Some recovering addicts replace their drug of choice with shopping, gambling or food. I chose sex. Dating. Flirting. Relationships. Men and women. In my four and a half years of sobriety, I’ve been single and sexually abstinent for a total of seven months. Why? When you sober up a drunken horse thief, he’s still a horse thief.
My need to seek approval through romantic attachments began in childhood, in one of the deepest layers of the onion that, until recently, hadn’t been peeled.
I’m the oldest of four. We’re all two years apart. At two years old, I stopped getting attention from my parents. They were busy taking care of the newborn, my mom usually pregnant with the next one. Above all else, I craved emotional intimacy. I didn’t find it in my family of origin, but I did discover it in alcohol when I was seven.
So choosing to get sober did get me sober, but the unresolved defects I wanted to hide were still boiling below the surface.
In high school, drink turned into drugs: pills, cocaine, weed, heroin, hallucinogens. Anything. If you put it in front of me, I took it. To soothe feelings of rejection, drugs and alcohol quickly became my family. I sought isolation as I cultivated my relationship with intoxication. I came to fear intimacy with others because of the looming threat of abandonment. I had few casual friendships throughout school, only pursuing their company if they liked escaping, too. My philosophy became that distance meant I could never be hurt; no one could disappoint me if I didn’t emotionally invest. This percolated into how I romantically related to men.
At 15, I started dating. I gave my virginity to the third boy I ever kissed. I fell in love with sex, an intoxicating rush followed by a high that acted like another drug. I loved the way a man could make me feel. I loved that someone wanted me. I hit my bottom with drugs and alcohol in something that resembled a crack house.
One night, after months of daily desperate attempts to stop, I moved back home and resolved to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. Drugs and alcohol had stopped working; I still felt the hopelessness, anxiety, guilt, depression and anger that plagued me in my more lucid moments.
I had drank to drown my feelings, but the little bastards learned to swim. So choosing to get sober did get me sober, but the unresolved defects I wanted to hide were still boiling below the surface. I started counting days. I had just turned 20. And I had nothing to numb my insecurities with—or so I thought.
The conscious contact I had with my emotions—the reality of my past—was too much for me to live with. The high of sex—the adrenaline rush of a good row with a boyfriend, and knowing someone else wanted me—brought the same relief as heroin once had. Not using my program to tame my behavior, I acted as recklessly with sex as I had when I was drinking.
Just after celebrating my 90 days, I noticed my physical craving for drugs hadn’t subsided. My sponsor told me that burning desires were normal, but my body acting as if I was still dope sick was not.
My carelessness finally led to a tangible consequence. I was pregnant. Again. Just like when I was 17, when a heavy dose of wine, weed, PCP and cocaine brought on a miscarriage. I hadn’t even known I was pregnant. I drowned the pain of having killed my child with more using.
But just as with drinking, the shame didn’t convince me to change. Consequences didn’t get me sober, and consequences from promiscuity didn’t deter me from repeating the same mistakes in sobriety. As my sponsor told me, the “ism” of alcoholism stands for “Incredibly Short Memory.” The Big Book emphasizes that I “cannot recall with sufficient force the terrible memory of a few months, or even a few days ago.” I am powerless over my disease, which asks me to react on the impulse of my willpower. The instantaneous ecstasy of seduction wipes my memory clean. So at 90 days, I’m carrying someone’s kid.
I felt it was controversial to share my decision to abort at meetings, so I spoke with a few women I trusted. One of them came with me to tell my mom. Not hiding it from her was the first truly sober action I took. I didn’t want to fabricate a web of complicated excuses and lies, so I got honest. She was supportive of my choice, and came with me and the baby’s father to the clinic. I had the surgery only a few days after learning of the pregnancy.
Alcoholics Anonymous alone could not have provided sufficient support for me to work through that pain.
It was not easy. I had babysat the same kids for six years, and I knew I wanted a family one day. With my newfound sober conscience, I was emotionally attached to my unborn child, but I also knew that I wasn’t ready to be a mother. Before the procedure, I sat next to a woman in the recovery room who was crying. She whispered through a veil of tears that she hoped I was making the right decision. I still believe I did, but the fact that my emotions were raw, real and present made it one of the most difficult and heartbreaking experiences of my life, let alone in sobriety.
I chose to stay awake during the surgery. I don’t know that I would refuse anesthesia today, but at 90 days I adamantly maintained that I would rather endure the fleeting physical pain than the elusive sensation of narcotics. I was afraid I’d want to get high again. The nurse held my hand as I shook, and the doctor verbally guided me through the procedure. It didn’t hurt badly, but watching my child be taken from my body scarred my psyche. It was brutal. Those visuals didn’t leave me for some time. Though I still remember it, it has thankfully ceased to haunt me.
It took three years of therapy for me to forgive myself, accept my choice and mourn the loss. Alcoholics Anonymous alone could not have provided sufficient support for me to work through that pain. I’m sure the guilt of my miscarriage, and that I felt I was abandoning my child as my parents had done me, weighed upon me and complicated the healing process.
But even after the abortion, I slept around. I continued to have unprotected sex and take booty calls for the next four months. My sponsor dropped me, saying I was unwilling to follow suggestions for my sobriety and she could no longer help me. She was absolutely right. But the stove wasn’t hot enough yet. I would, in moments of clarity, tell the guy I wanted no more, but would immediately relapse the behavior that night when he’d text me to stop by.
I finally was so humiliated that I stopped sleeping around. One guy accidentally fell asleep at my house on a school night. I had to walk him downstairs the next morning, where my 13-year-old sister was eating breakfast. Acknowledging the presence of that shame was my bottom, and enough to get me to stop. I committed to and followed a path of integrity in regard to my sex and dating life for years after. I had seven months sober then, and now have nearly five years.
My life is more fulfilling when I’m true to myself and treat my body with respect. The emotional abuse I brought myself should have led me to drink. I didn’t, but my instincts cry for drugs when those painful emotions arise, as I was recently reminded.
At four years sober, my boyfriend of two years broke up with me. One month later, we started talking again. For a week, we had phone, email and text message sex. The end of that week brought me the most intense cravings for drugs since early sobriety. Time in the program does not make me immune to that overwhelming shame I felt when I was a newcomer, steeping myself in promiscuity. Thankfully, I stopped the exchanges and got honest quickly. My sober network helped me process the breakup. I thereafter ignored my ex’s advances, which continued for another month. I haven’t spoken with him since, for my sobriety and my dignity.
Since that breakup, I’ve remained abstinent. When I told my AA sponsor the only reason I’m not sleeping around is because I’ve been chronically sick, she strongly suggested I begin to work the SLAA program. Once I’m well enough to regularly commit to it, I plan to.
The past few months have actually been an opportunity for personal growth that I could not have dreamed of reaching if sexually involved. I’m oddly grateful for this barrier my higher power has enforced. I’ve been able to objectively research how to function healthily in romantic relationships, share my experience with others and gain some valuable perspective through written inventories. I hope to bring all of it to my future relationships (yes, relationships, not hook-ups). I’m actually in a good place today, comfortable and confident with my conduct. I stay on top of my defects so they don’t resurface and I’m happy to finally love the one thing sex helped me avoid—me.
Charlotte Grey is a pseudonym for a writer in New York.