Want to know just how disconnected a person can get from life when an addiction becomes severely active for them? How about not really knowing about any of the major news events going on in the world?
I say this only because in the past few weeks I went to the theater and saw two different movies whose original events they were based upon took place during the time my sex and love addiction was at its worst. “Sully” and “Deepwater Horizon” are the movies I’m speaking of and while I vaguely remember the headlines about each of them, I must admit I never paid either much attention.
You see that’s the thing, when someone succumbs to a deadly addiction, nothing else going on in the world matters. The only thing that does is knowing when the next fix for that addiction is going to come along. In my case, that included not caring about the plane that safely landed on the Hudson or the oil rig that exploded off the Louisiana coast killing 11 people.
Frankly, this disconnection I had during the time my sex and love addiction was active was far worse than simply missing out on a few major news stories. I also passed up tons of opportunities to spend time with my sister and her family, I skipped out on many chances to hang out with friends and other loved ones, and I even lost out on a few potential relationships that would have been far healthier than anyone I was getting myself sexually involved with during that time.
The simple reality is this. When a person becomes deeply involved in any addiction, life passes on by without them ever realizing or even caring about it. But when a sobering day comes along, usually from either not getting their fix, or from being sick on some level, that’s when it hits them all at once. The shame, the pain, and the disgust about how much they’ve missed out on life. Yet even in the face of this, insanity usually strikes when the person decides they can’t deal with that realization of how much of their life has passed by and how much they feel like a failure, so they run back to their addiction and enter the same state of sickness as if they’ve never left.
I’m so glad this isn’t me anymore. I’m so glad I’m not sitting by my phone or computer these days waiting for phone calls or messages from people who I might be able to “spend time a little with”, if you catch my drift. And I’m so glad I’m not missing out on things happening in our world these days, even though there are times I actually do wish I could tune them out.
Nevertheless, I’m not missing out on life anymore and I’m definitely not disconnected from reality either. And while being disconnected during a once severely active addiction might have helped me avoid some pain I was going through, I’d gladly take the pain I’m dealing with today over being completely oblivious to what’s going on in the world around me. I give thanks to God and the 12 Steps for this. Because if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t even be writing this article right now… 🙂
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
