Back to the drawing board

I’d say the past 48 hours have been among the most testing this year. The obsession with sex that I was talking about the other day has dragged me into a vicious thought cycle which I’ve really struggled get out of. It can’t help that I’ve just stopped taking anti-depressants. I had hoped that the recovery tools I’ve learnt to use this year would buffer the effects of withdrawal from Citalopram, but until today nothing was helping. In therapy yesterday I nearly drove myself mad trying to explain the problem and the solution to myself as well as to my therapist. In the previous eight sessions there was a definite sense of progression and hope which wasn’t there yesterday. The therapist pointed out that coming off anti-depressants was bound to make things more difficult for me this week. After the session was over I just felt worse – there didn’t seem to be any answers to the sex problem, and I hate not having the answers.

I went to a place where there was supposed to be a SLAA meeting on, but when I got there the building was empty and it didn’t look like any meeting would be taking place. Desperate to surround myself with some kind of recovery I jumped on the tube and headed for a familiar AA meeting where I would be likely to see friends. For most of the meeting I did my usual thing of not listening to any of the sharing. I was desperate to think of ways to make myself feel better – of course thinking about it never gets me anywhere.

At the end of the meeting I finally decided to open my mouth and share, which seemed to release some of the internal pressure. I went home feeling slightly better, as I remembered my new mantra of keeping myself ‘In The Now’. Today I was irritated to experience the washing machine head from the moment I woke up again. When I was on Citalopram I still felt all these feelings, but my mood from day to day was definitely more stable than it is  now. Feeling different from one hour to the next can be very disconcerting, which is why I went on medication in the first place and why I feel so drained now.

After breakfast this morning I felt a bit more normal, but then this evening the anger and the worry and the sadness came back to bite me on the arse for no particular reason. I was marked in to make tea at Hinde Street, which I really didn’t want to do today. I forced myself to do it, making the absolute minimum of effort to be polite to people as I served them their hot beverages. Once again I found it especially difficult to listen to any of the sharing. When I did manage to open my ears everything I heard irritated and pained me. There was an awful lot of talk about resentment tonight. It shouldn’t come as any surprise to me that I am not the only person who ever feels angry in meetings. I could and probably should have shared my own pain tonight, but I honestly couldn’t be bothered.

Though I was thanked by the secretary for making the tea at the end of the meeting, I ended up feeling as if I hadn’t been thanked enough. I resentfully washed the teapots in the kitchen, thinking it would have been nice to have some help. And then as I left the meeting I noticed some people had left their rubbish on the floor. I could easily have picked it up and taken it to a bin but I childishly refused to do so, preferring the thought of the building’s owners having reason to complain about the meeting. There had been some people in the meeting who don’t usually go there, people I used to think of as close friends but who I hardly speak to any more; they all virtually ignored me tonight and so I had something else to go home feeling hard done by about.

The walk home was hellish as I allowed negative thinking to run around my head unchecked. I became irritated by every person I passed in the street. I realised that I hadn’t been this bad in months, perhaps not since the winter. As I approached home it occurred to me that I would need to do something more than blog about this latest episode. The idea to do a step 4 occurred to me, and that is exactly what I did as soon as I walked through the door. I didn’t wait until I’d watched Britain’s Got Talent, or until I felt tired and wanted to go to bed. I went straight to my cupboard and got the pen and paper out, because my sobriety is too important to me now. Someone shared in a meeting the other day about the fact that in recovery you can’t kid yourself about anything. And it’s so true, I can’t kid myself into thinking that it’s all right to hold onto resentment, even if it is fun in a way. I might not want to drink tonight, but there’s no guarantee that I still wouldn’t by this time next week. So I wrote it all down, and guess what, I felt a lot better afterwards.

The release of writing resentments down and identifying the character defects underneath them never fails to amaze me, after all this time and all the work I think I’ve done on myself. It had been at least eighteen months since the last time I did any step 4 work, so perhaps it was something I really needed to catch up on. I could be really annoyed with myself for managing to get into this state again, for not being well enough to deal with the resentment without having to set fifteen minutes aside for another step 4. But this is a daily program; as so many shared tonight, there is no magic wand that we can wave to make the problem go away forever. That I can get into this state so easily after nearly two years of continuous sobriety is worrying and annoying, but it is what it is and I have to deal with it and move on. No point in fighting the feelings, that just makes them worse.

I clearly haven’t been using the program properly this week; I’ve hardly been in conscious contact with my higher power for a long time. So, back to basics I must go. I hate it, but at the same time I’m kind of grateful for it. Every time this happens I learn something new about myself, and from an objective point of view that is quite exciting. I pray to God that I will feel normal again tomorrow, or that I will at least be able to do whatever I need to do without nearly losing my mind over it! Whatever happens, at least AA is always there, I suppose. Gosh, I didn’t expect to be ending tonight’s blog on such a good note!

The sex issue (part two)

I wish I could say it’s been a good week so far – technically it has been, but I don’t feel it right now. Since I stopped taking my anti-depressants last week the low level of anxiety that I’d experienced all year has turned into more of a moderate level. For the past two days I’ve felt as if I got out of the wrong side of the bed. Somewhere in my gut a switch has been pressed and all my thoughts and feelings are now negative by default. I’ve had positive experiences but the feelings are coming from a negative place. For the first time since I started taking medication last year I am experiencing life raw again. Welcome back feelings, it’s nice to have you round again! The good thing in all this is that the physical side-effects of anti-depressant medication are gone, and I don’t want to drink, which is always important.

 Monday night was perhaps the best bit of the week. After a local step meeting I went for a long walk with one of my dearest friends in the program. The air was hot and balmy and neither of us felt like going home. We walked along the Regents Canal to Shoreditch, where we unexpectedly bumped into two other friends from the program who were going out dancing. We visited a couple of gay bars in Hackney that I had not been to before, where the music was good and the men were, as always, nice to look at. It was a good night out, mostly thanks to the company. I was with genuine friends, with no pressure to be anyone except myself. Alcohol was all around us but I felt no inclination to drink any of it. I left the second bar to return home at midnight on a natural high. By now it was raining heavily and I prayed that I would not have to wait long for a bus. When I got to the bus stop there was a bus waiting there for me, convincing me that God was indeed on my side.

Yesterday was when things started to get somewhat worse. I definitely woke on the wrong side of the bed and felt markedly flat all day. I was supposed to be seeing my sponsee in the morning, something I was not looking forward to. Luckily when I got there he was in a typically effervescent mood, and I didn’t have to do much talking. Unfortunately he is not really practising much of the program at the moment: he says he hasn’t been to a meeting for over two weeks because of work and social commitments. I probably ought to be stricter with him about meetings than I have been. I told him that he is the only person who can know how many meetings are good for him, though later on I started to think that maybe he doesn’t know.

He’s doing what a lot of newcomers do: he’s putting work and social life first, desperate to cling onto the notion that the old life doesn’t have to end just because the drinking has. Yes, AA is a bridge to normal living, but that doesn’t mean that things don’t have to change. Hopefully I’ll be able to talk him into joining me at a meeting next week. Otherwise I will undoubtedly begin to feel like more of a friend than a sponsor, and that’s not what either of us needs.

After seeing him I came home to spend the next few hours searching for things to do with myself. Eventually I decided to go online to try and find a hot sex date. I hadn’t had sex in weeks and since I stopped taking citalopram, my sex drive has increased wildly. It didn’t take long to find someone who was willing to come over and give me a good seeing to. Unfortunately just as I was about to type my address out and hit ’send’, a voice in my head said: ‘what are you doing?’ and I couldn’t go through with it. All the dangers of casual sex hit me like a slap in the face, and I promptly logged off without explanation to my potential date.

I’ve brought guys home before, but yesterday for some reason it would have felt completely wrong to do so. I thought again about how nice it would be to meet someone on a friendship basis before moving onto romance; I realised that I was once again giving into the urge to find the quick fix. While there’s nothing wrong with casual sex in itself, I just can’t persuade myself that it is the right thing for me to do.

Seven years ago I knew it was wrong for me, yet I still went ahead and slept with well over a hundred different men in the space of the next few years. It was so much easier when I was drinking; I could just fall into bed with anyone and convince myself that I’d fallen in love each time. Today I can’t kid myself into thinking it’s OK any more. I’ve never even tried sex in a serious, long term relationship. A few months ago I guess I came to the conclusion that long term relationships are not for me either because I can get so obsessed with the fantasy of being in one. I can’t afford to define my love life by ‘long term relationships’, not only because it’s such a narrow category but because I’ve found time and again that relationships never work when I go looking for them. Now it looks as if I can’t afford to define my love life by casual, meaningless encounters either.

I really thought it would be healthy to open myself up to all possibilities and assess every encounter on face value. Perhaps my problem is that I am simply assessing things too much. But how the hell do I not assess experiences like yesterday? I want to learn from these things, I really do. It just seems like every time this happens I am missing something really important and obvious.

It’s clear that I need to make some sort of decision about where to go from here. Casual internet sex is too forced and unnatural, and at best it does nothing for me, so it looks like ruling it out completely would be a good way forward. Unfortunately as soon as I think about ruling anything out of my life I want it all the more. Yesterday evening I could not stop thinking about sex. The craving and the obssession was worse than it had ever been – worse than the obsession with alcohol. Drinking was far from my mind yesterday. If only I could apply step one as easily to my sex addiction as I did to booze. Abstinence from sex is, as we all know, a far more tricky and complex business than abstinence from alcohol. If you want to abstain from alcoholic drinking all you have to do is not drink. Abstaining from unhealthy sex isn’t just about abstaining from sex altogether. I’d go back to complete celibacy if I could, but I’ve known for too long that that doesn’t work for me either. So what do I do?

Admitting I am a true sex and love addict might help but even that is something I’m finding hard today. I know I have an unhealthy relationship with sex and love, but it’s not unhealthy all the time. At least my head doesn’t want to believe that it is. Casual sex can be quite fun sometimes, just like getting drunk could be from time to time. I found it so easy to start calling myself an alcoholic two years ago. Why is it so unbelievably difficult with sex?

Let go, let God?

I’m feeling a bit down today and I have to let some of this crap out of my head. I’ve just been to my third SLAA meeting in a year, where I was able to identify with pretty much everything that I heard. It was scary. About halfway through the meeting I started to feel like bawling my eyes out and ever since then, it’s been a challenge to suppress the tears. Finally, the truth that I am a sex-and-love-anorexic-addict is clear to me. I can’t hide from it any more and I can’t let it continue to eat me up. It’s been eating me up for a lot longer than anyone knew. All my adult life I have clung onto the fantasy of redemptive romance; for years I’ve shied away from real relationships because they terrify me and I do not know how to perform in them. The guys I go for are bad for me; the fantasies I have of them maintain a tight grip on me. I can’t have sex without feeling shame. I can’t fall in love without immediately needing the object of my desires to rescue me from myself. In short, I haven’t got a bloody clue how to have a normal, healthy adult relationship.

I wanted to share about all of this in this afternoon’s SLAA meeting but it was so busy that I couldn’t find it in me to jump in and take my chance. It was one of those meetings that I hate, where the next person begins sharing the nanosecond the last person has said their final word. I’ve never found much recovery in those meetings; part of me feels that I’d benefit a great deal from learning to ‘take the plunge’ and open my mouth in them. Since today is only one of two anorexia-focused SLAA meetings in London, I think I’m going to have to keep going back there.

When it was over instead of sticking around to speak to someone I disappeared as quickly as I could, convinced that I would burst into tears the moment anyone spoke to me. Instead of seizing the opportunity to find the kind of spiritual connection with another human being that I so desperately need, I ran away out of habit. I was exactly the same in AA two years ago – I don’t know  how I ever got over that. Actually I do know how I did it, but I can’t bear the thought of having to go through that process all over again. I have my comfortable meetings in AA now where I know everyone and where I can share quite happily every week, but they’re not enough any more. This sex problem goes way deeper than my alcohol problem, to such an extent that I don’t think AA is the right place to deal with it any more. SLAA is the right place – if only I could magically find the friends there that I’ve taken two years to find in AA.

From the meeting I walked to Hyde Park, where I sat behind a tree and allowed myself to weep quietly for a few minutes. As soon as any passers by approached I would force the tears back in. My inbuilt phobia of showing emotion in public remains strong. It didn’t help that I’d chosen to put to a playlist of classical music on my ipod – when it came to Barber’s Adagio for Strings I was a quivering wreck. I was full to bursting point with emotion; I still am. I’d like to think that I could share about this in my AA home group later on this evening. I’d like to think that inside that safe space I could let some of these tears out. I feel a bit sick now from keeping it all in. I haven’t cried in an AA meeting for a long time. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it today. I admire people who can cry in meetings – it always seems like such a tremendous relief. I’m not depressed about the fact that I’m so upset right now. I’m actually grateful that I have these feelings today. When I want to cry I believe I’m closer to God, just as when I talk about my feelings, write them down, or produce a creative piece of work I am close to my version of God. ‘Letting go’ means letting it out, in whatever way I can. Writing about this here has helped to calm me down a bit, of course. But sharing in a meeting would probably be even better for me, if I am honest. I pray that I can find the courage to do the right thing today, whatever that is. I don’t want to drink, thank God. But I’d like to act out sexually, and that is not good. I need a spiritual solution, and after two years of following a spiritual path it is clearer to me than ever that the fellowship(s) hold an answer.

The sex issue

Lots to talk about tonight! It’s been a good couple of days; there’s been plenty of opportunity for growth. At times I’ve felt confused, excited, content, lost. The longer I am in recovery the more feelings I seem to have, something I no longer think of as terrible. Yesterday, in my eighth session of cognitive behavioural therapy we summed up all the things that we’d been talking about so far by drawing up the main themes of our discussions on a whiteboard – an exercise I found especially useful as it turned out to cover just about every problem in every area of my life. The main ‘issues’ in my life seem to be these: work, social friendships, relationships and sex. The common theme tying these issues together is anxiety. I have developed a sophisticated set of avoidance behaviours which protect my core belief that I cannot function on my own in real life situations. Yet I keep being drawn back to the anxiety-provoking situations by an inbuilt need to be loved. I’ve been aware of all of these things separately for quite a long time, and in sobriety I’ve begun to see the solid links between them, but yesterday was the first time I had seen it all written down on one small whiteboard. I suppose I’ve done all this before in my AA step work, but in the CBT I am going a bit further, deeper into where the links started. Obviously it all goes back to my parents!

So yesterday was good, and so was today, for the most part. The sun is back and I spent most of the afternoon walking around London enjoying the warmth. Unfortunately I managed to spend over my daily budget yet again. Recently I’ve discovered that it’s quite fun to eat alone in fancy restaurants, and for the past two days in a row I’ve done just that, disregarding completely the £10 daily spending limit that I’ve set myself. It’s irritating – I know I’m doing it, I know it’s wrong, yet I still find it so easy to forget about that limit in the moment when I need to remember it the most. If I could manage to stick to that limit from now on I would have saved up enough within a year to go to New York. As it stands it doesn’t look like that’s got a cat’s chance in hell of happening.

I consoled myself this evening by going to one of my favourite meetings, where I saw good friends and heard lots of things that I needed to hear. In AA I have next to no anxiety around people now, which is nice. I guess it helps that there are about three or four meetings now where I know everyone well, which is what I always really wanted. After the meeting for some reason I felt the urge to go cruising for sex at a club in South London. Actually I’d been planning to do this all week. Until now I didn’t have the spare cash to be able to afford the entry fee for most of these places. I didn’t really have that spare cash today, but I spent it anyway, because I wanted to be held by a man again. It didn’t matter that it would be a man I’d never met before. I enjoyed myself perfectly well a few weeks back when I visited my first sex club with Neal. Today would be my first ever solo visit to one of these places, and because of that I was markedly nervous on my way to Vauxhall, but I kept going because I felt that I needed to be held. And having been quite keen on the idea of going to Vauxhall all week, backing out at the last minute would have seemed like the kind of avoidance behaviour that I wanted to avoid.

I got to the club at 10pm and was immediately put off by the dark, dingy entrance. I couldn’t go in immediately – I had to go for a couple of walks around the block first to calm my nerves. When I finally ventured in I was loathed to part with £5 for the entrance fee; inside the club was virtually empty, having only just opened its doors. All I could do was go straight to the bar and order a can of coke. A couple of guys sat near me gave me the usual eyeing up and down. On video screens behind the bar they were showing bog standard gay porn, the kind of thing I could have downloaded at home. Until I’d finished my coke I couldn’t move from the bar. Around me there were all kinds of darkened nooks and crannies where men were strolling in and out expectantly. I knew that my money would be wasted if I didn’t venture into one of those nooks eventually.

After finishing my coke I got up and stumbled into a tiny room where a video of a man being spanked was being played on a screen in the corner. There I was immediately fondled from behind by a short black man, who acted as if he had won the lottery by finding me. I didn’t quite feel the same way about him. He was nice enough, but I wasn’t turned on. In fact I didn’t get hard at all, which is unusual for me. Normally a man only has to brush past me to cause some excitement down there, but tonight it wasn’t happening. After I’d managed to shake the black guy off I returned to the bar to try and think my way into getting hard. I concentrated on the porn, but it wasn’t working. I was too uneasy, too unusued to the environment. Just half an hour after arriving there I collected my coat from the cloakroom and headed home, kicking myself all the way back.

The waste of £5 is bad enough, but it’s the lack of erection that is really bothering me. Even on my own at home I’ve struggled to get excited by anything recently, which suggests that there’s some kind physical issue. A couple of days ago I thought it might be something to do with the cumulative effect of taking libido-dampening anti-depressants for a year, which is why I’ve decided to stop taking them. It’s not just the lack of libido, it’s the digestive problems and the sleep dysfunction as well, feeling tired all the time. The cons far outweigh the pros now. I’ve heard that abruptly halting the intake of anti-depressants is a bad idea, but I’m sick enough of them to be willing to take the risk. I’m NOT advising anyone else to do this – I’m only basing my judgement on the knowledge that I’ve gained through reading lots about them and studying them as part of the Psychology degree that I took.

Whether this new problem of impotence is to do with Citalopram or not, it’s definitely a major problem. I felt embarrassed and quite upset on the way home tonight. Being impotent is just about the last thing I need to happen now, when I’m trying to explore and learn the things about sex that I never learnt when I was younger. I’m never going to enjoy sex if I can’t do it, and I remain firm in the belief that sex is there to be enjoyed, not avoided or feared.

I get the feeling that there’s a general link with the ‘performance anxiety’ that I’ve always had when it comes to being in bed with a guy. Even with an erection I have never been able to reach orgasm with another person in the room. The condition is called anorgasmia; its causes are not entirely clear. Because of that, every time I meet a guy for sex or dating or whatever there’s the fear at the back of my mind that they are ultimately going to be disappointed with me. That was the exact case six years ago when I met a man in Brighton called Nicolas, who took me home and expected me to let him screw me just because he’d cooked me dinner. After hours of trying and failing to get to that magical point where the sex actually means something, he became quite abusive and (I don’t want to accuse or blame, but this is the way I remember it) basically forced me to bend to his will. I didn’t reach orgasm, in any case, but by that point it wasn’t important to him.

Ever since then I’ve faced this constant terror of not performing, thinking that there’s something wrong with me, that I can’t possibly become vulnerable with someone in bed in case they find out how crap I am. It’s a messy, tricky and extremely complicated problem that I am only just beginning to look at. Today I find myself just about able to venture into those places where sex is readily available. I know I’m attractive to some people and I know there are certain things I like doing. What I have no clue about is this: what kind of men I want to meet and what kind of relationship I want. After tonight I just don’t think sex clubs are going to work for me, so what will I do? I need sex. And unfortunately there are no other places where it’s so readily available. I could go back to the whole dating thing, meeting guys on the internet, asking them out, going for coffee and getting to know each other, blah blah blah. But at the end of the day, that can be just as forced and unnatural as the sex club thing.

I just don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do any more. The men I tend to find sexually attractive – the builder types who wear hi-vis jackets and dirty leather boots – are part of a fantasy that can never be fulfilled in real life. Even if I met one it would never, ever be enough for me because a man like that wouldn’t be interested in ‘rescuing’ me. The places where sex is easily available are not places that I particularly like or feel very spiritual in. And the dating game just leaves me cold. I don’t care about long term relationships any more, I don’t really care about being ‘rescued’ or taken care of. I’d love to just get to know someone, spend time with him and make love in a proper bed after realising that I actually like him. It doesn’t need to be ‘love’, it doesn’t need to be anything categorisable, it just needs to be authentic. Nothing I’ve ever done in the bedroom or in sex clubs has been authentic. For the life of me, I don’t know where to start in finding this goddamn authenticity.

More experienced readers may be shouting ‘you’ll know when you’ve found it’ at the screen right now. Some might want to suggest that I give dating in AA a serious try. My sponsor is a strong advocate of that technique, being in a long term relationship with another AA member himself. I’ve always thought that dating someone on a similar spiritual, sober path would be lovely. Of course there’s a small chance I could meet someone like that randomly on the internet or elsewhere, but for convenience’s sake you have to think in terms of probability, and the likelihood is that my best chance would lie in AA.

What puts me off AA dating is the whole ‘13th stepping’ idea. I would never date a newcomer, full stop. Would dating an old-timer not be crossing a line too? AA isn’t a dating agency (I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that said) so how could I justify looking for a date there? Because no matter how you say it, making the decision to date in AA is using AA as a dating agency. And there’s something about that which has never sat comfortably with me.

I’m so annoyingly screwed up around dating and sex and relationships, I think I need to go back to SLAA or maybe even SAA. I’ve discovered a gay men’s SAA meeting tomorrow night in central London. I already know that I’ll fancy half the men in the room if I go there. But I need more than just AA and CBT to help me tackle this problem. I need to make another change in my life - I need to ask for more help. The last time I went to SLAA I didn’t see much of a solution to the problem, but perhaps I need to give it more time. It’s clear that I’m not going to move on in life without some kind of resolution here. I don’t want to become a priest and do celibacy again. What I don’t want is pretty easy to describe – I just wish I could begin to explain what I actually do want.

Appraisal

A good few days it’s been. Wednesday evening I spent a really nice few hours with my sponsee. We went for dinner in Soho and talked loads, got to know each other a lot better. I hadn’t seen him for weeks and felt slightly guilty about neglecting him. He reassured me that he felt bad for having neglected me. We agreed to try and keep in touch more regularly from now on. Whether we manage to start speaking more or not, I feel as if we’ve reached a turning point in our relationship. He says he wants to be more like friends, and on Wednesday we were just that, good friends. Obviously not like friends who’ve known each other for years, but that’s to come if we are to continue meeting like that.

 It’s exciting and rewarding for me, as it’s shown that I can be a sponsor and a friend, something I never thought possible. With all my sponsors I have struggled to be anything more than an acquaintance. I just couldn’t seem to assert myself enough in the relationships. With my current sponsor, there has been awkwardness for some time as I don’t like his partner, and what happened on Monday night was especially embarrassing for us both. I was thinking of changing sponsors again, until Wednesday when things turned around with my sponsee and I realised that sometimes, difficult relationships are worth working at.

 Yesterday evening I attended the gay meeting at Hinde Street where all the people that I’ve had resentments against in AA were present – but I didn’t feel resentful or uncomfortable at all. I decided to listen to the sharing with my ears and my eyes wide open for once, and it was a brilliant meeting. I felt spiritual and serene, as I realised that things have changed for me, and everything is as it’s supposed to be now. For once the resentment and the fear didn’t bother me because I finally knew in my gut that those feelings don’t mean anything compared to the love that’s everywhere in the rooms. I might not like what some people have to say about their recoveries, but I can start to put that to one side now, as I appreciate the deeper meaning and hope in AA.

 I faced a recently developed fear of sharing last night when I opened my mouth, determined not to get into a habit of keeping silent. I talked about my recently found pink cloud, as well as the big recovery themes that I have been struggling with in this my second year of sobriety: romance and finance. On both scores I have been trying to get more honest, and it has been very painful at times, and sometimes I forget what the point of it all is, but I seem to want to carry on being honest about both problems now. The truth is that I have used sex and money like drugs this year, acting out big time in both areas to make myself feel better.

 This week I’ve started to keep a daily spending diary, a boring and irritating task but something that needs to be done if I am to get really honest about my serious overspending. Whenever I spend money I have to make it a habit to ask myself whether I really need to spend that money. As for sex, I don’t exactly know where I am with that any more. It’s a tricky and hugely complex problem that I have just started to tackle with my therapist, who I only get to see for five more weeks. I think that perhaps a referral to a sex therapist would be a good idea for me, as would a return to the SLAA meetings. I need more help with this, that’s for sure.

 The good thing is that I am finally being honest about it. A year ago I wouldn’t have known that sex addiction was even a problem for me. I thought lack of sex was the real problem. Of course, my enforced celibacy was part of the problem: I was terrified of intimacy and at that time I dealt with it by avoiding it altogether. This year I seem to have gone right the other way, forcing intimacy to prove to myself that I can handle it, and to make me feel better about myself. A middle ground has to be found, I just have no idea where it is yet.

Release

I received a surprise at my local home group tonight, as I arrived in the room to be asked by the secretary to do the chair. It must have been a higher power moment as I’ve noticed recently that I’m not sharing in meetings very much: being able to speak for fifteen minutes tonight would be the perfect opportunity to start correcting that imbalance. I’d never chaired this particular meeting before, and when I started speaking I found myself being unusually brutal in my honesty, talking about some of my character defects in great detail. The day’s ‘daily reflection’ was all about step 4, which is what inspired me to talk about character defects. I seemed to become so honest, in fact, that it felt like there was no one else in the room except me. When I’d finished talking after fifteen minutes it was like waking up from a dream, as I suddenly noticed the other people in the room again and realised what had happened. I’m grateful that I was given the opportunity to be chair tonight: I think I needed it. I can still barely believe some of the things that I am able to talk about in AA meetings, the way I can talk about some things. Most of my chair focused on my parents, the two people I have held responsible for all the problems in my life and the two people I love more than anybody else in the world. What’s nice is that every chair can be different; sometimes I speak more about my drinking, or my time at University, or my experiences in AA. Tonight those things took to the sidelines as I openly looked at my major character defects, fear and anger, as well as mine and my parents’ part in things. To call it cathartic would be a cliché, but I’m going to call it that anyway. Every chair I do is a release of emotional energy into the world, if nothing else. And I’d like to think that it helps someone else in the room other than me.

Hard times

Not a happy alcoholic tonight. The day started off badly when I managed to sleep in until 4pm, for the first time in about a month. I was doing really well with getting up in the mornings until last week, when the sleepiness started creeping up on me again, as I knew it would. Like the illness, this habit I have of ignoring the alarm when it goes off is insidious, telling me I can afford another five hours in bed when I really can’t. After I’d finally got out of bed I decided to put the rest of the evening to as much use as I could, first going to the launderette to do some much needed washing before heading to the step meeting in Holborn where I used to make the tea. I hadn’t been to that meeting in months and I never wanted to go again – being forced to make the tea there every week for a year really put me off it. I only went today because I knew my sponsor would be there, and I kind of thought it might be good to challenge myself and see if I could get through the hour without a single resentment.

 Of course I couldn’t. When I left with my sponsor at 8.30 I was glad to get out of the room. All of the clique that I’d come to resent so much during my year of tea-making were there; three months of being away from them hadn’t made any difference. It’s not just the clique that I dislike about the meeting, it’s the sharing; no one ever shares about the steps, so I don’t know why they bother to call it a step meeting. At 8.30 my sponsor and his partner were heading into Soho for dinner, and I was happy to be invited along. They had these vouchers for a burger restaurant which seemed to offer a good discount, so I thought I wasn’t going to spend anything. Unfortunately when we got to the restaurant and ordered our food it turned out that the vouchers only enabled us to buy any meal for a set price, which I could not afford. By that time I’d ordered my food and had to ask my friends for money, a request which made my skin crawl. I have never liked asking for money; I think it’s a vile thing to do. I subsidised the price of the meal as much as I could, meaning that I managed to spend all the money I had left on my bank account, so now I have nothing left until next week when my benefits come through. Just great.

 With the embarrassment of having to ask for money and the knowledge that I have £0 to live on until next Tuesday, I was hardly able to enjoy the food when it finally came to the table. My sponsor’s partner Clive tried to include me in the conversation a few times, but I just wanted to shrivel up and die. He seemed to notice that I was going into one of my ‘isolate’ moods and decided to push me harder for conversation. Clive has never been one of my favourite people in AA – he is camp and loud and nearly everything he talks about is sexual in nature – but he knows me well. My sponsor meanwhile didn’t seem to notice that I’d gone quiet. Or perhaps he did notice but felt too awkward to say anything. He’s just like me – whenever I sense awkwardness in anyone it just leaves me cold.

 I rushed the food down just so I could get out of the restaurant as quickly as possible. As I walked home I agreed with myself that I’d never go for another meal with anyone until I have a job. I cannot afford to eat out in fancy restaurants any more, it costs me far more that it’s worth. If someone offers to pay for me then fine, but in most cases I can’t expect them to do that. I’ll just have to live on the cheap £1 ready meals that they sell in the supermarket across the road from now on. I’ve done it before. I’m going to keep a daily spending diary from now on as well. I’ve worked out that if I can keep spending down to £10 a day, I should be fine. That way I save about £10 a week and the holiday that I have planned for the summer should be able to go ahead. Planning a holiday is as good a reason as any for me to try and live on a budget now. At least it’s something real to look forward to, something that will be good for me.

 God I’m sick of living like this. But I have no choice. Either I put myself through the misery of getting a job or I stick to £10 a day. This is real life, this is the world I live in. In an ideal world I suppose there would be no such thing as banks and overdraft charges. I accept that this is not an ideal world. I accept that this is the way things are, and I accept that I have to live with it. At least I’m sober, at least I have my creativity and my serenity.

Out

Good weekend so far. Last night I broke my final sober taboo: I went to a nightclub on my own. For nearly two years I’ve avoided doing this as it was a classic drinking behaviour for me. Back then I preferred going to these places on my own as it meant I could get more drunk and meet guys for sex more easily. In early sobriety I made this rule that I wouldn’t do it any more, because I believed that there had to be some boundaries in recovery. But as I get more sober I realise increasingly that there don’t have to be any restrictions on what I do with my time, as long as I don’t drink. And I wasn’t there last night to drink, I was there to dance. For nearly two years I’ve avoided dancing because of this rule that says I can never do it on my own; needing someone there with me has led to far less opportunities to do it in general, and I was kind of missing it. In the end I don’t think I was avoiding solo dancing in clubs because I was scared of drinking, I think I was more scared of being tempted to act out in other ways. For me, there are lots of different forms of acting out. Falling for beautiful men who I’ve never met before is one way. In gay nightclubs, this sort of thing can happen a lot.

 Last night I really wanted to dance to some amazing music, and for the first time in my life I decided that was going to be the only reason for going out. For the first time I didn’t want to meet anyone at the club, I just wanted to let go of myself and do something that I’d never done before. Beforehand I attended the AA meeting in Soho, to strengthen myself for the night ahead. When I first arrived at the club there was a degree of self consciousness, as I got there really early and felt a bit exposed dancing alone in a corner, but that soon went away quite easily. There were of course many beautiful men there to appreciate, but I didn’t fall into the trap of thinking that one of them could complete me, like I did for years. At one point I was approached by this small Asian man who made it quite clear that he wanted to sleep with me. I felt awkward and bad about brushing him off, but I knew I was not interested and while he was there I could not dance. When I pushed him away gently he sulked like a child for a while. I began to feel guilty before realising I had nothing to feel guilty about. For him to expect me to go with him just because he had made the move would have been presumptuous of him. I dread to think how it would have turned out had I been drunk.

 Once he’d gone I could dance again. The music was as amazing as ever, though not too different from two weeks ago when I was last there with Cole. I stayed until 2am, just the right time to leave as I was getting tired and the music was repeating itself a little. Over all I felt proud of myself for having enjoyed myself without the need to be validated by anyone in the club. Dancing alone without a drop of alcohol in one’s body is a hard thing to do. Two years ago I wouldn’t have dreamed it possible. I probably won’t do it again for some time. I don’t want to get addicted to going out again. The nice thing is I know I can do it now, whenever I want to. I don’t feel like I have to do it all the time. It’s there for me, like everything else in the world.

Today

3 o’clock this afternoon I managed to get out of bed – not a good start to the day. For the past few weeks I’ve been a lot better with rising in the mornings. Today was just a blip, I hope. Because I was up so late I didn’t really feel like doing anything this evening. At 6 I went out for dinner, dining on my own in a local restaurant for the first time. I’m pleased to have conquered my fear of sitting alone in restaurants. There was a time when I thought people weren’t allowed to eat out on their own! Thanks to this change in behaviour I am no longer restricted to McDonalds when I’m out and about and I get hungry. After dinner I went to the local gay meeting, where I heard just what I needed to hear. The chair spoke about the serenity prayer, something I finally seem to be appreciating the essence of. When I bought that little plaque in Exeter Cathedral with the serenity prayer printed on it nine years ago I didn’t know what it meant, and when I came into AA for a long time I didn’t fully understand it either. Now I think I’ve finally got a grip on it, and it’s helped me to get over the emotional hangover left from the weekend very quickly. Normally I’d be down about it for at least two days; today I’m thanking God for the lesson that the pain has taught me.

Surrender (part 1)

A rather remarkable weekend it’s been. Saturday I spent mostly with my dear friend Neal, the only non-AA I really spend time with these days. We’ve been friends for years and I think it’s safe to say he knows me better than anyone. On Saturday afternoon we took in the sunshine on Hampstead Heath, my favourite part of London, whilst talking about the usual thing: men. It seems Neal has been luckier in love than I recently. I’m very happy for him. Early evening I had to go to Notting Hill to take the meeting, where my time as secretary will soon be coming to an end, unbelievably. I’ve enjoyed my year in charge and I’m sure I’ll want to take on another service commitment there as soon as this one has finished. After the meeting I met up with Neal again, having agreed to accompany to him to one of London’s many gay sex clubs for the first time. Neal, who is thirteen years older than me, knows these places better than me; I’ve always wanted to see what they’re like but have been too scared to. On Saturday I kind of gave in to the realisation that there’s nothing dirty or immoral about going to a club for sex. Sure, it carries some risk, but so does a lot in life.  The only thing stopping me from exploring these potentially exciting forms of sex has been fear, and I decided early in sobriety that I didn’t want fear to stop me from living any more.

 So we arrived at the club in Euston at around 10pm. Straight away I was pretty nervous, but determined to have a good time. For a long time I didn’t seem to receive any attention; I had to do a lot of walking around and looking before anything interesting happened. I guess a lot of the people there needed the time to get drunk enough to start making moves. Without that option I simply had to wait and see what would happen. In the last hour or so I began to have the fun I had been waiting for, so much so that I was fairly overwhelmed by it all. At 1 in the morning I went home relieved and excited to have finally broken one of my lifelong taboos. A year ago I would never have thought it possible to enjoy myself in that kind of place. This year has been all about learning to use my body and enjoy sex. I think I’ve taken another real step on that journey this weekend.

 Yesterday I started the day by meeting Neal again for a walk along the Regents Canal in more unseasonal sunshine. We walked roughly all the way from Camden to Little Venice, about three miles. I’d done the walk myself many years ago with my mother – yesterday brought back some nice memories for me. At Little Venice there was some kind of boat festival going on, with tea and cakes, market stalls and maypole dancing. It was all very British, and I loved it. In the evening I’d arranged to meet someone special:,my American AA friend who I was talking about last week. He had been in Paris all week and was back for a couple more days. I was very excited about seeing him again. It turns out that he hates being referred to as ‘the American’, so I will have to give him a fake name for the purposes of this blog: let’s make him Cole. I met Cole in nearby Bayswater and we had a wholesome, meaty dinner at a very loud steakhouse before heading to his hotel for a night of the same kind of fun that we were having last week. Having let myself go to such an extent on Saturday that I was able to enjoy it with several men I’d never met before, I should have been able to enjoy last night without too much effort. Unfortunately I seemed to be coming down with swine flu, with a very dry cough and a noticeable fever, which just made me want to go to sleep.

 Cole didn’t seem to mind this so after some spiritual conversation we fell asleep in each other’s arms. All night I felt very hot and trapped inside my own skin, but I managed to sleep a bit, which is encouraging as I’ve always found it nearly impossible to sleep in strange beds. Today when we woke up there was a lot more spiritual chatter – we got to know each other much better along the way. We found ourselves disagreeing a lot over various things in the conversation. We’ve had similar experiences and problems in life but we seem to come at it all from very different angles. It almost got to the point where he would say something was black and I would call it white. I found it irritating, mostly because I felt guilty for being so disagreeable. I’ve honestly never disagreed with someone so much in my life. From irritating I eventually went to finding it quite hilarious, and I didn’t want to leave him all day. I realised that the constant debate was probably quite healthy for the relationship – if we agreed on everything then it would probably be pretty boring.

 After some lunch in Queensway we went back to the hotel and tried to have sex again. We clearly like each a lot and although he is not the physical type I’ve always felt drawn to, the spiritual and emotional connection is something I find very exciting. But no matter how exciting it gets, I can never reach orgasm. I admitted to Cole that I’ve actually never reached orgasm with another man in the room; he seemed to find this disturbing. I used to find it disturbing but I guess I’ve got used to it over the years. It could be down to shame, embarrassment, fear of vulnerability, I don’t really know. It turned into something else that we could vehemently disagree about, as he tried to persuade me that I will never be fulfilled until I can experience that physical peak of love with another man next to me. For some time I’ve happily told myself that I don’t need to make all the effort required to reach orgasm, because there are many other ways of enjoying oneself. Today Cole began to make my belief in that idea crumble. I’ve never reached orgasm in sex and I’ve never been able to have a loving, fulfilling relationship: the two must be linked somehow. Cole actually went as far as to say that this is the biggest and most important problem that I need to deal with right now, that all the other problems in my life really follow on from it (such as the anxiety and depression). It took me hours to finally see that he might be right, after we’d argued and argued about it and I nearly walked away several times.

 It’s very difficult to concede that one is wrong in this area because it is an area of deep vulnerability for me. To admit that I might never be content in life until I’ve worked out how to break this psychological block on orgasm is all at once exasperating and heartbreaking. I know that my inability to let go of my inhibitions doesn’t just apply to my sex life: in social situations, at work, in my creativity, even in AA, I am always holding back a bit, because it’s the way I’ve learnt to protect myself. Even when I seem to be really turned on in bed and it feels like I’m going to get over that barrier, it never happens. I watched a film recently called ‘Shortbus’ where one of the female characters went on a very entertaining  journey in trying to achieve orgasm for the first time in her life – of course I empathised with her greatly. The embarrassing thing is that this is a much more common problem for women. I’ve read that in men, it is virtually unheard of. Why am I so strongly feminine when it comes to sex and love in general?

 Cole and I didn’t really have the problem resolved by the end of today. I realised as time went on that I was only staying there to avoid going home. It being a bank holiday, my mother would have been at home all day, and I felt compelled to avoid her for as long as possible. By dinner time my attempt not to make a decision about leaving was getting ridiculous. When Cole announced that he had an evening social arrangement with some glamorous friends, I was given the opportunity to finally leave. An old bit of me felt bitterly hurt by the fact that he did not invite me out with him; another stronger bit of me felt hollow and empty about the fact that a spiritually nourishing weekend was finally over. Who am I to expect him to invite me to everything? The truth of the matter is that we still hardly know each other, and we’d already had enough time together. I just didn’t want to go home, that’s why I’m always hurt when people don’t invite me to things. It just means I have to be at home living my life while they’re out there living their lives.

 We’ll definitely keep in touch, and I’m sure it won’t be the last time we spend the night together. He officially lives in New York, so perhaps he won’t ever be the regular boyfriend that I thought I was looking for. I don’t think that matters. All the time that we’ve spent together has been an opportunity for me to learn about myself. The pain I felt at saying goodbye tonight was highly informative: pain is a great teacher, after all. On the way home I felt a strong urge to cry, which I tried to stifle by stuffing my face with junk in McDonalds. Other people can use alcohol for the same effect, I don’t have that option any more. I shouldn’t have done it – I’ve gotten pretty good at healthy eating recently, and McDonalds was one of those lines that I was trying not to cross. I didn’t enjoy the meal much at all, in fact I could hardly eat any of it. Back outside I looked at the sun setting in the sky, it was absolutely beautiful and the need to cry became even stronger. I realised that during the weekend I had come very close to God. Cole said to me that the connection one gets with another person during orgasm is a spiritual experience tantamount to finding God, and for the first time I really believed him.

 I felt God with me tonight, carrying me through my pain, and after that it wasn’t so bad. If God wasn’t in my life then I wouldn’t have had that wonderful time with Neal on the canal yesterday; I wouldn’t have met Cole and learnt all these things about myself. I haven’t quite met with God fully because I haven’t been able to let go of myself fully yet, but I think I am on my way there. In ‘The Power of Now’ Tolle says that to achieve true spiritual enlightenment one has to learn to die before I die. Letting go, surrendering to love, giving in, dying – it’s all the same thing. I can see that now. I need to start surrendering more. It’s simple, but it isn’t going to be easy. At least God is there with my best interests at heart, always.

 Here’s a beautiful song that seems to sum up my feelings at the moment: