Interview with a Recovered Alcoholic

By trade, I am a writer. I write fiction, to be more precise. Because of this, I'm a constant researcher, always looking for ways to understand what's going on in the world and why. When I had the idea to interview John*, my husband's step-study leader, I had two purposes. One was to get firsthand feedback from an alcoholic in order to better flesh out a character idea. The second was because I want to understand addicts. As the wife of a porn addict, I've never really understood what makes an addict tick, thus never understanding what drove my husband to do the things he did. To me, ignorance is not bliss, but rather getting to the bottom of an addict's addiction helps me see that our experiences are not isolated incidences. Most, if not all, addicts share similar roots. Here are just a few that John revealed to me during out interview.

• Addicts remember their first experience -- With John, it was when he was thirteen-years-old and went to a party at his friend's brother's house. He downed two Budweiser tall boys and got thoroughly wasted. In that experience, there was no moment of regret, no wishing he hadn't drank a beer. Nor did he seek out alcohol. But when the opportunity arose, every time, he took advantage of it. My husband remembers his first experience like it was yesterday. His father gave him "the sex talk" and a dirty magazine to go along with it.
• Moment of clarity -- When an addict is committed to recovery, he/she will experience what some refer to as the moment of clarity. It's when they finally see that the pain is outweighing the pleasure. It's hitting rock bottom. It's finally seeing all the damage an addict has left in his/her wake. For John, that moment of clarity came through after his second DWI. He was three times over the legal limit and sent to rehab, where he finally had to detoxify his system. My husband's moment of clarity came when he attended a men's conference at a local church. He'd been in recovery for a couple of months, but when the pastor leading his small group pointed out the issues facing men today, he saw not only that he wasn't the only one, but that the change in his life had to be real and with Christ's help.
• The Fog -- When addicts are in the depths of their addictions this is when they are immersed in The Fog. An addict can't see that the addiction is real. They create a false sense of reality and in this false sense of reality the lying takes center stage. They learn to cover up the addiction and hide it as much as possible. If someone in the addict's life says he/she is an addict and they need to go to recovery, then unless that addict is really wanting it (i.e. meaning the fog has lifted and clarity comes through) the rehab or recovery will never pan out. The addict has to want recovery for himself.
• Every addict has an addiction that they prefer -- John said he'd done more than drink (at the peak of his addiction he would put away fifteen or more full-sized hard liquor drinks a day, then tie a few extra on at night). He had his days with cocaine and meth, but he said if you lined up all the abusive substances he'd ever consumed, he would choose the glass of liquor every time. Same goes for my husband.
• Relapse gets more painful with each one -- Relapses happen, but according to John, the further down the road an addict is toward recovery the worse each relapse gets. After seven years of never touching a drink, John slowly lost his grasp on recovery. He thought he didn't need the groups or meetings and that he could do this thing on his own. That's when he took a drink. And as he described it, it was wonderful. It was the high he missed more than anything, but it eventually sent his house of cards tumbling to the ground. The Fog descended once more. When his wife found his bottle of liquor hidden in one of his suitcases, he was kicked out. It hurt him to hurt her, but he knew that he was the one who had to get his life back on the right track.
• Recovery groups work and are imperative in the recipe for recovery -- Pain has to exceed pleasure, John says. The steps (step studies) in recovery coupled with his relationship with God is what has kept him eight years sober. He says that step studies are an absolute need for any addict wanting to shed his/her addiction. But once in a recovery group, always in a recovery group. John knows that he could never leave. He can't go at this thing alone, no addict can, but now that he's found a place in his life where God is in control, he's going to stay there.
• Never want to repeat the past -- Although John calls himself a grateful alcoholic (meaning what's happened in his life had a purpose -- for the past eight years he and his wife, who is also a recovered alcoholic, have run one of the largest recovery groups in my city of residence) he would never want to repeat his past. There's just to much pain in all of that.

I don't know what kind of addiction your spouse might be recovering from, but what do you think about John's insight? Does it help you better understand the addict in your life?

*Names have been changed in order to protect the identity of the individuals.

Don't Send Me Flowers

If you messed up said the sign on a local flower shop. Underneath those words was a small pot of flowers.

If you messed up a lot said the sign next to it. Underneath was a lovely arrangement of roses, tulips, baby's breath, etc.

"Man, but if that isn't a crock," my husband said one night when he got home from work after seeing those signs in the window. "I know to never, never give you flowers when I've messed up."

What he's referring to happened almost a year ago in January. I discovered what he'd been looking at, and just like every other time, I felt like somebody had hit me with a two-by-four. I didn't talk to him for days. I harbored so much anger (because I'm one of those who lets it build and build inside me until I'm about to emotionally burst) toward him and wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. Of course, like most men seem to believe, flowers should heal my aching heart.

Very big mistake.

When those flowers arrived, I wasn't at home. I never called the florist back and they ended up delivering the arrangement to my neighbor's house. (Who, of course, had a barrage of annoying questions about why he'd sent them to me. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's nosy neighbors!)

The card was signed with profuse words begging my forgiveness. I scratched out what he'd written and wrote my own message -- "These aren't for me. They're to help make you feel better!"

When he came home and saw what I'd written, I knew I'd hit him where it hurts. He took that vase of flowers and made his way to the front door.

"What do you think you're doing with those?" I asked.

"What does it matter. They're mine." He went outside and the next thing I heard was glass shattering against the driveway. He'd taken that vase of flowers and had thrown them against the pavement. What followed was the most heart wrenching argument I've ever had with him. I bawled like I never had in the past.

But what followed the next day was the first real steps toward healing (because we'd been through this before). For both of us. Is he fully "cured"? No, he never will be. He's what addicts call a "lifer." He will forever be in recovery, forever be learning to fill the bad with good, forever taking one day at a time. And for now, I've made the decision to stay with him. I made that decision, not him, even though he gave me the option to leave him.

But he knows to never send me flowers for his screw-ups ever again.

Is there one thing your spouse has done in the past that only tells you he/she is feeling guilty for his/her wrongs and not really doing it for you?

What's Your Love Language?

I've been reading a book that I've read in the past, but have decided to revisit. It's entitled The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. In the book, Chapman describes how we all have a love tank, but each one of us has to have that tank filled in one of five ways and not all of us share the same love language.

These are the five love languages:

• Quality Time
• Words of Affirmation
• Gifts
• Acts of Service
• Physical Touch

I received this book about nine years ago as a gift and read it when my husband and I first got married. We learned that his primary love language is Words of Affirmation and that his secondary is Physical Touch (this does not necessarily mean sex). My primary love language is Quality Time and my secondary is Physical Touch. In order for our love tanks to be filled, we have to learn to speak each other's love languages.

Since this year has been a particularly rough year in our marriage, I decided to read the book again. And I'm glad I am. I needed a refresher course not only in my husband's love language, but in mine, as well. I think sometimes I don't know how to reach out to my husband and communicate what's bothering me, but a lot of that stems from my love tank being on empty. Sometimes I'm just functioning on fumes. And I know the same goes for him. Learning to communicate in our love languages helps us to understand when the other is feeling particularly low about what's going on in his or my life.

Do you know your love language? Do you know your spouse's, and if so, are you speaking it and filling up his/her love tank?

Relapse

How does someone's
relapse affect you?

It was my husband's relapse that made me decide I wanted to write down what was going on in my life. We have a program installed on my husband's computer called "XXX Watch." Every questionable site he visits is sent to my email and, in a sense, I became his accountability partner in the very beginning of his "recovery." (I put it into quotes because he hadn't started his real recovery when we installed the program a few years ago.) Almost every time he's looked at something questionable this is how I've found out. Over the years my reaction escalated until he finally went into a recovery program.

His relapse came in October of this year.

I received the email with the questionable sites listed. I didn't need to go to those sites. I just had to read the titles to know what he'd been doing. And I was more hurt than I'd ever been.

But why was this time so much more painful when there were fewer sites visited than many of his other jaunts into porn-land?

Because this time around I'd been there by his side, encouraging his recovery, saying I knew he could do this thing, going to recovery meetings with him, and respecting his need to tell others in his own time.

All along he'd been lying to me.

And I was tired of the lies. So tired.

Then the you-know-what hit the fan at work, because he'd done something very much against the rules and that landed him smack into a large pot of boiling water.

And now we wait to see what the results will be. A firing? Probation? Unpaid leave? Will we have to uproot our family and move elsewhere? I don't know, and the uncertainty is very rough on our family at the moment.

His relapse means my sadness, no matter how many times he apologizes.

What does relapse mean to you?

The Ten Percent

My husband is currently taking a men's Bible study course using Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker's book and workbook entitled Every Man's Battle. He's gone through the study once before a couple of years ago, but considering what we've been going through over this past year, I'm gonna guess that it didn't take.

Now, I'm sure many of you out there (especially those who are Christians) have heard of this series. Basically, it breaks down what ALL men go through when it comes to sexual impurity. This time around, I'm reading the book with my husband and it has offered me some insight. One section that caught my attention is where the authors discuss "The Ten Percent." From what I understand, this tends to be the standard norm among all addictions. Here's what it says in Every Man's Battle:

❝Another way of looking at the scope of the problem is to picture a bell curve. According to our experiences, we figure around 10 percent of men have no sexual-temptation problem with their eyes and their minds. At the other end of the curve, we figure there's another 10 percent of men who are sexual addicts and have a serious problem with lust. They've been so beaten and scarred by emotional events that they simply can't overcome that sin in their lives. They need more counseling and a transforming washing by the Word. The rest of us comprise the middle 80 percent, living in various shades of gray when it comes to sexual sin.❞ (Page 31)

I find this all very informative in a sterile, clinical sort of way, but I don't believe it. I believe more than 10 percent of men struggle with a stronger level of sexual addiction and not just "various shades of gray," otherwise, why would they be unable to shake this addiction on their own.

My husband does not frequent prostitutes or massage parlors, but he does have a very strong addiction to the images before him. He's tried to explain why he feels obsessed to look at those sexual images, but since I'm not an addict, I have a hard time understanding. I think, as a society, we need to look at addiction for what it is, and not continue to gloss over certain aspects of it by calling them "shades of gray." Those shades and shadows are very hard to shake, and sometimes the root of that addiction can be even harder to discover than the sexually scarred individual. Even after almost completing his twelve steps, all my husband can say is at the heart of his addiction is Lust and Obsession. But my question to him is, what in your past triggers the Lust and Obsession? He has no answer for that.

Do you believe in the statistics I quoted above? Do you believe it's only 10 percent of men who struggle with a deep sexual addiction, or should that number be higher?

When Does the Healing Begin?

I'm a pretty well-versed blogger, being the manager of two other moderately successful blogs, but this one is different for me. Like many other women out there, I have been left on the sidelines as my husband undergoes recovery for sexual addiction. It hurts like hell. I have no other way of explaining it. I'll start this thing off by directing you to another woman's post. Her description of what she was going through connected to me in a such a way that no other story has.

Please visit:  


http://www.awomanshealingjourney.com/jodis-blog/320-a-shattered-china-cup.html

If you are anything like me, then you understand how hard the healing process is.

So, my question for you is this -- When does the healing begin?