Category: Recovery From Addictions

I’m sure by now just about everyone in the United States has been made aware of Subway’s former spokesman Jared Fogle and the sex crimes he’s been accused of, some of which he’s already admitted to. While everyone seems to be either making jokes about him and Subway, or are outright lambasting him in total detest, I have felt truly sad and had some compassion for him. Why? It’s simple really. Jared has a sex addiction and I can somewhat relate to that.

Thankfully I can say that I never went down those dark roads that Jared did with his sex addiction, as I never engaged in any underage sexual behaviors or child pornography. Given I was molested at 12, those were things I loathed because I had so much pain around being violated myself at such a young age. So how can I have any empathy for someone like Jared then? Well, I came to realize that sex addiction was a disease due to my own battles with it. Although I was more of a love addict, endlessly chasing after married or unavailable individuals, I did have my own issues with sex addiction as well. Adult pornography, cyber and phone sex were often my replacements for a former alcohol and drug addiction for way too many years and my life suffered greatly because of them.

Having been in successful recovery for both my sex and love addiction for almost 3 ½ years now, I’ve learned to have a lot of sympathy for those still suffering from this disease. In fact, I regularly attend weekly meetings to help with my recovery and it’s there I see others still battling with it like Jared has. But instead of making jokes or being disgusted by what I hear, I continue to look at them with love and kindness, remembering I too once suffered greatly. Even more important is the understanding I have now, that deep down below their toxic behaviors and addiction is another of God’s souls worthy of redemption.

This is why I’m so grateful I was able to find healing and recovery from my own sex and love addiction behaviors because I wouldn’t have the compassion for those still suffering from it like I do now. Unfortunately, there are too many others out there who try to fight this disease on their own like Jared did. Most end up falling only deeper into it and many eventually get arrested because of how far it takes them into its perpetual darkness. Nevertheless, I’m 100% convinced that no matter how far one retreats into that darkness that sex and love addiction leads to, that God’s love and guidance can always lead them back into the light.

Hopefully people may begin to pray for Jared Fogle instead of chastising him, and remember that he too has a piece of God within him, fully capable of being healed from a disease that has held him in its deadly grips for far too long…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

 

Have you ever seen those commercials on television that show you the horrors of cigarettes? I know I have and honestly, as much as I wish the people who are still smoking would pay attention to them, sadly most of them won’t. How do I know this? Because I used to smoke and I remember how powerful that addiction was when I was doing it.

It’s probably best that I clarify something right off the bat first. I’m not writing this entry to convince you to stop smoking if you happened to be one of those 1.1 billion people who still do. I’m just writing this to tell you a little about the years I myself was hooked on them.

The first time I ever actually smoked a cigarette was on a hot summer night when I had been drinking alcohol pretty heavily. I was hanging out with a guy I was secretly smitten with and I thought I’d impress him by trying one. After pulling out one of the Newport menthols from his pack and lighting it, I tried to hold it in my mouth like he did and then inhaled. Like all those movies and television shows that often portray what happens when a person first tries to smoke a cigarette, I began to cough and gag uncontrollably. But I was determined to be more like this guy, hoping somehow it would draw me closer to him. Little did I know though that the only thing it would draw me closer to is an unhealthy life? Needless to say, once I got past those initial problems, its effect on me was electric. Not only did it give me a buzz and a sense of ease and comfort, it also enhanced the effect of all the booze I was beginning to consume in greater and greater quantities.

For a while I’d only smoke when I was drinking and I’d often tell myself I wasn’t addicted to cigarettes because of this. I’d usually only consume maybe five or six throughout an entire evening while I drank, but the thought of doing them the next morning when I awoke was initially never there. In fact the smell of them on the two fingers I used to smoke the night before, as well as all over my clothes and pretty much the rest of my body, totally repulsed me at first. But as I grew more restless, irritable, and discontent with my life, I found that I wanted to get more of that ease and comfort during the day when I wasn’t able to drink. I found I could get a little of that by smoking a cigarette after lunch and after dinner. Soon it became one of those things I had to do after every meal or I just didn’t feel relaxed and complete.

Then came the stress from various aspects of my day-to-day living. At this point in my life, I was in college and deeply closeted. Cigarettes began to offer me some relaxation either before or after big exams, or while hanging out with someone I was attracted to but couldn’t admit to it. Eventually, it felt as if everything else there started to get to me as well, like traffic around campus for example. The more I became stuck in it, the more smoking a cigarette seemed to help me deal with it somehow. Then I noticed I had problems moving my bowels in the morning, but smoking a cigarette always corrected that somehow. And just like that, cigarettes soon became my answer for all of life’s problems.

Like any addiction, the bad effects of this growing habit didn’t happen right away. The first negative thing from doing it didn’t really occur until a few years down the road when I began to easily get winded while playing sports. My stamina in turn then became less and less the more I kept on smoking. Soon my white teeth started becoming really yellow and my breath more and more foul, and then I began to go through regular episodes of bronchitis.

Yet I continued to do this habit and would even try to enhance the buzz at times by using chewing tobacco, which was definitely a sign of this growing addition. But one day when I lit up a cigarette as always and inhaled the first puff, something happened. My throat spontaneously closed, almost as if it was attempting to reject the nicotine all on its own. I’d try several more times to inhale the smoke and only got the same exact result. Unfortunately, I was completely oblivious to the notion my body was trying to send me a warning message to kick the habit. Instead, I kept on doing it, finding ways to distract my mind so that I could override the constant strange throat reaction and inhale the smoke.

When I began suffering from serious anxiety and depression and found that cigarettes (and alcohol) were only making it, and the rest of my health worse, I knew I needed to do something. That’s when I sought a Higher Power for help through a humble prayer on my knees. The result was swift when the compulsion to do both was immediately lifted. I truly consider myself one of the lucky ones these days because of this. I have seen plenty of the horrors that an addiction to smoking cigarettes ultimately leads to, from COPD, to heart disease, to high cholesterol, to poor vision, and of course many forms of cancer. I knew most of this when I used to smoke yet I kept on doing it.

You see that’s the problem with all addictions. Once a person finds some ease and comfort from the substance of any addiction, it becomes next to impossible to have any desire to stop doing it until the pain and suffering gets great enough from actually doing it. This is why anyone who is a prisoner to smoking isn’t ever going to give much mind to all those commercials on television that constantly show people on breathing apparatus, or having lost limbs or parts of their face, or even the ones lately that are trying to cater to the young crowd by showing a pack of cigarettes come alive like one of those creatures from the Alien movie series.

That’s why I feel it’s so sad that 1 in 3 adults on our planet continue to engage in a habit that could eventually destroy their mind and body and possibly even take their life the more they do it. I have plenty of friends totally addicted to cigarettes that constantly tell me they plan to quit, but the reality is they won’t until something really bad happens. Hopefully each of them and anyone else suffering from this addiction will one day wake up like I did and ask their Higher Power to guide them away from something that’s so deadly.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

On Friday’s at my five day a week AA home group, it’s open topic day and one never really knows what’s going to be brought up during them. Usually I contribute something at each of them, but a few weeks ago I found myself struggling to share anything when the subject brought up was to describe our first AA meeting. The reason why I struggled so much was simple. I simply just couldn’t remember it.

The original AA meeting I actually went to was somewhere during the first part of summer of 1995. I had a social worker at the time counseling me who suggested I try attending a few. About the only thing I remember from the first one I checked out was how smoky it was, because back then you could still light up a cigarette during them. Having just quit cigarettes in addition to alcohol, my initial impression of AA quickly became biased. I tried a few others in the days and weeks ahead, but I can’t say I remember any of them either. Part of the problem was that I had an ego a mile wide and I felt that the only thing I needed to do was not drink, not do drugs, and not smoke cigarettes. I never realized that those meetings were a lot more than just dumping one’s drama out there and I didn’t understand that there was a lot more work to do on myself after becoming clean and sober. But the reality was I wasn’t open to doing any of that work on myself back then. My ego had convinced me I was absolutely fine as I was, so long as I was not drinking, smoking, or doing drugs. Over the course of the next 12 years, none of that changed much either.

While I remained clean and sober and hit random meetings here and there, the only things I remember about any of them were whether there was anyone attractive present. Sadly, meetings to me for all those years were nothing more than a dating pool or a place to find a hook-up. My first real memory of an AA meeting didn’t really come until I became so powerless over my addiction-based insanity that I found enough willingness to get to one and actually listen for once. That moment was on the first Friday night of September in 2007 when my only real recovery friend invited me to go to his home group after I told him how miserable I was in life.

I remember walking through the church doors to his group that evening observing how everyone there appeared to be happy, yet I was so incredibly depressed. How could someone with 12 years of sobriety feel this way is what I thought inside as I greeted my friend with a hug? The immediate thing I told him was that I was in a very dark place and needed to share that night. He let me know I wouldn’t be able to though because they had an incoming group coming to share their experience, strength, and hope. I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about though because the only meetings I had ever attended in the past were ones that were open discussion. I proceeded to pressure him with the notion that I absolutely needed to share what was on my mind and after seeing I wasn’t going to give up, he ended up letting the incoming commitment know of my desire. Ironically, they eventually called me up to the podium where I clearly recall feeling a lot of fear inside.

As I stood there and began to speak in front of more than 100 people at a podium, the only thing I ultimately remember saying was how sick I was after all those years of being a dry drunk and that if I didn’t get help that night I was going to kill myself. I then burst into tears and rushed back to my seat. When the meeting ended not too long after, I got my very first sponsor and it was then I definitely began my true path to recovery.

While I’m slightly saddened that it took me as long it did to get there and create a strong enough of a memory to remember my first true AA meeting, I’m still thankful for all those prior ones I went to. Because it shows me how much I’ve grown since that very first smoky one I sat down at all those years ago where I let my ego run the show. I truly consider myself one of the lucky ones now because so many others have walked in my very same shoes and either relapsed, died, or remained a dry drunk. Thank God none of those happened with me and thank God I found enough willingness to finally come to an AA meeting with an open mind, as doing so has saved my life.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson