My Secret Shame

What does it mean to do unto others as you would have them do unto you? That has been referred to as the Golden Rule in the Bible. The Wiccans say to do no harm. I say always be gentle and come from a place of love. It really is just that simple. And all you have to do is to take it one day at a time.

Let me share a little bit of my story. It is a story mixed with mental illness, alcohol abuse, and sexual addiction. It is a life of sorrow, trauma, joy, triumph, redemption and transformation.

I am a gay man. It took me a long time to admit that! There had been so much shame involved. Here is my story about how I found the key to open the closet door. Eventually I walked through it; but, for many years, I was locked in the closet. It was a closet of shame.

It all began with sex. I have shared a host of addictions in my past. These would include alcoholism, drug addiction, sexual addiction, codependent relationships, love addiction, tobacco addiction, compulsive shopping, workaholism, caffeine addiction, sugar addiction. The list could probably go on.

Gratefully, many of these addictions such as alcohol, drug abuse and sexual addiction are no longer issues within my life. From cigarette addiction, I am still seeking recovery. I may never recover from this and that's okay. Fortunately it is not truly life-threatening in my belief system. We get what we believe. I keep my focus on recovery from the greater of "the evils."

What I've come to learn is that I could not work on all of my addictions at once. That's what the perfectionist who lurks within my brain would like me to do. It's also a recipe for failure. I'm like everyone else. I'm not perfect; I'm only human.

I've heard it said that to be human is to be addicted. I believe this to be true. It seems that it's the human condition to expect something or someone to make us happy rather than to look for happiness within ourselves. That only works for awhile until we feel the aching longing within ourselves once again. As for me, and as you may discover, only spirit can fill that gaping hole of need.

It seems to me that so much of our unfulfilled needs come from the materially-driven society in which we live. What happened to me in my past was that I became consumed by my wants instead of focused upon my needs. I certainly have had a tendency to try to fill myself up with things outside of myself in order to feel better. That's only worked for the time I had been engaged in those addictions, attachments, or compulsive behaviors. After the thrills wore off, I was just as lonely and needy as before.

My first and primary addiction fueled something even more toxic. That was my secret shame which would ultimately lead me back into this addiction following more shame, emptiness, apathy, or despair. For many years I fooled myself by justifying my sexual behaviors. So many gay men were leading promiscuous lives in the 1970's and 80's. For many that ended with the fear of illness and death connected to AIDS. For many of those who survived, AIDS had become the wake up call for them to have made changes in their sexual behavior. Unfortunately that didn't work for me. I was addicted to unsafe sex.

I had no need to put any chemicals into my body to get high. I would experience "a high" during sexual acting out that was more potent than any substance I'd ever put into my body. I have since learned about the altered body chemistry that's activated while under the influence of the addiction.

My sexual behavior was not a moral issue as I'd wrongly believed. I was absolutely unable to stop my compulsive behavior even knowing that I was doing something that went against my personal values. That only increased my shame.

During that experience of powerlessness, I would often engage in behaviors I would never have dreamed to have been possible. I would end up feeling so ashamed. That would only serve to drive me back into the addiction in order to try to make myself feel better. It never worked.

I would continue to engage in inappropriate and unsafe behaviors which would exacerbate my shame. As time wore on, I began to experience more and more unpleasant consequences. In addition to relationship problems, I experienced debilitating depressions, suicide attempts, sexually transmitted diseases, robbery, serious threats of bodily harm, and apprehension by law enforcement to name a few. None of that stopped me; that is, not until I hit a bottom connected to pure despair. That's when I found my way to a twelve-step recovery program named Sex Addicts Anonymous.

What I learned when I began my recovery was just how devious the addiction is. As with all addictions, the behavior is simply a symptom of a deeper distress. Coming to terms with my feelings and dealing with life's problems instead of running away from them became the greatest challenge of my life.

As with any addiction, sexual addiction and its accompanying shame is indeed a physical as well as mental and spiritual disease. It had its roots in my early life, when I learned to cope by soothing myself with sex whenever I became troubled. That's how I survived. I was amazed to discover that the addiction had absolutely nothing to do with sex per se. I simply wanted to be loved. I just didn't know how to find that love from others or from myself in a more appropriate way.

Unfortunately my sexual soothing became very dysfunctional when I became an adult and tried to maintain a semblance of a healthy relationship. I didn't have the tools to do that because I truly didn't love myself. That made it impossible for me to develop an open and honest relationship in which I could give freely of myself. What's more, I didn't even really know who I was. I'd been running from myself all my life.

What happened instead was that I'd developed a double life. In what seemed like my normal life, I pretended to be a well-adjusted person. I'd go through the motions of life while using my double life as a sex addict as a means with which to cope with whatever feelings were uncomfortable. By uncomfortable feelings, I'm talking about feelings such as worthlessness, loneliness, anxiety, sadness, self-pity, anger, and resentfulness to name but a few. This would translate into basically any feeling that had a negative charge to it.

I would also invariably turn to my addiction whenever I felt elated. Then I would use sex as a reward. Ultimately I didn't know how to take care of myself at an emotional level. Additionally I would find myself turning to my addiction during times when I wasn't taking adequate care of my physical self; for instance, when I was hungry, tired, or feeling sick.

I couldn't remain faithful to my short-term wife or my first male partner for any substantial period of time no matter how hard I tried. On those occasions when they learned about my behaviors, I would tearfully promise that I'd never cheat on them again. Unfortunately, when it comes to addictions, promises are meant to be broken. I wrongly thought that I should be able to control my behaviors. That mistaken thought only added to my shame whenever I would slip back into lifelong behaviors which only continued to cause my partners and myself more pain.

Over the years, my behaviors became even more frequent and outrageous. Consequently my life became more and more unmanageable. Following many years of devastating and often suicidal depressions, I finally reached out for help. This came on the heels of a suicide attempt, a break up in my long-term relationship, and recovery from alcoholism during which my sexual behaviors escalated. I came to realize that I was totally out of control. For me, it became a matter of life and death. I didn't think that I would be able to survive another suicidal depression.

The seeds of addiction and shame were planted in my childhood. I suffered from some traumatic experiences and feelings of inadequacy. My early sexual memories and behaviors escalated once I began to explore gay sex as a young man. By that time, I'd become a full blown sex addict. It would take me several more years before I could accept that fact. That would take me another decade before I came into recovery for the first time.

Writing my autobiography was an exercise in piecing together a very fragmented life and examining the light and dark sides of myself. It became a cathartic experience during which I sought to become whole. I hope to have my autobiography published at some point in the future. For now, I will tell you about my experience in recovery.

My journey toward recovery began after I joined Alcoholics Anonymous. Within the course of the next year, I finally found the courage to seek help from Sex Addicts Anonymous also known as SAA. As crazy as it may sound, I didn't know how I could find the courage to explain what I perceived as my perverted behaviors to another human being. I didn't stop to consider that people in that program might have experienced behaviors that were similar to my own.

I was horribly nervous when I met with two men at a Ground Round restaurant. They shared their personal experiences of addiction with me while telling me how the program worked. I couldn't believe that I was meeting in a public place while having such a discussion. What struck me as particularly odd was that these two fellows didn't seem to have any shame in talking about their pasts during our meeting.

This was to be the meeting before the meeting. Out of respect for the other group members, prospective members were always met in a public place before the new members were allowed to attend a meeting. This served two purposes. It created a feeling of safety for the current members and it also gave the new member an idea of what was about to happen. I will never forget that day.

I arrived at the actual meeting to discover to my horror that I was the only gay man there. What only served to make matters worse was that there were two women in the group. I had no idea how I would ever be able to talk about my "degrading homosexual experiences" with a group of straight men and women.

I quickly learned that, while many of us engaged in different compulsive behaviors, the underlying feelings were the same for us all. I quickly formed bonds with these men and women who spoke intimately about their own experiences in a way that quickly disarmed me. I didn't know what to make of the attitudes of the longer-term members as they discussed their experiences. Many of them seemed to be happy. I decided that whatever they had was something I wanted for myself. I did my best to do what they told me had worked for them.

I got myself a sponsor and I began to work the steps. The first step was to admit that I was powerless over my addictive sexual behavior and that it had made my life unmanageable. I didn't have any problem accepting that in theory. Even so, it was difficult to let go of an addiction that had, at one point, been my friend.

I began to focus on staying abstinent from toxic and inappropriate behaviors one day at a time. During many points, I had to cut that down to an hour or even a minute at a time. Sometimes I simply felt as if I was coming out of my skin. Whenever I could put together a few days or weeks of abstinence, I would feel as if God had worked a miracle within my life.

Then I would find myself allowing myself to fall back into the addiction. Recovery wasn't going to be easy and no one made that promise to me. Even so, I kept going to meetings. I felt as if my emotional life depended upon it. Truth be told, I always felt better after I'd gone to a meeting even though it often felt like pulling teeth in order to get myself to attend in the first place.

Within a few months, I gave a formal first step presentation to the group. I talked intimately and honestly about my sexual behaviors and how they had made my life unmanageable. It truly helped me understand how powerless I was over the addiction at that point in my recovery.

I felt a tremendous weight lifted off me following my presentation. I was told by the other members that they loved me and could relate to my experience. They told me how honored they were that I honestly shared my story with them. It was such a cathartic experience as years of shame seemed to melt away.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with newly recovering people, I went out of the program a year and a half later during a difficult period in my life. The subsequent shame of not coming back only kept me away that much longer.

I went back into my addiction with a sense of sad resignation. I became apathetic and managed to let go of my guilt toward cheating on my partner since we had stopped becoming sexual with each other. I rationalized my outside sexual behaviors as acceptable since I deserved to have sex.

Truth be told, I was the one who had stopped that part of our relationship. Unable to allow or know what intimacy was, I preferred to have sex with others. It would be a long time before another bottom finally brought me back into recovery. That happened twelve years later.

I was back in the trenches of addiction as I continued my "field research." What did I find that was different? The answer was nothing! The addiction only continued to escalate as I became more and more out of control. On some days, I would have sex with ten or more partners. It was such an easy thing to do in those places where both gay and straight men sought to have sex with other men.

I practiced unsafe sex almost exclusively as I continued to put myself at risk of HIV infection. Having not acquired it, I was under the delusion that I was invulnerable. The truth is that no one is. At some level, I must not have cared if I remained alive. Addiction is a terminal illness for those who continue to pursue it with all its inherent risks. How I managed to survive only spoke to one truth. I remained alive in order to tell my story.

My symptoms of active mental illness were now being controlled by medication after I had finally been properly diagnosed. That's another story.

After twelve years of slowly destroying my spirit and my twenty year relationship, my partner confronted me. He'd found a bottle of Viagra which I'd come to need in order to sexually perform - My guilt and shame had had a psychological effect with which I had needed physical help. He gave me an ultimatum. I could either go to couple's therapy or my partner said he would leave me. I felt trapped, but I didn't want to lose the relationship that I had thought would last me for the rest of my life.

Kicking and screaming on the inside, off to therapy with him I went. As soon as I got there, I realized I would need to work on the addiction. The only thing that made sense to me was to go back to SAA. I also realized that the only way that the program would work for me would be if I was to do it for myself. Saving the relationship would hopefully be the end result. Only time would tell.

I also realized I would need to do personal therapy in order to deal with "the demons" of my past. Shame haunted me from the core and it had infected me from so many sources. These would include: childhood sexual and emotional trauma; the thought that I needed to please others in order to earn their love; and my other secret childhood shame that I might be gay and therefore unworthy of love from my family or even from God.

I returned to SAA filled with shame, though I was quickly reminded that I was no different than any of the other members. I was only doing what had become an ingrained pattern. I was only seeking to survive my pain. Yet, once again, I was reminded that there was another and better way. They loved me until I learned to love myself and give that unconditional love to others.

I worked the program with a diligence. I attended four to five meetings per week. I obtained a sponsor and I practiced abstinence from my toxic sexual behaviors one day at a time. I couldn't possibly imagine myself being free for a lifetime after so many years of being in bondage to lust. Practicing freedom in small doses made my life more manageable and helped free me from perfectionist thinking. That would remain a challenge for me as is sometimes still the case.

I learned to recognize and deal with my feelings in a healthy way. I stayed connected with others as I sought to end a lifetime of isolation from people and from God. I immediately found that I was freed from compulsive behavior, though I would mistakenly test the waters again. As time went on, I was able to put together longer and longer pieces of sexual sobriety. It was a daily challenge and I was gaining more and more hope and faith as I went along.

I looked to a Higher Power that was only loving and who had no judgment. I experienced God's presence and His voice through the other members of my program. I began to feel worthy of that love as I learned to love and trust myself. I also began to trust God because He was doing for me what I could not do for myself.

My partner and I continued in couple's therapy, but I hadn't been able to let go of one relationship with a younger man with whom I had formed an attachment. I had started to fall in love with him. That part of my addiction would ultimately spell the end of what had become twenty-four years with a lifetime partner.