The addictive process (sex addiction)

Sexaholics Anonymous, pages 29-37

We sexaholics do not presume to be authorities on addiction of any kind, much less sex addiction. The trend of research on the subject reveals that the concept of what constitutes addiction is undergoing a process of evolution. Some researchers even confess to being baffled by what addiction really is. It seems the more we know, the more there is to know. We need to have some humility here. Looking at our sexaholism in terms of addiction seems to be a useful way to begin looking at ourselves.

We speak from our own experience as seen through recovery. We feel that only such an in-depth revelation will expose our condition for what it is and facilitate recovery.

Living inside our illness, we were blind to it. In recovery, the addiction begins to lose its hold over us, but it is necessary that we never forget what we really are. Had we seen but a little of this, it might have saved us years of agony and inflicting our madness on others. If we can help other sexaholics understand the true nature of what they are doing to themselves and others and encourage them to join in a fellowship of recovery before their malady reaches the malignant stage it did with many of us, we will indeed be grateful.

Our experiences have revealed three aspects of our condition that commonly identifies addictions: tolerance, abstinence, and withdrawal. If someone has experienced these three phenomena in some area of his or her life, that person is generally regarded as being addicted. When we apply this test to ourselves, we identify as being addicted to lust, sex, relationships, or various combinations of these – for starters.

Tolerance

The term tolerance refers to the tendency to tolerate more of the drug or activity and get less from its use, hence the need for increasing dosage to maintain or recapture the desired effect. With addictions other than drugs, tolerance refers to a need for increasing amounts of obsessive thinking, interaction, or activity, with less and less effect. In short, we resort to the drug more, with diminishing satisfaction. We see how this applies in our case when we remember how our lust or sexual activity escalated over the years, crossing one line after another, first in our thought life, then in our behavior. For example, those early masturbation fantasies were seldom enough; we graduated to seeking increasingly potent varieties. And if we got hooked on pictures, we found ourselves seeking ever-more-explicit images to use. If we began by dating for romance, it often escalated into seeking more promiscuous liaisons. Exposing ourselves in fantasy progressed to doing it in public. We needed more and more of our “drug.”

Abstinence

The term abstinence refers to the phenomenon where the typical addict tries to quit using the addictive agent or activity. Perhaps we should call it attempted abstinence. We swear off – again and again. Something inside tells us we should stop. How many times did we say we had to stop? How many times did we actually try stopping? Some of us stopped every time we acted out!

Withdrawal

The term withdrawal  is applied to the symptoms the addict may experience when deprived of the drug or activity. Such symptoms can be physical, emotional, or both. This gives rise to the deception and demand that we’ve got to have sex. But this is no different from the drug addict feeling he’ll die without his fix. It is simply not true; not feeding the hunger doesn’t kill us.

Some of us look back on our transition to sobriety as a time when we were in a state of shock, in which our whole system had to slowly recover from the trauma of a lifetime of self-inflicted injury. Sobriety involves a new and unfamiliar way of life, like driving in a foreign country without knowing the language or customs. Only this is a whole new inner terrain. Without the drug, we begin to feel what’s really going on inside. It takes time to adjust to all this, and the support of others in the fellowship is vital. Journeying this new road together helps take the fear out of withdrawal. We see that others who have gone before us have discovered that sex is truly optional, once they surrendered lust and the expectation of sex. And their comfort and joy are genuine; they are neither abnormal nor deprived. Married members discover they can go into periods of voluntary abstinence to recover from lust and find them surprisingly effective and rewarding experiences. Yes, there is life after lust! And life after sex!

We see that the practice of our addiction includes the whole range from sporadic or periodic to continuous acting out, sometimes all within the same individual. But regardless of our particular pattern, it involves the addictive elements of tolerance, abstinence, and withdrawal, although we probably are not aware of them at the time. And if we switch addictions – not uncommon for those trying to quit one – the addictive process is the same.

Three additional aspects of our addiction we should look at are toxicity, adverse physical and emotional effects, and trigger mechanisms.

Toxicity

Toxic reactions to alcohol and drug abuse are common knowledge. What we might call the toxicity of lust becomes especially apparent to us in recovery. We become increasingly aware of the poisonous effects of lust on our thinking and behavior. We have heard members say, "I'm allergic to lust," and we know the person is trying to describe the toxic reaction that occurs whenever he or she takes a visual or fantasy "drink" without even acting out. In sobriety, once we have withdrawn from lust and then let it back in, the toxic effect is felt immediately and strongly. We can tolerate less of it than ever, and it produces a greater disturbance. Our sexaholism doesn't stand still; it progressively worsens...

Adverse Physical and Emotional Effects

Who can say what is the full range of side effects that lust, sex, or relationship addiction can precipitate? We're still learning. Obvious effects are any of the proliferating horde of venereal diseases. Many of us found that impotence or frigidity also resulted from our sexaholism. But a vast range of other effects that we are just beginning to recognize accompanied many of us on our disastrous path toward sexual and emotional ruin: self-obsession, self-hatred, self-punishment, anger, loss of emotional control, isolation, and diminished ability to relate to others, concentrate, and function. Our sexaholism opened the door to a host of mental, emotional, and spiritual disorders that followed the advancing addiction.

It's as though at certain stages, our entire system cries out: Stop! You're killing me! Sexual sobriety opens the door to recovery, where the healing begins. We feel better physically, emotionally, and spiritually when sober and when the principles of the Steps are effective in our everyday lives.

Trigger Mechanisms

In our addiction we develop a growing number of trigger mechanism that help set us off. These include stimuli, conflicts, or pressures that provoke a fantasy, feeling, or thought that leads to our acting out. We seem to have no trouble identifying some of our more tangible lust and sex triggers. By the time we've become addicted, we've created a whole universe of them, which expands as the addiction progresses. Here are some categories suggested from our experience; the list will never be complete.

Sex Objects. Persons of the same or opposite sex, including our own bodies. Almost anything about them can serve as triggers: various body parts, items or styles of clothing, body language, and endless varieties of speech, behavior, or attitude. Some of us include in this category animals and inanimate objects.

Media. Pictures, printed matter, ads, television, movies, music, and dance. Various places, from bars and dance halls to the streets, marketplaces, and showplaces of the city may also be considered media in the sense of what they communicate to us.

The Inner Landscape. Most of us can see how memories and fantasies can act as triggers. Intangibles we are likely to identify on our own are such things as failure, rejection, or criticism. More remotely identifiable triggers are such things as feelings of loneliness, alienation, world-weariness, boredom, isolation, "the lonely crowd," and other manifestations of unfulfilled God-hunger. Also, nudging us to reach for our drug are such things as a heightened state due to anything from compulsive work, anger, resentment, anxiety, fear, excitement, or haste, to such things as stimulating foods or beverages or even intellectual or aesthetic excitement. What we seem to be discovering is that just about anything can become a trigger, indicating that there's an underlying pathology driving our thinking and behavior. This can help us see how the whole person must be involved in recovery. Recognizing and accepting our limitations thus become crucial to recovery.

Susceptibility to such triggers is one factor behind our use of the program slogan HALT - Don't get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired...

As we learn to recognize and surrender our triggers in sobriety and accept our limitations, fear of falling lessens. We learn the difference between indulging ourselves and taking care of ourselves. The new way of life works - if, that is, we begin finding what our lust was really looking for. Finding this is the result of a patient working of the Twelve Steps...

The Addictive Process

Here, again, our experiences in recovery reveal aspects of the process common to other addictions. In the early formative stages we have an overpowering desire - Is it really a demand? - for an action, interaction, or fantasy that produces a high - something to get us out of ourselves. It brings relief and pleasure, so we seek it repeatedly and compulsively. At first, it's a pleasurable way to cope with our inner conflict or stress or pain that seems intolerable. It works. Typically, sex with ourselves or others starts us off, and just as in other addictions, it dissolves tension, relieves depression, resolves conflicts or provides the means to cope with a difficult life situation or take an action that seemed impossible before. Whatever form our sexaholism takes, it has the apparent effect of reducing isolation, easing lack of emotion, loneliness, and tension; and of gaining power or providing escape.

This new-found "friend" not only seems to reduce our inner conflict, boredom, and negative emotions, but also offers us fusion, validation, and a false sense of aliveness. As a matter of fact, all of these effects are false or at best only temporary. What seems to promise life is really taking away our lives.

It is almost impossible to pinpoint exactly when, how, or why our practice becomes addictive. Eventually, the process takes on a life of its own, often unrelated to the initial causes. And unlike normal coping practices, our addictive thinking and behavior become excessive and repetitive and are forced to serve a whole lot of other functions they weren't meant to serve.

Over time, the sense of pleasure begins to diminish; we feel less relief. The habit starts producing pain, and hangover symptoms begin appearing when the pleasure is outweighed by the pain; tension, depression, rage, guilt, even physical distress. To relieve this pain, we resort to our habit again. As we constantly call on our addictive act for instant relief, our emotional control declines. We can often go into impulsive behavior and mood swings, of which we are often unaware. Intimate and social relationships deteriorate.

Some persons coming into Sexaholics Anonymous seem to be in this transition zone between pleasure and pain. Thus, they go in and out of sobriety or the Program, feeling confused about their false start.

Eventually, what we're doing disrupts our ability for daily living. The addictive patterns lower our level of consciousness and remove us from life's mainstream. We are driven to spend more time thinking about and carrying out our addiction. At the same time, we deny the addiction to avoid the pain of recognizing how much of our life it has invaded and controls. The adverse side effects produced within us become more and more damaging.

Denial becomes woven into the fabric of our being. By refusing to listen to to that still small voice within, we begin by denying we are hurting ourselves. For this lie to persist, denial must pervert the reality of ourselves and others and turns into blindness. We become unwilling and finally unable to see the truth about ourselves.

Finally, our addiction takes priority over everything else, and our ability to work, live in the real world, and relate comfortably with others suffers accordingly. In advanced stages, sexaholic practice becomes our main coping mechanism and only source of pleasure. Then it no longer helps us cope and begins causing new problems that must be coped with. In this vicious cycle, what was used as the cure becomes the sickness; what was used as the medicine becomes the poison; the Answer becomes the Problem.

Summary of the Addictive Process:

It begins with an overpowering desire for a high, relief, pleasure, or escape.

It provides satisfaction.

It is sought repeatedly and compulsively.

It then takes on a life of its own.

It becomes excessive.

Distress is produced.

Emotional control decreases.

Ability to relate deteriorates.

Ability for daily living is disrupted.

Denial becomes necessary.

It takes priority over everything else.

It becomes the main coping mechanism.

The coping mechanism stops working.

The party is over.