Appetite for Destruction
Whatever I Put Before My Recovery, I Lose
October 11, 2010
All the aspects which comprise my program of recovery from sex addiction are my life. The program is my life. If I don’t stick to my program, I won’t function healthily with the aspects of my life I hold dear and for which I want to be present: my children, my art, my work, my self. Because the addiction works to come between me and those facets of my life, I have to put my recovery from the addiction first and foremost; I have to put the God of my understanding first and foremost.
That may sound fanatical, but I feel, more and more each day, a stronger more attentive relationship with the God of my understanding. I am regularly reminded that, should I neglect my Third Step, should I lose my learned tendency to give all things that happen in my life up to God — good and bad — that I will slip easily back into the repetitive, obsessive, exhaustive habits that fomented my addiction. That’s what was actually fanatical. Not my fidelity to my recovery program, but my former fidelity to addiction — that blind, senseless, soulless movement through a void which knew no bounds and heeded no cautions and sought no conclusion.
My addiction was all those things: ceaseless and nonsensical and voracious in its appetite. Even when I wasn’t in full-bore acting-out mode, the wake of that self-destruction would leave me in such a state that I would eventually go right back to acting out anyway because I would give in to the lie that the acting out would give me something to feel again. In reality, I was only ever avoiding my true, deep-seated feelings, my pains and enthusiasms in a terrible feedback loop of addiction that ate away days and months and years.
Pretty dramatic, huh? I write colorfully to make the point that the addiction is powerful. And it is dramatic, in that it takes me away from my spiritual nature. In recovery, I can be sad but happier than I ever was in addiction. And I can live in the present with less fear or preoccupation with what’s going to happen next. Steps One, Two, and Three taught me a radical sense of faith in my Higher Power. And I can go to bed tonight saying I lived for today and will endeavor again tomorrow to be present and thankful.
