Category: Recovery From Addictions

It seems like every time I share my story now of addiction to recovery, I’m asked by some individual at their beginnings stage of finding sobriety or still deep in the throngs of addiction whether 12 Step recovery is the only solution to working through it. The only answer I have to that question which I know to be true is that it’s the only solution that has worked for me. Are there other solutions out there to becoming sober and living a healthy recovery life, free from toxic addictions? If there are, I never found them, but I sure did try many things to figure that out.

Therapy was my first, but it only got me so far and really was good so far as get my addiction out in the open with a safe individual to talk to. Then came joining a men’s organization, which helped me to become more accountable with my actions in life with others outside my therapist. But there too, it only took me so far on the path of sobriety and recovery. After that, I tried changing my lifestyle by living healthier with a variety of forms of holistic healing, including eating better, taking herbs, homeopathic remedies, and seeing plenty of natural practitioners. Yet that only took me so far too with my sobriety and recovery. As the years went on, I tried to live a more religious path, became a Deacon, immersed myself in religious studies, trying multiple spiritual paths, including Nichren Buddhism and chanting, only to keep falling into the throws of addiction in some form or another. When I discovered the power of meditation after going on a 10-day silent retreat, I thought I had finally found the answer to everything, to all my sickness that still lived deep within me that drove me constantly back into one type of addiction after another. While meditation worked for a while, it eventually didn’t like everything else. And working longer hours, volunteering greater, and even moving to places I thought would be more conducive to finding true sobriety and recovery didn’t work either. I truly tried so many ways to remain clean and sober and live a healthy recovery life, but none were ever successful in the long run.

One day, I finally realized why none of those paths ever worked. It was because I was always looking for the solution that could be implemented for a period of time to fix my addiction, where after implementing, I’d be done with it, and move on to other things. But that’s not how recovery from addiction works, especially 12 Step recovery. You see, 12 Step recovery works because it’s something one needs to implement every, single, day upon waking, where it’s then lived throughout the entire day into the next, one day a time, for the rest of one’s life. It’s not something one learns and graduates from, which is precisely the thing I kept looking for and never found.

The 12 Steps have taught me that I get a daily reprieve from my addictive behaviors by implementing them every day I wake up and carrying them through my entire day. They aren’t a temporary solution, and they aren’t a quick fix, something an addict is constantly looking for.

The 12 Steps ultimately led me to find a deeper relationship with not only myself, but also with my Higher Power. They truly helped me to see how I was always looking for one quick and easy fix after another to cure that addiction part of myself, when what was driving that search was always the addict in me. The 12 Steps removed what was driving that process and led me to be driven by something far Greater.

I thank God I found the 12 Steps of recovery and continue to live them out on a daily basis. Because the life I lived before them was one constant attempt after another to find some “instafix”. There is no “instafix” that ever worked for me, but the 12 Steps of recovery have, because what they led me to, was a solution far Deeper and far Higher than my addict-self ever found…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

I lost a college friend recently who was only 48 years old. I discovered this when his ex-wife contacted me via Facebook messenger to let me know. When she asked me if I could maybe send her a few comments about good things I remember from his life, I spent days struggling with the task, because in all honesty, I never developed a close connection with this friend due to his incessant search for sex and love that consumed him from one woman to the next.

When I eventually spoke with my friend’s ex-wife over the phone, I was truthful with her about this and apologized for not having anything positive to say about him. I told her that her ex struggled with his addiction to women, but she let me know she already knew that.

My friend would move from one state to another, one city to the next, and from town to town, consistently believing that each woman that led him there was “the one” for him. In the pursuance of this, he abandoned his son, friends like me, and all his loved ones, which at times made me very angry.

People often forget that sex and love can be addictive, and my friend denied he ever had this addiction like most people do when confronted about it. But when one’s life becomes dependent on finding that “one”, when life becomes a blur of one sexual escapade after another, when friendships and family and children get thrown to the wayside in the pursuance of sex and love, and when the only thing that becomes important is the search itself for sex and love via the Internet or in various other places, it’s a good sign that it’s become an addiction for the person.

My friend was a constant reminder of that for me, because I struggled with this addiction for as long as he did, until I woke up one day and saw the mirror in him. Thankfully, I finally addressed this addiction and found recovery for it, which has led me to have a 10-year monogamous relationship now, as well as freedom from pornography and a number of other toxic sexual behaviors as well. My friend never found that, even after I tried many times to get him to see how much his pursuance of sex and love was consuming him.

The thing I have the greatest sadness for now that he’s gone is not for the loss itself, it’s for his son who will grow up never having developed a close relationship to his father, something I know quite well given my father suffered from this addiction too. When my dad left my mother at the end of my senior year of high school for another woman, I never would live with him again under the same roof or feel incredibly close to him either. In light of that, my mourning for my friend’s son is because I know what comes next for someone who experiences this and that’s a struggle to ever develop close male connections and be open with deep emotions in general.

Nevertheless, my friend didn’t get to know the true me either like he didn’t with his son. Most, if not all of our conversations, were always about him and his desires and plans and the like, about women and money, and all the grandiosity that came from living in his addiction. Yet I never saw my friend find any real happiness, peace, love, or joy in any of the relationships he landed in, as he constantly found fault in each of them. That’s what happens when addiction consumes the soul.

I’m thankful I’m sober from sex and love addiction and have a long-term monogamous relationship to speak of because of it. I’m sad my friend never found this and that we never got to know each other deeply either, as I believe below his addiction and self-centeredness surrounding it, was an amazing soul, completely worthy and capable of giving and receiving unconditional love.

What I’ve come to know through his death and so many others from this addiction or any addiction is this. For as long as any addiction consumes an individual, the only sure thing that will come from it by continuing to pursue it with all of oneself is sure death. But finding true sobriety and recovery can and will ultimately lead to deeper connections, more loving friendships and relationships, and a much brighter life.

Thanks be to God for my still being on the path of sobriety and recovery. May my friend who never found it rest in peace now and may all those who continue to suffer from sex and love addiction, or any addiction, find sobriety and recovery from them before it’s too late. Because one day your luck with any addiction will run out, like it did with my friend, someone I really never got to know and wish I had…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Today’s quotes are ones that deal with 12 Step recovery and many of the things I’ve learned in sobriety from former addiction by working the 12 Steps and continuing to work them, one day at a time, hopefully for the rest of my life…

“When I got sober, I thought giving up was saying goodbye to all the fun and all the sparkle, and it turned out to be just the opposite. That’s when the sparkle started for me.” (Mary Karr)

“Being in recovery has given me everything of value that I have in my life. Integrity, honesty, fearlessness, faith, a relationship with God, and most of all gratitude. It’s given me a beautiful family and an amazing career. I’m under no illusions where I would be without the gift of alcoholism and the chance to recover from it.”

“Addiction is giving up everything for one thing. Recovery is giving up one thing for everything.” (Anonymous)

“The first three steps taught me how to give up. Four, Five, and Six taught me how to own up. Seven, Eight, and Nine taught me how to make up. Ten, Eleven and Twelve taught me how to grow up.” (Anonymous)

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson