Hopelessness
Ruled
This is an excerpt from WHEN LOST MEN COME HOME, not for men only
Having lost the ability to stop my addictive
behaviors permanently on my own, the only life I knew was a life of
hopelessness. I had tried everything I knew to try and nothing had worked for
me. I hated my behaviors and most of all I hated myself. Destruction grew
inside me, and consequence grew around me, spilling over into the lives of
others. Though I wanted to with all my heart, I could not stop the accelerating
madness that characterized my life. At times I thought I had proven to myself
that everything was going to be okay. But I was only deceiving myself,
suffering one of the key hallmarks of addiction: denial, which is another way
of saying, “I don’t even know I’m lying.” Also, denial of addiction is where we
use seemingly rational and logical arguments to defy the addicted reality of
our lives. In this way I marched self-willed, self-deceived and
self-centered, unknowingly, deeper into my addictions, hating myself
increasingly every step of the way, hoping and praying that everything would be
okay, but fearing it would not be.
In
the fellowship we share our stories with each other, how very often we could
successfully (temporarily successful) bridle and contain ourselves, only to see
our addicted compulsions ooze into other areas of our lives. Perhaps someone
who used escort services and massage parlors would stop visiting them for a
while and begin to believe he had conquered his problem. “Success” had been
achieved, or so he thought; he was feeling great. Everything seemed fine, but
sooner than later, he found himself living and behaving addictively in other
areas of his life: alcohol, drugs or prescription medications, food, spending,
gambling, work, and even the obsession of controlling the lives of others. The
list of addictions is virtually endless; ultimately the results are the
same.
Most
all of us in one way or another substituted or rotated our addictions. This
proved we were still addicts with dark secrets, toxic shame, and a laundry list
of growing interpersonal failures. Our best efforts by themselves had changed
nothing except the flavors and colors of our destructive patterns.
Subconsciously, our addictions had become a permanent part of our lives. We
were masters of ignoring the addicted reality of our lives, blind to see how we
protected the addiction and denial that was destroying us. In rare
moments of insight and clarity, we’d grasp the insane thinking behind our
rationalizations, our minimizations and our excuses. But a moment later, we’d
forget the pain our addictions created for us and others, thinking that all was
well, that we were in control, and that we could have our cake and eat it too.
It
seemed no matter how many times we hurt ourselves and others, we held on to the
delusional belief that somehow, someway things would end differently the next
time, opening the door to repeating the addictive cycle once more. Soon we were
acting out again, always with the same result, a life of decay and personal
demoralization. Insanity! Definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different
results.
Reality
is that any addiction that goes unnoticed or is not acknowledged by the one who
is addicted will most likely intensify in obsession, frequency and duration.
Addictions most always progress, although the addicted person usually doesn’t
realize it. Addictions simply outsmart people in this way. An immensely complex
human phenomenon, addictions are fluid, odorless and colorless in all their
forms. The pioneers of addiction recovery, Alcoholics Anonymous, assert that
addictions are, “cunning, baffling and powerful.” And they are.
Personally,
I’ve found my own addictions to be very patient, hiding inside me and waiting
to strike at the moment most destructive to me. Without fail, whenever I acted
out in my addiction, my life and circumstances would begin to erode and my
relationships would begin to suffer. Inside, I would feel as if everything good
about me was being corrupted. There were times when I felt dead and spiritually
I was. Quietly, inch by inch, I was being sucked dry of my dignity and my
humanity. Evil wins every time when I pursue instant gratification and when it
came to my sexual addictions, I was being robbed of and losing the most
precious of God-given human dignities: my ability to make healthy and sane
choices for myself.
In
sharing with each other in the fellowship, we admit that we often felt
victimized by those around us, but we really were just victimizing ourselves. Every
day we fought harder and harder to hang on to the life we thought we wanted,
and each day we lost a little more of our life, suffering injury every step of
the way, always still fighting, and always still losing. We had been using our sexual
behaviors as a way to escape from reality, but our escape had become our
prison. When we experienced pain that seemed too much to handle, we
resorted to our addictive acting out, and this increased our painful guilt and
shame, which in turn created an increased likelihood of more destructive and
severe acting out in the future. Caught up in this downward spiral, we were
doing what the addiction demanded instead of what we truly wanted to do.
Progressively, sexual addiction gave less and took more from us, even corrupting
the personal values and priorities we professed. In one way or another,
everything we said had become a lie. After a while no one believed us, but us.
We were deceived, believing it impossible to stop even though we wanted to. At
best, all we could honestly admit was that we
wanted to want to stop.
In
years prior to recognizing my own addicted condition, I had known others who
suffered from very obvious addictions. Unable to relate to them because of my
own denial, I would say things like, “Poor guy, too bad he never got his act
together — better him than me.” Or, “Thank God I’m not like him. I can stop
whenever I want to.” Or perhaps I had said, “I’m not like him, I’m only having
a good time.” And of course, on numerous occasions I said, “I’m not hurting
anyone.” These were my common thoughts of self-deception. And I believe many of
us have shared these thoughts along with me.
I was a master of rationalizing, minimizing and excusing, stubbornly
denying the possibility that I was caught in the power of something bigger than
me. I was just like the sad people I so righteously pitied, but I couldn’t see
it.
At
first glance it would have appeared that sexual addiction was my most dangerous
problem, but it wasn’t. My most dangerous problems were the supporting
denial and addiction to my own ego, my self-sufficiency and the belief that I
was in control. Protecting my egocentric denial was the root problem that
initiated, contributed to and maintained every addictive thought, desire and
action I had. AA calls this “self-will
run riot, natural instincts gone awry.” My life had become scripted by a
warped sense of what I thought I needed and wanted, not about what was truly
good for me. Furthermore, my commitment to control myself, my circumstances,
and the lives of others in order to feel “okay” was killing me.
Our God-given instincts turn against us when we are
dedicated to rule our own lives as if we were master of our own world. With an
attitude like this, we lose sight of what we really need and want for our
lives, blindly moving in a direction we don’t really want to go.
I
rationalized to myself because I couldn’t explain my actions. I made excuses to
others because I had no real answers for their questions. Being always
committed to appear “normal” to others, I would hide my cries for help so those
around me would only see the counterfeit image I felt I had to portray. Then,
unable to live with my own self-deception, I would begin to think about the
relief my addictions could bring me and I would return to what had poisoned me
time and time and time again.
“Hell
on Earth” is where the men of our fellowship have lived. And in our fellowship,
we admit that the demands of our self-centeredness were too much for us and, we
believed, too much for anyone else, too. Becoming ever more frantic, we looked
for greater and more extravagant ways to prove ourselves acceptable to the
world around us, hoping that someday, somehow we could truly believe in
ourselves. We were fools and didn’t know it! Does a fool ever know?
This is an excerpt from WHEN LOST MEN COME HOME, not for men only
~ Copyright David Zailer, 2011
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