Tag: healing

Reflections on Recovery – approaching five years

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This year will mark my fifth year in recovery. I would say I have definitely encountered my psychic shift. It has all been by God’s grace, paired with a willingness to look in the mirror, talk honestly about the inside of my brain, and accept that I was never meant to do this alone.

What has changed recently? If I’m completely honest, my focus has shifted from recovery from to recovery to. I’ve used that phrase for the last couple of years because I knew I needed to move forward into life, shaped by this new way of seeing the world and my relationship to it.

I remain, in many ways, a walking paradox. I am many things at once. I am grateful and feel pangs of remorse on any given day. I wouldn’t change a thing, yet I would give anything for a do-over. These statements sound like they can’t exist in the same space at the same time, but who ever said the very being of a man is bound by the laws of physics?

The mantra of my recovery fellowship is from shame to grace. Many would read that as a point A to point B journey, and I suppose that’s partly true. What that view often misses is that we continue to need grace, and we continue to take inventory. In the Twelve Steps, the inventory begun in Steps 4 and 5 continues in Step 10. This is ongoing.

Every day in recovery is a spectrum of relapse into the illusion of independence. I may not fall back into my darkest hole, but each 24-hour period is still full of cocktails of fear, resentment, gratitude, peace, joy, and regret. I am a tapestry of what the programme calls assets and defects of character.

In The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, the mole says to the boy that one of our greatest freedoms is how we react to things. Every day presents that opportunity to live in freedom. Until I accept that the only thing I can truly count on in this world is the grace of God, my inventory becomes that of a score-keeping Pharisee of self. With grace, it becomes a head-up, self-aware posture that recognises how a word, a look, or a deed affects others.

One of my biggest life skills is the ability to own my own shit before others do. I am still a smiling and loving pile of contrition. Honestly, the day I cease to be so is probably the day I fall back into my old delusions.

If my addiction is wedded to my illusory self, then I see it existing in much the same way Lord Voldemort endured throughout the Harry Potter films. My cycles of addiction split my soul into pieces, hidden away like horcruxes. For me, food, social media, tech doomscrolling, procrastination, and even permitted sexual behaviours can become places where my character defects feel nostalgic for the past.

Here’s a concrete example. Masturbation with the boundary of no porn or unfaithful fantasy is a permitted behaviour for me, yet I often need reining in. The muscle memory to ritualise it is deeply ingrained. With food, I can eat badly, gain weight, and quietly undo the wins of a life lived in recovery. My running, cold plunges, and hunger for outdoor adventure give way to eating at stupid times, buying larger clothes, and chewing Andrew’s antacids like they were named after me.

This week’s contradiction is this: I have desire and lust for my own partner. Instead of stepping out and initiating intimacy, I retreat into fantasy. I end up in another room, jacking off to imagination and euphoric recall of being with the woman I love. There’s something profoundly sad and lonely in admitting that I have all I need, yet still opt for a counterfeit sense of relief. I don’t feel overwhelming shame about it, but it continues to fuel a deep sadness.

When it comes to intimacy, I express love, affection, and longing. Yet years of feeling inadequate and fearing rejection pull me back into nostalgic fantasy, rather than the beautiful, participatory chaos of real connection. Call it what I want, but I’m living in the past, flicking through the “porn magazine” of my own biography.

Even here, there is gratitude. I long for her. I can honestly say I’ve never been so tethered in desire, love and fantasy to my own partner.

So what’s my feedback to myself? My recovery logic differs from that of an alcoholic, where sobriety is black and white: consume or abstain. That binary works for substance addiction. With process addictions, the reasoning is different. Food addicts still need to eat. Gamblers don’t need to gamble. Sex addicts don’t need to be celibate. The issue is discernment.

In SAA, we define our own abstinence. It isn’t fixed in stone, but it must be rooted in honesty. To thine own self be true.

This is why others remain essential to my recovery. I can’t afford to confuse privacy with secrecy the way I once did. Today, my self-reading tells me I am more emotionally open, reflective, and gracious. Yet I am still intimacy-avoidant, and I can’t change that alone or heal in a vacuum.

So nearly five years in recovery? It’s still one day at a time and my recovery is best done less about me and more about we.

This is where we talk , set another boundary and continue to take one day at a time.

God, give me the serenity. Grace always grace!

Hell Jim, not as we know it!

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I’m proud of my Welsh heritage. I spent my twenties in Wales, and volumes could be written about those years. But now, in my forties, after working the Twelve Steps and realising that God was never angry with me nor cut me off, I feel like I’m finally coming to know who I am and what I believe. For many years that clarity escaped me.

Frank Turner sums it up well:

“All my friends are getting married, mortgages and pension plans

And it’s obvious my angry adolescent days are done

And I’m happy and I’m settled in the person I’ve become.”

I’ve been making peace with a time in my life when I didn’t face the grief and trauma of losing a baby. After years of serial dating and escape through relationships, I eventually darkened the doors of the church.

Like David, I had let my desires dictate my choices, and in my moralism I convinced myself God was punishing me. Within the sheltered community of church, I managed three years of abstaining from relationships, sex, and mostly from pornography. I thought I’d found the formula.

I reasoned that my healing would come the way David’s did — through grief and resolve. I went to the Scriptures and landed on the story of David and Bathsheba’s first child (2 Samuel 12). David fasted and wept while the child lived, but when the child died, he got up, worshipped, and ate, saying: “I will go to him one day, but he cannot return to me.”

I read those words, said a prayer, and told myself that my own loss must have been because I’d lived outside of God’s will. That thinking caught up with me eventually, but it shows how distorted my view of God was. I had cast him as judge, jury, and even executioner.

And yet, that church was still more life-giving than my upbringing. My unconscious distortions about God began to be challenged.

Work during those years meant standing behind the counter of a small valleys high street shop. Because I lived in town, I met most of its eccentrics. One of them was Jesus Jim.

Jim was a friendly man, barrel-like in build, with a stubbly face, flat cap, and a blue vest that read “Jesus Loves You.” Unlike many street evangelists, he didn’t lead with fear. He insisted that God loved everyone so much that he couldn’t imagine sending anyone to hell. “Even the devil himself,” Jim would say, “were he to bend the knee, would be forgiven.”

That was my first brush with universalism. At the time I dismissed it as fringe thinking, but the seed was planted.

The church I attended was an AOG Pentecostal, though it tended to fly under the radar. We moved in prophetic, charismatic streams and had a reputation as a wild bunch. Some big names passed through our little congregation — most pivotal for me being John Crowder. His message of the finished work of the cross and the radical scandal of grace was hard for many to swallow, but in my heart I knew it was true.

It shouldn’t have been shocking, but paired with trance-like ecstasy in the body of believers, it was something to behold. We were swimming in ancient revelation and drunk on the wine of it. In simple terms, it felt like the works-based paradigm of worship was being turned on its head. How do you chase after God when He has already found you? How do you press in when He has already pressed into us? This wasn’t just new language — it was a recovery of unapologetic Trinitarian theology.

I left church not long after Rob Bell got strung up for merely questioning the context of hell. I realised I was somewhere on the universal spectrum, and for the last fifteen years I’ve made a hash of living — but through recovery I’ve reconnected with voices like Crowder and C. Baxter Kruger. Slowly, I began to untangle the knots of my distorted belief.

The great pains of the past, though healed from an eternal perspective, still get triggered in daily life. That’s okay — because now I get to experience the full spectrum of living instead of numbing out. Just today, while watching Private Practice with my partner, the storyline of a terminal pregnancy hit me harder than I’ve felt in years.

When you cry so hard your head feels like it will explode, the language of weeping and gnashing of teeth feels more literal than allegorical. Yet I know, no matter how low I’ve stooped, I was never out of reach or alone.

Now, like Jesus Jim, I’m convinced God’s love is too strong to torment His beloved children for eternity. I believe in the refining, restorative fire of God’s love — a fire that burns the very evil out of us. The Greek phrase translated as “eternal punishment” in modern Bibles is aionios kolasis — literally “age-during correction” or “pruning” — not timoria, which means retributive punishment.

So I suppose that means I am — and am not — a universalist. Not sure about the devil ever getting his bedroom back though.

Triggers

Making the world smaller

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In a world that is full of issues which cause worry and often draw a line in the sand and beckon people to take a stance, I see more that divides than unites us at present. Whether it’s Ukraine and Russia or more recently the State of Israel and the displaced Palestinians, whenever there is a flag to wave and a side to pick, we find the most dangerous of human behaviors at play. But it’s not just about geopolitics or warfare.

Objectifying and dehumanising are alive and well in many ways among us. For all our modern-day virtue, we see people are easily othered, described, and treated as objects, devalued for their humanity. Empathy is displayed with profile picture banners and solidarity with buying a particular product or taking part in a social media trend.

I speak on this as one with life experience. The apostle Paul referred to himself as the “chief of sinners.” As he wrote to others knowing full well his own past behaviours.

This post isn’t some rant of a hypocrite or someone trying to compare themselves to an apostle, nor is it about the state of the world but the observations of a flawed man. I am a cautionary tale in the perils of sexual objectification and ultimately the dehumanizing that grew out of unchecked thinking.

I have to check myself when I participate in othering and that often means dipping out of political discourse, not joining in with people gossiping about or judging others, such situations are a breeding ground for my character defects. I have to conduct myself through the mirror as it shows me the only person I need to try to steer.

I hope that we as a people wake up to the slumber that modernity has lulled us into and see how easy it is to judge and devalue others, I was asked once how I was able to look at sexual content with such a lack of care for the humans on the screen. All I could say was that I believed I had seen so much that I had dissociated what I would see on a screen from real life.

I make reflective observations about myself more than others now, but I have had to make it a smaller place to live as I often see peoples pain a lot easier than before, Empathy was always suppressed for me when I used porn to shut down negative emotions.

In recovery I experience the full spectrum of emotions, it’s both the best and worst thing about being sexually sober.

The feelings now at play are like the overwhelming senses from a clip I reflect on from “The Man of Steel.” The young Clark’s senses were in overdrive that it was too much pressure; it was consuming. His mother’s answer was to make the world a little smaller and just focus on her voice.

If I focus on the issues of the world around us, I try not to take sides and instead try to see the humans in the headlines. Be that the latest celebrity pile-on or the next political issue that many pick sides on. My role is only to make better choices in my own life, not to control anyone but take accountability for my own actions.

Most sources of worry about the world can be filtered through the serenity prayer.

I pray too that I don’t slide down the slope of objectification, as I never want to fall off that cliff again.

Healed at the pool

“You only need me” – it’s a step 11 thing

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Lately, I’ve become locked in the orbit of my faith, The 12 steps of Sex Addicts Anonymous have been instrumental in bringing me full circle. What I truly appreciate about this program is that it doesn’t impose a particular belief system or agenda on its members. It’s all about personal growth and healing, no strings attached.

In the past, I might have been guilty of dogmatic arrogance with my faith. But today, I’ve come to realise that I’ve been granted forgiveness and a fresh start. What truly matters is not the dogmatic preaching of one’s interpretations but joy knowing what revolutionary change these stories can mean to us if we keep an open mind.

Tonight, I’m inspired to write about just one story that hit me like a lightning bolt. I’ve been engrossed in the streaming series “The Chosen.” It’s the first Christian-produced show that’s captured my attention with its quality and a fresh perspective on stories I’ve known since my youth.

The story that caught my attention centers around a paralytic man who spent over two decades waiting by a pagan pool, hoping for healing from its waters. Then, God arrives.

Like the cripple at the pool I made my bed and hoped my pain would go away. You see, in the past, my addiction was my god. Sex and porn were my acts of worship. I was devout and faithful to those rituals, and those rituals led me to my darkest places. But you know what? Rituals are powerful, and they can lead us out of the darkness too.

In recovery, we learn to walk again, we replace old destructive rituals with healthier ones. We find the God of our understanding, ready and willing to work with us as we carve out a new path. As we make progress, we begin to understand that we’re spiritual beings, and we realise that our old ways were an attempt to fix spiritual wounds with corrupted and counterfeit solutions.

Now, my desire is simple: to continue healing from the pain of the past, to embrace more intimacy in my relationship based on authenticity, and to live a life filled with love and service to others, to experience rather than just exist.

I’ve recently travelled through moments I would have begged God to spare me from, moments of great shame but I’ve discovered that the most profound lessons come from those experiences, no matter how painful or shameful they may feel I am connected with my future and potential through grace.

In my service work with fellow addicts, I’ve learned the importance of sharing my faith but not imposing it. It doesn’t matter how someone finds their path to a higher power and lasting change; it could be the group, the program, or something else entirely. The important thing is the transformation. I have no qualms with God sitting back and not craving credit for changing lives. God to me sometimes hides his signature on his masterpieces.

The beauty lies in the journey, in the transformation, and in the newfound faith that carries us forward from shame to grace.

Service and amends – Steps Nine & Ten in action

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After an online home group meeting and a tough day, like many other days over the last few years. My partner and I, are watching Elementary. Johnny Lee Miller’s portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in recovery from addiction has given me many 12-step moments of reflection.

Tonight’s rewatch of an episode focuses on Sherlock’s guilt over his character defects leading to a friend getting hurt who no longer wanted to be around him. His sponsor, Alfredo, suggested that his work in the program had opened him up to empathy, and it was time to give back.

Service has been crucial to my progress. From putting out chairs to organizing new meetings, laying down my selfish rituals of the past, and embracing service to others has set me on a path toward pursuing a better way.

Tonight, like every other night, the meeting and the program have been there for me. Initially, it offered me a space where I realised I wasn’t alone or as unique as I thought. In that place, I felt safe to start making friends based on owning my past and, from there, to finally open up and deal with the past that drove my addiction for so long.

This recovery journey has reminded me that recovery is for the long haul, and it isn’t just something I do to clean the outside of the cup. I have a purpose, and I love this recovery stuff.

I am working my 9th Step, making direct amends where possible. Some I have to have a face to face discussion with about my actions and ask for their forgiveness, there are others that I cannot make amends to, for example, I cannot make amends to nameless faces on screens but I can live an amends as there is no proof like that of a changed person.

The fruit of working the program is evident in one’s life, as I have experienced. We turn to the big book to see what’s on offer for those who diligently work the steps.

Here’s the 9th Step promises that fire me up!

Today was a difficult day, but I choose to see out this day with immense gratitude.

I am a blessed man.

God, continue to grant me the serenity.

As I close the day I want to get better at being consistent with my 10th Step night time inventory.

Here’s a useful little Free 10th Step App

Unpacking the subconscious

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The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul

Carl Jung

A night of heavy dreaming left me more tired than before. Yesterday was a busy and emotionally taxing day. Life, in general, is, to be fair, challenging, but such things are beyond our control. All that is within our control is to find peace amidst it.

Owning one’s truth can be difficult to live with, and sometimes that means living with the knowledge that others are aware of your most shameful times. I am living in a perpetual state of Step nine (striving to make amends) and will continue to do so for the remainder of my time.

Now that we have some context of where my head is at, I want to unpack my dreams. Some people believe that dreams have spiritual significance, harking back to ancient times. Dreams are like our subconscious minds showing us things, and if we are willing to explore them, they can help settle certain emotional states.

I dreamt I was with a mix of a couple of ex-girlfriends. I say “girlfriend,” but I now realize that many of my former partners were fellow broken souls searching for something no human could offer. We found in each other respite from our own indiscernible pain.

This beautiful chimera was a blend of everything that excited me about the chaos. The sex I thought was fantastic, but it was devoid of real intimacy because it lacked something truly human. In the dream, I was right back there, feeling desired and enough, but as I often failed to see with such partners, completely disposable.

My dream then shifted to show me something painful—a loved one in a hospital bed. I’ve come to love this person as we walked shoulder to shoulder, and I feel I have, in a tangible earthly way, someone whom God uses to show up for me and let me know I am not alone.

In real life, this is a wonderful friend and journeyman, but in my dream, this person represented my fear of loss. When you open yourself up in a truly human way, you have to embrace the risk of loss, hurt, and all the pain that might come with it. It’s how we truly get to live—by embracing the full spectrum of life and not being selective.

I experienced this feeling and fear when I fell in love with my puppy. She won’t be around forever, and one day will come great pain and loss. But in between, all the colorful joys that come with it, there’s limitless love and acceptance.

Back to the dream, I let the girl walk away, and true to my experiences, she moved on relatively quickly. But this time, I didn’t dwell or jump to the next with a ball of emotions thinking, “next, next.”

I then took a call from a friend. A friend who said, “I know what’s going on, mate, and you’re not alone. I know you’re more than what you’ve done, and I’ve seen day in and day out for years now what you’ve done to make amends. You spread more life now than you ever peeked at death.”

This friend represented hope, hope that I will be seen not through the prism of my worst actions but rather through my authentic life in colour.

As I lay here thinking, I have a day to get on with, and I conclude from this busy night of dreams, I see the important lesson. Acting out or using others to medicate feeds one another’s pain for a moment, yielding nothing because it risks nothing emotional, sure, you can take risks that wreak havoc in life but we addicts throw that dice every time. This stuff is deeper than addiction.

When we love, we have to be willing to experience it all—the good, the bad, all weathers, and even loss.

When I traveled out of my mess, I was like the prodigal son Jesus spoke of. I was truly spent, broken, and my choice was mud, death, or redemption. I may or may not be forgiven in men’s eyes, but if I make myself a servant, it will be better than the mess I made. True to the story, while it is not without cost, I am restored, I have worth, and I am accepted.

There are no “real” relationships without this risk, and the only fee is to be open. The world offers counterfeit love, so I have to wonder why I spent so long with my microwave meal when I now get to experience the Father’s banquet.

Should I stay or should I go?

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This post is about partners, yesterday my loving partner sat with me through an appointment about my ongoing support in recovery from addiction.

I don’t know where she gets her strength from. Every step over the last near two and a half years she has been in my corner, supporting and encouraging me forward.

I may not have connected with my program of recovery, therapy and life of service were it not for her seeing my problem was more illness than moral bankruptcy.

One of the key points she attributes to this is that her therapist specialises in Sex Addiction and knows both sides of this pain, she broke things down into the choice which is hers in staying and how it’s always a choice.

Not all partners make it out of the wards of betrayal and hurt. Here are some points to consider when your world comes crashing down as a result of a loved ones sexual compulsive behaviour.

  1. Seek Professional Help: Both you and your partner should consider seeking professional help from therapists or counselors who specialize in sex addiction.
  2. Safety First: Assess your safety and well-being. If your partner’s addiction has led to abusive or harmful behaviors, your safety should be the top priority.
  3. Understanding Addiction: Educate yourself about sex addiction to better understand its nature and challenges. Addiction is a complex issue, and learning about it can help you empathize with your partner.
  4. Open Communication: Have open and honest conversations with your partner about their addiction. Effective communication is essential for addressing the problem and deciding on a path forward.
  5. Boundaries: Set clear boundaries to protect yourself emotionally and physically. Define what behaviors are unacceptable and communicate these boundaries to your partner.
  6. Support System: Lean on your support network, including friends and family. Only discuss your situation with people you trust, and seek emotional support from those who understand your struggles. Seek some advice about dealing with disclosure first.
  7. Assess Willingness to Change: Evaluate your partner’s willingness to seek treatment and make changes to overcome their addiction. Are they committed to recovery, therapy, and making amends?
  8. Impact on Children: If you have children, consider how the situation affects them. Their well-being should also be a significant factor in your decision-making process.
  9. Self-Care: Prioritize your own self-care and well-being. Caring for yourself emotionally, physically, and mentally is crucial during this challenging time.
  10. Time for Reflection: Take the time you need to reflect on your feelings and options. Decisions in such situations often require careful thought and consideration.
  11. Trust and Rebuilding: Rebuilding trust in a relationship after addiction is a long and challenging process. Consider whether you are willing and able to undertake this journey. Make new memories together, moving on and choosing to forgive is an ongoing process.
  12. Personal Values and Goals: Reflect on your own values, life goals, and what you want from a relationship. Does staying align with your long-term objectives and happiness?
  13. Legal and Financial Considerations: Depending on your circumstances, you may need to consider legal and financial aspects, such as property or custody arrangements.

Remember that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to whether you should stay or leave a relationship with a partner who has sex addiction. It’s essential to prioritize your well-being and make a decision that aligns with your values and what you believe is best for your future.

For some further support and advice check out our help for partners page

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.

Higher Power is Purpose

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Where there is no vision, the people perish

Proverbs 29:18

My whole life I have abused my ability to see, if the eyes are the window to the soul, I have defiled them with my vision since I was a child, all the while living my life without a true vision. I would name this post double vision but that would be focussing on the problem.

This week I shared at a neighbouring fellowship and as I spoke something clicked, the words power and purpose are interchangeable in recovery. The one thing that kept me alive beyond the initial feelings of wanting to end my life was that if I could survive this and help others, that might just be enough reason to keep going.

That purpose of serving others, taking all this mess and hurt and somehow working it into some form of good has been the driving force behind this whole journey thus far, for all the talk of higher power and wrestling that some experience because of whether one believes in God or not I would simply say “struggle with the God stuff, that’s fine but find your purpose! you will find your power.”

I lived my life chasing the next promotion, the better paycheck or seeking the admiration of others. I used to message girls just to get some compliments and only then tell them I was in a relationship, if I was a droid I had a bad motivator. (pardon the star wars speak) I was destined to perish for my lack of vision.

The subjects of betrayal and trauma are ones I can empathise with greatly, we addicts can hurt those we love the most and we really do have to own that.

At times I conflate a loved one’s hurt feelings with my own character defects, and that is an error in judgement on my part, you see for me to be well, I have to guard against self-pity and gloom speak.

It’s crucial that when it comes to anyone else’s feelings or thoughts, it is not my place to dwell or take defence. Instead, I focus on amends and living as my authentic self with a sense of purpose I had previously lacked.

If a connection is the opposite of addiction then having a purpose focused on serving one’s fellow man is a noble endeavour and for all you give away you receive more, it’s almost a spiritual transaction which is why the literature pulls no punches in its religious undertones, the concepts we tap into are the opposite of our self-serving addict personas, the programme really becomes a sufficient substitute.

My partner said that she often feels overwhelmed and while she fully supports me in my recovery it can at times be a little much, my response was that the time to worry is when I am not obsessed with my recovery, I give it the same diligence and priority that my acting out held for so much of my life, but I agreed that we would need to find some boundaries as my being present for the moment isn’t just to keep me on the straight and narrow but also to facilitate my showing up for those in my life.