Tag: fightthenewdug

Finding shelter from the storm

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The first and basic rule of survival in any handbook is shelter. I think on some level it’s why I love camping so much. There’s something about traveling on foot and being present for the journey—the ups and downs, the fatigue of a climb, and the elation of the summits. Then, pitching your home for the night to rest up. You pack up the following morning and return home with a soft reboot of the mind.

In this week’s meeting, we focused on the three circles. This first and basic tool in recovery allows us to define our abstinence and helps us start managing our lives better by avoiding the gravity of the core behaviors that we ritualized and solidified in our addiction.

We will focus on the good stuff—the outer circle, which I see as “what I get to do and things we should do.” These are generally positive things that may mirror, in some way, our dangerous rituals. As we find new ways to live life on life’s terms, these become substitutes or other choices when triggers inevitably arise in life.

These could be hobbies, spending time with friends, participating in service to others. In short, they are positive activities that contribute to our healthy lifestyle in recovery.

In fact, these are the things your authentic self loves to do. However, addiction often took priority, causing these things to be sidelined years ago. In my case, I had moved nearer to the coast years ago, and only in recovery did I start to explore wanting to surf again. Years ago, I loved watching and playing snooker, and only in recovery did I give this any time.

So, what do I mean by mirroring our addictive behavior in our recovery? Well, all things start with a first thought, an idea. In addiction recovery, we put in a lot of work to understand what goes wrong. Sometimes it’s good to study what goes right.

Lately, life has gotten peak stressful, fearful, and taken me to peak remorseful. Now more than ever, I feel like I’m just desperate for ways to cope. I want to act out, I want to smoke, and I have been turning to food, letting the healthy things I love slip.

Using my outer circle, I thought I could use a night out on the hills. That first thought or idea passes the test, but it’s only as my thoughts linger on that idea that I think about when I will next have an opportunity. Then I need to plan, prepare, pack the bag, the car, and set off to the national park, and then park up and hike. Only after completing all these tasks do I get the payoff of pitching the tent and enjoying the serenity of healthy isolation, which for me is time spent with my higher power.

Life is at times a storm. The addict in me used to believe the lie that my rituals change the weather. But recovery shows me that I am not the conductor of this orchestra. I can take shelter and take care of myself, and it is in this admission that I feel I am able to let go absolutely of the former things.

The heart of the matter

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This is a big one tonight, the world seems like a noisy place for me at the moment.

One of my healthy habits and hobbies is to head for the hills for a night under the stars. That night me and my dog packed up to head home as the better half had a tough night due to my stuff making life complicated.

As my mind spiralled with guilt I took a moment to stare up at the stars. I had a moment there just contemplating the size of the universe and reminding myself that the world still turns and no matter how tough I may find things at times it doesn’t all revolve around my mistakes and shortfalls of yesterday.

Gabor Maté says don’t ask why the addiction, ask why the pain? This is the heart of addiction, this imbalance, pain, turmoil, and stress. In my case, I turned to pornography to address any imbalance I could encounter. I often used to wonder why I was never stressed like anyone else. I never allowed myself to feel and experience life and its struggles as my anaesthetic would numb all of that, my brain was able to provide its very own depressing antidepressant, thus my feedback loop would repeat over and over again with various intensities.

Life in the bubble was fuelled by pain and only created more, the worst kind of renewable energy.

Tonight I sat in my plastic chair like every other week, before the meeting I was asked by a new fellow about sponsorship and if I would be willing to get them going with the program.

At times the man I see in the mirror is one I place a varying value on, the stocks and shares in the market of self are erratic lately so someone seeing that I model something in recovery that they want is a reminder that experience, strength and hope doesn’t diminish or lose value just because you go through tough times. What an honour to help someone this way.

This same fellow shared about a painful life event and a sadness I knew too well, that life event was the biggest bump in the road for me, my friends witnessed how I went off the rails in a spiral of drugs, serial dating, depression and acting out with porn the only way I knew how.

I had named this pain in therapy and with my sponsor and the handful of fellows in calls but not really in the rooms. Naming the pain and learning to live with it has been such a big part of recovery. The grief I never allowed myself to feel is now diagnosed along with my addiction.

The mess of my childhood was something I always told myself I would make right when I became a parent and when I realised my very genetic fabric caused the loss of who would have been my son, I boarded it all up and dusted myself off, “it is what it is”, I used to tell myself. With each new prospective partner came that chat, the, I am not a good bet if you want kids to chat. When was the right time to bring that one up? It added even more anxiety to sex which was already hampered by porn-induced ED. What if I get someone else pregnant and another baby has a terminal illness.

The worst part was the lifeless labour, it delivered no cries, only unimaginable pain. Seeing a clearly not well and not fully formed lifeless baby was an image etched on my eyes forever and nothing has hurt more than what I saw that day.

Even there though, I beheld wonder, the tiny and perfect fingerprints filled me with awe but this felt cruel. Hands that barely spanned my fingertips were so tiny and wonderfully made.

This is the answer to my why the pain.

This answer has a name, he was called Morgan and at 23 weeks he never drew a breath but he would be a teenager now. Part of my step nine amends to myself is my plan to take a little stone with me as I make my way, its counterpart will be with him where he is, and the other with me to place on every summit and adventure I embark upon.

Fearfully and wonderfully made – Psalm 139

Only the 12 steps, therapy and the support and love of others have helped me come to terms with all this all these years later.

If I spend too long on the why of my addiction I find nothing but contempt for myself, I hate what I did, if I learn to live with my why the pain, I can live one day at a time in serenity.

The Game of Phones

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We live in a world now where mobile computers have changed everything, I often think back to the 90s when lads mags, Oasis and video games filled the time that I wasn’t kicking a football around in the park.

I was about 12 years old when I first came into conscious contact with pornography, my parents in some way must have thought it healthier to have a stash under the bed than the torn-out pages from papers or smuggling the catalogue with the lingerie section into my room.

When I think back the very first time I came across a magazine it was my birth father’s stash and I would have been about 6, my uncle some 3 years older and his friends were talking about nude mags and I said I could get one. I had no idea of what it meant back then but only a few years later it would become my easy way out. My escape.

Pat Carnes is the sex addicts version of Dr Bob, he was one of the first who wrote about sex addiction back in 1983 in the book Out of the Shadows, and many others since, he explained in recent times on the beyond theory podcast that a common path for males is formative years involve a hijacking of the reward system with video games which hits a whole other level when coming of age with pornography and the internet.

This has more recently been built upon with data from fight the new drug – https://fightthenewdrug.org/whats-the-research-video-game-addiction-linked-compulsive-porn-2/

I have observed this in my story and many shares of fellow recovering sex addicts and also observe it in friends and colleagues, the cultural normalising of video games and porn that led to a lot of my distorted thinking being propped up, thinking everyone is probably doing what im doing just nobody talks about it.

Here in 2023 and I am in the age demographic who’s pornography addiction dates back to a time before all this internet, I can remember a time before you could type in anything you can think of and a screen will show you what it can find. In my day it was magazine and video, as technology evolved so did my addiction.

I meet guys now who have never known anything but limitless novelty at a time where people are becoming less and less connected. For those who are old enough to remember viagra or to use it’s generic name sildenafil was a hit with older men who could no longer function fully due to age-related factors, now we have impotence drugs marketed towards guys in their 20s and they even allude to Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction being one of the contributing factors in this demographic.

In recovery I have seen just how much tech is designed to hijack our reward system, apps rely on algorithm and the doom scroll is a part of normal everyday life.

Internet Gaming Disorder has a greater backing from the DSM-5 than Sex Addiction which is frustrating, I have previously said whatever it is referred to as in a text book means little to me as my priority is that I am well and living as my authentic self.

A big purpose I feel in recovery is to take all I have learnt from my mess and poor life choices to help others find freedom and healing in their own journeys, there are innumerable folks entering rooms around the world, some have the self-awareness to seek help while others find their way into the rooms through hitting rock bottom and others being stopped by the law.

When I describe how bad things were for me to newcomers to the program I am reminded just how insane and unwell I was in “the bubble” as I describe my acting out behaviours would feel like someone else was taking the wheel and as a passenger I knew I was going to feel like shit and I still found myself along for the ride anyway.

My challenge with living in this game of phones era is to embrace help and accountability with tech, tools like Covenant Eyes and Screentime tools mean I can say to someone this stuff is just too difficult for me alone and I am willing to lay down my “right to privacy” knowing that secrecy is more the apt word for the things I have struggled with. I am glad that most late nights on my phone or computer now involve blog posting, podcasts or YouTube.

Tech is a great tool but a terrible master.

Perceived Efforts

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As an aspiring long-distance runner and a person familiar with biblical metaphors, I am full of ways to explain the challenges of life with addiction through the language of endurance in the outdoors.

But before we get all deep and philosophical perhaps a more literal explanation of the why of my running, the how of my running and how it all had to change when I hit bottom.

Life has always been about escapism, from the Kenner toys and VHS that took me to a galaxy far far away as a kid, to the fantasy that adult magazines used to spark the fire of addiction followed by the years of pursuing an image of self that I and others could be proud of, I have always been looking for a way out of real life and being the me in the mirror, never feeling good enough.

Running and the outdoors used to be my escape, that mindset had to flip when I hit my bottom. Running away was no longer an option, there is no escape from addiction, and no distraction could plaster over the “I’m fucked” reality of where my addictive behaviour took me.

About two years ago I hit a wall with my running, just weeks prior I run 18 miles and felt like I was going to crack a marathon but here one mile in and my head was different. All this stuff was still with me and my trainers felt like lead boots. I no longer felt I could chuck some headphones in and get away from everything while I ran. No volume could drown out the sound of the cogs in my brain.

I lay down and practised some breathwork and centred myself, I made the decision headphones stay at home and from now on I run with my mind and my thoughts became my music.

I finally cracked that marathon after I learnt to travel and be grounded in the present, I had booked well in advance a trail marathon, not just your average but one with scores of winding hills, 26 miles with thousands of feet of elevation.

The experience was the pinnacle of months of commitment, consistency and drive to complete something I knew would be painful and difficult. I didn’t execute the plan perfectly but it gave me the legs and lungs to complete the task. I will never forget the last mile and a half as I ran with cramps and a ball of emotions as I teared up.

I had exorcised some demons, that voice that’s plagued me my whole life that says I’m not good enough was told to get in the sea.

They say you learn a lot about yourself in a marathon and that I did, I learnt my relationship with myself was and always will be key, where I get my value and self-worth from cannot be rooted in other people’s perceptions of me. I am more than my past actions and decisions and if anyone else wants to look at me and say otherwise then that’s not for me to dwell on.

My next race will hopefully be an ultra marathon but to get there I feel some recent events have taken me back to that place where my runs feel like I’m carrying those lead boots and the peace I found in my being present in my running has gotten noisy again. But I know this process and it shall pass.

My workout runs ask me to score the activity, how difficult was it? And how did I feel? The perceived effort is a vital metric for training, recognising one’s load is an important part of avoiding injury and is also a life skill to safeguard against burnout.

In my last few runs, I have found it hard and I feel weak, this perception is naturally negatively influenced by my circumstance and mood, I will take some time and come back to the ultra at a later date, my mental health is important because without it nothing works.

My next outdoor challenge will wait for now, sometimes life throws other types of mountains at you. I know that in the last few years, I have put the work in, I have owned my mess with honesty and embraced as many tools as possible to clean up my side of the street and as a result, I feel stronger.

My perceived effort for life, service, love, connection and empathy all show that I am fit for the ups and downs of the next few miles and if anyone else thinks differently I just need to remember they do so from the sidelines.

Transition is the mission

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I wanted to start this post and share that I am entering into a season of transition for the next couple of months but my journey of recovery thus far has been about working a program that addresses my former things, my old thinking, my living a double life and we are talking about years of struggling in secrecy.

In the last couple of years, I have gone from wanting to end my life in a pit of shame and regret, to becoming equipped with tools for living, experience, new friends and hope for a future.

As a result of the work I have had to do on myself, I can accept that my previous actions bring about a consequence or a transaction if you will, a debt that has to be paid as a part of my amends to others, God and importantly to myself, I am worth more than my past actions reflected. I can lean into it no matter how painful and attest to being a different me than before.

The healing I have found in service to others and life now centred on recovery makes me a more empathetic person than before. The switch from being self-centred to making room for others has helped me get out of my well-worn traits of self-pity, self-serving and all the other defects you can place self in front of, the only self part I need to be responsible for is self care.

I have to live with the shame and regret of my past decisions and behaviours but now, like my traumas, they must live in the rearview mirror. I have to look at life ahead, soon I will be able to walk that out in a more tangible way than I have been able to thus far and that won’t be an easy process but it is crucial to being able to move on.

I always knew I had an unhealthy relationship with porn and were I to describe it I would say it’s like an addiction, it turned out as we know that’s exactly what it is.

Through the twelve steps I get to fulfil my higher purpose of helping my fellow man on their quest to living more authentic lives, I can think of no greater honour than turning the worst of me into the best.

I am grateful for the connections and presence in my life that I never had before this program.

If anyone is new or struggling?

Keep coming back, it works!

The Contradictions and The Opposites

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“He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly
fiction.”

Kris Kristofferson

Kris Kristofferson is said to have written the song the pilgrim in part about Johnny Cash and his behaviours, he was often described as the walking contradiction. As I look at my life I can relate with these words.

We addicts find ourselves caught in a relentless struggle, as our actions often betray the values we hold dear. I may cherish honesty, yet deceit became my modus operandi. I might value connection, yet isolation becomes my sanctuary.

The chasm between intentions and actions became a source of immense anguish, intensifying the contradictions I faced and lived with as a silent hypocrite.

One example of contradiction was I knew a girl who was what now may be described as a content creator, but we used the phrase glamour model back in the day. I stumbled upon her accidentally online and once I knew her alternative name I knew I could find these galleries of images, images which she doesn’t own and can never remove from the internet, the pain and regret of that period of her life I knew to be a source of great discomfort to her but so many times I would revisit these images to view them despite knowing better.

The self loathing involved with this act of self defiance was one of many examples of toxic shame at play in my life. I shudder to think the hours wasted merely in trying to find everything I could, the obsession and lunacy of addiction truly is cunning, baffling and powerful as the big book describes.

The contradiction I live with daily is that I despise everything that is pornography, I see no positives from it personally, I believe it is the worst educator, that producing and selling content is not empowering and being a blind consumer of it is buying into a lie that it is a substitute or an aid for real intimacy and connection. The reality, however, is if I was given unfettered access to the internet I would be walking the tightrope where if I were to fall off I would lose myself in a hole for days binging everything I could. I need accountability and I need support to function with modern living.

As soon as I see contradictions and paradoxes at play in my life I know I need to do some work on self care and service to others. My course needs correcting immediately as a degree or two off-course can be remedied quickly but to carry on in the wrong direction I can go severely off course very quickly.

One of the most profound contradictions I have to be alert to is the illusion of control. I may desperately desire to reign over my life but in truth I am a terrible God, without the program and others I will find myself utterly powerless in the face of compulsion. There is no self help for an addict.

So what do I mean by opposites? this is where the idealist and the romantic in me steps in, recovery gives flawed folks such as myself a chance to own my actions and more importantly learn from and learn how not to make the same mistakes and terrible decisions over and over again.

When I look at some of my worst and most shameful deeds on my inventory I see the opportunity to find the opposites or work towards the symmetry of redemption, from shame to grace, from defects to assets, from resentments to gratitude.

This website serves as an opposite that I needed to realise in my new life, in the past I would search out directories that would take me to places no person should go to online but to me they served as a phone list of dealers, I was the depraved junkie and my eyes where the veins waiting for its hit.

To live, I need to take the worst of me and work towards a directory of hope and help to make amends to myself and others for colouring so far out of my values.