READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.
“What if you had it all
But nobody to call?
Maybe then, you’d know me
‘Cause I’ve had everything
But no one’s listening
And that’s just f*ckin’ lonely”—
Lyrics “Lonely” by Justin Beiber
Addiction is like a train going down the track out of control. It escalates and encompasses every aspect of life. Most addicts experience a cocktail of hits that can go from alcohol to opioids, MDMA, psilocybin, food, work, sex, etc. It’s a boutique combination designed for escape. Anything to avoid emptiness, and loneliness and provide an exit from it all.
Today porn plays big on the screen for addicts and nonaddicts alike. Some people use porn as a healthy way of enhancing their sexual experience with a partner. For them, it is not an addictive agent. For others, not so. The average age of early exposure to porn on the Internet is age 8—a little young, wouldn’t you say, to introduce such a stimulant to a child’s brain! Wonder what would happen to someone who introduced a regular shot of whiskey to an 8-year-old?
Today, there’s such a thing as neuronal fatigue caused by being overexposed to porn. People who immerse themselves in porn want more and more to achieve a new high. Whatever you can think about you pretty much can find on the internet. As the neurons in your brain fire and you do it over and over again you build networks of arousal. However, the brain gets tired. Victoria’s Secret is no longer arousing. There is a compelling desire for something more exciting and sensational. Sexual intimacy as a typical romantic encounter becomes less appealing. It loses its intrigue. We now see a growing number of young men in their early to mid 20s who struggle with erectile dysfunction related to neuronal fatigue.
Then there’s the aspect of double life with addiction. Your drug of choice becomes an organizing principle in your life. Everything is organized around the hit and the junkie worm demands more and more while you try to hide all that is going on inside and around you. It quickly becomes complicated and exhausting. Rapidly, your life disintegrates and the wheels on the train go off the track. There is clearly a free fall into the abyss of addictive behaviors.
Recovery is about stopping the runaway train. You do this by contracting sobriety which means to abstain from the addictive behavior totally. You don’t drink, drug, sex out, binge with food, etc. It’s simple. You stop it all. You don’t compromise by agreeing to cut back. You stop. You hang out with others who have radically stopped and share honestly what you went through in your addiction and what you are going through in your recovery.
Sex addicts struggle big time with sobriety. Literally, a sex addict in recovery must stop all sexual behavior and employ celibacy for a time in order to reprogram their sexual desire. Emotions that have been frozen—medicated with sexual desire—need to be redirected and embraced in a healthy way. Often sex addicts are asked to go 90 days with no sex of any kind, not because sex is negative or a moral issue but because it became out of control like someone who likes ice cream and begins eating the entire carton every day. There’s a problem that requires you to stop and examine what is going on. This is how you address the free fall into addiction.
Recovery from addiction is a paradox. From another perspective, there is a free fall into recovery growth. Addicts in recovery like to say that they came to know themselves. But, there are levels to self-knowledge. For some addicts knowing that they can stop their destructive behavior with a recovery program is all they really want to know about themselves. Others want to go deeper. Like I’m grateful that I don’t drink or act out anymore but why do I smoke 3 cigars a day or why can I not get a handle on my anger or rage? It requires that I go deeper. It means that I need to explore the roots of my addictive nature and not just understand it but process my pain and transform my behavior. It suggests that I unpack my affect dysregulation, a term that addresses the fundamentals of childhood development and early relational trauma.
However many addicts resist addressing these issues. They are satisfied to practice being sober and tolerating the residual of being a “dry drunk” which includes acting out with abusive behavior just without the drug of choice.
It’s like living in a high rise. Some people are happy to live anywhere in the first few stories while some choose the penthouse. To live in the penthouse in recovery means that you must dig deep inside. It’s what I describe as endlessly exploring your own brilliance which leads to healing and fulfilling your destiny. The levels of exploration in knowing yourself are endless!
Some people settle for a double life. I wonder what it was like for Bill W during the last days of his life. He knew he had conquered his addiction to alcohol, but he never made sense out of his double life. He had a mistress, a wife, and a family. Trying to sort it all out—set boundaries, be honest with himself, his wife, his mistress, and his kids was just too much evidently. He died with that ball of string never untangled.
I wonder what will be left untangled in your life or mine? The only way to address hypocrisy and incongruence is to go deeper and be honest with yourself. You will need to stop playing games in your head. You will need to be willing to put on the table your hypocrisy and incongruence with strong accountability around people who support and believe in you. Even if you are legendary to some who surround you. The truth is we are all celebrities to someone who is influenced by our lives. Look no further than your children, whatever their age!
I have worked in a recovery program now for 35 years. I have watched many addicts come and go, live and die. Some have lived inspired lives of sobriety but have remained stuck in the mud with rage and anger, never choosing to go deeper in their recovery. Now in my 70s, I have a lot of recovery friends who are out of the boat as we say. Some remained untreated workaholics or egomaniacs and chose to die that way.
People choose to know themselves at certain levels of awareness. I wonder what level of awareness you and I will choose to go out with? I once wrote a meditation about knowing yourself. I likened it to taking an elevator down deep inside. It was an elevator that would take you as deep as you wanted to go. I wonder what it would be like just to free fall forever into understanding and openness of your own brilliance and understanding about life and who you are? The result would be Free-Falling into Authenticity, which is always a choice.
