My father was a bad drunk. Not abusive or angry, just an out-of-control, no-holds-barred narcisstic drunk. He had 3 marriages, a bunch of kids, went to jail a few times, lost jobs, wrecked cars, screwed all the housewives in the neighborhood, broke his promises, alienated his children. Pretty much made a mess of the whole thing.

He was finally able to get sober when he was around 52. After a particularly harrowing series of events he landed on my doorstep and asked me how I had quit drinking. I gave him a book called “Living Sober” and put him on a plane back home.He never drank again.

I was happy for him, and proud. I had been able to get sober myself at a young age, due in part to his horrifying example. So I had him to thank for that. But mostly I was proud and relieved. I didn't want him to die the kind of tragic early death he seemed destined for. Sober, his life improved dramatically.

Dad took to AA like a duck to water. He went to meetings, sponsored guys, went to retreats. He even became a delegate to the state convention. He had business cards printed up with a little coffee cup on them. His wife went to Alanon. He had an AA slogan to answer any situation. (That part was annoying.)

His biggest problem seemed to be that he was getting fat. He was now consuming massive quantities of ice cream with the same gusto he used to attack Jim Beam whiskey.

We lived a few hundred miles apart, and saw each other infrequently. When I did visit, I would ask him about his program, his step work etc. His answers were always evasive and seemed designed to shut me up. At first I thought he may not be comfortable with the role reversal of the situation. I had been sober much longer, and, as regards recovery, it was truly a case of the child being father to the man. My father didn't take too well to that idea.

At some point I realized that I had been waiting. I had expected that, in accordance with his 12-Step program , he had been reviewing his past, making an inventory of his life, and would be making amends to people he had harmed through his addictive behavior. These are essential parts of the 12-Step process. So I asked him directly about this aspect of his recovery program. His response was clear: "My problem was I drank too much. I took care of that problem. I don't drink anymore. I am not about to turn over old rocks to see what's under there."

I talked a little about how much better his life could be if he worked on these things, the underlying causes of addiction, but he wasn't buying it. He had heard it all before. It wasn't for him.

Dad lived for another 25 years after that conversation. I continued to visit, but not often, usually when he was having some health crisis or another. It became increasingly difficult to be with him. He seemed to me just a shadow of a man. When he was drinking he was a huge presence, a dynamic personality. Now he seemed small, giving out no energy, just kind of existing. His wife treated him like a boarder, or a kind of overgrown child with developmental problems. It made me sad to be there.

When he was in the hospital, dying of Congestive Heart Failure, he asked to be taken home. His doctors had told him he had only a short time to live and he wanted to die at home. His wife refused. She wouldn't allow him to come home. So, instead, he was taken to a nursing home where he died 2 days later.

Carl Jung taught us that spiritual healing comes from acknowledging and embracing our shadow, our dark side. We repress it or ignore it at our own peril. If we live in fear of what is under those old rocks, and how we will feel when we confront them, then we are stuck in a kind of half-light, a twilight existence which holds the energy of a full and rich life, but restrains it and eventually smothers it.

It takes a great deal of courage to do this, to take a “moral inventory”, to make amends, and clean up the wreckage of the past, to grieve our losses. It is painful and difficult. The payoff is substantial, but it takes a leap of faith to believe that. The big fear is that a thorough scrutiny of the past will reveal that we truly are loathsome human beings. So it is best to not even look, safer to keep all those rocks in place, right where they are.

Recovery if full of ironies, and this is a big one. The more we look at our troublesome behavior, the clearer it becomes that we are not essentially “bad”. If that were the case, we wouldn't be trying to heal and change. Addicts are not bad people trying to become good. They are damaged people attempting to heal from the past, and stop a cycle of self-destruction.

Most addicts in recovery are much stronger and more resilient than they believe. They have vast inner resources that belie the negative core beliefs they typically carry around.

The 12-Step programs hold out the possibility of a life that is "Happy, Joyous and Free." That's what Bill Wilson wrote in 1939. It's still true today.

That's what is under those rocks, Happiness, Joy and Freedom. 

Last week my colleague, Bill Owen, and I gave a presentation at the annual conference of the CCAPP, (The CaliforniaConsortium of Addiction Programs and Professionals.) The topic of our talk was: Sex and Pornography Addiction in early Substance Use Recovery.

Newly sober addicts tend to rediscover sex, and enjoy it in a way they never had while they were using.

Here's an anecdote about Wynn C, an early AA member:

Wynn stood on our front steps one bright Christmas morning enthusiastically kissing a different handsome AA swain as others crowded past them, pushing inside to a party, where they would drink tomato juice and laugh like banshees, delirious with joy. They had found God (as they understood Him), and as long as they stayed away from booze and aspirin, they were okay; they were in the clear. They weren't ashamed of sex; they gloried in it.
"MY NAME IS BILL", Carolyn See, The Washington Post, February 27, 2004, page C02.

Bill Wilson himself , according to many accounts, struggled with inappropriate sexual behavior.

Treating methadone addicts with heroin.

As the AA office staff expanded in the 1940s, Bill seemed to take an active part in its recruitment efforts. One longtime AA member told me that at first she didn't know why in 1946 Bill hired her and another young woman AA member. "Neither of us could type or take dictation," she told me. Then, one night soon after they were hired, Bill took both women to an AA meeting. He sat between them and, all during the meeting, he had a hand on one leg of each of the women.
Bill W., A Biography of Alcoholics Anonymous Co-Founder Bill Wilson, Francis Hartigan, page172.

Back then they couldn't identify what we have come to know as the “Whackamole” problem in addiction. Put down one drug and you'll find another to take its place. Those early AA meetings, in addition to being hook-up central, were so filled with cigarette smoke, it was hard to see. The focus then was on the substance, not the underlying condition. Many sober addicts took to gambling, sky diving, spiritualism, religiosity, overeating, compulsive exercise, workaholism... Anything to self-soothe and feel OK. Addiction is a disease of escape. Take away his drug of choice, and he'll quickly find another. A good addict will always find a way to escape.

Now, some 80 years after AA began, we have a lot of information we did not have then. For starters, we have the cases of the millions of people who have been able to tame their addictions through the 12-Step process. We also have numerous therapeutic techniques that were developed in the intervening years. We have some understanding that some are genetically predisposed to addiction, and well documented evidence that childhood trauma and neglect play a part in the development of addictions.

We also have increased understanding of how the brain operates. The neurochemistry of the brain, it turns out, is a key component in addiction. Substance addictions and process addictions are merely different ways of manipulating this chemistry to effect a change in mood. Behavioral addictions and substance use can actually carve new neural pathways over time, so the brain ends up in a new “normal” state, dependent on the addiction to remain regulated. To the brain, it doesn't matter if you're using porn or cocaine. To the pleasure centers of the brain, it's all the same.

The good news is that this process can be reversed. The brain chemistry, over time, can essentially reset itself. New neural pathways can form, allowing the addicted individual to feel OK without the need to alter their mood artificially. This is what recovery is, a new “normal”, which is what the old normal should have been, but was hijacked along the way.

Terence Gorski, known in addiction treatment as the Relapse Prevention Guru, puts it this way:

Sobriety = Abstinence from addictive drugs +

Abstinence from compulsive behaviors +

Improvements in bio/psycho/social health.

In 1958 Bill Wilson wrote that “Emotional Sobriety” was the next frontier. He was referring to what Gorski put into words years later.

People don't like the term Sex Addiction. Some say it's not a real addiction. Some say that it is just an excuse for bad behavior. They come up with all kinds of names for it: Sexual Compulsivity, Compulsive Sexual Behavior, Impulse Control Disorder, Hypersexuality, Out-of-control Sexuality, Problematic Sexual Behavior, Intimacy Disorder, Sexual Disorder (Not otherwise specified)

But when you look at the characteristics: preoccupation, tolerance, withdrawal, cravings, denial, continuance despite negative consequences, what you see is addiction, pure and simple. Pat Carnes defines addiction as “A pathological relationship with a mood altering experience.”

The relationship is pathological when choice is gone. The sex addict does not choose his behavior any more than a heroin addict chooses to shoot up. The choice is gone. The compulsion is in charge.

Sure, sex in recovery can be great, but an addicted person always needs to examine why you're doing it. If it is primarily to escape or run from feelings, then it's important to look at that. Replacing one addiction with another can bring the whole recovery process to a grinding halt, and have you scratching your head, wondering what went wrong.

David walks into a restaurant, looks around and spots an attractive woman across the room. She is sitting at a table with a man. She looks up toward David, and their eyes lock for an instant. They both look away. A few seconds pass, and he turns to look at her again. As he is turning she lowers her coffee cup and looks straight back at him. This time the gaze lasts a few seconds before they each slowly turn away.

His heart races. His eyes light up. He smiles at the hostess, takes a deep breath, and floats to his table. He doesn't walk. He floats. A moment ago he walked into this restaurant just another guy on his lunch hour, but now he is King of the World.

This is the moment a sex and love addict lives for, The Second Look. It lights up his brain like a spike in the arm, like a dry martini, a line of cocaine. It says “You are a sexy guy, a worthwhile person, clearly someone of wit, intelligence, passion and erudition; someone who could make me happy, give me beautiful babies, maybe the answer to all my prayers. Maybe you are the ONE.”

Or it could mean “You are a hot guy. I would love to jump on you right now.” Either way it works for David. It gets the spark plugs in his brain firing.

Never mind that he doesn't know the first thing about this woman. He can project onto her whatever he likes to bring this fantasy to life. The fact that she is with another man is not a deterrent. In fact it is a bonus. She not only thinks I am hot, but it is clear she can see that I am superior to that guy she's sitting with. I'm a winner. He's a loser.

For some sex addicts actual, or even virtual sex, is optional. More central to their mood alteration is the validation, the feeling that they are desirable and desired. We see this often with “emotional affairs”, a relationship with a colleague or client. The person, a man or a woman, replaces the primary partner bestowing affection, understanding and tenderness, stopping short of any actual sexual involvement. That keeps it legit, or so the belief goes. Truth is, men and women who do this are robbing their partners of a large chunk of themselves. They share their true feelings with the other, then come home and watch television.

It is complicated, of course. We all like to receive validation and attention from others. And no one gets all their needs met by one person. But for those afflicted with this disorder it is not simply a momentary blip of pleasure at being appreciated by another. It is necessary for their very survival. It is a deep need to be seen and accepted.

The thing that makes sex and love addictions so easy to deny is this characteristic. It is not one or more behaviors that define the addiction, but rather it is the compulsive nature of the behavior. Alcoholics regularly associate with people who drink more and worse than they do. It allows them to say “Well I'm not as bad as that guy.” With sex addicts it is easy to say “At least I don't...Fill in the blanks: Affairs, strip clubs, escorts, massage parlors, dating sites, Tinder hook-ups, office intrigues, sexting masturbation, pornography...Endless ways to medicate yourself with sexual arousal.

The place to look is not at the behaviors, but at what surrounds the activity. Does it create shame? Is it secret, requiring a double life? Have you tried unsuccessfully to stop or moderate it? Do you make promises to yourself, and then break them? Do you continue the behavior in spite of negative consequences? These are some of the indicators there is a sexual compulsion at work. These compulsions can be helped. The first step is recognizing they exist.//