Addictions Suck. Rebuild Your Life.

Okay, guys. I’m taking a break for a while. As you can see I only posted once last week. I need to think and refocus. Honestly, I’m tired. Writing about recovery is heavy and depressing, so I’m taking a break. How long? I don’t know.

Part of building a healthy life is that you have to take time to assess where you are in life. This allows you to refocus and rebuild.

Will RecoverCast continue? I don’t know. I won’t make any promises either way.

Be well,
Damon

While doing a bit of keyword searching I stumbled upon this phrase: sex addiction cure. The real question: Why do people Google for such a thing? There can only be a few answers:

1. To find a quick and easy way out of the sexual addiction
2. To know how to stop acting out
3. To know if there is a true cure

I’m no mental health professional, but it seems to be like losing weight: People want to lose weight, but the things influencing their thinking are flawed. Here’s what I mean: if a person is overweight, you don’t want them to lose muscle mass and bone density. You want those two things to strengthen. Fat needs to be lost. Their eating habits and exercise routines are influenced by industries that are solely interested in making profit. Don’t misunderstand: I am a capitalist, but given my experience with weight loss and addiction recovery, there seems to be a misunderstanding of how the human body works, and the environment surrounding the phenomenon fuels this misunderstanding.

Weight Loss

Over past five months I’ve lost 24 pounds of fat while retaining healthy muscle and bone. How did I do it? Fasting and lifting weights. I fast for weight loss and lift weights only to maintain muscle and bone. The fasts only last for 24 hours at a time, once or twice per week. My weight lifting routine consists of two exercises, twice per week: dead lifts, push ups and variations on those, i.e., dead lifts, squats, snatches, and front planks transitioning to the push up position. That’s it.

I control my weight by eating less. I exercise to only maintain or build muscle and bone. Most people have it backward: They try to eat gain muscle and exercise like a hamster to loose fat. That doesn’t work unless you’re hiking 22 miles a day on the Pacific Crest Trail or mountain biking down the Continental Divide. It’s much easier to eat less than to exercise more. It’s like concentrating on minor things to make a major difference.

Sun Tzu Said

As Sun Tzu said: In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns. In other words let major things make major differences, and let minor things make minor differences. Don’t set yourself up for failure.

Sex addiction recovery can be a lengthy campaign, but the goal is to live in victory. If your goal is to simply slug it out, you will fail. Weariness scraps to the bone, as useless as a cup of sand to quench a warriors thirst.

Sex Addiction Cure

What does all this have to do with a sex addiction cure? According to Chris Anderson’s new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” today’s younger generation expects information to be both free and infinite. In my opinion the problem is that while information is abundant, human experience, knowledge and understanding is quite finite. In school we’re taught to memorize information and regurgitate it on a test. We mistakenly and unknowingly think that all things are knowable and can be understood. In other words we fail to realize our limitations as humans.

Such as with a sex addiction cure. We don’t have all the answers nor can we predict the future. In fact we don’t really know all the questions.

Questions

Is there a sex addiction cure? Wrong question. Why do you want a cure? Correct question.

A dear friend has taught me, and still teaches me the importance of asking the right questions. Questions are filled with presuppositions. Correct questions are lead by first understanding one’s own disposition. If you’re a sex addict looking for a sex addiction cure, then you’re presupposed to having an instant fix for all your problems. That’s what the addiction gave you temporarily. That kind of thinking can lead to an equal expectation for a cure: instant, magic bullet or where’s the wizard mentality. Dangerous stuff. Couple that with highly sexualized western culture, and now your very desire to get well is tainted by unrealistic expectations. Such a thing is folly and leads to epic failure.

Set yourself up for success by understanding where you are. Take a step back to put yourself in a position to go beyond where you were. There is hope. There is help, but there is no cure. It’s a fight: A war where you must be focused on victory. It does get better, a little easier, and not so Hellish as those first couple of years in recovery. Hope and endure, friends.

Be well,
Damon

P.S., If anyone is interested in weight loss through fasting, check out Brad Pilon over at Eat Stop Eat. He was a graduate student in nutrition and has spent a lot of time studying the effects of short-term fasting on the human body. This stuff works.

This is not an affiliate link, so there are no kickbacks coming to me. You can read Brad’s blog and watch his YouTube videos to learn everything you need to know about short-term fasting. Brad’s research is compelling. Check him out: Brad Pilon.

Here’s cool little ditty: My Three Rs for Recovery. Here’s an excerpt:

R is for Remembering

The strongest antidote to fantasies about “how nice it would be if I could x or y or z” (plug in your addictive behaviors), is to remember the destruction those behaviors caused. That means remembering the bad parts (there are plenty) vs. the “fun” parts (usually only occurred at the beginning and became fewer and farther between as the disease progressed).

Be well,
Damon

A Quick Story:

Several years ago I checked out a book at the library about bicycle repair. At the time I was in graduate school and a bicycle was my main form of transportation, so basic maintenance and repair skills were needed.

Well, someone stole that book. Being responsible for it, I went online and ordered two copies from Amazon: one for myself and one to replace the library’s copy. Being bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and full of pride, I went into the library’s lobby and explained the situation to the receptionist.

“Sorry, we don’t have a way to accept that.”

What? Someone took responsibility for a lost book, did whatever they could to offer restitution, and they didn’t have a way to accept? Eventually I talked to some big wig manager type. They accepted my offer, but she made sure that I knew that they wouldn’t do it again. Strange.

Because of rules, systems and bureaucratic mess they could not receive my restitution, amends for something gone wrong; therefore, if they had not accepted, their organization would have been diminished, and my life would have been diminished if they had not allowed me to clean up my mess.

Here’s another example: Suppose a book collector decided to donate his entire collection to the library. They wouldn’t have the ability to accept, thus the good will of the collector would be rejected, the library would not be as enriched, thus both parties would end up with a diminished existence.

Two Lessons:

1. Making amends where possible is an important part of recovery, but in the end it’s their choice whether to forgive or condemn you. Sometimes you can’t make amends for the pain you’ve caused others. Do what you can on your part. That way at the end of your life you can say, “I tried to make it right, but they wouldn’t accept.”

2. What unsaid rules and systems do you have in place that prevent you from moving on to success in recovery? Sometimes we build systems that destroy our lives. Such systems must be set to run in a different mode. You can never get rid of all the consequences of your bad choices, but you can make good choices: wise decisions that help you build life instead of destroying it.

Be well,
Damon

Don’t go straight for healing, straight for a “better life.” Spend time understanding and accepting the hows and whys that lead to your current situation. Don’t be afraid of what you find. Accept it, change and move on.

Be well,
Damon