My Outer Circle

 The Tenth Step states simply that we “continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.” I had the opportunity to practice the Tenth Step last week. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology I have a 256 kps internet connection, that often performs as fast as 56 kps, so I am lucky enough to be able to call my wife and daughter’s every day, I can attend telemeetings, and sometimes the connection is even fast enough for me to check my email.
Last week I talked to my wife one night, a pleasant conversation. We probably get to talk more while I’m deployed than we do at home, since there aren’t as many distractions. I was surprised when I checked my email at work the next morning and found an angry email, asking why I left without leaving her a power of attorney. She went on to point out that I had told her I would get the power of attorney, that I spent much of my leave watching TV and playing video games, and that I still failed to get said power of attorney. She suggested that I either don’t care about my family, or that I didn’t trust her with a power of attorney.

Three years ago that email would have prompted me to get upset, act out, and fire back with numerous counter accusations. I would have remained angry for days, maybe weeks, and gotten defensive. My addictive mind would have taken it as evidence that my wife doesn’t love me, and that her being angry at me only meant that I was unworthy of love and that she would probably leave me. I would have avoided talking to her, all along worrying that my marriage was ending.

None of that makes sense, but by definition we addicts are insane, and I have no doubt that those would have been the thoughts running through my mind. Thanks to recovery, and having worked the Steps, I did what this situation called for. I took an inventory. I realized that I had put my wife in a lousy situation. If anything happened to me, or if she needed to take care of a major financial or legal issue it would have to wait until I could get a power of attorney to her. Worse, if I got hurt (which is more likely to occur do to a sports injury or falling in the shower than through enemy action at this point) and evacuated to Germany she wouldn’t be able to make proper arrangements for the kids to come and see me without a power of attorney.

I very clearly realized that I was wrong. So I did something about it. I went out and found a legal clerk (that was pretty easy) and got a power of attorney drawn up. Then I found a notary and had it notarized, and found a digital sender so I could email it right away. Then I wrote her and admitted I was wrong. More important, I took inventory and listed the defects in my character that made me wrong. It wasn’t a matter of trust. My wife handles all of our money. I have a vague idea of how much I make a month, and no idea how much money we have in the bank. I trust that the bills get paid on time, that my truck won’t get repossessed and that the house won’t get foreclosed on. She handles the finances because I have proven as an addict that I shouldn’t handle our money. A sad, but simple truth. I have no choice but to trust my wife with out finances.

The reasons I didn’t take care of the power of attorney issue before I left were two of my character flaws that I discovered in the Fourth Step, one minor, one major. The minor one is laziness and a tendency to procrastinate. I am a human embodiment of Newton’s Law, a body in motion will tend to stay in motion, a body at rest will stay at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force. I often require an outside force to get up and do something. The more major flaw is that I often don’t feel empathy, even for the people I love most. It never crossed my mind how worrying it must have been for my wife to not have a power of attorney in hand when I’m gone for a year, and worse to have to wonder why I didn’t get her one.

Thanks to the Tenth Step the situation was defused in less than a day. My wife knows I love her, she knows that I trust her, and I didn’t obsess over the state of our marriage. I recognized that I was wrong, I admitted I was wrong, and best of all I did something about it. I’ve changed, and that is a good thing.

(For those who are offended by religion, this isn’t a religious post per se, but please feel free to substitute “Higher Power” for “God”. I tend to say God because I am a believer, and frankly because it means less typing.)

The Third Step tells us that we must turn our will and our lives over to God as we understand God. That’s easier said than done. Muslims have a phrase they use, In’sh’allah, If God wills it. Many non devout Muslims, use the phrase as an excuse to not do something. Many Iraqi’s don’t want to say no, particularly to a superior or an American, so if I ask for something, they’ll say In’sh’allah, and I know they mean no.  True believers however honestly believe it when they say if God wills it. I’ll tell my friend, the Iraqi Division Command Sergeant Major, “See you tomorrow”, and when he replies, “In’sh’allah”, I know he really does believe he will see me if it is God’s will.

To me that’s what the Third Step is about. It doesn’t absolve me of my responsibilities, as a husband, a father, or an Officer. It doesn’t mean I don’t need to look for a job as I near retirement because God will find one for me. It means that I should ask God to help me find a job that is in accordance with his plans for me, that will support my recovery. I’ve had offers already from friends who have proceeded me into retirement and found me jobs that pay a huge amount of money, but involve long hours and travel, two major triggers for me. I know those jobs aren’t God’s plan for me.

I can’t stop saving for my daughter’s education, because God will provide them with scholarships. I belong to every Army fraternal association known to man, from the 82d Airborne Association to the Association of the United States Army, basically so that someday my kids can apply for their scholarships, but I know that I have to pay into the Texas Promise Fund every month so that there will be four years of college guaranteed to each of them no matter what.

The same goes for work. For the past two months (actually 58 days to be specific) I’ve struggled with an issue at work. Just before we deployed a full Colonel showed up to my team. Though I’m the team commander, and I trained the team, and did the mission readiness exercise with the team, this man out ranks me. My boss is smart enough to know that I have three previous combat tours, including one as an adviser, (the new Colonel has none), I commanded a training battalion (the new Colonel commanded a recruiting battalion), that I speak and understand some Arabic (the new guy speaks none), and they have completed adviser training (the new guy hasn’t). Unfortunately, the new guy needs a job, they finally scraped the bowels of the Pentagon and found all of the Colonels who have never left the continental United States, and told them go to war or retire. So this guy needed a job, the Army found him one in my brigade.

My boss decided that he should be the Iraqi Division Commander’s adviser, and that I would continue to command the advisory team. The situation wasn’t working. We butted heads. My subordinates were torn between doing what the higher ranking guy wanted to do (which sometimes didn’t make sense) or what their commander (yours truly) wanted to do. The Iraqi general didn’t want to deal with a guy who had never heard a shot fired in anger, so he would call me in later (usually in the middle of the night) to go over the same issues. I wrote all of the reports, and did most of the heavy lifting.

 The tension was incredible. In my active addiction I would have been paranoid, worried that every phone call between the extra colonel and my boss was about me, been convinced I was going to get fired. I would have obsessed over the seeming lack of respect toward me, sticking me with this guy who didn’t have the knowledge or experience that I do, and expecting me to train him. The tension would have built, and I would have used it to justify acting out. I would have schemed to find a way to get rid of the interloper. I’m not proud to admit it, but I would have found ways to undermine what authority he has, and ways to embarrass him. I would have done my best to make him fail.

Instead, the me in recovery, did his best not to worry when he called my boss. I explained things to him in painful detail, usually more than once, so he would understand why some things had to be done the way I suggested. When he ignored my advice and caused friction between us and the Iraqis we advise I took the blame and covered for him. Every night I prayed that God would come up with a solution, because I didn’t think I could do this for a year, or even until December when in theory our mission in Iraq ends. I even volunteered to go to Afghanistan so I wouldn’t be a distraction for my team, and so I didn’t have to deal with the conflict.

Today God fixed my problem for me. I got a call from my boss telling me that he has another job for the extra Colonel, coordinating between two units. I’ll still have daily contact with him, but he is no longer part of my team. My problem is fixed, my sobriety is intact, and I live to fight another day. Best of all I didn’t try to exert my own will and make life harder than it was already. I didn’t resort to using my defects in character to get what I thought I deserved. My Higher Power got me what He knows I deserve.

I never believed in affirmations, perhaps because I always pictured Stuart Smiley or whatever Al Franken’s character was on Saturday Night Live standing in front of a mirror talking about how he was good enough, and by golly people like him. It struck me as stupid. I believe I’ve made it pretty clear that I’m by no means a humble person by nature, in fact I’ve been told by peers that I intimidate some of my superiors. I didn’t think affirmations were of any use to me, especially as a recovery tool.  

That has changed over the last few days. I read the chapter on tools for recovery in Thirty Days to Hope and Freedom (maybe it’s obvious, I really think it’s a great book). I never really believed in affirmations because I never understood them. First I never realized the negative messages I send myself every day. I’ll walk out of my trailer (it’s a CHU, but no one knows what a CHU is, so I’ll call it a trailer from here on out) and forget my pistol. I realize it about the time I get half way to my headquarters when I don’t feel the weight on my chest. My response is always to say to myself, “John you idiot.” A negative message to myself to say the least.  

At other times I’ll lose my confidence, be it work related, relationship related, or recovery related. For instance I’ve been struggling mightily with masturbation. Twice since June I’ve reached thirty days sobriety, and twice I’ve had masturbation slips shortly after. (I’ll talk about the masturbation debate I have with myself, my recovery friends, and my sponsor another time.) I’ll begin to despair, telling myself that there’s no way that I can maintain long term sobriety if masturbation remains in my inner circle. 

Now I’ve learned how affirmations actually work. The author encourages us to write down the most recent compliments we’ve received, the projects we’ve completed to a high standard, achievements in our lives, qualities that others have admired in us, and base our affirmations on those. He also teaches us how to use affirmations. I pictured standing in front of a mirror, like Stuart Smiley and repeating the affirmation a hundred times, feeling like and idiot. He suggests that we write our affirmation on a Post It Note and stick it to the mirror. Read it out loud a few times while shaving. Then put the post it on the dash board on the drive to work. (OK, that doesn’t work for me here, since work is about sixty five steps due North of the trailer, but work with me here.) Then put it somewhere at work where it will catch your eye during the day. I chose the bottom corner of my monitor. 

Today, since I’m struggling with masturbation (and I only have two days of sobriety to my name), I thought of one of my achievements. I was sober for over two years, believe it or not. No sex outside of my marriage, no pornography, no adult establishments.  That is the greatest achievement of my life. So today my affirmation was “I CAN get and stay sober.” I repeated it a few times in front of the mirror (feeling a bit dumb I’ll admit.) I pondered it on my way to the mess hall. I put it on my monitor. I must have seen it, read it, and said it to myself at least two hundred times today. “I CAN get and stay sober.”

The crazy part? I think it worked. I believe it. I BELIEVE that “I CAN get and stay sober.” It got me through today. Another twenty four sober hours. Tomorrow’s affirmation? I don’t know. I’ll meditate on it tonight. For now its enough to know that I CAN get and stay sober.

I have about five or six days of reading left in my latest recovery book, then I’m going to move on to a thirty day AA Step Study. In theory, I should be able to work the steps again over a thirty day period, hopefully with some help from my sponsor back in Texas. This will be the third time I’ve worked the steps. (Hopefully they’ll take this time.)

 The First Step (Admitted we were powerless over addictive sexual behavior- that our lives had become unmanageable) sounds simple. In theory we complete the First Step the first time we attend an SAA meeting and introduce ourselves as a sex addict. In order to really hit home just how powerless we are, we write out our First Step, recalling the painful details of just how divorced from sanity we really were in our acting out behaviors. Many of us chose to share our First Step with our group, by reading it out loud during a meeting, then inviting feedback. In the book, Thirty Days to Hope and Freedom, the author refers to the first three steps (Step 2 is Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, and Step 3 is Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to God as we understood God), as “I Can’t”, “He Can”, “I’ll Let Him”, which I found to be pretty insightful.

Every morning I read from a book of daily devotions for those who are afflicted with Sex Addiction, called Every Day for Every Man. Today’s reading was about confession. “Change is impossible until a man is willing to confess his actions. Why does God want us to confess? Because confession puts an end to self-deception and replaces it with humility.” Suddenly my eyes were open to the reason we do the First Step, and why we are encouraged (but not required) to do it publicly. I even see why many members with long periods of sobriety often celebrate their sobriety birthday by giving their First Step again. It humbles us.

I hate to ask for help. I hate to accept help when it is offered. From the very start of our marriage my wife knew I had a problem. (I didn’t realize it at the time, I just thought I was evil.) She encouraged me to get help, she offered her forgiveness if I sought help. Even after our first four day intensive sex addiction counseling program, I still found it hard to ask for help. My first six months in recovery I made my phone calls like my sponsor wanted, and I worked on my First Step, I came to realize how insane I was, but I was still too proud to ask for help. When I gave my First Step presentation (I had never seen one before I did my own) I expected to feel shame, I expected my fellow addicts to judge me, and point out how insane I really was. I felt embarrassment, many of the things I did in my acting out were embarrassing to say the least. Yet, as member after member gave me feed back, and told me that my story had different details, but it was the same as theirs, I came to realize that I was not unique. More important, probably for the first time in my life, certainly the first time in my adult life, I felt humble. Humble enough to ask for help.

 Today I read day twenty one or twenty two of my therapist’s book, Thirty Days to Hope and Freedom. Today’s chapter was on cross addiction. He points out that most addicts have another addiction. I believe that. Many in my fellowship belong to other fellowships, many belong to several. I have friends who have long term sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous, Cocain Anonymous, and Narcotics Anonymous. Many found that when they entered recovery for their other addiction(s) that their primary addiction was actually sex addiction.  

Sometimes it scares me that people who have achieved sobriety from heroin and crack cocaine struggle with pornography. I look at people that I have great respect for, who kicked addictions that caused them to become chemically dependent, yet they often can achieve only a month or two, in some cases just hours from their sex addiction. It scares me at times, to the point that sometimes I wonder if long term sobriety from my disease is even possible. Then things happen, like witnessing a friend achieve three years sobriety, and another close friend has close to a decade, and I realize that our program really does work. As the promises say serenity will come to us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but it will always come if we work for it. 

My therapist’s book goes to great length discussing other addictions a sex addict may suffer, everything from chemical addictions, to gambling, to eating disorders, to video game addictions, to eating disorders. I can honestly say that besides my sex addiction I only have one other addiction, to nicotine, specifically I dip Copenhagen. I have since I was in college. I quit once for three years. It was painful, physically and emotionally. After three years clean from Copenhagen (though not from the occasional cigar) I started again.  

Looking back I started dipping again right after I got arrested for soliciting a prostitute (see this post:13 Oct 09 ). I was getting ready to propose to my wife over Christmas that year, and I realized that I needed to stop my acting out with prostitutes, other women and couples. I knew I had a problem (I didn’t know that problem was addiction at the time) and I knew I had to stop. When I tried to quit my sexual acting out, I started dipping again. I find that the closer I am to acting out, the more I dip. It’s one of the elements on my “Personal Craziness Index”. If I go through more than a can in a day, I know that there is something out of whack in my life that I need to fix. 

In my therapist’s book, he suggests that one can’t truly be in recovery if one continues another addiction, even if one remains sober from their sex addiction. Like we talk about in “how it works” half measures availed us nothing. Because I’m not (yet) willing to give up nicotine, does that mean I’m taking half measures that will avail me nothing?  

I don’t think so. Early on in my recovery, my sponsor asked me about other addictions. We talked for an hour before he became convinced, as I am, that other than compulsive sexual behavior (sex outside of my marriage, pornography and masturbation) that my only other addiction is nicotine. He doesn’t seem concerned. Not that he doesn’t care about my borderline high blood pressure (probably caused by dipping), or that eventually I may end up with mouth, throat or stomach cancer from my tobacco addiction, he does. But he also gave me some sage advice. “Let’s work on the addiction that will kill you first.” In his case that was alcohol. In my case it’s sex addiction. Someday maybe I can kick the tobacco addiction, but first I know that it’s a crutch that I have to lean on until I can maintain long term sobriety from my sex addiction. I don’t know what long term looks like, remember, I was once sober for two years, but for now, I’ll continue to tackle one addiction at a time. The one most likely to kill me comes first.

 I’m on Day 18 of my therapist’s book, 30 Days to Hope and Freedom. To be honest I had some misgivings about reading it. I always dread my yearly follow up appointment with him. As the day of the appointment gets closer, my inner addict’s voice gets louder and louder. I feel that I’ll disappoint him, and that I’ll end up feeling inadequate. In reality, I know intellectually that only I can make me feel anything, and that my therapist really is there to help me keep my addiction in remission.  

My therapist, actually I guess if you Google the book title (and by the way, I highly recommend the book, but I’ll get to that later) you’ll find his name so I can just call him Dr. Magnuss, sent me a copy of the book months ago. I put off reading it. It sat on my nightstand for months. I made excuses not to read it. I figured that I have done a four day intensive program with him, a six month follow up, and two one year follow ups, what could possibly be in the book that he hasn’t already told me?  

Well, as it turns out, there’s a lot in the book that can help me. Some of it we covered in therapy, and I’ve put it to use over these last three and a half years. Actually we’ve probably covered it all in therapy over these three and a half years, but it turns out that reading it outside of our therapist/patient relationship is a help as well. I seem to retain much more of it for one. Today’s chapter is on tools for dealing with intrusive thoughts. One of the tools described is “Re-framing”. That is looking at a situation in a more positive light. For instance a challenging assignment at work can be viewed as either a challenge, or more positively as an opportunity.  

One example he gave really struck a chord with me tonight. He talked about an addict with a weekend home alone who has no plans is faced with loneliness, a feeling he may choose to medicate away by acting out, or he can Re-Frame the situation as solitude. This one year deployment has the potential to turn lonely for me. I am surrounded by people all day, many I like, some who drive me crazy, many don’t speak English, and my knowledge of Arabic extents just far enough to ask how you’re doing and if your family is well. 

I miss my wife and kids. I miss my dogs, the cat, and my recovery friends back in Texas. Every night, usually sometime between seven and nine I get back to my CHU, and settle in for the night. If I choose to go down that road, I can look at my existence over the next year as one of loneliness. If I get too lonely, I may make the wrong choice and medicate that feeling away with one of my Inner Circle Activities, masturbation, or pornography. 

Thankfully I’ve come prepared. I talked at length with some very close recovery friends and my sponsor. I framed this year as an opportunity to devote more time to recovery than I have been able to at home. Little did I realize that I was using one of Dr Magnuss’ tools. I re-framed loneliness to solitude. Solitude isn’t a bad thing. It’s not the same as loneliness, it’s definitely not the same as isolation. I’ve been very careful to avoid isolation. I spend most of my day doing battlefield circulation. I seek out my subordinates and my Iraqi counterparts and talk to them about what’s going on, rather than making phone calls, or worse sending emails. I eat three meals a day with my friends.  

At night, I enjoy my solitude. I call home as often as I can to talk to my wife and my girls. I also take advantage of the time alone. The Rosary I found last week has brought me much closer to God, I have spent an hour a night in earnest prayer, an important activity for me. It facilitates the Eleventh Step: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry it out. Even more basic than the Eleventh Step implications, I’ve found that if I don’t feel close to God I can’t stay sober, and if I’m not sober I can’t feel close to God. (There’s a heck of a paradox for you.)  

I’m grateful that I have this opportunity. I wouldn’t leave my family for a year if I didn’t have to, but the opportunity this deployment affords me to work my program has been beneficial to me. Two years ago I wouldn’t have recognized that. I am grateful for the wisdom and experience to see it now.

 If you go back and look through some of my earlier posts, you’ll see that for a long time thanks to my addiction I though God had abandoned me. There were years (from about 1983-2008 if you want to but a number on them) when I felt that there was no way that a loving God would forgive me for my actions. I only prayed when I was in a panic, usually along the lines of “God don’t let me get killed” (that one has actually worked out pretty well so far) or “God don’t let me get caught” (that one…well not so much effective). 

As I’ve progressed in my recovery, I’ve come to realize that God never abandoned me when my addiction started, in reality I had abandoned God. I grew up pretty religious. I went to Church almost every Sunday, I was even an altar boy. I actually liked church, I found the pageantry of Mass comforting, I felt connected with God when I walked out of church. As my addiction began, I lost that connection. There were times when God did His best to stop me from acting out, but I ignored His message. (Just see this post: http://myoutercircle.blog.com/2009/10/13/my-ever-evolving-addict/  for a prime example.) 

This past week I’ve struggled with masturbation. I lost thirty days of Sobriety on Thursday. Worse, I started to rationalize. The old arguments I use with myself. “I’ve got to reset my sobriety anyway, and everyone masturbates, monkeys masturbate. If I have to reset my sobriety date, I might as well reset it for something that’s really addiction-like porn.” I spent a good part of the day Friday planning on acting out with pornography. Then while sitting in a friend’s office he was looking for a pen in his lap drawer and came out with a tacky, baby blue plastic bead rosary. He was going to throw it in the trash. I told him that was sacrilegious, and put it in my pocket. 

I kept that rosary in my pocket all day. When I got back to my room, I realized I didn’t remember exactly how to pray the rosary. I remembered it started with the Apostle’s Creed, so I looked that up. I didn’t recognize the version I found, I remembered it being a lot longer when I was a kid, so I googled the parts I remembered, and discovered that what I remembered was the Nicene Creed (which is the old school Catholic version). I remembered the Hail Mary, and the Lord’s Prayer, I just needed to look up the Gloria and the Mysteries of the Rosary.  

Before I knew it, it was time to go to bed. I hadn’t acted out. Saturday after I talked to my wife and kids, I got on my knees and said the rosary. It took an hour, but I felt a little closer to God, and a little further from acting out. This morning I couldn’t get a good enough internet connection to call in to a meeting, but since I was up, I got on my knees and prayed my rosary. Tonight I did the same. Not only has it kept me from feeling the need to act out, but tonight by the time I finished, I felt almost the way I used to when I left mass. 

A few years ago I would have been oblivious to the message that God was sending me. I wouldn’t have seen the Divine Purpose behind being in an officer, not my own, in the middle of Iraq, when the occupant just happened to stumble across a discarded rosary that he wanted to throw away. Today I’m far enough along in my recovery to recognize that rosary was a reminder from my Higher Power that he’s there for me, and he wants to reconnect as badly as I do. I’m thankful that I recognized Him talking to me.

I expected to miss my wife and daughters while I was deployed. I expected to miss my dogs and my cat. I even expected to miss my sister-in-law. (I am the only man in the world who counts his sister-in-law living two doors down among his blessings.) I didn’t expect that I would miss my recovery friends and our meetings as much as I do.

One of the things that feeds addiction is isolation. Isolation predated my addiction. From the time I was six or seven I would choose reading a book over going out and playing with other kids. I ran track and cross country, not exactly team sports. I joke that my favorite song is Warren Zevon’s “Splendid Isolation”. (It’s just a joke, my favorite song is Al Stewart’s “Roads to Moscow”, followed closely by Warren Zevon’s “Empty Handed Heart”.) If you would have told me three and a half years ago when I stepped into my first meeting that I would not only come to look forward to them, but that my best friends would be people that I met in those rooms I would have called you insane. Of course that was before I came to accept the fact that I’m actually the one with a loose grip on sanity.

The last couple of days I attended a couple of tele-meetings. They were good meetings, I enjoyed them, even the confusion that comes with trying to do readings and sharing with people accidentally talking over each other on the conference call. They helped me to stay sober, and stay connected with my fellow addicts. They were good, they just made me miss my home meetings. One of my core beliefs as an addict was “I am not worthy of love, respect, or friendship.” One of the readings in my Tuesday night men’s meeting says we sought our addictive behaviors because “Our insides didn’t match what we saw on the outside of others.”

Until I found the fellowship of SAA, I never really felt comfortable around people, much less wanted to share my feelings with them. Today I find myself missing people who’s last names I don’t know, but that I love like brothers. I miss the big dinners before Tuesday night meetings, and the lunches with my closest friend in recovery after Saturday morning meetings. I miss forty five minute conversations with my friends after one hour meetings. I miss being able to look at a friend and know just by seeing his expression that he’s having a trying time and needs my support.  I miss having friends be able to look and me and know that I’m the one having trying times and need their support.

My focus this month seems to be on gratitude. I think it probably reflects in most of my recent posts here. Today I realize that I have one more thing to be grateful for. It seems strange to thank God for my addiction. If I had my druthers I’d prefer to be “normal”. I’m not, I suffer from an incurable brain disease. I am grateful that my disease has brought me into a fellowship full of remarkable people that I’ve come to love. I miss them.

This week it just seems like there are not enough hours in the day. I’m doing my best to keep up with my recovery points system (a great tool I wrote about in another post awhile back http://myoutercircle.blog.com/2011/06/28/recovery-points/ ), but its been more of a challenge than I thought it would be. I’m probably not going to be able to maintain the optimal 80+ points a week. For one, date night and healthy sex are kind of out of the question, as my wife is about 7,568 miles to the West of my current location. For another, I’m damn busy.

Today was a typical (thus far anyway) day. I got up at 4:55 am, hoping to do a tele-meeting on Skype (Turns out my Magic Jack doesn’t work for conference calls), but the internet was down. Instead I did some spiritual reading, knocked out some push ups and sit ups, then went to breakfast. I got to my headquarters at eight, then spent the next ten hours either in my HQ, or with the Iraqi General that I advise. I ate dinner and got back to my quarters at 6:30. I read today’s chapter in my therapist’s book (30 Days to Hope and Freedom), and then dialed in to a tele-meeting that lasted until 8:15. A quick journal entry (which you’re reading now), an email to three program friends, and hopefully a phone call home, will take me to about 10pm. A half hour of reading (for enjoyment…all work and no play, etc, etc) will take me to 10:30, then assuming that I don’t have to sit in a bunker waiting for rockets to land for an hour tonight, I’ll get about 6 hours of sleep, before I get up to exercise, and try to get back to my quarters in time for another 7pm tele-meeting tomorrow night.

I’m not complaining, the story of my day is not a “woe is me tale”. Really it’s a reminder to myself of the fact that I am a much better place on this deployment than I was on my first two, thanks to recovery. There just aren’t enough hours in the day for me to do all the recovery related activities I would like to: eat three healthy meals, sleep 7 hours, exercise for 40 minutes, do a meeting, journal, do a half hour of recovery reading, and an hour of Step Work. Instead I have to prioritize and decide how I want to spend the time I have. If I really need a meeting I’ll forgo the 7 hours sleep to get up early for a tele-meeting. If I don’t feel a strong connection to God today, I’ll do some spiritual reading. If I feel disconnected from my program, I’ll call or email a program friend. Sometimes, I even just tune in my Slingbox and watch an episode of Warehouse 13 from my DVR back in Texas.

The beauty of my recovery is that I’m making smart choices, to further my recovery. I’m deciding between exercise and a meeting, between a healthy meal and recovery reading, or between step work and journaling. I’m not choosing between surfing for porn and sleep, or between cybersex and a meal, or between masturbation and a shower. Tonight I gave up an hour of TV to spend an hour sharing a meeting with 22 fellow sex addicts from all over the world. I’m grateful to every one of them for helping me stay sober. I’m grateful to God for giving me the gift of another day’s sobriety and the wisdom to make the right choice. My program isn’t perfect, but as we say in “How it Works”, we seek progress rather than perfection. Sometimes it takes sitting back and remembering just how bad it used to be to remind me of how much progress I’ve made, and just how imperfect I am.