Addiction is a kind of runaway train that leaves the station when we stop dealing with our emotions, stop living our fullest lives, and stop wanting to cope with whatever life throws at us. Addiction is a kind of vacation from life that eventually becomes the Vacation in Hell. It takes over our lives and becomes the controlling factor in everyday life. Here is one story.
In my 50-year-old client, we’ll call him Matthew, addiction had taken two forms: crystal meth addiction and sex and love addiction. It wasn’t until his late thirties that he first encountered the unholy combination of sex and drugs. He was caught up in internet sex, meeting men online and then hooking up with them. The sex almost always involved some kind of drugs. His long experience with alcohol and marijuana gave him false confidence, as he said he could take them or leave them. He felt no compulsion to drink or smoke, so in that respect he was not addicted to those substances. When crystal meth entered the mix, however, his addictive personality took over.
Matthew recounts that he first encountered crystal meth at a party, and he enjoyed the high it gave him. It was highly energizing and, for him, highly sexual. The mix of crystal meth and sex quickly became a potent force in his life, as he was running away from feelings of loneliness and disconnectedness from himself and from others. By now, he was engaging in drug use and having sex every weekend. To this day he doesn’t know how he managed to hold down a job while doing this.
Eventually, however, he was fired from his job, leaving him with spare time at his fingertips–which turned him then to daily use. In addition to the increase in using, and instead of smoking or snorting the crystal meth, Matthew began injecting it intravenously. As his life spiraled out of control, he met someone (another IV user) whom he thought could be his boyfriend. Little did he realize that the whole relationship was fueled by drug use. Eventually, the boyfriend tired of him and wanted to break up. This was heartbreaking to Matthew, and he nearly went mad with grief. Meth can easily lead to overblown feelings, and he realized that he had become addicted to the boyfriend, too, for sex and love.
The withdrawal from the boyfriend was even harder than the withdrawal from using crystal meth. Initial withdrawal from the drug involved a week or two of depression and nonstop sleeping. The withdrawal from the boyfriend, however, lasted months and took a toll on his heart. Someone finally pointed out to him the abusive nature of that relationship, and slowly he started to see in real terms his own part in this sex-and-drug-fueled “relationship.”
Matthew and I worked psychodynamically to reveal the roots of his desire to escape, and he entered a behavioral-modification drug workshop to learn the tools of sobriety. After that, he attended Twelve Step meetings and came to understand the spiritual basis for recovery. For three years, we worked on not only the drug addiction but also the sex and love addiction. It was a happy day when I told him that he was basically ready to handle life on his own, without my help.
Because I have been around many addicts in my practice, I have friends and clients who are still struggling with addiction and often relapse. Sometimes I think that it is much harder to kick an addiction when one is young than when one is older. There is something about the years adding up that forces us to take stock of our lives and makes us willing to give up bad behaviors, especially when faced with a future that finally looks very finite in years.
Ultimately, the decision to enter recovery has to come from the individual. I have thus seen the limits of my ability to help someone stop, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. I use Matthew’s story as an example for these people, how he ran away from himself through drugs and sex, and how, through the help of therapy, he found his true self again. “When I was on meth, I became a person who wasn’t me,” he said later. “Now, I am happy to be me again, facing life square on, without any escapes.” Matthew now attends occasional Twelve-Step meetings as a refresher for everything he has learned. The last I heard, he was renewing friendships, focusing on his career, and avoiding needy and neurotic relationships.
by David Bowman, LMFT
This article was first published on davidbowmanlmft.com. David is a licensed California Marriage and Family Counselor and the creator of Father Figures: Reparenting for Men.
Photo by Eyasu Etsub on Unsplash