As I introduce myself
as a sex, romance and relationship addict, I want to first touch on how each of these young age with compulsive masturbation. I would sneak around and had a lot of shame mind, whether it be a fix on a movie, a celebrity, or the idea of flowers, candles, and beautiful love songs to get high off of; it never kept me in reality.
It was all just an escape. It also never allowed me to be present and to see the person I was with for who they really are. The fix and fantasy in my head was enough alone to get me high. My relationship addiction, which I believe to be my core spiritual malady, never gave me the opportunity to be alone.
I was too busy compulsively pursuing and being a serial dater often with emotionally unavailable men and women, and using sex as a tool to get the relationships I wanted. My disease revolved around my worth of being tied to someone. And when that person left, it would feel as if my oxygen supply had been cut off.
March 11, 2012 was my first S.L.A.A. meeting. And like a true addict, I arrived late because I was having sex with the man I was cheating on my husband with. Three weeks prior, I had just gotten out of rehab for love addiction. I remember walking into my first meeting, the room was crowded and I took the only seat I could find, near the door on the floor. And as I curled up in the corner and listened to each share, I began to cry. There was a piece of me in each of these women and suddenly my story was being spoken out loud. I knew I was home.
I remember approaching the chairperson after the meeting and saying, “I don’t know what to do, but I know I need help.” That was my first bottom.
It took a few months to find a sponsor and begin working the Steps, finally being able to admit my own powerlessness. During this time, I found myself and my steadfast self-will breaking abstinence and being unable to give up dating, one night stands, obsessing over the collapse of my marriage and obsessing about an affair gone awry.
It took being a victim of Hurricane Sandy and being displaced from my home, seeing $50,000 worth of damage, and having no job, for me to finally hit the stop button. I decided to set a 90 day bottom-line of no dating. I would focus on finding work, beginning a new career, and rebuilding my life.
There was literally nowhere to start but over.
On day 45, I met J, the man who helped to rebuild my home. One month later, we had sex. Two weeks after that, we fell in love. Two months after that, he decided to leave the relationship.
I hit my second bottom. It was during this time that I lost my previous sponsor but still showed up to meetings like a dry drunk, listening, barely sharing, and never working the Steps or praying.
Self-will had begun to fail me and my spiritual malady had reached an all time low. It was at this point that a fellow reached out to me. I remembered hearing her qualify many months before in a meeting.
We had exchanged numbers and never got the chance to meet. I heard that this fellow woman had a lot of recovery and I decided to respond to her call. That fellow woman is now my sponsor and through her spiritual strength, love and kindness I have made it to my 9th Step amends and found sobriety.
I would be lying if I said my journey with her was an easy one, in fact, on the contrary. I found myself at times simply unwilling to surrender. How can I once and for all get out of the driver’s seat and believe in this Higher Power?
Could this beautiful abundant God actually restore my sanity? The what-ifs kept me stuck in my head, but my faith outweighed it. I knew that surrender was the only road to peace. It was the only solution for how I could win back my life.
Although the challenges of life haven’t changed, the choices certainly have. I can now choose freedom over sickness, serenity over chaos, amends over resentments, and faith over fear. My disease no longer runs the show.
For me, the true freedom came when I was finally able to take a hard, and rigorous honest look at myself, finally being able to complete and share my inventory after nine painstaking months.
Most of the time this process took place without hope, but never without faith. I knew that having faith was the only way out.
July 11, 2013, was my 16-month sobriety date. As I look back with gratitude, I can now see how my most painful circumstances became my greatest gift.
By consistently attending meetings, turning over my will, taking service positions in the fellowship, working the steps, and most importantly not beginning or ending my day without bringing God in, I am able to walk a spiritual and sober path.
I can finally be in my own skin, and sit with feelings instead of run from them, always trusting that God will see me through any challenges that life throws my way.
That once obsessed and scared little girl who sat in her therapist’s office compulsively blaming former lovers and being told that I was bleeding, and needed to get help, was now a wide-eyed self-assured, dignified woman with hope.
I am grateful for the words I heard that first day in an S.L.A.A. meeting that continue to carry me through, “Don’t give up before the miracle.”
I am a living testament of that miracle.
To the women, and men in this fellowship, thank you for loving me until I learned to love myself. I dedicate this to you. May we all have the gift of a sober miracle.
— ANONYMOUS
“Don’t give up before the miracle.”
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the Journal, Issue #146