"Holiday Recipes for Relapse & Recovery"

The holidays can be a challenging time for all of us, especially those in recovery. An increase in sugary, fatty foods, plus a decrease in structure, combined with a mixture of family chaos, can quickly become a recipe for relapse. Despite the many challenges of sustaining recovery in this season, there are essential strategies that will help you maintain momentum and enjoy the peace and joy that may be possible throughout the holidays. Here are 5 ingredients that will not only help you avoid relapse but also lead you through a more enjoyable holiday experience that moves your recovery progress forward.

                                                             Recipe for Recovery

1. Remain committed. Remember, while you may be on vacation from your work responsibilities, you are not on vacation from your values or your recovery work. Maintain your “Dailies” and self-care, so that you can stay on track emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Starting with morning inspiration and ending with healthy evening decompression will be especially important.
2. Stay connected. Whether the holidays represent joy or family chaos for you, it is common for extended family involvement to bring an assortment of feelings bubbling to the surface. Reaching out to recovery group members, friends, your spouse or partner, your accountability team, or a sponsor, can help you stay grounded rather than simply reverting to your childhood role and all of the emotions associated with it. Instead of reaching for more pumpkin pie or another “drug” of choice, reach out to someone in your support system, whether by phone, text, or face-to-face conversation. Crying out to God may also provide a place of solace and refuge.
3. Avoid black & white thinking. Just because you may enjoy some special treats over the holidays does not mean all of your goals must be discarded. Excess is not your friend. Staying up all night, stuffing yourself silly (repeatedly), obsessive spending, etc, will make you vulnerable to forgetting your “bottom lines”, boundaries, and values. This kind of living will leave you feeling tired, lazy, and uncommitted, all of which are dangerous mentalities for those in recovery. When you make a poor choice, forgive yourself, and recommit. Stewing in your shame is counterproductive.
4. Be mindful. With new environments come new temptations. Be aware and be wise. You know your triggers. While it is important to maintain an awareness, or mindfulness, of your surroundings, it does not need to become an obsession. In fact, it may be helpful to focus on positive, enjoyable experiences rather than thinking about avoiding all the things you know you “shouldn’t” have.
5. Have fun! While all of the previous recommendations are important, they do not mean you are expected to have a boring, uneventful experience. That kind of vacation is a setup for relapse. If you deprive yourself of fun, you will likely eventually seek out excitement in self-destructive ways. Recovery can be a time of learning, maybe for the first time, how to enjoy and live freely without the “drug” you once depended on. Find creative ways to enjoy yourself, relax, laugh, and savor life and time with those you love.

Staying focused over the holidays will require effort. While it may initially feel bothersome to implement the above strategies, it will actually help you experience a freer holiday season. How can this be true, you might ask? Rather than seeing these suggestions as duties, consider them keys to freedom. They provide the structure that will free you from the slavery of addiction. Keeping in mind the purpose of these strategies and your reasons for staying committed will help you remain on track in implementing them. Being proactive in this way can help you finish your holiday break feeling rested, refreshed, healthy, on track, and proud of your progress.

Written ByForest BenedictM.A., Certified Sexual Addictions Treatment Provider (SATP-C), MFT Intern

The Amends Process in the 12 Steps

There is great disagreement in the recovery community about the best path to follow when we have wronged another.

In an effort to avoid the discomfort of direct amends, there will be those who claim that “living amends” is more important than acknowledging the specific nature of our wrongs. Living amends are certainly important because there can be no lasting change without them, but they cannot take the place of telling the exact nature of the truth, if that is possible. All too often, “living amends” become a way of hiding from the truth of our wrong.

Even more significant is that when living amends are the only form of amends used, it is very likely that old wrongs will eventually be repeated. If we are unwilling to explicitly acknowledge our wrongs, it is not likely that we will ever really examine how it was that we came to harm others to begin with.

If we do not understand precisely how our wrongs came to be, then it will be difficult – if not impossible – to develop a clear plan for change that says more than: “I am sorry and I hope I never do that again.”

We wholeheartedly believe that saying “I’m Sorry” ≠ amends. There is so much more than lip service that needs to be implemented. There needs to be a plan for not repeating the hurt next time. In recovery circles that process is developed utilizing the 6th and 7th steps.

We all make mistakes. Whether our partner commits the wrong or we do, there is only a lesson to learn from our mistakes if we are willing to examine the defects of character that gave rise to the wrong. The 6th and 7th steps of the 12-Steps are designed to specifically acknowledge and rehabilitate those defects.

Many in the recovering community become disenchanted with the process of recovery and loose hope when they continue to make the same mistakes. First and foremost it is important that we remember that our goal is progress and not perfection. Next, it is crucial that if we are to make any progress we must begin to understand the truth about our wrongful behavior. It is not enough to say, “I am sorry and I am going to live differently” if we are making no attempt to learn from our mistakes and implement the changes needed to not do it again.

That is why Steps 6 and 7 precede the amends process of the 8th and 9th steps in the 12 Step process. If we do not develop an understanding of the function of our behavior and then process that insight through the 6th and 7th Steps, we will begin to feel hopeless. We have seen this truth in our clients over and over again. Many may enjoy long term sobriety but so often they have forgotten steps 6 and 7 – and they remain unsatisfied.

Please share with our readers how you have undertaken or recommended that others complete the often forgotten 6th and 7th Steps. Also, what is the benefit that you have seen from purposeful work on the replacement of one’s defects of character with healthy and sober coping strategies?

 

This article was written by John & Elaine Leadem

What is it like to be a Sex Addict?

For many under-informed folks, a kneejerk reaction to the phrase “sex addiction” is for them to say something along the lines of, “Now that’s an addiction I’d like to have. Where do I sign up?” In reality, however, sexual addiction is not nearly as much fun as it sounds. Try thinking of it this way: drinking and even getting drunk on occasion can be perfectly enjoyable and lovely if you are not an alcoholic, but deadly if you are; in the same way, casual and/or intimate sex can be a whole lot of fun, as long as you’re not a sex addict. In other words, if you are a sex addict, then casual, meaningless, objectified sex with others and even image-driven sexual fantasy can quickly result in relationship loss, shared diseases, emotional instability, job and career loss, depression, isolation, and more.

Like other addicts, sex addicts compulsively engage in their addictive behavior even when the activity is no longer enjoyable, is ruining their life, and they’d very much like to stop. Typically, sex addicts experience all sorts of guilt, shame, and remorse about their behavior. They then seek to self-medicate this emotional discomfort by engaging in more of the same troublesome, addictive sexual activity or by using other forms of escape like drugs, gambling, video gaming, eating, spending, and the like. The cycle of addiction is for sex addicts, like all addicts, a vicious, demoralizing, and self-perpetuating spiral from which there is no escape without surrender and outside assistance.

Behaviors commonly engaged in by sex addicts include (but are not limited to):

• Compulsive viewing of pornography, with or without masturbation
• Compulsive masturbation, with or without pornography
• Compulsive use of “dating” websites and “adult friend finder” apps as a way to hook up for sex
• Consistently being “on the hunt,” always on the lookout for sexual intrigue
• Multiple affairs and brief, serial relationships
• Consistent involvement with strip clubs, adult bookstores, and other sex-focused environments
• Repeatedly engaging in prostitution (hiring or providing) and/or sensual massage
• A consistent pattern of anonymous/casual sexual hookups
• Repeatedly engaging in unprotected sex
• Seeking sexual experiences without regard to immediate or long-term potential consequences
• A pattern of “nuisance” sexual offenses such as voyeurism, exhibitionism, frotteurism, and the like

When sex addicts fantasize about, prepare for, and engage in these and/or other sexual activities they use fantasy and euphoric recall to induce a highly emotionally charged neurochemical intensity. Sex addicts often describe this as feeling like they’re “in a bubble” or “in a trance.” Remaining in this trance-like state of arousal and disconnection for an extended period is the sex addict’s true (albeit unconscious) goal, more so than the sex act itself. Essentially, sex addicts create and use a neurochemical sexual high to detach and dissociate from depression, anxiety, and other uncomfortable emotions and life stressors. This is very similar to gambling addicts who consistently “find themselves” in casinos or wagering online; they don’t know how they got there, and they lose track of time and the real world while they’re there. Escaping into this type of hyper-emotional-arousal offers sex addicts a controllable form of escape, similar to the effect alcoholics and drug addicts get when they drink and use. And just as most drug addicts get “high” long before they actually ingest a drug – experiencing neurochemical excitement and dissociation caused by the pleasure of looking for and finding drugs, getting the money to pay for drugs, going to the dealer to buy the drugs, and the rest of the pre-use process – sex addicts get high more on the on the idea and anticipation of their sexual conquests than the conquests themselves. And sex addicts can remain in this elevated neurochemical state for many hours, sometimes even days at a time.

For sex addicts, compulsive, eventually self-destructive sexual acting out takes place regardless of outward success, physical attractiveness, intelligence, and even existing intimate (or at least sexual) relationships. Very often sex addicts, usually in response to a specific negative consequence that their behavior has caused (threat of divorce, trouble at work, arrest) will tell themselves, “That was the last time I am ever going to…,” yet soon enough they return to the same destructive sexual activity. They simply can’t stop, even though the behavior is destroying their life and often the lives of those they love. Sometimes their sexual activity escalates to the point where it goes against their moral beliefs and ethical values, and they step over lines they never thought they’d cross. Because of this, sex addicts typically find themselves leading shame-based, intensely secretive double-lives, hiding their sexual fantasies and behaviors from family, friends, coworkers, and anyone else close to them.

Over time, sex addicts experience:

• Loss of control over sexual thoughts and behaviors
• Escalation in the frequency and intensity of sexual thoughts and behaviors
• Increasing amounts of time lost to sexual fantasies, rituals, and behaviors
• Decreased interest in other, previously enjoyable activities (hobbies, work, time with family, developing healthy relationships, etc.)
• Irritability, defensiveness, and anger when confronted about or when attempting to stop sexual thoughts and behaviors
• Directly related negative consequences (relationship, emotional, physical, financial, legal, etc.)

The simple truth is that for sex addicts, sex is less about the pleasurable act of being physically intimate with another person and more about using the hunt and search for sex as a form of emotional and psychological escape. Because of this, sex addicts often attempt to prolong the bubble/trance experience by postponing the sex act for as long as possible. After all, orgasm ends the fantasy-fueled arousal cycle, killing the neurochemical high and forcing the addict to re-engage with life on life’s terms, which is what they are trying to avoid in the first place.

 From:

Robert Weiss LCSW, CSAT-S is Senior Vice President of Clinical Development with Elements Behavioral Health.