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Read Part 2

Another turning point came. This was at a Promise Keepers conference. One of the speakers made this point about men and sexual sin. “God will not deliver you from your friends”. I came to realize that day that my addiction was my friend and I didn’t really want to give it up. It was the most honest I had ever been to myself about my addiction. Something even more important came out of that conference. I was able to recognize a truth about God and began to integrate that truth into myself. That truth was that God love me and cared about me no matter what. His love never changes no matter where I am in my life or what I am doing. I can really come to Him just as I am. He will not turn me away or reject me. He will hold me in His arms and He will guide me. God had a plan for me, a plan I was completely unaware of all along the way. I know there were many times and sometimes years that I felt far from God but He was there, right there, working His plan. I invited God into my life when I was sixteen years old. Into my life He came. I cannot really say I felt His presence or His hand working in my life. As I look back over my life, I see clearly now that He was there and He was working. I found a real sense of freedom. I found the freedom and peace of knowing God’s love, grace, and forgiveness. This gave me a new perception of my addiction and my path to recovery. It was a slow process, but I came to accept and personalize the Love of God. He would not tease me or criticize me. He would not reject me. He would always understand me and accept me just as I am. This gave me the new understanding and the willingness to take a new look at myself. It was a more honest look. I lost my identity as a failure and a sex addict. Yes I was a sex addict and yes I had had many failures or incomplete successes. However, all of it was part of the journey to better understanding and acceptance of who I really was.

Today my life is different. The shame and loneliness have faded to almost nothing. I continue to work as both a nurse and a psychologist. God has a purpose and a plan and a calling. One of those callings is to reach out and help other men who are having a similar struggle in their lives. Sexual addiction is a product of personal life experiences and our personality make up. It is not just a behavior to learn to control. It has a purpose in our lives. When we take it away we are left to deal with all the things we have been hiding and running from. These are powerful and painful feelings. God’s love, your understanding of yourself, your patience with yourself and your acceptance of yourself are all important components of success, not only in over going the addiction behavior but in many other areas of your life.

If you need help, find it. Find a group of other men. The healing power of the group process cannot be denied. If you have to choose between a group and individual therapy, choose the group. If you start with individual therapy, set your goal to find and attend and participate in a group. There are many books on the subject and most are good. If you find one and you feel it is more legalistic and judgmental, put it aside and find another. I have read most and will suggest Breaking Free by Russell Willingham. I am impressed with his focus on the personal relationship with God as fundamental to recovery. For deeper understanding of sexual addiction, I suggest Out of the Shadows by Patrick Carnes. This will reveal much about yourself and the influence of your past on your addiction. If you have this problem, get help. You cannot do it on your own. Even if you read all there is on the subject and get a PhD, you will not find success without the help of others, others just like you. You have tried to do it alone just like I did and each time, just like me, your success fell far short of completion. Maybe this is your time to take the step in right direction. If you have accepted Christ into your life, you are saved. God loves you and He is with you always. He is working in your life. Open your heart to that love. Let Him hold you just as you are. The strength of His love gives you the strength to take the journey of recovery. There are many paths in your journey. Many appear dark and others seem more like steps backwards. These paths are often filled with more insight and understanding about yourself. The knowledge that God loves you no matter the outcome provides the strength and the endurance to push on in the quest to be a better man of God. We cannot honor God by trying to appear perfect and hide our imperfections. We honor Him by facing our imperfections and coming along side others to help and be helped.

This is part two of a three part series, read part 1 here.

I have been a Christian since high school. My own past and negative attitudes about myself kept me in a strict and legalistic spiritual environment. I am not saying there was not love or acceptance there. I am saying I was not open to it if it was there. I lived in fear there too. If they found out about me, I would be criticized and rejected by the few friends I had and especially by my best friend who led me to the Lord that one night in the school parking lot. I viewed Christianity as something that told me how I was supposed to act and behave. Since I failed at that every day, my feelings about myself never changed. I knew I was saved but my every day struggle and pain continued and I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone. Just as I was not open to the love and acceptance of the church I also not really open to the ongoing love and acceptance from God. I just didn’t understand it or know how to accept it and integrate it into my life. I came to understand that I just didn’t expect anymore from God then I had received from my parents. I had just accepted that no matter how much I hated it, or how lonely I felt, or afraid I was, I was supposed to be alone and handle it on my own.

I felt very alone in my life. I made my own decisions and set my own life course. I kept my feelings and thoughts to myself because I was not capable of handling the criticism. I tried college. It was a strict and fundamental university. I convinced my parents to let me go and found a way to work off my tuition. They criticized my decision and didn’t want me to go. Their objection only made me more determined to go. As a below average student with poor study skills and poor ability to focus and maintain attention, the challenge of college was greater than my ability to meet those challenges. The success I was hoping for was fading. This led to more escaping into my fantasy world. It was hard to find the privacy to masturbate and I found myself confronted by my roommates. The shame I felt then was no different than that of my wife catching me later in my life. My roommates gave me two options. They could report my behavior to the dean and I would most likely be expelled from school or I could see one of the psychology professors. Not being ready to admit failure on my choice to attend college there, I chose the latter. What was supposed to be help was really the manipulation of a student to meet the sexual needs of another sex addict, the psychology professor. Somewhere deep inside me, I found the courage to confront him but I was too ashamed to tell anyone else. It was after this that I made my choice to leave college. I used the lack of adequate funds and poor grades as my excuses and never told anyone of my experience. I was convinced they would not believe me anyway. It was over ten years later that I first told of that experience. Even then I was not looking at myself as having an uncontrollable addiction. It would still take many years to reach that place.

After returning home, I found myself in the health care arena. It was not glamorous by any means. I was working as an orderly in a nursing home. It was there that I met someone that I had a great deal of professional respect for. At his persistent encouragement I finally got up the courage to apply to nursing school. I rationalized that it was only a few short years and that if I didn’t make it, it was not all that much time wasted. I didn’t expect to succeed. I was convinced I was not smart enough. Somehow I did make it through the curriculum and managed to pass the state licensing exams. It was a turning point in my life. It was that day that I was convinced that I could really make it on my own and I would not be dependent on anyone or even have to ask for help. I experienced a sense of freedom and a hope for my own future. I threw myself into my work. It became a driving force. It strengthened my sense of independence and the myth that I didn’t really need anyone in my life. I still felt alone. I was hiding behind my career and still had my addiction.

There was still something missing. Why wasn’t I happy? Why couldn’t I be close to anyone and be honest about my feelings? I know it was because of my parents and their decision to drink rather than be a part of my life. But, shouldn’t that have gone away by now? What is wrong with me? Why is it, that no matter what I do or how good I do it, I don’t feel a healthy sense of accomplishment? I was haunted by these questions. How could I find out about myself? How could I help myself? The drive to find my own answers and an interest in psychology led me back to school. The fear of failure was diminished because I had a career to fall back on. In addition to that, I was only going to lean about myself so I could fix myself. Taking only one or two classes at a time I manage to complete a BA in psychology. This offered little help in accomplishing my purpose.

My first marriage failed after 4 years. My pride and my fear and my shame prevented me from going into counseling and saving the marriage. A few years later, I married again but the results were the same. I know there were faults in my wife and I used them all to keep the heat off of me and to keep me from looking at myself. Intimacy was just not in my makeup. The shame and the fear were too intense to even try. I was still lost. Nothing was helping me. I didn’t think God was helping me. Getting married didn’t help me with my addiction or my ability to be close to anyone. Having a successful career didn’t make me feel any better about myself or make me feel any more successful or accomplished.

The next ten years was consumed with trying to maintain my career, raise my son, and feed my addiction. I had custody of my son and I felt I was the better parent but didn’t feel like I was being a good dad. It was during this time that I made another choice to take a risk with school. I applied for graduate school in psychology. I never expected I would complete the program and become a psychologist. Again, my purpose was to fix myself while pretending to pursue a career in psychology. Like all of my other efforts, this one failed too. I understood more about the problem and my past and how things got the way they did. What I did not find was a solution. I had the knowledge and the insight into myself but I was no better. The emptiness and loneliness continued.

It was at the end of my masters program that I married again with great hopes of a lasting marriage. I was still trying to hiding my addiction and control when and how much I was acting out. The marriage was working out. We had become more involved in church. I was having some limited success with talking and sharing. After 10 years, we were still married. She was not as happy as I was. Her disappointment and the stress of finishing graduate school took its toll. The addiction got more out of control. She had caught me several times. At first we agreed to get rid of the internet. I kept loading it back on. She finally demanded that we get rid of the computer all together. It took all day to pack it up. I had a sense I was cutting my lifeline. I still asked myself how I was going to manage without it.

Continue to part 3

Suddenly I am jarred back to reality with that dreadful sound of my wife’s voice.  “What are you doing?” I have been caught again. My whole being is filled with shame and guilt. There are no words. I was stuck in silence. There was nothing I could say to make it better now. I clicked off the computer. She demanded to see what I was looking at. I just refused. She gives up and goes back to bed.

I am afraid. What will happen now? I have promised to stop so many times before. Just like all the times I promised myself and God in the past, I failed. The pain and shame inside is almost unbearable. I want to run. I want to get away, but how? How can I run from myself? The only way I know is into my world of porn and fantasy. She doesn’t understand. I don’t know how to make her understand. She is so hurt and so angry with me. I don’t blame her but I wish she could understand.

This was the point in my addiction where things changed. She was at the end of her rope. She demanded we get into counseling or she was leaving and taking the kids with her. I didn’t want to lose her or the kids. That fear made it possible for me to agree to counseling. During the counseling process I came to admit I had a problem and I had no control over it. It had been in my life for so long I had just come to accept it most of the time. After all, it was serving a vital purpose in my life. It was keeping me from looking at me and who I thought I really was. I couldn’t even imagine not having that escape in my life. It was my fix, my drug. I needed it.

As a result of couples counseling, I investigated help for sexual addiction. I found Sex Addicts Anonymous and Sexaholics Anonymous. It was off to a 12 step recovery group. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t think it would or could help me. As I listened to the stories of others, I found myself doubting them and questioning their recovery. My efforts at abstinence always failed after just a few days. I kept going every week. If I thought I wasn’t getting help, at least my wife thought I was and that decreased the criticism and disappointment from her. In time, I was able to make more progress. It was always a fight and a struggle each and every day. I was able to share in the group sometimes and that was progress in itself. I had never told anyone my story or even ever shared much of what I thought or felt to anyone. However, the feelings I had about myself did not change. I always felt inadequate and incapable. I was aware that things in my life were in contradiction to those thoughts and feelings but that didn’t change the inescapable negative self image.  Continue to Pt.2

This is part one of a three part series. read Pt.2 here

I do not need to tell you about the barrage of temptations in cyberspace. Advertising, even on innocuous sites can be risqué to disgustingly perverted. Internet, as a logical entity, enticed me. I could spend days online without stop, and not even noticing it. The Internet is easy, but it is not right. After waking up to this, I took up Job’s covenant.  “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl.”  Job 31:1

But, how am I to grow these hedges? Could I just cut back here and there? Trim at the edges, till it is completely gone?  Would reducing the time and content over time, work?

For me, and those whom I talked about this, gradual cutbacks did not work.  I always found excuses to extend my time, to expand my searching and not get into the real world. Cyberspace is easy.

There was just one other solution left. Cold turkey. I mean flesh frozen, instant, absolute zero.

I knew I would have issues, slips and annoyances. What I did not want to do is permit myself leeway on the goal from the start. I knew that the closer I am to God, the less of a chance I have to stumble or fail.

Let me remind myself, that the Internet is a tool, that the LORD has given us. It is just like fire. We can cook and warm ourselves, or damage and kill with it. Our choices what makes the difference.

So, here is a list of things I did to help my on my journey. This is a non-exhaustive list, but my starting point. All of them can be done with little to no financial outlay.

No private screen – Location, location, location. If you are blessed to have a family, move all the screens to a location, where general traffic can see what you are surfing. There are few technical excuses why this cannot be done.  By moving it into a public and visible area, it helps with temptation.  On days when I am alone, I take my laptop and work in a cafe, or public library. I would hate to be caught in public, and I get kicked out when the place closes.

Limit usage – I could spend hours, nay, days on the computer, forget about food, my family and friends, unable to hear the telephone, and even bodily functions became a distracting annoyance.  Unless you are in the business of working with computers, there is no reason for anyone to stare at a computer screen for more than a few hours a day.  Set a drop dead time on the computer. Better filtering software packages also provide time limit enforcements.  I always thought I was an owl, spending nights after nights on the computer. Turns out I can get up at 6 in the morning, and can fall asleep by 10 at night.  I try not to touch the computer on weekends, holidays or vacation.

Filtering software – There are dozens of these packages available, some even free. None are perfect, but they block most inappropriate sites, advertisements and track various Internet activities.  I also use advertising blockers, and have redundant solutions. The combination of things should reduce not just inappropriate material but speed up my regular surfing, and reduce my security risks. Look for a filtering software which sends periodic e-mail reports or provides a portal to accountability partners.

Limit chat – Chat programs and sites, specially group chat programs are dangerous territory for men.  There is little control who else is on that chat. There is little control over what is said. There is little control on the validity of the content. Anonymity tends to push the boundaries, pretending to protect our lies. Limit this activity to get that grocery list from your wife, or address for the Saturday potluck church party.

Avoid spam – I know it is very hard not to get spam. I am not talking about blocking it, or filtering it, although that is very important for many reasons. What is crucial, is not to follow up or look through them.  Those subject titles are often made to tantalize you. Just like Joseph from Potiphar’s wife, we need to run as fast as possible. Delete them.

Addiction - Addiction to the Internet, Internet pornography, online gaming, chats and alike is not a figment of our imagination. Check, and double check yourself. Am I spending too much time on the Internet, whatever the excuse is? Am I bored when I am not on the ‘net? Am I behaving differently online, than in the real world? Go outside. Ask family members about you.  What do they say? If you are obsessed, you need help.  Meet people face to face. Enjoy life amongst your brethren.

Cell phone parental control – yes, some vendors can do it.  Most of us have moved on to Internet enabled telephones.  Whatever you call your gadget, remember that there are filtering solutions for these devices and need to be enabled.

TV – I … got rid of mine, for now at least. That might be a bit extreme to most, so I suggest the following – do set that parental control, and set it PG-13.  Order Netflix. I became a big fan of Netflix since I have no TV, and my kids demand some entertainment when we are shut-in.  I can stream some great classics, and order DVDs, yet control the content with extreme prejudice.

Entrust your brothers – Have your brothers in Christ receive your filtering software or accountability report.  Becoming accountable to them is an annoyance at first, but the fruit of the relationships grown from it worth it. Knowing that I can discuss my struggles and not be denigrated is freeing.  My layman suggestion is that your accountability partner is a male, and not a family member.

As I said before, this is not an exhaustive list, and a perfect solution for everyone. It is a template to think about, and to review.  You don’t have to be an addict or have an obsession to follow a prudent path.

This past fall, reflecting on this day four and a half years ago, Summers said he was at one of the lowest points of his life from his drug and alcohol use. “Every day was the worst day of my life,” he said. “I was barely surviving.”

Sitting just feet away from where he had pondered taking his life, Summers casually slurped down a bowl of Ramen noodles and talked about his rehabilitation in between spoonfuls. Wearing ripped jeans and a black T-shirt from Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker’s clothing line, he propped up his long legs on the chair next to him. “I feel pretty good about myself” now, he said, later adding, “If I didn’t have my faith, I wouldn’t have my sobriety.”

Summers, 23, of Youngstown, Ohio, is one in a relatively small number of young men nationwide who are receiving help for their addictions.
A recent survey on drug use by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that of the 23.2 million people over 11 who needed treatment for substance abuse and addiction in 2007, only 2.4 million, or about 10 percent, actually went to a treatment facility. The report said substance dependence or abuse was twice as high in men compared with women, and those between 18 and 25 were the largest age group affected.
For those who actually receive help, maintaining sobriety is another hurdle.
Another HHS report stated that 46 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds being admitted for substance abuse treatment in 2006 were repeat admissions.

Learning how to survive addiction is a challenge for young men, said Don Lewis, Director of the San Cristobal Academy, a group home for young men facing problems with substance abuse, among other issues, based on Taos, N.M. “You always hear about rehabilitation. Well that’s the man in his 40s,” he said. “He has those coping skills somewhere in the past to be able to allow him to function on a daily basis in society.” He added, “All the rest of that still weighs on these young men.”

Experts have recently been calling attention to the struggles with addiction that young males face. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a philanthropy based in Princeton, N.J., sponsored a global competition last year to reach what it referred to as young men “at risk.” The foundation offered funding to organizations coming up with solutions to combat issues affecting this demographic, including addiction and mental health care.

For Summers, recovery did not come easy. His drugs of choice – alcohol, cocaine and marijuana – had led him down a treacherous road. But his faith, his relationship with a recovered addict in his ‘40s and his attendance at a rehabilitation facility helped him change his life.

The first time Summers drank, after sneaking into his parents’ liquor cabinet at age 12, his father found him the next morning lying unconscious in a pool of his own vomit in the living room. After a cooling off period, Summers began his high school years regularly drinking and smoking marijuana. “If I didn’t smoke weed, I didn’t feel normal,” he said.

Heavy drinking led to a DUI arrest and charges of disorderly conduct during his freshman year at Youngstown State University. The next year, he added cocaine to the mix, snorting nearly every day. Summers ended up totaling his car and losing over $2,000 on a gambling-cocaine binge. “I lost complete control,” he said. “Everything that happened in my life was self inflicted.”

During the spring of his sophomore year at YSU, amid his drug and alcohol use, Summers sank into a deep depression. He had trouble concentrating in school and withdrew from friends and family. Instead of attending class, he slept in the stalls of the men’s restroom.

tFriends would rap on the door of his home, wondering where he had retreated, but Summers never moved from the couch in his living room, where he spent most of his time. Sometimes he went days without showering. “I would wake up every day and feel worse than the day before,” he said. “I just wanted it to end.”
James Helmuth, a psychologist and chemical dependency counselor in Akron, said addiction often leads to depression, when people become “so frustrated at living” that they lose all sense of hope. He said discouragement becomes despair and then withdrawal from others, which can be the beginning of clinical depression and result in suicide attempts.

Summers finally reached his breaking point in the fall of 2004. While he could not pierce his skin with the knife, he was able to down a bottle of No-Doz and Advil. He sat in the campus library waiting to die as sweat trickled down his forehead. Other than feeling like hell, nothing happened. “I’m such a screw-up and can’t even kill myself,” he thought.

In the spring of 2005, after unsuccessful recovery attempts through Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, two trips to a psychiatric ward and an outpatient program, Summers said he knew he needed a change.  Help came from an unusual place – a religious retreat with men more than twice his age.

After seeing other men, including his uncle, attend a religious “renewal” at St. Christine’s parish in Youngstown, Summers decided to give it a try. The first morning of the retreat, after hearing one of the men give a talk, Summers spotted Joe Dunlap, a recovered addict whom he had heard helped others. With red hair and arms the size of basketballs, Summers said, Dunlap looked a bit threatening. “He’s not somebody you would want to get upset.”

While feeling timid at first, Summers eventually walked over to Dunlap. Before he knew it, he was sharing his story. “He said something like, ‘You gotta pull God through your sobriety, and if you don’t pull God through your sobriety, you won’t stay sober,” Summers said. “He gave me this calming feeling – that if I continued to build a relationship with him, that eventually, I was going to be successful in sobriety.”

Dunlap, 45, a superintendent at the Youngstown water department, said he knew when he met Summers that the journey would not be easy. “I knew that was going to be a challenge going in,” he said. “The struggles that Scottie would face, or anybody young … is that they think, ‘Oh no, my life is over. I can never drink again. I can never have fun. I can never be a young adult.’ But you can. I’ve had the most fun since I’ve been clean and sober that I’ve ever had in my entire life.”

Dunlap said that at the time of the renewal, Summers did not know if he was ready to give up drinking, being that he was just shy of 21. “Well thank God for that,” Dunlap said. “If I had only got it when I was 20 or 21, I would have avoided a whole lot of misery.”

Summers’ struggles did not end after meeting Dunlap, however. This was just the beginning of his recovery. After approximately eight months of sobriety, working a 12-step program with Dunlap and spending his 21st birthday playing golf with his dad, Summers relapsed. “They say you relapse in your head way before you actually do it,” he said.

In October 2005, Summers said he began to reason with himself that maybe he could have a drink. He knew he had been addicted to cocaine, but maybe alcohol was OK.

One Thursday night, he went out with a friend to a downtown bar called Jay Jay’s and met two girls. One of them ordered a round of shots. Summers hesitated before grabbing the glass. “I thought about it for a moment,” he said. “I couldn’t believe I was going to ruin my sobriety.” But then he thought, “She’s buying a shot for me. It would be rude to turn it down.” He took his first drink in eight months, and they all laughed about it.

That night, Summers added five beers to the mix and thought to himself, “This is manageable.” He was wrong. A handful of beers turned into getting drunk and high with friends almost every night.

One of the biggest hurdles young men face after treatment for drug and alcohol dependence is the social scene, said Susan Gatsos, a substance abuse counselor in Fairfax, Va., who has worked with young male addicts. “If that was their whole life, then they have to learn some new stuff and be able to get comfortable with being somebody at a bar with their friends that orders club soda,” she said.

Amid his partying, Summers began taking money from his parents and selling their possessions to pay for his habits. “We knew he was stealing,” Scott Summers, Sr., said. “We just sensed that he had a problem, and we didn’t know how severe the problem was.”

He also stopped calling Dunlap. “When you quit hearing from somebody, you know something’s going on,” Dunlap said.

Summer, Sr., and his wife, Cheryl, decided to take drastic measures. On November 29, 2005, they told their son they were going to have him arrested for theft unless he went to the Glenbeigh rehabilitation facility near Cleveland. “We felt he was out of control,” Summers, Sr., said, “and we felt that was our last resort, our last hope.” Begrudgingly, Summers agreed to go.

Brad Price, the clinical director at Glenbeigh who is also a recovered addict, said individuals like Summers do not often relapse because of major life events. “Addicts don’t relapse because they run into mountains,” he said. “We relapse because we trip over mole hills.” He added, “We start cutting corners, cut down on meeting attendance, stop AA, stop talking to sponsors, hang out at the places where we used. When that impulse to get high hits, we’ve dismantled that support structure that allowed us to stay sober.”

After arriving at the facility, Summers said he hugged his parents good-bye and took a drug test before settling into his hospital-like bedroom. The next day, after attending several group meetings and talking with his counselor, Summers said he began feeling different.

“I don’t want to live like this anymore,” he said to himself. Then, everything clicked.
“I’m in bed one night,” he said, and began to think, “I gotta do this. I’m going to take control of my life.”

Summers said he got out of bed and knelt down on the cement floor with a thin layer of carpeting, wincing from the pain. Facing the bed, he propped up his elbows and clasped his hands. “I prayed so hard,” he said. “God, just please help me stay sober, whatever it takes. Just take this away from me. I can’t do this alone.” Then came redemption.

“All of a sudden – I don’t know how to describe it,” he said. “I had a new outlook on life.” This time, the sobriety stuck.

Summers began attending AA regularly, repaired his relationship with his parents, dropped old friends who used and began to finish his 12-step program with Dunlap.

Summers, Sr., who lost his father on the eve of his 5th birthday from drunk driving, said he regained his best friend. “He is so strong right now,” he said. “I idolize him. He’s really turned his life around.”
Back in the suburbs of Youngstown, several designer T-shirts were spread out on Summers’ bed, drying after being washed. A Dave Matthews Band poster hung over the headboard. A book on Alcoholics Anonymous and a Bible sat on his bedside stand.

Summers was excited. He was preparing to speak at a men’s religious retreat in February. He said he had bonded with the older men on the renewal team, some of whom were recovered addicts. “I find myself being able to have good conversations and sometimes even better conversations with guys that may be in their 40s and 50s,” he said. “I could talk to any one of them, any time, about anything.”

Summers said that at times he continues to struggle with his sobriety, especially when he goes out to the bars with his younger friends. “Sometimes I think, ‘Wow, that beer looks really good. That would really hit the spot right now. I wish I could, but I know I can’t. And that’s fine.’”

Still, he remained optimistic about the future.

“Every day may not be the greatest day,” he said, “but as long as I stay sober, it’s a good day.”