Shame in the World of Sex Addiction

What does one do with the shame?

Perhaps you left your sex addict. Perhaps you stayed. Perhaps you left and then returned for reasons that are only known to you. Perhaps you don't know what to do. Perhaps you are a sex addict. Or a co-addict. Love addict. Romance addict. Relationship addict. Perhaps it's all of these. Perhaps it's none. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...

Perhaps you are me.

At the end of the day when I am laying my tired body down to rest, my mind begins to wage war. The images scorch before my mind's eye, searching for a place to make their home.

I no longer want this body to be home to the memories. And so, the endless riddle is, what does one do with the shame?

When it began to dawn on me that my partner had a sexual addiction, I did nothing. I believed that if I loved him through it, showed him my unconditional love, that somehow he would be healed. And in doing so, I nearly destroyed myself. And honestly, when I say I did nothing, that is not true.

I enabled him.

I became a willing participant. I owned his shame. I owned his disease. And for a while, I believe I became his disease.

In my journey towards recovery, I have had to face the very real fact that I absolutely cannot change the past. I am a natural born control freak, so this has been challenging for me to accept. Shame revisits me often. I greet it like an old friend, cry with it, scream with it, and sleep with it. It visits me in my dreams, in shadows of pain, in twisted memories. Always exaggerating the evil it thinks it is.

And yet, in moments of clarity, I have come to realize that shame is nothing but love at the other end of the spectrum. I am propelled towards love and forgiveness with shame licking at my heels. I cannot seem to run fast enough. The awakening for me has been in the realization of this concept: anything that brings us back to love, is simply love in disguise. And so now, I tell my old friend that it is no longer needed, it has already done what it was supposed to do.

Shame has inspired within my soul a longing, a search for perfect love and complete forgiveness, acceptance, and redemption, and, yes, a soul mate, beautiful sunsets, full moons, magical beginnings, and happily ever-afters.

And I am finding that this road is leading back to Me.

sometimes a cigar is just a cigar

I find myself watching that show on A & E INTERVENTION from time to time. Sometimes I get sucked right into the addicts story of woe while other times, the addict ends up infuriating me so much that I fear I'll end up giving myself a stroke! I know that every addict is different and so is their tolerance, etc but you'll be hard pressed to convince me that someone who has just been using for a couple of years is going to have as difficult a time kicking then someone who has used for a couple of decades. Whatever, that's not really what has got me all fired up!

I am very much aware that there are a whole lot of people who drink or drug so that they are able to escape or forget some awful past trauma, or to self medicate either diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health issues. I also think that there are a whole lot of us out there who drink or take drugs just cause they like to drink or take drugs! I was most definitely one of them.

It's often much more difficult to watch the addicts support group as they struggle to come to terms with their addict and his/her behaviour. Without exception, they all seem to have a tendency to blame themselves in some way for the addicts problems. Maybe that's true in some cases, but I suspect that more often than naught, it is not at all related. Maybe they're simply being too hard on themselves. Certainly if they actually did something terrible, then my guess is that they already know it. So, if they are unable to actually think of anything that they could have done to cause them to drink or drug then there probably isn't anything at all. They should attempt to move on and stop torturing themselves with guilt, vainly searching for that traumatic event that caused their loved one to become an addict. They may simply have to accept that perhaps their addict does what they do simply because they love getting drunk or high for this and this alone.

I wished many times when I was young and immature and arrogant that I had something in my past to be tortured about. It's a lot more romantic and punk rock if your life is filled with some sort of angst! Unfortunately for me, I was as far removed from that lifestyle than one could possibly imagine - now, since my late teens and early twenties, I've since managed to change all of that and wish that I didn't have some of the baggage I've now managed to accumulate in the past two decades!

I was fortunate enough to be raised by involved, loving and kind parents, given every middle class advantage. I did exceptionally well in school. earning a full paying scholarship to university upon my high school graduation. I was a lifeguard at our local pool every summer and worked as a waitress at the local truck stop during the school year. I had more than enough friends and no terrible, life altering story to tell about my teen years or even any tease worthy physical defects. I had what many would consider an idyllic childhood and yet, I still managed to spend two and a half decades abusing substances as if this were my true life's calling.

I discovered booze in my mid teens, and I loved it. I mean, I couldn’t believe how much I loved it. I then managed to spend the next many years of my life enjoying it to great excess. I drank because I liked getting drunk too much. It fit just right inside my mind. Eventually, of course, the drinking got less fun, certainly less exciting, and in fact, actually started to get boring. It never got to the point where my drinking interfered with my work or life but still I could see that if I didn't reign myself in that I'd be unable to maintain the status quo much longer.

Drinking was much easier to walk away from simply because I had something newer and shinier to replace it with. I still had a pretty idyllic life even though I'd since been through a couple of really nasty relationships but even so, I never used any of this as an excuse to continue my substance abusing lifestyle. I had now simply integrated this into my everyday routine. Even at the very end of my final out of control opiate addiction two and a half years ago, I was never, ever using because of some awful trauma that I was trying desperately to suppress. To the end, and I mean to my absolute final hit with that syringe filled with about 12mg of dilaudid, I was using simply because I loved to use. End of sentence, full stop. Period.

In the end, it doesn't matter much how you got yourself addicted, once you are, you have a struggle ahead of you, and I don’t think that falling into addiction this way is any “worse” than falling into addiction and abuse for any other reason. Nobody plans to become a desperate drunk or drug addict, certainly not initially or intentionally, although as a species, we seem to be hardwired to seek out pleasure – and for those of us that seem to get more pleasure out of a drink and drugs than others, it’s understandable why we might get ourselves into trouble.

Broken Windows

"Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars."

Broken Windows by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, which appeared in the March 1982 edition of The Atlantic Monthly

Yesterday I learned that my mother had finally, after all the crap she's done, all the drunk driving, drunk dialing, drunk wedding wrecking, drunk ax wielding, drunk lying, drunk sending her kids to Scandinavia and leaving them there, etc. -- gotten herself arrested. Money can insulate you from almost anything, but not forever, and money cannot buy happiness. It can finance a spectacular misery and it can postpone, or evade entirely, reaching a real bottom. That is mom's situation; too rich to have the kind of consequences that it sometimes takes to fully concede defeat.

I learned from my sister that my mom had been arrested. I was checking e-mail on my mobile phone at work last night around 9. Her note said if I ever need a reminder of why I stay sober, take a look at the Ada County Sheriff's Arrest Report for January 31st. Of course I called my sister immediately. I'll spare you the details of the sordid story - it will probably make it into a screenplay at some point anyway - but the climax was my screaming mother being arrested in front of her home for obstructing police. Some part of of me, the part that isn't perfect yet, was thrilled that she was finally reaping some consequences from her addiction. The part of me that still hangs on to resentment toward her for any of the thousand ways she has harmed her children suddenly felt vindicated. In spite of all the 4th step inventory written on her and in spite of having some idea of my part, I have kept a careful distance from her. It wouldn't do either of us any good to make that amends too early. Clearly I need to do it so that I can put that inappropriate glee behind me.


The joy was fleeting though. It lasted just long enough for me to get home from work and pull her mug shot up on the sheriff's web site. It shocked me.
If the community of recovery is a neighborhood and the eyes are the windows of the soul , I live in a great neighborhood today. I live among people who solve their problems by serving their Creator and helping others. Windows in my neighborhood don't stay broken. Trash doesn't stay out on the street. Looking at the windows in mom's neighborhood breaks my heart.