The Sex Addict Contemplates: Why is Powerlessness a Prerequisite to Believing in a Higher Power

Why can't the first thing we believe in be a Higher Power? After all, G-d is the beginning and end of all existence, in my opinion.

But that's not the opinion of most addicts who are acting out. When we're acting with anything--sex, food, money, anger (all of my favorites, not necessarily in that order all of the time)--that 'thing' really becomes the 'higher power'.

When I risked losing my professional schooling, my professional career, my freedom (due to incarceration for acting out) and my life while acting out, I wasn't feeling powerless, and it didn't matter what my idea of G-d was. On some level, I was even hoping to get caught, as I thought it may have been my only way out of the addictive lifestyle and all of it's attendant wreckage.

Now that I've been in recovery for over three and a half years, I see that powerlessness is a prerequisite to believing 'a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity'.

If we're 'in control' of our addiction, then there's no reason to move on to the next step anyhow.

It's a fallacy to think there's nothing more powerful than 'will power'. I have proven this over and over again in my acting out. I had to be 'powerless' to give up the notion of 'will power' and let my 'Higher Power' chime in to help me out.

If there's no powerlessness, the implication is that the addict will not give up the reigns and allow any other source to help control his or her destiny. There will always be some resistance, some retained grasp on the poisonous substance that is the fuel for this person's addictive cyle.

Being powerless is a prerequisite to sobriety and recovery. It is a 'no brainer' to be a 'no brainer' and let go, and let G-d....

The Solution To Sex Addiction--all addictions--Is Counterintuitive: There is Power in Powerslessness

It's the last thing I'd think of when trying to overcome addiction. How many times did I say the last hooker was the 'last time'? How many times did I look at the porn site and say 'this is it. I'm not going here anymore'? How many times did I tell myself that I'm never going to masturbate again?

The same holds true for food addiction. Many more times in my life did I say 'I'm done with desserts' or 'I'm going on the strictest diet now'.

From an early age, I was taught that my problem with overeating was due to a lack of 'Will Power'. It was drilled into my head from my parents as they struggled with compulsive overeating. "You just need to try harder", "You're only hurting yourself--just think before you act".

WTF? If it was only about trying harder and my parents, the 'strongest and best people in the world' had their recurrent struggles, why should their son, who was 'stupid', 'no good', and an 'a**hole' going to do better than they could'?

The AA 12 and 12 book spells out the most counterintuitive argument that one could think of: Give up. Don't have self confidence. Hit bottom--that's the only way you can start getting better.

You've got to be kidding. So I have to give up and admit I'm powerless? I've got to take my self confidence out of the equation? I need to hit the bottom of the barrel before I can start getting better?

Well, from my educated perspective, the good part of that meant that I need to keep acting out so I can hit bottom. Of course the problem with that is I am a 'low bottom'. It's not enough for me to masturbate or look at porn. I have to keep escalating. And from what I understand, despite sobriety and recovery, the disease continues to be a progressive one. My bottom line of 3 and a half years ago is no doubt deeper than it was. I've talked to guys with more than a dozen years of sobriety and they've said the same thing. Despite their continued sobriety and recovery, they've felt that their bottom line 'in the brain' had gone to new depths.

And that's what my mind always would do when I was acting out. I'd have to find the sickest, most preposterous things on the 'net for me to continue to satisfy my craving. And of course, the addict's 'itch' is one that can never be scratched.

So the counterintuitive nature of recovery is actually right on. As I look at my 'socially acceptable' addiction with food, as with sex, I need to raise the bottom and admit I'm powerless. My self confidence needs to be eliminated from the equation. I need to enlist the help of other addicts who will help me maintain sobriety and grow in recovery.

It's not about the will power. I wish my father, he should rest in peace, would have found that solution. He never got into recovery for sex or food addiction. And my mother still struggles with her food, although she's discovered exercise as a healthy outlet and has been in the best shape of her adult life in recent years.

I'm powerless over food and lust. May I continue on the path of sobriety, recovery and serenity one day at a time--another difficult concept. How can I say I'm only sober at the moment? Why not just commit to the lifetime solution?

Because we live in the moment, and like everything else in life, all great achievements are earned by taking one step after the other...

The Sex Addict Reviews 'The Double Life' Concept and How it Relates to Food Addiction

It was easy to justify the double life in Sexaholism.  The private things I did to feed my addiction were simply socially unacceptable.  This, of course, allowed for bigger secrets to develop and left alone to my own thought processes, I continued to escalate in the addiction while justifying my actions and lies.

Why would I want to tell my wife that I was masturbating incessantly to porn back then?  And why would it be important for her to know I was looking at more and more objectionable material, including animals and children, as well as pictures depicting violence and necrohilia.  She didn't need to know that and it wouldn't hurt her or our marriage.  Right?

How about when I escalated to chat rooms, pretending (to myself anyway) that I was going to pick up an underage girl in one of these rooms.  And then there were the masturbation episodes on cam.  She didn't need to know about those either.  Nor did she need to know that I watched women expose their breasts on cam and one time I watched a male masturbating on cam.

I'm pretty sure she didn't need to know that I was going to adult bookstores and masturbating in booths again, nor did she need to know that I was viewing erotic dancers and masturbating to them as well.  She definitiely didn't need to know about the cruising in areas where there 'may have been hookers'.

And finally, she didn't need to know that I finally crossed the boundary of picking up a hooker again--just that once.  Only to do it about three times a week for the better part of a year, constantly 'quitting for good', only to start again sometimes even the same day.

The lying was meant to protect the innocent spouse from harm while I fed the addiction.  It actually enabled me to escalate to a point of no return.  Once I'd confided my crimes to her, our marriage was over and the damage to her seems to be permanent.  Even more than 3 and a half years later.

So here I am, remarried, sober from sex addiction for all of this time and thinking recovery has been going well.

That is, apart from the food.  It's the first addiction, the one that is really socially acceptable to some degree, and one that people can live with--at least initially.  I'd say the damage the food addiction does to one's self esteem can lead to acting out in other areas.  I've seen myself binge on food and then go act out sexually or vice versa in the past.  I still have some spending problems and they've occurred around the times I've acted out with food.

So the lies I told while acting out with food have also been to protect others.  I didn't want my parents, my spouse(s), or people who cared about me to see me compulsively overeating, so rarely did I do it in public.

But what happens after you binge privately over and over and over?  You gain weight, making the current clothing tighter and requiring new clothes, eventually.  It also leads to a more toxic personality in my case.  I become bitter, sarcastic, withdrawn. 

How does leading a double life help in food addiction?  In sex addiction?

It doesn't. It enables acting out to continue in perpetuity.  And in both cases, it leads to death and destruction of the addict, and also of those around the addict.  Sooner or later...

The Sex Addict and the Spiritual Solution--it works for food too!

It's amazing to me how much discipline I had with regards to ensuring I could act out and get away with it in a previous marriage.  This occurred with both the sex and the food addictions.  I'd allow the Ex to fall asleep and then I'd ever so quietly slip out of bed/out of the room and to the Internet to look for my favorite porn.  I'd eat whole meals or gigantic sugar snacks on the way home from work and then hide the wrappers in the garbage at a store or outside my house.

So discipline plays a role in successfully acting out as an addict.

Has discipline played a role in recovery?  Can their be a sex or food recovery without discipline?  How about without a Spiritual connection?

And it's simlply a willingness to connect with a Power greater than ourselves.

Discipline can be your friend or it can be your enemy. 

Discipline earned me a college and professional degree.  It helped stay sober from sex addiction for years now.  It continues to keep me out of troublesome situations with regard to the sex addiction.  It's the LACK of discipline and connection with the spiritual side of my life that has led to repeated failures in food recovery. 

I know it's progress not perfection, but it seems that the yo yo dieting has a distinct negative effect on my willingness to connect to that Higher Power.

So I ask G-d for the willingness to connect with Him and make the spiritual connection that may be necessary for food sobriety.  This simple discipline to let go and let G-d...

The Sex Addict faces the merciless nature in all his addictions...

Ain't that the truth.  I've met very few people in recovery--real recovery--that didn't get that addiction leads to life threatening consequences.

Acting out with prostitutes on the streets, viewing illegal porn on public computers, let alone 'private' computers, and going to strip joints, porn shops, and peep shows put me in the most dicey situations one could imagine.  At any point I may have come face to face with either a cold blooded killer, life threatening disease, or with the long arm of the Law.

Ultimately it was the efforts to preserve my marriage and my brutal honesty in confession (translation--dumping my guilt in a shock wave of pain) to my Ex that resulted in my most painful consequence right now, the legal restrictions around seeing my children unsupervised.

Switch gears to the more 'socially acceptable' addiction and there are unique differences, along with startling parallels in the 'fatal nature' of food addiction.

Acting out with food has some obvious consequences.  It leads to obesity, which is associated with heart disease, stroke, and death.  What is not as obvious is the link to sleep apnea, which in my case led to my constant fatigue, which fueled my acting out in all areas of my life.  Overeating also leads to poor self image, which leads to more acting out and need to numb.  It leads to ingesting more carcinogens, which could lead to cancer.  It also can lead to overspending (on food), spending on new (bigger) clothes, and more money spent on healthcare due to associated health problems. 

Being obese absolutely has diminished my life experience.  There are things I couldn't do because of being out of shape like certain hiking trips, climbing trips (favorite things to do for some in the Northwest) and it has led me to be more reclusive, antisocial and that leads to less fun, fulfilling life experiences.  I become more introverted after acting out with food, which leads to more isolation and therefore less interaction with people and things around me.  I also believe there's descrimination against overweight people.  This occurs for job opportunitities, for opportunities to have friendships or romantic relationships, although gratefully I am comfortable enough in my own skin and with my marriage that the latter do not matter to me.  I also believe that those who judge people 'of size' and don't want to befriend them simply for that are likely not people I'd like to befriend in the first place.

Here food was supposed to help me feel better and resolve my angst, and it has a terrible effect on the rest of my life and on relationships. 

I'm grateful to be working on food recovery...

Quick Food Fixes are Sexy for the Sex Addict

Until I have completely hit a rock bottom, I'm not sure that any addiction I have can enter the recovery phase. 

That's why, as it says in the AA 12 and 12 book, we have to find a way to raise the bottom.  I cannot control and enjoy sexual acting out at this point.  The consequences were too painful for me with losing my kids, losing my marriage, and nearly losing my career and freedom.

Food addiction is different, without a doubt. And it's as or more deadly than any other addiction, but it is much more pernicious and tenacious than the others.  I have to 'walk the tiger three times a day' with food.  No other addiction that I know of has that kind of power.  I didn't have any sexual activity for 2 and a half years in my SA recovery and I didn't die.  I couldn't go 2 and a half weeks without eating, much less 2 and a half days--at least without severe physical consequences.  

Food addiction can have direct and indirect consequences on my life, some quick and others slow.  The slow ones are obvious.  Being overweight and consuming poor foods leads to diabetes, heart disease, stroke, some cancers, sleep apnea, and a host of other maladies. 

Immediate consequences are not as obvious, but very significant.  The effects on my psychological state are profound.  Acting out with eating has high highs and low lows.  The low lows affect my self confidence which can lead me to worsening of all areas of my life.  The same way alcohol and pot were considered 'gateway drugs' to worse problems, so is acting out with food.  It's a gateway to all other addictions for me. 

And like all other addictions, it's progressive.  I've always found new ways of acting out and escalating the ways I 'mainline' my drug.  This also leads to more escalation of the mental and physical problems that accompany this problem.

Ironically, we must admit we are powerless over the addiction(s) to gain any power over them.  No one can be pushed into recovery unless they've hit their own bottom of sorts.

Old Les Brown ( http://www.lesbrown.com/ ) says 'A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still'.

Thankfully, I'm making progress with the food addiction today...

The Sex Addict Noshes on the 12 and 12: Am I TRULY a Complulsive Overeater?

I'd like to say no.  Where's the evidence for it?

From a young age, I had been told that I shouldn't overeat and that I need to lose weight.  As a result of the shaming and damning that my parents did at home, including putting me on a diet while the rest of the family, friends, kids at camp, ate what they wanted to.  I was urged to diet and count calories while I was still in grade school.
                                            And what did I do when I came home from grade school? I'd sit and watch the boob tube while munching on leftovers or junkfood or something that would be helping me numb out.

I began hiding what I ate at age 8 or younger.  I didn't want family, friends, fellow campers to see what I was actually consuming.

Later in life, in middle school on up, I'd enjoyed bingeing with certain friends, another sign of my compulsive eating behaviors.

Since college,  I've frequently yo yo 'd with my weight.

To be con'd...