relapse prevention

Almost Persuaded— Everyday Struggles in the Life of a Sex Addict

March 1, 2024 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

Today is both different and not so different. For you, there are no verbal fights just a lot of distance between you and your partner. The two of you have learned to duck and dive major issues with work, busyness at home, activities with the kids, and a lot of impression management with everyone else.

The truth is that you are resentful, empty, bored, a little depressed, and very lonely deep inside. These have been feelings that you have marinated with for a long time. You are not alone during this Christmas season. There are millions of men and women stuck in the same place throughout the world. Your challenge is that you are a recovering sex addict with a monkey mind that tells you any reason is a good reason to act out and what better time than now!

There’s the woman at work that you have befriended. She’s a colleague and you work side by side with her. She is not particularly attractive to you but she is nice and you can tell she is vulnerable. She has told you enough about her struggles and demands of life that you feel buoyed and confident to do a little flirting—not too much, but, enough to trigger a dopamine rush that fills the emptiness. Without realizing it for the past few months, you have relied on the occasional hit of flirtation to take the edge off the disconnect from the emptiness that is growing inside.

Now, you long for a connection inside that you don’t consciously think or talk about. You want to flirt more, not less. You tell yourself the conversations with your female colleague are innocent because there is no sexual content to them. You don’t bring them up with support people and the 12-step meetings that you attend. You certainly don’t tell your partner about them. You notice that you avoid talking to anyone about what is going on inside. The secret adrenaline rush is something you nurse and enjoy. Gradually, it becomes a hit that covers over the loneliness and emptiness, without admitting you are having an emotional affair, and you haven’t even talked about sex!

You realize that the conversations with her are giving you an emotional connection that you have not had with your partner at home for a long time. Then, it happens! After work, she tells you that she took her car to the repair shop and they promised to bring it to her before her work day was over but they just called saying they could not and would make arrangements for her to come by and pick it up. Sheepishly, she asks if you would be willing to drop her off to pick her car up after work. Immediately, you say yes.

For the next 2 hours before work is over, your heart is racing with excitement and optimism. The adrenaline is flowing and it seems like the time is just evaporating quickly. You wonder if she is drawn to you like you are drawn to her. You know she is married and you haven’t heard her say anything about her partner. The recovery side of you sets off an alarm that says “Be careful!” There are warning signs that say “Danger, this is not a good idea!” However, you quickly minimize the warning as your mind craves for more rush and secret titillation. You tell yourself she is not all that attractive, so why are you getting so ramped up? Your mind goes back and forth like a pinball between bumpers thinking “Maybe something can happen” and “Don’t be stupid”.

On the way over to the repair shop, you find yourself going out of the way to compliment her in as many ways you can think without appearing over the top. She tells you she enjoys your friendship and when she gets out of the car, you help her find the keys to her car which the repair shop left at a designated place before closing for the day. Before leaving, she gives you a full-bodied hug and tells you that she really appreciates you helping her out.

On the way home, your mind is full of arousing thoughts. You know that the thoughts are not sustainable with recovery and fidelity with your partner. That’s the reason you don’t tell anyone about them. You garner the thoughts and hang on to them like a teenager who just received his first kiss! Logical sober reasoning gives way to fantasy. Later, after the same routine of clearing the table and putting the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and watching a little TV, your partner retires to bed for the evening. You are left thinking about your thoughts about your colleague. Sitting alone the desire for porn begins to grow and overshadows every thought! You begin to long for connection with your colleague and the desire to masturbate to porn becomes overwhelming.

If this experience is similar to what shows up in your recovery journal, you are not alone! These experiences represent the everyday struggles that face many sex addicts! You are at the edge of acting out. Some would say you already began the journey down the slippery slide of relapse a long time ago! What would you do to stop the slide?

Here are a few considerations.

1. Get radical: At the apex of desiring to masturbate to porn, get out of your chair, pick up your cell phone, and call recovery members for help. It will be inconvenient for you and likely for the one who answers the phone. Yet, if someone were drowning would you watch the person drown thinking that it would be inconvenient to get your clothes wet? Rather, your recovery friend would like to know they supported you saving yourself from a moment of recovery demise! Then put your laptop/phone etc in a place that would make it difficult to act out after the call, like locking it in the trunk of your car and putting the keys on the nightstand on your partner’s side of the bed. What this radical behavior does is break the spell of build-up toward using!

2. Pop the bubble of secrecy: Practice telling on yourself. The last thing you want your 12-step group or therapist to know about you becomes the first thing you say. Unpack the energy around the relationship with the colleague and the desire to masturbate to porn. Tell your sponsor, the 12-step group, and the therapist about the adrenaline rush around both. When you eliminate the secret, you will be able to best see perspective and return to operating from a position of strength and not weakness in managing your junkie worm.

3. Practice playback by identifying the footprints of your addictive cycle: You may need help with this from a seasoned therapist. However, you can train yourself to do this work with a sponsor or other recovery colleague. Wade through each build-up thought, mistaken belief, and disconnect in a life situation that accelerated your addiction cycle. Only then will you be able to thoroughly shift away from intimacy-disabling to healthy intimacy-engaging behavior.

4. Build boundaries that don’t blow people away: The colleague at work is not the devil. Your addiction is not her challenge. Simply avoid the flirtation. Keep the conversation on business only. Utilize the 3-second rule in your head, so that when an adrenaline rush of excitement descends upon your thoughts, you actively change your focus. Be accountable with specific thoughts with recovery support people and not your partner. Be responsible with your partner with clear communication that if you act out you will disclose within 24 hours what you did and how you will address the issue. Sharing that you have been challenged with your recovery is appropriate minus the lurid details. Leave that with your 12-step group and sponsor. Boundaries require follow-through and accountability.

5. Transform the curse into a blessing. Address the unmet emotional need that triggers your desire to act out with “Old Faithful.” You can pinpoint unmet needs by paying attention to feelings and affect. Addicts disconnect from feelings mostly because they never learned to connect with their emotions and address them in a healthy way. Recovery colleagues, dear friends, sponsors, and therapists can help you learn how to parent yourself and fulfill your emotional needs in ways that will change cravings from a curse to be numbed into a blessing of intimate connection.

For most of us who are addicts, the junkie worm never goes away. Paradoxically, the very “worm” that can destroy you can also be that which deepens your relational connection when you take the initiative to transform it from a curse to a blessing of relational connection.

The Secret Life of Long-Term Sobriety, Part 1

December 26, 2023 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

For many in recovery sobriety is a mystery. A 12-step group usually starts with a prayer and often ends with clasped hands in a circle repeating in unison “It works if you work it and you’re worth it”. Over the years I have heard many addicts testify that in those same meetings, after all the good-declared intention, they acted out before they got home and sometimes even before they left the parking lot.

There is a great divide in reality at 12-step meetings. There are the haves and have-nots. Those who have sobriety and those who don’t. For many, sobriety is elusive. At times, after working hard to achieve sobriety, it can slip through the fingers in the blink of an eye, or so it seems. How are some able to achieve and maintain long-term sobriety while others cannot?

Over the next two blogs, I want to propose 11 keys that are vital to creating long-term sobriety:

1. A decision to stop no matter what it takes. This, like the ten other keys, seems like a no-brainer. Yet, through observance of the meetings I attend and the addicts I counsel, this key is often missing. I ask many addicts who come to do work at PCS if they are done with their addiction. I often get the reply “I’m here, aren’t I?” It’s almost as if somehow showing up to the PCS building would be magical and that the building and all the therapists will transform him or her from a raging addict to zen-like sobriety. Addicts can make a great therapist look inept or an average therapist into a rockstar. It all depends upon the attitude that he or she chooses. I recall my wife Eileen and I saying to each other that “we would hock our socks” to get healthy. That was about the reality that we had no funds for treatment. The decision was to do whatever it takes. Many addicts come to a 12-step meeting without a “white hot” intensity to transform their lives. They look for someone to give them something or to take care of them. It is common for some addicts to show up with an attitude of entitlement. Long-term sobriety requires something very simple: You must want to stop more than anything else in the world.

2. Be humble. You would think that an addict’s life of frustration and failure would result in humility. Yet, often this is not the case. Addicts present most frequently with arrogance. Some are full of conceit and presumption while others seem demure on the surface, but underneath are full of disdain and hubris. The truth is that practicing humility is a lifelong challenge. It requires charting a recovery course that includes holding your attitude and spirit accountable to group members. It demands that you put people in your life who role model humility. It is common for addicts in recovery to assume they won’t need to practice humility and lose their hunger for it. Often, addicts fall into a trap that they have done this work for so long that they do not need to embrace this fundamental component of recovery. This is where you fall into lapse or relapse behavior. You might not act out but for sure you will stop growing deep without humility.

3. Be coachable. I will never forget my earliest days in 12-step recovery. I would question the purpose of each step and present as cynical of the overall process. My sponsor, Chip, who was for the most part mild-mannered, cleared his throat and said “Ken, I think it would be in your best interest to shut up and just do what you were told to do”. This admonition hurt my feelings and was used to save my own life. It is rare to find an addict who is hungry to take guidance. Most of us think we can do this by ourselves. You can be inspired by others who testify about reaching out, but most of us don’t do this very well. This is true even though your best thoughts and actions got you into the addict-behavior mess you are in. With stubborn inflexibility, many addicts refuse to listen or take action from what they hear in a 12-step meeting. The doctor can write the prescription, but you have to take the medicine.

4. Live your recovery in consultation with accountability. There is an oft-repeated saying around 12-step groups, “If 8 or 9 people tell you that you have a tail . . .check your ass in the mirror!” Though humorous, there is important recovery wisdom here. Addicts don’t want anyone telling them what to do. They bristle with direct feedback. Yet there is no other way to establish long-term sobriety. It requires a shift in spirit and attitude. The reason a sponsor tells a sponsee to call them every day is to create the habit of living in consultation. Most addicts won’t do this. It contributes to shortsighted relapse. There is a difference between consultation and dependence. Recovery becomes a paradox. You are taught to consult, and in the end, every action you take in your life is about your choice and decision. Be accountable. Live in consultation with others. It cements long-term sobriety.

5. Don’t just do the steps. Learn to live them in commonplace experience. Addicts get overwhelmed trying to do the steps. Perfectionism is a contributing reason why some addicts stop before completing all the steps. Step 4 is particularly difficult. More addicts get stuck in Step 4 than any other step. Addicts think they have to do this monumental undertaking. It’s as if you must walk through burning coals and stay there until your sponsor permits you to step out. Step 4 is difficult. We don’t have to make it harder than it is. A thorough Step 4 is never complete. So, address a character flaw, even a few. Sit with it. Learn what you can in the moment of focus and then move on. It is important in recovery to understand we don’t do the 12 steps but we learn to embrace and apply them in the common places of everyday living.

Euphoric Recall

August 29, 2023 by Ken Wells

Ecstatic Exhilaration or Dysphoric Discomfort? Blueprint for Relapse Prevention

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

Euphoric recall is a two-sided coin. The power of addiction is much deeper than being in close proximity to your drug of choice. On any given day, euphoric recall can invade your space seemingly out of the blue. It doesn’t come from nowhere but so it seems. Fatigue and boredom can be its trigger. Breakthrough relief after long extended effort can also trigger the recall of past exhilaration from acting out. Unstructured and unaccounted-for time is the breeding ground for the junkie worm. There is often an increase in heart rate, an inability to concentrate in the here and now, and raging obsessional powerful memories of past experiences. The euphoric recall of past acting out paralyzes all other thoughts. The experience triggers compelling ecstasy around destructive behaviors that threaten to melt the resolve of any addict in recovery.

On the other side of the coin, past memories can feel like a plague that never lets go. Like the fog that clings to the night air, the nagging memory of compulsive acting out cloaks every behavior throughout the day. It’s in the background of every activity. Memories can be exhausting and set the stage for despair. Harsh remarks from others, agonizing hopelessness, and chronic partner despondency tempt any addict to long for escape from the daily drudgery of the painful reality of carnage from past addictive behaviors.

No one escapes the elation or deflation of euphoric recall in addiction recovery. It becomes critical to accept and manage this dynamic and not ignore or minimize its presence. Listed are a few considerations to improve your recovery management.

1. Know that the charge of excitement does not mean you have crossed a line of no return. “Want to” does not equate to “got to”.

2. Spit in the soup of your euphoric recall. An old Adlerian strategy helps in this endeavor. Think of your favorite soup served at your favorite restaurant and the maitre d spits in your soup. Do you eat it? Of course not. Do the same with your euphoric recall. Imagine it being spoiled by the reality of being discovered acting out by a partner or dear friend. Think of the hurt, unbelievable pain, and shame that would follow. Let the thought jolt you out of your intrusive destructive thought.

3. Practice a 3-second rule. Give yourself 3 seconds to experience the euphoria and then practice radically focusing on non-acting-out behavior.

4. When oppressed and discouraged, place the shame on past destructive behaviors and keep it away from your sense of self.

5. Practice and train in bathing your heart and soul in positive, inspiring affirmations.

6. Act in the present with the vision your destiny inspires you to be. Some suggest that you “fake it till you make it”. I suggest that you practice behaviors that express your belief in yourself while ignoring feelings that tempt you to think otherwise. This requires training and religious practice.

7. Remain hungry to learn regardless of how you feel. No matter what the circumstance you can learn from the pain of past mistakes. Therein lies the deepest of wisdom. This is the place where you can access your own brilliance and creatively develop a solution while you deepen your belief in your own destiny.

Addicts who practice this process learn who they are in a moment of struggle. The deeper the pain and the more stressful the struggle—the more beautiful the blossom.

This new post was written by Ken Wells. In Dare to be Average, Ken’s new book, you can embrace healing, peace, and self-acceptance through meaningful insights to discover purpose and fulfillment in everyday life.

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