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.

Lilly's Letter

Lilly had a crush on me in high school. She thought I was innocent and wholesome – good father/husband material – which I was. Her friend Linsey also liked me, but promised to stay away for Lilly's sake.

Linsey honored her promise by sticking her tongue down my throat and her hand in my pants. I guess she was excited by the lure of something she couldn't have. She's still like this today. She's most interested in fucking when I give up, stop trying or caring, and decide to become a kindly and celibate monk. Then she's on fire.

A few years later, Lilly was the Maid of Honor in our wedding. Yeah, it was a little strange. She went on to become Linsey's confidant when I would disappear down the rabbit hole of drugs and porn. Knowing that Lilly knows all my shit makes me uncomfortable around her, but I'm happy Linsey has her as a friend.

Lilly sent me an email a couple of days ago, opening up about her own food addiction and her fears of hurting the man she's in love with. Writing her back this afternoon was a good experience for me:

Hi Lilly-

What a sweet and honest letter this is. I'm honored you would share so much with me. All I've really known is that you've struggled with food. There's been times when I screw up and Linsey heads off to see you, and I feel so ashamed, and Linsey just tells me that you understand me better than I think.

As hard as it's been for me at times, I really do support your loyalty to Linsey. God knows she needs somebody she can talk to about me, and you and her friend Claire are pretty much all she has (outside of her support groups.) Your friendship and support have helped her to stick around and work things out, and for that I'm very thankful.

I definitely do understand the way that addiction is there every single day. I get angry sometimes when I hear people share that God has taken away the desires they used to fight. I just sit there and think, "it must be nice..." But then when I'm honest with myself and look at the big picture, I realize God has taken away much of the constant drives that used to plague me all the time. I guess I offer that to give you hope - with enough time and work, I think any addiction does become easier.

As far as how it affects your boyfriend, I don't think the answers are as easy. I can tell you that what I wanted (prayed for, begged for, cried for) was to be healed from all this crap, to be fixed. I wanted to be able to go to my pastor and say, "I used to have this problem..." I wanted to be able to completely remove the pain and discomfort that my issues have brought into my family.

But I think I'm learning it doesn't work that way. I finally figured out that I had to go to my pastor and say, "I have this problem, now, still, ... and I'm working on it, every day." I had to find the strength to tell Linsey, "I have this problem, I will always have this problem, and because I love you, I want to work on it so we can have a marriage."

And I had to ask for her help. Things didn't really get better for me until she was willing to accept that she couldn't bring home a prescription for codeine and keep it in our medicine cabinet. I've sat through so many family support groups and heard spouses that were angry they couldn't keep alcohol in the house anymore. And this is what it comes down to for me: Real recovery isn't saying "I will have enough willpower to walk past the liquor cabinet every day and ignore it." Real recovery IS having the courage to say: "will you help me by moving the liquor somewhere else?"

I guess I'm just trying to share what I've had to learn, over and over and over, the hard way - that the more isolated I am, the more control the addictions have over me. Of course much of my openness is with recovery friends and groups. But it's unavoidable that some of it has to happen with Linsey. You mentioned the times when you fudge the truth with your boyfriend. Boy does that sound familiar. I still struggle with this, and I know that it wouldn't really be productive for Linsey to hear every little thing that I share with my groups, or therapists, or whoever else helps me out. But the key is, I can't protect her from it completely. I wish so much that she didn't have to look at it, to see this ugly shameful part of me. But the only way to kill the beast (or at least keep it out of my yard) is to have a certain amount of transparency with her. And to let her see how helpless I am against all this without the help of God and recovery people.

I am also sad that a distance has grown between us. But I can live with you being angry at me sometimes. I'm angry at me sometimes. I don't know where you are in terms of recovery "stuff" – you know, groups and books and steps. But I can tell you that for me, trying to fight by myself was an exercise in frustration and disappointment. As busy and exhausted as Linsey and I are, I just started back into a weekly step-study group, because I need other people to stay sober. I hope that it makes you happy to know that your letter, and the time I've spent reading and answering it, were just what I needed right now. You helped me today, and I am grateful for that and for your friendship.

Eli

Do You Know the Real Me?

It's inevitable, I guess. Eventually someone I know will stumble across this blog. So if you're that person, I'm writing this to you. I want to answer the questions that you may not feel comfortable asking.

First of all, how big of a deal is this secret you've found? That depends. We're not talking Men In Black, or Watergate tapes, or the Sacred Feminine and Knights Templar. I have no power or money to speak of, and I'm not running for office. In one sense you've just walked into a recovery meeting of sorts, where the basic rules of anonymity and confidentiality are tacitly assumed, if not always followed. Most of what you read here I've shared with complete strangers in 12-step groups for years. That takes guts, and I'm proud of it.

Here's where I stand today: Most of my family knows I'm an addict. (Even my grandparents – I had to sit in their living room a few years back and apologize for stealing a bottle of Vicodin.) And as for the burning question on the table, yes, my pastor knows. That day a year ago, when I sat in his office sobbing, parents at my side for support, was a turning point. I've worked here six years as your full time employee, I told him. People look up to me. Whether I feel like one or not, they see me as their pastor. All this time, as I've made myself available to God in the best way I know how, I've had a plan: Someday, I'll sit you down and tell you that I used to be an alcoholic/addict. I lied for a while, but now I'm done. And everything is fixed. But now I understand that it doesn't work that way. I'm an alcoholic. I'll always be an alcoholic. This will never go away. I can't lie anymore, so I'm pouring myself into recovery, and I'm ready to face whatever this means for my work here in the church.

If you indeed know me, you might also know my pastor. How do you think he reacted? Gracefully, wisely. He said that as an employer, he was not obligated by our church laws to fire me, bring me before the church board, or anything else of that nature. He said that as a friend and mentor, he was proud of me and excited for what God could do in my life now that I had come to the end of myself. We set up accountability checks, we prayed and hugged, and I went on with my life.

So on a professional level, the information in this blog probably wouldn't cost me my career, but it could seriously mess up the time line I've been following for “going public” with my addictions. You know, the one that says I'm just not ready yet to “go public” with my addictions.

I guess this is what I'd ask of you at this point. First, let me know you're “in.” Email me, call me, know that I've done the disclosure thing before, and I'll do it again. Many times. Chances are, you knowing about my addictions will ultimately be beneficial to both you and me.

Second, make a decision about this blog. If it's just not your thing, if the language is too course or the stories too raw, let it go. If you find it helpful or thought-provoking, then by all means, read and comment. Either way, if you're connected to other people who know me, help me keep it a secret. If (and when?) I lose my anonymity here, writing these posts will stop being helpful to me. At least in the way they've been helpful so far – in digging through emotions and details that are hard to talk about face to face. I haven't invited my pastor to read. He doesn't know that I relapsed in December, only that I am working my program and giving my all to find sobriety through God and the program.

Many of my fellow bloggers have written this post. One of my favorites is MPJ's, whose front page states: “Click the links below if you have realized you are My Mother, My Father, Anyone else who knows the real life me.” Cute. And profound and touching if you follow the links. I figured it was time for me to write my entry in the “what to do if you know me” genre.

So if you're my bass player, and you noticed that my Gmail account was open to a certain “Eli Hornby” when you used my computer this morning, welcome to my world. I think we need to spend some time over coffee soon. I'm free most days this week.

That goes for anyone else as well.

Awake

Day 46

I'm awake.

Not buzzy awake – Monster drinks and nicotine, porn and adrenaline. Handfuls of meds and empty bottles of cough syrup. Midnight hammock with the porch light off. Euphoric cognitive dissonance: “I will write the most beautiful poem” when I can't even string together words.

I mean sure, I had my triple-venti-nonfat-no-whip-mocha. My friend said that Starbucks is too strong for her – she drank it yesterday and it made her sick. Well, duh silly. It's like heroin: you can't shoot up right out of the gate. We have to build to that.

But I'm awake and alert and picking up the pieces in my den, one book or cable or CD at a time. These sediment layers are an archaeological record of the last several years of my life, and my spectacular failure to follow through on all the projects I started. I tried to explain to my nine-year-old: I'm not just untangling cables, I'm having to look at all the things that I wanted to do, but never finished. Ashley responded, “Why don't you just do them now?”

And that's what each day is like right now. I'm feeling the warming rays of the sun after days and months of rain.

Part of it's familiar. When I make that excruciating call, “Mom, I'm using again” and the cycle breaks – and I feel the freedom from the tyranny of my addict. I don't have to stockpile internet porn or hide chemicals under the bathroom sink during every free moment. That much I've been thankful for, many times. Until it starts again.

Part of it is unfamiliar. And terrifyingly real. Because this time in sobriety, I'm not curled up under the covers. I added to the endless list of recovery slogans my own little mantra: “Get out of bed, stupid.” Because once I'm up, I can think about my goals and spend time with the people I love. I can even dig through my shit when I'm feeling brave, exposing it to the healing light of my program friends, my therapists, my sponsor, you.

It's not that I haven't wanted to be awake before now, but that I simply couldn't. I know that “change in sleeping patterns” is on that check list for clinical depression. How many times have I sat and answered those questions: Change in appetite? Yes. Loss of interest in daily activities? Yes. Feelings of hopelessness? Yes. Thoughts of suicide? Yes.

Yes, yes, yes...

If you're on meds, don't get me wrong. They've saved my life, more than once. And I'm still on them now. But last summer (three relapses ago) I asked my shrink for less, not more. I was tired of being numb all the time. Because life isn't just about not feeling awful all the time, but about feeling warmth and joy and excitement, and maybe even crying when I'm watching Wall-e with my kids.

The recovery lesson for me is this: I didn't wake up because I found the right meds. I didn't wake up because I exercised or juiced carrots and apples and parsley. It's the step work. Answering questions about the shadowy parts of my landscape, and sharing with other people. Coming out of isolation and answering my phone.

It isn't all ecstacy. (The feeling not the drug.) I spent so many years trying desperately every day to top the previous day. I'm and addict; that's how we roll. I'm still learning and struggling with the concept that every day isn't Christmas morning. (This last December 25th, Ashley burst through the door and asked, “Do you know how hard it was to wait 'til 7:09 to wake you up?” We asked what time she had woken up. Answer: “7:06.”) But this moment, I can look out my window, and see the silhouettes of the trees across the street against the blue and gray of the sunset, and I can experience it. In the moment, with a deep breath of oxygen. And my neck hurts a little, and James keeps asking me Nintendo questions, but it's all OK, because I'm here.

And tomorrow, I'll “get out of bed, stupid” and I'll call my sponsor and read my Big Book. These banal things that stave off the nightmare for one more day, and allow me to take in all the beauty and grace that have been poured into my life, before I even knew to ask for them, before I ever deserved them.

And I won't be dreaming, but awake.

No Spin

Day 64.

I’ve been struggling.

Why is that so hard to say? When I started this blog, I wanted to lay it all out, everything from the beautiful to the repulsive. Essentially, I wanted to document what it’s like to be an addict. But I find it surprisingly difficult to reveal the ugly stuff until I’m ready to pair it with a redeeming ray of sunshine, which I will now proceed to do. But what if I’d written this entry yesterday? All I could have said was this:

I’m looking for relief in all the wrong places. I’m in emotional and physical pain, and I’m trying to fix it by taking medicine I don’t need, smoking obsessively, drinking energy drinks, and looking at not-quite-porn. It started when my wife left for the weekend, in an attempt to soothe the obsession without falling off into relapse. It wasn’t necessarily that destructive or hurtful, but it was wasteful, and kinda lame. I set up a bunch of safety precautions – phone calls, accountability reports – but it really comes down to what’s going on inside. Once I stayed at my parent’s house while Linsey was out of town, to be “safe.” I ended up using in the bedroom next to my son while he slept. I mean, until I fix what’s going on inside, what can you do? Chain me up?

I’m not fixed.

In my efforts to reign it in, and get through this rough patch, I’ve spent a lot of time on the phone with my new sponsor. This is growth – I hate the phone. We’ve talked a lot about “middle circle behavoir.” SAA’s middle circle is a double-edged sword, with both powerful and dangerous potential. I firmly believe in the concept: define behaviors that can lead to relapse, so that you know where you’re headed before you get there. If you do it right, you’re asking for help before you crash and burn. This takes a lot of honesty and vulnerability. If you do it wrong, you’re defining behaviors as middle circle “on the fly” to suit your desires in the moment. Then you’re in trouble. Basically, you’ll do OK with the middle circle concept if you can admit that you’ll never be fixed. If you’re looking for complete release, the ability to say “I used to be an addict,” then it won’t work for you. Because every time you call up a program friend and say you’re in the middle circle, you’re acknowledging that you’re still looking for illicit comfort, you’re still messed up, and you’re still a heartbeat away from relapse.

In this morning’s meeting, my sponsor gave up two and a half years of sobriety. His slip had been a little bit of internet porn. I remembered the relief I felt when I recently started over. He echoed my experience, that honesty and continued growth are more important than your chip-record. Chips and the sobriety time they represent are invaluable. So is being able to admit that I’m not yet (and never will be) fixed. I find it interesting and relevant that God never did take away Paul's "thorn in the flesh."

I’m broken.

This week in my church, a woman shared her testimony. It boiled down to this: She is heading to Korea for missions work, and wasn’t sure they’d want her. The reason? A few years back, she went through a divorce. I caught her after the service and told her with tears in my eyes that I admired her. Not for going to Korea, but for choosing to share with us her struggles. As a newly single woman, she had been living in her parents’ home, but avoided our church out of shame. Going back meant walking into the building where she’d married, and facing friends who had attended her wedding. Eventually, she did return, and found love and acceptance. (Thank God – that’s the kind of church I want to be a part of.) I learned that my actions as her Worship Pastor had been part of her healing. What a humbling lesson on the mystery of God’s plans: I was filling an orchestra and a choir. God was healing a broken heart. I believe that in her ministry, she will discover, as I have, that her wound is not a liability. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” [2Cor12] It’s really true.

I need God.

Our guest speaker had worked as a missionary in China. She was down to earth, funny and authentic. She had recently spent two weeks in a poor farming province teaching about the Old Testament. (Shout-out to my Jewish friends…) Everyone wore thick jackets in the pictures, the kind I wear once a year when we take the kids to the snow. They sat on a kang, a raised heated platform, where they also ate and slept. It was crowded. The church service in the city was also crowded, and had expanded from a living room to an entire floor of a factory. How does one keep an illegal church service (with 200 people) secret? These people are hungry. They need and want more of God in their lives. And when given the opportunity, they respond. Our speaker contrasted this with our reluctance to go to the altar. We worry, what will people think if they I know I need God? How did we get the idea in our heads that needing God makes us less spiritual? I have a long way to go, but I’m done debating the first couple of steps. I’m powerless, my life’s unmanageable, and only a power greater then myself can restore me to sanity.

Resentments

Back to day 13. This is a long one, folks.

Last night I was drowning in resentment. The timing was strange, or fortunate, I’m not sure which, since last night was the three-year anniversary of the Celebrate Recovery group I attend. Everything was great – the music, the food, and I couldn’t stop the tears as I listened to one person after another share their stories. If you’ve ever wanted to know what the whole 12-step thing is about, this would have been a good introduction. You won’t find it in a book or a video, or in one person’s experience, but in a room full of people who are all over the map. There’s 24-years-sober-guy, the girl who just lost her kids after a DUI, the guy who went back to the bottle after 25 years when his wife died of cancer. And what we all share is humility. We’ve come to the end of ourselves and asked for help in our brokenness. It’s beautiful.

And thank God everyone doesn’t have it all figured out. I can handle the success stories because they’re bookended by guys I know, guys I’ve cried with, who are still fighting through it. They hurt every day, and rely on God, friends and groups to survive. Every night they remember the Big Book’s advice to search for “selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear,” [p84] and immediately ask God to remove them. (How did “fear” get into this list? That’s a question for another post.)

One day at a time, one word at a time. Resentment. It haunts me and poisons me, it permeates my speech, my thoughts, my sleep. How many times have I sung about bringing my stuff to the “foot of the cross?” How many times have I done it?

Linsey, these are my resentments towards you today. Can I pour them out without prefacing each with my own apologies, my own failures? If I write them here, can I begin to heal? At next year’s celebration, will I be able to put my arms around you when others share about their healed marriages?

I resent the way you drift off to sleep after you’ve hurt me or we’ve argued. Since I am not a survivor of abuse, I do not know how to turn off my feelings of betrayal, anger, sadness, arousal, and most often loneliness. These feelings intensify and fill the darkness like the sound of your snoring. And then I am struck by that odd sense of indignity when someone doesn’t confront you or even avoid you, but rather simply ignores you. I hear: You’re not even worth the time it would take to argue.

I resent the way you responded when I gave you the flyer for a “sexual abuse survivor group.” That night seems like so long ago, when we attended our first Celebrate Recovery. I was broken and hurting, and nervous sick to walk into a church full of addicts, and yet was feeling some hope for our marriage. We had finally put the basic pieces together: I’m an addict and you’re a survivor, and we were going to do this together! Last night, Gerri shared about her first night at CR. She had come to see exactly what it was her fiance (my cousin Jack) did on Friday nights. She decided on that first night that she would be a part of this, every Friday, with Jack at her side. I waited four years for you to come with me. I hear: I’ll get better when I feel like it, but don’t you dare screw up again.

I resent what you said Thursday night after we made love. You had asked me earlier why I had been burying myself in hobbies, why I’d been unavailable. Because you’re dangerous, I said. Opening up my daily life to you costs me, and sometimes I can’t pay. I’m emotionally broke. Trust me, you said. Then, like normal people, we ate and talked, watched TV and went to bed. It wasn’t perfect or awful, just good. (“She didn't make me miserable, or anxious, or ill at ease. You know, it sounds boring, but it wasn't. It wasn't spectacular either. It was just good. But really good.” –Rob, High Fidelty) And when we finished, I let down my guard and felt joy. Those fucking orgasm hormones, they make me love you so deeply, and life turns OK – everything turns OK. And when I told you how I felt, you rolled away and said you wished it didn’t mean so much to me. You wished you didn’t have that much power over my feelings, that much responsibility.

You know, when I got married, the James Dobsons of the world had me convinced that if I just WAITED until I got married, we’d both feel that good. I gave up on that pretty fast. Then I read some other Christian book on marriage, and it said that it’s OK when the woman just finds joy in giving. She doesn’t need or even want "her turn" every time. So I learned, I accepted, that you won’t enjoy sex like I will, and we agreed to find meaning and legitimacy in the nights when I needed you like oxygen, and you let me breathe. But Thursday night, even that was too much. I heard: I can’t tolerate you feeling that happy.

I resent that your recovery is so different from mine. At CR last night, I heard all these women get up and share that they were in recovery for COSA (Codependents of Sex Addicts?), which more often than not means that they are abuse survivors. (I'll never forget when a counselor at Kaiser rehab said, "and we all know that the codependents are worse than us 'cause they do their shit sober.") Some took chips “for various lengths of recovery” which is an interesting variation on the AA phrase “for various lengths of sobriety.” What does it mean when a COSA person takes a 90-day chip? That she didn’t clam up and make her husband feel like a rapist for the last three months? And that’s what pisses me off. I have an addiction – “cunning, baffling, powerful.” [p58] I’ve spent years of my life getting up before sunrise to go to morning meetings of AA, SAA, NA, CR, rehab. I try, read and read and read, fight, surrender, write. There’s this line of people stretching back into the past that I’ve sat down with, one by one, and told that I’m helpless and sick, that I use drugs, look at pornography, steal things. I beg and beg, weeping on my knees in front of God, for release from the constant, maddening drive towards the substances that will put out the fires in my mind and body. They haunt me every single day. And I can do this without fail, for days and weeks and months, then blow it all in a moment of weakness when a handful of pills seems like a more responsible release than suicide, and I have to fucking start all the way back at zero. And tell everybody who loves me that I’m a failure. Again.

And maybe this is more of what was going on last night than I know. Because a couple of weeks ago, I compulsively swallowed a handful of medicine that I knew contained my “drug-of-choice”, and I told Heidi in our counseling session, like I promised I would. And that was it. It’s out. I didn’t hide it like so many times before, the times when I rationalized that I hadn’t gone to the store to buy (or steal) the real stuff, I hadn’t laundered money for some porn site, I hadn’t called that girl from the emotional affair. The last time I relapsed, I did the real thing (except contact that girl) and I laid in bed next to you multiple nights, high for hours, looking at porn on my phone. Yeah I know, it hurts to say it out loud. This time, if it even was a relapse, I took some pills that made me sleepy.

Since I began recovery two markers have gradually moved up a scale which charts my progress. At the bottom of this scale is my addict, at the top is the perfect creation God intended. One marker represents my behavior. It has moved up! I am getting better, I am accepting the strength of my higher power. But higher up the scale is a marker for my standards, my definition of sobriety. It continues to be a few steps beyond my behavior. I had months and months of sobriety in those earlier years that didn’t contain a week of sobriety by the standards I hold today. Through much work and agonizing, I’ve gradually expanded my “inner circle” of behaviors that I choose to abstain from. I’ve come to see that many things that seemed harmless, or maybe just wasteful, have repeatedly led me back to “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.” [p30] (In other areas, I’ve relaxed, and grown to accept imperfections and weaknesses.) Today, I choose honesty, disclosure, vulnerability. As an addict, I cannot wait until the world falls apart to declare a new sobriety date. I took a step, a small step, back into substance abuse, and even though I didn’t give into other addictive behaviors, I must start over. I’ll write it in my Big Book, below the other crossed out dates, like my first sponsor told me. September 15, 2008.

Dry-Erase Board

Day 4
There’s a dry-erase board by our front door. It’s for messages and lists. I’m sure on the box there was a picture with generic things written like “milk, eggs, bread” and “don’t forget to pick up Sarah at the mall.” Ours had a circled number written in the corner. It’s the number of days I’ve been sober. Linsey updated it every day at first, then eased into the period of erasing “103” and writing “112.” That’s usually when I get into trouble. I just walked by the board, and the number is gone. I guess it’s just too painful for her to write the number “4.”

Today would have been five months. The hardest part of relapsing is telling all of the people who believe in me that I screwed up. I know that some of them are wondering how they might have helped me differently, some feel sad for Linsey, and, worst of all, some aren’t even surprised. People who attend 12-step meetings with me, or “program people,” are unfailingly supportive. They know what it feels like to give in, feel guilty, swear off, clean up, then start all over. They know the fear, the helplessness, the self-loathing. The madness and the chaos. They know how small I feel when I realize that my promises to myself mean nothing. They get it before I even describe it – It’s eerie. My parents have been increasingly gentle as well. I spoke to my mom on the phone yesterday. At one point she said, choosing each word carefully and speaking resolutely, “we are not afraid of your difficulties.” They’re in for the long haul.

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s Linsey. I’ve hurt her over and over and over, and each time, her pain bleeds out all over the place. Here’s the truth: I have never experienced anything more agonizing than watching her cry because of me. Nothing even comes close. I would gladly slit my wrists, borrow my dad’s gun for an afternoon, or jump out my hotel window than break her heart. These options take turns lodging in my brain until I realize how much worse it would hurt her if I left. Central to our struggle is her inability to trust. What a combo – me and her, the untrustworthy and the untrusting. She told me tonight that she doesn’t even feel like she knows me. The things I do don’t make sense to her. Program people refer to Linsey as a “normie.” I hated that word at first. But they’re right. There is something fundamentally different between normies and alkies, addicts, and perverts. I don’t really care if you believe it. Look at things from my side of the fence for a moment: I don’t understand why you don’t reach for a cocktail when you’re hurting. If I did, I wouldn’t be this way.

It is often said that chemically dependent people fall into three evenly divided categories. The first group achieves long-term sobriety on the first serious attempt, the second relapses several times before succeeding to stay sober, and the third group relapses chronically for life. “Jails, institutions and death,” you will often hear in support groups. This is your future if you don’t deal with your addiction. I recently spoke to my friend Darla who has relapsed several times. Over the years we’ve fought together to reclaim our lives. I told her that sometimes I wonder which group I’m in. I’ve been at this for six years. That’s half my adult life. That third group – the ones who never make it – what if that’s me? Some days I would welcome the surrender of putting on a hospital gown and moving into an institution. More often, I wonder what heaven is like, and I wish that I could be there now.