Hitting Bottom: Sex and Addiction
by Beverly Fisher, Slut at Large and Woman of Easy Virtue

I remember sitting on my couch in my living room, my whole body wracked with sobs. I couldn’t stop crying. It felt like my whole world was crashing down around my ears. I had lost the one person I’d ever truly loved. I was neglecting my child, who sat in front of the television for hours on end while I locked myself away in my room. I owed the landlord thousands of dollars, and the electricity was due to be shut off. My family and friends wanted nothing to do with me. I had lied to them too many times, borrowed too much, stolen. My job performance was a nightmare. I had no sex life, was uninterested in sex. My life had become completely unmanageable, utterly out of control.

I sat there on the couch, crying, wondering how I’d come to this horrible place. But I knew. I knew because I was holding it in my hand: a pipe, loaded with marijuana. I smoked pot all day and all night. I smoked more pot than anyone I’d ever known. I smoked the first thing when I woke up in the morning, and the last thing before bed. All I cared about was marijuana. All my life I’d wanted to be a writer, and suddenly I realized that I hadn’t written anything in three years. I’d spent the previous three years stoned, all the time. And sitting, there, crying uncontrollably, I lifted the pipe to my lips and lit the bowl. Even knowing it was the cause of my downfall, I couldn’t stop. I just couldn’t stop.

It’s hard to explain addiction to someone who’s never experienced it. How do you express the utter despair and hopelessness, the sense that your life and everything in it is completely out of control? How do you explain the need to deaden feelings, to escape from reality? Addiction is a sickness, not a weakness of character. It is a disease for which there is no cure, but there is treatment.

I am an addict. I am in recovery for some of my addictions, but not all of them. I still smoke cigarettes, and am hopelessly addicted. I still have issues around overeating and food. I no longer smoke pot, nor do I do other drugs. I am in recovery from co-dependence. The fact is, I have an addictive personality. I could get hooked on tree frogs if there were a reliable supply. Thankfully, I don’t live in a rainforest.

Addiction can take many forms, from drug and alcohol addiction, to eating disorders, to being a workaholic, to sex. These days, while it’s much more socially acceptable to admit to being an alcoholic, or even a prescription drug addict, sex addiction is perhaps the most secret addiction of all.

What is addiction?

All addictions, whether sexual, chemical, or otherwise, share typical features. The most common is that the person has a relationship with the object of his addiction which becomes more important than anything else in his life. When I was under the grip of my marijuana addiction, I was having a love affair with the drug. Nothing else – no other relationship or person, my job, my family – was as important to me as my next high. It progressed to the point where I had to smoke pot not so much to get high, but simply to feel “normal.” But, like all addicts, I was utterly isolated, terrified my secret would be discovered, filled with shame and a terror of being abandoned by those I loved, and even society itself. I stuffed these feelings down by smoking more, completing a vicious circle.

The term “addiction” applies to any number of compulsive behaviors, and suggests a persistent pattern of behavior that continues even in the face of negative consequences. Further, addicts are often in denial about their addiction or their behavior, and blame others for their problems. For me, I was always complaining that the world was shitting on me. It was just one problem after another, none of which were, in my addiction-fogged brain, my fault. I couldn’t see that my own choices had created my own circumstances. I couldn’t recognize that I was 100 percent responsible for my own life.

Addiction means that you know something is wrong, and keep trying to fix it – “this is the last time, I swear” – but you are unable to stop. Often addicts continually engage in self-destructive or risky behavior, sometimes escalating. Additionally, we have to do more and more and more of our drug of choice, because we become acclimated to it. I smoked so much pot, it would have put anyone else under the table, but I had to have more. In the end, I wasn’t even feeling that “high,” just a dulling sensation that wiped away my feelings.

As addicts, we spend more and more time in pursuit of our addiction, neglecting family, work, and social obligations. Hobbies and other pursuits are forgotten. As I said, all my life, all I cared about was writing. And suddenly it didn’t matter at all to me anymore. All that mattered was getting stoned, altering my moods. I wasn’t capable of facing my own feelings and dealing with them. I used pot to stuff my feelings down, or to change the way I felt. I didn’t know how to deal with my life anymore. I didn’t know how else to cope, other than to smoke.

The experience of the sex addict parallels my own. The sex addict simply uses a sexual behavior – anything from exposing himself, having phone sex, or downloading porn from the Internet, to name but a few – to alter their mood. Drugs are called “mind and mood altering substances” and sex can also fall into this category.

Thankfully, out of all of my myriad addictions, I am not a sex addict. But I could be. Being an addictive person means that I can and will find anything to be the focus of my addictions. I am grateful that I’m not a sex addict, because of all the addictions, I think that one is the most painful, the most difficult to recover from.

The birth of shame

How do we become addicts? Patrick Carnes, PhD, in his book Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction, writes that addiction begins with the addict’s faulty belief system, a set of beliefs about ourselves and the world that color the way we view reality. Based on our beliefs, most of which we start off with in childhood, we decide how we are going to act in the world, we judge the behavior of others, we choose what we want to do with our lives and the kinds of relationships we’re going to have. As addicts, we have faulty beliefs about ourselves. Most of us don’t believe we are worthwhile people. I used to think that if people knew the “real me” they wouldn’t want to be my friend or lover. I believed that the only reason my daughter loved me is because she simply didn’t know any better.

So pot became my way of dealing with my pain, and pot contributed to my feeling of isolation and loneliness. I used it to fill the void in my life, the big empty hole in my gut where the love and belongingness went.

Dr. Carnes points out that out of that faulty belief system, our interacting faulty beliefs, we come to view reality in a distorted way. Denial, blame, rationalizations, and justifications for our behavior are just some of the things we do to hold on to our view of reality.

I once heard somewhere that ego seeks to reinforce its own view of itself. In other words, if I see myself as a bad person, I will do things and treat other people in such a way that they will treat me badly, reinforcing my image of myself as a bad person. You’ve heard the term “wearing rose-colored glasses” – we create our version of reality, wear mental filters that color the way we see the world, and the way the world sees us. This view of reality stems from the faulty beliefs we carry. I saw myself as unlovable; so I would behave in such a way that no one sane could love me.

I spent many years dating a sex addict, Mark (not his real name). Mark was in recovery for drug and alcohol abuse, but not for his sex addiction. He was what they call a “dry drunk” in that, while he wasn’t using drugs or alcohol, he still had all of the addictive behaviors and faulty beliefs of an addict. He was miserable all the time, and it was always someone else’s fault. He would go out for the day and come back with stories about how this bus driver was an asshole to him, that waitress was rude to him, and how he’d been mistreated by everyone. He didn’t see that going out in his foul mood, he himself was rude and insulting to everyone he met, and they simply responded in kind. He literally created his own miserable reality.

I am sure that he justified his need for phone sex and compulsive masturbation by believing that he wasn’t really “cheating” on me. He never had an affair or saw another woman, to the best of my knowledge (and I think I’d know, but I could be wrong). Mark was not alone in his concurrent addictions; according to Dr. Carnes, 42 percent of sex addicts have a problem with some type of chemical dependency. 38 percent of sex addicts have an eating disorder. He writes that “Among cocaine addicts, 50 to 70 percent have a problem with sexual compulsion.” I once had a boyfriend who couldn’t have sex at all unless he was high on cocaine. Whether he was a sexual addict or not, I don’t know, though he definitely had a cocaine problem.

Addicts are full of justifications and excuses. For me, I smoked pot because it “calmed me down.” It also “helped me cope with things” and “kept me happy.” Nevermind that I was miserable and anything but calm. Sex addicts, according to Dr. Carnes, offer a variety of excuses for their behavior, too: “I’m just oversexed,” “men are more sexual than women,” “Cybersex isn’t real, it’s not cheating,” “this is how I relax,” “my husband doesn’t give me what I need,” and more. We become delusional, and start believing our own lies and rationalizations.

Blame is a big part of the addict’s repertoire. I’d had a hard day and the boss was a jerk, I needed to smoke pot. It was his fault. Mark had been treated badly all day and just needed to relax. Other people drove him to the phone sex line. He probably blamed me, for that matter, for not “putting out” enough. For the addict, the world is unfair and cruel, and we deserve a little reward for putting up with it.

Paranoia is another big one. I knew I was a liar, a thief, and completely untrustworthy. But I was terrified of anyone else finding out these facts, and would react violently angry when cornered. I lived in constant fear of discovery, which only made me want to smoke more pot.

In this way, the faulty beliefs and thoughts of the addict shut us off from the rest of the world. We become lost in the world of our addiction, our fears and paranoias and justifications. We view the world not through rose-colored glasses, but black ones. Everything is bleak, and only our addiction can comfort us.

Addicts as children

Where does addiction begin? The faulty belief system is usually born in childhood. Often the parents of addicts are addicts themselves, and they pass on their own faulty thinking to their children. Dr. Carnes writes about abuse, punishment, humiliation, and abandonment, and says that “The more prevalent these elements are, the more compelling the addiction.”

The child believes he is a bad person, and unworthy of unconditional love and acceptance. I know that for me, I always felt that my parents’ love was conditional. I know now this isn’t true, but as a child I felt that when I was “bad” they didn’t love me, that I was only loveable when I was “good.” I didn’t feel that I could trust or depend on my parents to be there for me. I used to come home crying from school because someone had teased me or hurt me. My mother couldn’t talk to me about it. I know now it’s because it hurt her too much, she felt too much pain at my suffering. But the message she sent me was that my feelings weren’t important, or valid. And she wasn’t able to offer me the comfort I needed.

My father was a rageaholic; his temper was truly something to behold. I was terrified of him, terrified of making him angry, terrified of making a mistake. A perfectionist, his expectations of me were often unreasonably high – dooming me to make a mistake and feel his displeasure. As an adult, I have had to face my own perfectionistic tendencies, and learn to conquer my raging temper.

I know so many addicts who have been physically abused by their parents or stepparents, or shamed and humiliated. I read a “Dear Abby” column once where a young man wrote about his mother’s punishments, how she forced him to spend one entire summer dressed as a girl as punishment for bad grades at school. He was writing to Abby because he felt guilty, as he wanted to make some kind of mistake so that she would force him to dress as a girl again. He wanted that experience. I felt so sad reading that column – here was the birth of a sex addiction, or at the very least a fetish that would be painful and difficult to deal with.

Almost all addicts report feeling lonely, unprotected, and unloved as children. There is often no one to protect children, or keep them safe. “As the child matures,” writes Dr. Carnes, “there begins a search for that which is dependable – something that you can trust to make you feel better.” In the search for something to depend on, to trust, addicts seek out those things that always feel good, things that can be counted on no matter what. I sought out pot. Some seek food, or alcohol. And then there is sex, which is usually free, and something you always carry with you. Sex addicts never run out of their supply.

The initial decision to use drugs or sex comes from the belief that the addict’s needs will not be met if they have to depend on someone else. We are all about selfishness, out of self-protection. We could not count on anyone as children; we cannot count on anyone else now. So our most important need becomes the object of our addiction, whether it’s gambling, food, marijuana, booze, or sex. That is the one thing that makes us feel the same way, every time. We can count on it, in a way we could never count on anyone or anything else.

Sex addiction

Sex addiction can take many forms. We have humorous stereotypes of male flashers in trenchcoats, but the reality of sex addiction isn’t funny. There are many female sex addicts who sometimes have a greater struggle than their male counterparts, in that women are not “supposed” to be sexual the way men are. About 40 percent of sex addicts are women.

Sex addicts can be compulsively downloading porn off the Internet, having an endless string of one-night-stands, having unending affairs, spending all of their money on prostitutes, compulsive masturbation, voyeurism (peeping), exhibitionism – in short, all of the ways that people can have sex in a healthy, normal way can be turned upside down into an addiction. Some sex addicts are also rapists, incestuous, or pedophiles, though not all rapists are sex addicts. It simply depends on how people approach sex, and their beliefs and behaviors around sex.

Masturbating is a normal, healthy thing. But for the woman who does it 20 times a day, whenever she feels upset or depressed or angry, it’s an unhealthy addiction. A minor bit of exhibitionism, like enjoying masturbating for your partner, is fun and harmless. But the man who cuts holes in his clothes to purposely “accidentally” expose himself on the beach, is in horrible anguish. A woman who spends all her time cruising bars, looking for another one-night-stand, is suffering. A man who hires yet another prostitute and then realizes he can’t afford to take his child to the dentist is an addict.

Dr. Carnes talks about the addiction cycle, which has four steps. The first is preoccupation, which is a mental state not unlike a trance where the addict’s mind is filled with thoughts of sex. For me, this phase occurred when I ran out of pot. I couldn’t stop thinking about getting more, about getting high. I would call my dealer and the anticipation would build.

The second phase in the cycle is ritualization. Sex addicts, and addicts in general, have routines that lead up to the addictive behavior. The ritual intensifies the preoccupation, making it more exciting. Part of the ritualization for me was buying more paraphernalia for smoking pot. I had to have the latest bong, the newest pipe, which only increased my anticipation of smoking. The act of sitting down to smoke, loading the pipe, preparing my toys, was all part of the ritual for me.

For a sex addict, this ritualization may include turning on the computer and listening to the modem kick in, or perhaps preparing sexy clothing for the evening ahead, or simply getting in the car and starting to drive, preparing for a night of cruising.

The third stage in the cycle, according to Dr. Carnes, is compulsive sexual behavior – or compulsive using, as in the case of chemical addicts. This is the actual sexual act, or addictive behavior, that is the culmination of the preoccupation and ritualization. This is when someone actually uses the glory hole at the adult bookstore. This is when I smoked pot. And these are the behaviors that we, as addicts, are unable to control.

The final stage in the addictive cycle is despair. It is at this point that we know we have a problem and are unable to stop, and become filled with a sense of total hopelessness and shame. Our lives have become completely unmanageable, and yet we still hold onto the illusion of control: “this is the last time, I mean it.”

The pain and misery of the despair stage can be overcome by moving right back into the preoccupation phase – and thus the cycle repeats itself, over and over, growing exponentially worse with every repetition.

Recovery

But there is hope for the addict. As I’ve shown, there are huge parallels between all forms of addiction, from alcohol, to marijuana, to sex. As early as 1975, some sex addicts got together and decided to do something. These groups took the proven principles of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and adapted them to their particular addiction. Other Twelve Step groups exist: Marijuana Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, and even Dual Recovery Anonymous, for those with chemical dependency and mental health issues. For just about every addiction, there is an “A” (for Anonymous). Personally, I could sign up for most of the “A”s.

The sex addicts have formed several groups: Sexual Addicts Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous, and Sexual Compulsives Anonymous. The National Council on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity (NCSAC) has both national and state chapters working to educate the public and reduce the stigma of sex addiction.

Sex addicts in recovery report terrible withdrawals from their addictions. I believe that there can be a physical addiction, in addition to the psychological addiction, to sex. I know that I went through terrible physical withdrawals in early recovery, but the worst was the psychological withdrawal.

In the first Step, we admit we are powerless over our addiction, that our lives have become completely unmanageable. This is incredibly difficult for many addicts, because we are so isolated and maintain an illusion of control over our lives. To admit we are powerless seems weak, and forces our addiction out into the open. We have been living secret lives for so long, and we have controlled that secret. The admission that the addiction is more powerful than we are forces us to ask for help – something we’re not good at.

We ask for help from a Power greater than ourselves. This is a stumbling block for some; believing in the Christian God is not acceptable to many. But then it is explained that the Power greater than yourself can be all yours, that you can decide what that Power is. It can even be the Twelve Step group itself. It can be a woman in a floral print dress smoking cigars and wearing cheap perfume. You get to define that Power for yourself. It is “God as we understood Him.” It’s your understanding, just as I have my understanding.

We learn to separate ourselves from our addiction. Being in a group of addicts helps make the admission of powerlessness less frightening. We have to learn that we are not bad people, but rather good people in the grip of a terrible illness. We begin to develop hope for the first time, as we come in contact with others like us, and begin to accept a Higher Power of our own definition into our lives.

Being around others who have suffered the same way we have suffered helps break the cycle of isolation and loneliness. We begin to develop a new way of looking at reality, not through the “black-colored glasses” of our addiction, but through clear eyes. We begin to trust others in the group, and are in turn trusted. For addicts who have been secretive and dishonest for so long, this means everything.

Through the Twelve Steps, we explore our own strengths and weaknesses, our self-esteem and self-worth. We examine our values, our goals, our behavior towards ourselves and others. We take responsibility for our actions, letting go of the blame and justifications and rationalizations we’ve been utilizing for so long. We acknowledge our mistakes and misdeeds, and make amends for them all. We learn about the power our addiction had over us, and the way it distorted our thinking, our lives, and the lives of others. It turns out that we can survive without pot or sex or alcohol, but that we need a rigorous program of living to help us. We are addicts and always will be.

I learned to deal with pain and anger without using. Frustration became just that: frustration – nothing more. I didn’t have to anesthetize myself to cope with reality. I learned to express emotion in a normal, healthy way. And I learned to trust others, that there were people out there who genuinely cared about me, and who I could care about in return. I learned to like myself, really like myself, for the first time in my life. I discovered that I was worth loving, after all – and this allowed me to see the love that had been there, waiting for me, all the time.

No longer out of control, no longer blaming others for my life and my problems, I was able to look reality squarely in the eye, shoulders thrown back, ready to face anything. It meant having to face up to some painful truths, including writing them all down here. But I was able, through a program of recovery, to be free of my addiction at last.

Recovery is painful and very difficult. But it is the most rewarding process I’ve ever experienced. Living a program of recovery may have been difficult, but it was simple and liberating. I’ve never felt so free and in control of my life than when I released control entirely. It seems like a paradox, and yet it’s true.

Addiction, whether it’s sexual, chemical, or emotional, is a painful disease. As I said, there is no cure, but there is hope in recovery. All we have to do is take that first Step.

 

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