Welcome to another entry in gratitude on this Grateful Heart Monday! For today, I wish to express my gratefulness for what I’m about to achieve in just a few days, God willing, and that is passing a huge sobriety milestone in my S.L.A.A. program.
For those who aren’t aware of what S.L.A.A. is, it’s Sex and Love Addiction, a 12 Step recovery program that works the same steps as Alcoholics Anonymous. Sex and love addiction is something I battled with quite a bit in my 20’s and 30’s. But thankfully, a few months shy of my 40th birthday, I finally began a true path of sobriety and recovery from an addiction that I felt did far more damage to my life than drinking and drugging ever did to me. And that’s probably only because the drinking and drugging part of my addition life spanned just six years, where I spent the majority of two decades living in toxic sex and love patterns.
Nevertheless, I’m just a few days shy of reaching my 10th milestone where I’ll have been free from an addiction that I know would still be there if it wasn’t for the S.L.A.A. program and God of course. By the grace of both, I’ve been abstinent from pornography, infidelity, romantic obsession and attachment, and promiscuity for a decade and I have immense gratitude for this.
This addiction is insidious and often beckons me back into it, especially when my partner and I have had those moments where we find ourselves on opposite sides of the boxing ring so to speak. It’s time like that or times when my physical and/or emotional pain have gotten the best of me where my ego tries to tell me that some of my behaviors with this addiction weren’t so bad back then and provided me more comfort than pain. If I didn’t have my S.L.A.A. 12 Step meeting on Monday nights, my sponsorship work in that program, a decent list of recovering individuals to connect with from that program, and a strong recovery relationship with my Higher Power, there’s no way I ever would have achieved a decade of sobriety with this addiction.
While I have zero desire to go back to drinking and drugging and haven’t really been tempted to do either in decades, I can’t say the same with my sex and love addiction. I think the truth behind that is that sex and love is inherent to a human being’s nature, especially touch. While a person can live without alcohol and drugs forever with no issues, it’s been proven that human beings require human touch. But that innate craving can become quite warped when that pit within grows deeper. My sex and love addiction began with the simple desire to be touched and loved, something I didn’t get much of at all growing up. The toxic behaviors that came out of my sex and love addiction all stemmed from that feeling. It may not have started out so toxic, but it eventually became that way the more I allowed it to control me. It’s why I remain so devoted to a program that plenty from other 12 Step programs haven’t understood or haven’t wanted to understand because many struggle themselves with these types of behaviors and aren’t ready to face them yet.
Regardless, I dedicate today’s Grateful Heart Monday to reaching a major milestone in my 12 Step recovery from sex and love addiction and thank the S.L.A.A. program and God for making that happen. Without both, I’m quite sure this addiction would have been the one to take me out of this world for good…but 10 years later, I can thankfully say I’m still here, doing my recovery, and heading into the next decade of sobriety from it and hopefully many beyond.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
