Addiction is thorny. Every addict knows this. Once it has its claws in you, it can feel impossible to disentangle yourself from it. The relief that comes from being discovered and/or finally taking the first step to get help is tangible. Finally, you don’t have to be dealing with this by yourself anymore. Finally, you have an excuse to make it stop and the motivation or resolve to do so.
But what happens when that motivation fades? Sure, you’ll be committed early on, attending meetings or support groups, meeting regularly with your therapist, following the program…until it starts to get too hard. Maybe the motivation you had to quit goes away, in the form of a separation from a spouse or consequences fading in intensity. Maybe you lose sight of your reasons why for stopping. Or maybe the pain of the recovery process becomes too great and you have to escape back into something that is self-soothing, comforting, familiar.
So you relapse. And upon relapse, the shame you’ve been holding at bay with recovery work comes crashing down on you again. And to avoid or self-medicate away from that shame (because it is impossibly painful) you act out again, continue to go back to your addiction because it’s what feeds you. Maybe there’s a part of you that desperately wants to get out, that knows the destruction your addiction can cause, that it already has caused. But then there’s another part of you that says you can’t live without your addiction. That it’s the only thing keeping you sane, keeping you holding on, keeping you alive.
And so these two sides are at war. Pulling back and forth, hoping to motivate you on one side, hoping to destroy you on the other.
“There’s another part of you that says you can’t live without your addiction. That it’s the only thing keeping you sane, keeping you holding on, keeping you alive.”
Add in additional shame because you can’t stop, further consequences to your behavior that result from your relapse, and the dopamine and adrenaline rush that feel more intense because you haven’t acted out in a long time, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
In early recovery, I often hear vestiges of the war: wanting so desperately to stop but feeling completely unable to. The addict part of you convincing that it isn’t all that bad, or that you’re hopeless and without strength to stop. Or the reality that you really just don’t want to stop because it feels good and offers relief from the pain of daily living. These admissions are often then followed with shame-based beliefs about yourself: I’m a horrible person, I’m never going to get better, There’s something wrong with me, I’m disgusting, I’m worthless, I’m weak.
What’s the quickest remedy for shame? Escaping into addiction.
Addiction feeds off of shame. So before we can truly bring addiction to an end, live in recovery and achieve sobriety, the shame needs to be addressed as well. Otherwise you just end up as a dry drunk.
Here’s where acceptance comes in.
Acceptance? What? So I’m just supposed to accept that I’m a lost cause and act out as much as I want to? The addict part of me really likes that, but the healthy part knows that’s not good.
“Before we can truly bring addiction to an end, live in recovery and achieve sobriety, the shame needs to be addressed.”
True, if you look at acceptance as a free license to do whatever you want, that’s a problem. That’s typically where addicts get entrenched in self-aggrandizement and self-deception as a way of denying and avoiding the reality of their addiction.
Acceptance is an important step in releasing yourself from shame, but it doesn’t stop there. We’ll get to the next part in a moment, but for now, let’s start with acceptance.
How does it feel to say to yourself: I’m a horrible, disgusting person who doesn’t deserve good things? If this is the language you use to describe yourself, no wonder you want to run away into addiction, into something that helps you feel better.
But what if, instead of beating yourself up for your addiction, you sought to make sense of it?
Hear me out: addiction doesn’t develop out of nowhere. Research has shown that sex addicts often carry stories of sexual, physical, or emotional abuse or neglect. Neglect, in particular, is hard to see because it’s the absence of something good in our upbringing. Because we consider our own upbringings to be “normal”, we don’t see it as neglect.
Even if you don’t have abuse or neglect in your story, the world we live in offers pornography at the ready with the few clicks of a button. Pornography is designed to draw you in, flood your brain with dopamine and keep you coming back for more. It’s an industry, after all, and they want to make sure you continue to “buy” their product. Never mind the fact that regular use affects the neurocircuitry of your brain to make real-life partners less attractive, sexual desire harder to drum up, and creates a pattern of dependency on the images for sexual release.
Examine the origins of your addiction story. Where did it start? What was going on in your life at the time? Were you experiencing pain or distress? Even what you might consider “normal” pain like a breakup, a parental divorce, teasing at school, feelings of loneliness – what did the sexual behavior help you avoid?
When you pick up a habit that helps you cope, you tend to repeat it in adult life even if it’s not working anymore or its hurting you. Sexual behavior, beyond just a habit for coping, is self-reinforcing as it alters your brain to offer such a potent rush of feel-good neurochemicals every time you engage in it.
No wonder you keep going back to something that feels that good. You learned it worked, and so you’ll repeat it.
“When you pick up a habit that helps you cope, you tend to repeat it in adult life even if it’s not working anymore or its hurting you.”
And you aren’t the only one who’s had this experience. There wouldn’t be books written about sex addiction, research articles on the effects of porn on the brain, and 12 Step and support groups about this issue if you were the only one who struggled with it.
Allowing the addictive behavior to “make sense” releases the stigma of shame. It’s not that you’re a horrible person – you’ve (in essence) conditioned your brain such that you go to sex to give you relief from stress or pain.
So now what? Sure, it makes sense, but does that give me free license to do it whenever I want?
Not exactly. See, realizing that it makes sense and acknowledging that for yourself is freeing. It means that you’re not alone and that others have found a way out of this, even when they’ve been in the midst of an intense relapse or full-on addiction.
Remember earlier when I said there would be a next step beyond acceptance? That step is commitment.
Commitment to change. Commitment to recovery. Commitment to carry out the life values that are important to you. Commitment to people. Commitment to yourself.
Understanding commitment requires a vision for your future. Shame destroys any hope for the future, so it follows that vision is only established when you accept that you aren’t hopeless or a lost cause, because it makes sense why you would choose addiction. Knowing others have been able to get out of it bolsters that hope.
Why do you want to stop? What has it cost you to stay addicted? What have you lost? What are you at risk of losing if you don’t stop?
Imagine your future if you don’t stop acting out. What would that look like? How does that make you feel? Imagine your current or future marriage or relationships falling apart, your addiction escalating into behaviors that are illegal, your body ravaged by disease, the impacts on the women or men you objectify and treat as sex objects instead of people. The addict part of yourself might say, “well that’ll never happen to me,” but anecdotal evidence says otherwise.
Pause: do I need to remind you of the acceptance piece again to release some of the shame of recognizing the impact of your addiction? It makes sense why you’re acting out, and there is hope for you to change. Got it?
Now envision your life without the addiction. What matters to you? What feels important to you? What would you spend your time doing? This may be morbid but - what do you want to be remembered for after you die?
Once you have that vision in mind, recognize that the vision you have will not happen overnight. You can’t scale Everest in a day, and you’d almost certainly die without training. Instead, you need to take each day at a time, each step at a time. You need to “train” for your recovery journey by doing small, concentrated tasks that move you closer to your goals of sobriety and recovery.
Join a 12 Step group. Choose to spend one day without acting out. Start to exercise more or pick up a hobby that you’ve been meaning to do. Reach out to a friend or 12 Step member when you’re feeling triggered. Go to a therapy session. Work on a workbook or book related to treating sex addiction.
“You need to “train” for your recovery journey by doing small, concentrated tasks that move you closer to your goals of sobriety and recovery.”
And most important, don’t expect that you’ll be able to do this all at once. Take it one step at a time: but be sure to take that step.
And when you find yourself beating yourself up for not accomplishing your vision RIGHT NOW, take a step back and remind yourself of acceptance.
“My name is _______. I am a sex addict. I am in recovery. I have ___ days/years/minutes/ hours of sobriety, and I choose to be sober in this moment. I know the addiction comes from my story, and I know I am not alone. I will focus on this task to support my recovery today: (going for a walk, reading my 12 Step literature, sending a text to my sponsor, staying focused on my work, installing a filter on my computer). My addiction does not define me: it is not who I am.”