Course Correction

I took the "Days Sober" widget off my blog. I'm sick of it, and it's become an impediment to writing. In church-ese we say "We count people because people count," and it's the same thing here: While the focus should be on *quality* ("progress not perfection"?), you eventually have to measure some kind of *quantity*. In church-land, that's the size of your congregation compared to last year. In recovery it's how long you've been sober.

One day.

A year and a half ago, after everything crashed and burned, I found a counselor who specializes in treating sex addiction. It's been a quite a ride - illuminating and excruciating and encouraging. I feel like I've made progress for the first time in a decade, which isn't true, because that invalidates all the work I did before, which was also exhausting, but not very encouraging. After truly addressing my sex addiction in a structured program with a trained therapist, I made it to fourteen months. In my world, that's relatively awesome.

After a year of working part time, I became over-employed last September. Who complains about having too many opportunities to work? I guess I shifted from a life of recovery (with work on the side) to a life of work (with recovery on the side) and I just can't do that. I relapsed in November, and again last week. This looks depressingly like my old cycle.

That's okay. I have hope. Maybe for the first time in a while. When I would relapse before, people would always say Get a sponsor and work the steps. Get a sponsor and work the steps. Get a sponsor and work the steps. Get a sponsor and blahblahblahBLAHBLAHBLAH

There, I said it. I just lost every single one of my faithful AA readers. (Funny fact: I don't have any more faithful readers!) I know that's blasphemy, and I have the deepest respect for AA. Really - I'm not just saying that. I once read that AA was the most important invention of the 20th century, and I often bring this up to people. For how long have alcoholics faced jails, institutions and death, with no hope at all? Forever, that's how long. 1935 was the first time in history that alcoholics had hope. Ever.

But I kept doing those things and doing those things and I learned incredible things about addiction and recovery, and I still believe that if I'd kept at it I could have found some sobriety in AA - but what an incredible difference to be working with a counselor who truly understands the agony and darkness of my world as a sex addict, and even more so as a sexual anorexic.

But as I was saying earlier I have hope. I'm not going back to the same thing I've done for years, but back to something that really began to change my life in September of 2011. I guess it sounds like I'm proselytizing, but the material put together by Patrick Carnes is the thing I need to get back to. If you happen to be a sex addict who's not sure where to start, www.sexhelp.com is the best place.

Tonight I had another talk with my son James about his success in staying away from internet porn. Not because of some program I installed on his computer - though these can be helpful - or because he's afraid of punishment - though he should be afraid of consequences - but because he's spent the last year learning with me about addiction and healthy sexuality, about managing feelings and urges, about self-care and asking for help, and accountability and "checking in" with other guys. I'm glad that the things I'm learning aren't just for me.

Update

It's been a life-changing few months. I often want to post about the trees, but I don't think they'll make sense without the forest – so here it goes...

>>>New Therapist

When I woke my parents up and told them I was using in their home, I think the seriousness of my addictions really sank in. We talked the next day about what to do next. First came the difficult acknowledgement that I am, first and foremost, a sex addict. Chemicals are just icing on my porn cake. At this point, they happen to be willing and financially able to help, so we looked into inpatient sex addiction clinics. When we saw how much they cost, paying for a therapist who is specifically trained in sex addiction didn't look so bad, so that's where we started. After some research, I really clicked with a guy in Carlsbad, which is about an hour from my home. We jumped right into Patrick Carnes material, and I knew I was in the right place. So far it's been excruciatingly painful at times, and probably more helpful than anything else I've done.

>>>Marital Separation

I stayed with my parents until the middle of September and went home a couple of weeks before I wrapped things up at the church. The time away from my wife was amazingly helpful. Being there of my own initiative (instead of being “kicked out”) allowed me to grow instead of sulk. I don't think I ever realized how codependent I am with my wife. Even with the lost job and being separated from my family, I felt positive most of the time. Somewhere along the line, I had learned that I wasn't allowed to be happy unless Linsey was happy, which frankly isn't very often. This has been a huge change.

>>>Job Loss

What a complicated, confusing mess. Sometimes in life you have to look a list of truths and let them sit, side by side, even if they seem to conflict with each other. Here are a few of them:

-My (former) pastor (and boss) had encouraged me to ask for more help if I needed it. When I did, he fired me.

-My using had not really affected my job (in any tangible way) but at a church, it seriously affected my integrity.

-Many church members (who knew the whole story, without edits) were crazy mad that I was fired and were ready to fight the decision.

-Whether or not the pastor made the right decision is not what matters. That I lost my job to my addiction is what matters. Let me say it again, in the interest of thoroughly hitting bottom: I lost my job to my addiction.

-My wife told church members not to fight the pastor – that it was time for us to move on and that I needed to feel a consequence. She was right.

-I have been increasingly unhappy with the pastor's leadership decisions in the last few years. He's made some seriously destructive mistakes, become more and more dictatorial, and is showing significant signs of memory loss. He is unwilling to retire. That's not sour grapes, it's just what is.

-I've been in conversation with a few potential employers, but was too afraid of change to leave my position. If I'd been healthier, I would have left years ago. Instead I chose to do it the stupid way.

-Leaving my position in that church has been one of the best things that's ever happened to me and my family.

-Getting fired from my position in that church has been one of the most painful and difficult things that's ever happened to me and my family.

>>>Rehab

Two weeks at Kaiser's Chemical Dependency Rehabilitation Program. Very helpful – lots of good tools and connections. Good use of time in my first two weeks of being unemployed. As the name implies, it's a chemical dependency program, not a sex addiction clinic. But it's all good.

>>>Grief and Divorce Recovery

My aunt happens to run an amazing Grief and Divorce Recovery group. You don't have to be going through a divorce to attend, just grieving something. She told me I would be grieving the loss of my church, and that I should attend. Honestly, I think I've been grieving the healthy church I used to work at for the last three or four years. What I have never dealt with, however, is the gut-wrenching pain in my marriage. I carry debilitating anger and resentment for the first twelve years of our marriage, during which Linsey repeatedly explained to me that we didn't need outside help because there were no problems to work on. I've committed to doing whatever uncomfortable “grief work” this workshop tells me to do – drawing pictures, writing “unsent” letters, and other such things.

And letting go of old marriage-hurts is the right thing to do at this point. Because it's not about Linsey right now, or my marriage, or my career, or anything else. It's about me, a recovering sex addict. And I have hope right now. It feels nice.

Drugs - The Good Kind

This is not what I thought it would feel like to be 35, I told Linsey. She asked what I meant: Did I think I'd be the Composer in Residence for some college orchestra? More successful, career-wise? A better dad?

Not really more of anything, actually. The only way I knew to say it was, I thought I would be less lost.

The weeks after a relapse, even a quickly aborted one, are inevitably brutal. I've screwed up my brain chemistry: things that should feel good feel bland, things that should feel bad feel excruciatingly painful. Food for thought next time I get a “bright idea.”

But this one goes deeper. In this chapter of my life I find myself haunted by some of my more tenacious demons. Sometimes my sobriety feels like a game of Jenga. I think all of the pieces are there, that my stability is secure, and by a mistake of omission I pull a cornerstone. Each time the tower falls, I relearn the importance of vigilance.

I can learn much during this post-relapse period, as I tear away the band-aids that my addiction has plastered over my wounds. When I manage these hurts in healthy ways, I am prone to forget they are there. (I guess that's called healing.) But when I wake up from my addiction, there's a unique opportunity to look at whatever I was running from. What void was I filling with all the wrong things?

So I'm realizing that I've been a little sloppy in treating my depression. First, the usual caveats: depression is not an excuse for my relapse. And I'm not suggesting psychiatric treatment as a substitute for a rigorous 12-step program - depression and addiction are not the same thing. But, in my life at least, they feed into each other, in a wickedly symbiotic manner that leaves me no option but to face them both down, unflinchingly and relentlessly.

A week after I used, I left one of my regular meetings feeling supported and encouraged. I don't know what happened on the way home that night, but the bottom dropped out of my world. I took off my seat belt and took my van past 110 mph, praying to be killed in an accident. I'm either too chicken-shit or too grounded to ever follow through, so I talked myself down from the ledge and went home and called someone. I'm proud that I picked up the phone that night. People came over, we talked, I felt loved. After they left I carved myself up with a razor blade. I've been doing this for years and I never talk about it, because to talk about it seems self-important, like a “cry for help.” The silence has not served me well, so I'm ending it.

Obviously there are pieces of my relapse in that night, shards of guilt and shame and self-loathing that are achingly familiar. There is also a kind of narcissism in any self-destructive act. But I know that there is also a component of under-treated major depressive disorder-recurrent that I cannot afford to minimize. I know this for a fact. I know it because I've been on and off medication for all of my adult life, and I know what the “brain chemistry” part of depression feels like. I know what if feels like to be properly medicated, and this isn't it.

Towards the end of my college years, I gave a composition recital. I also tried to kill myself. My acceptance at that point of the inescapable roll of prescribed psychotropic medications in my life was tinged with sadness. I feared that if I medicated the blackest parts of my mind, the colors would fade as well. They did not. During this time, I fell in love with a child and lost her, and every shade of compassion and heartbreak I experienced was vivid, sharp, saturated. I composed the most honest and moving pieces of my career, all while under the treatment of a psychiatrist.

I guess the “recurrent” in my depression diagnosis was true. I guess it's time to put in some more work on that front.

[Photo by size8jeans under C.C.License]

This post is also at The Second Road.