Counting One Day at a Time

 

Last night, today, an awful damaged rotator cuff pain, and yes, as a seventy-three-year-old 12 Step recovering alcoholic, drug addict, food addict and sex and porn addict, I do my best to keep a clear head. But the level seven on the one to ten pain scale demanded relief measures. So, I swallowed the pain killer pills; got skyrocketed into a drug like high. And it drove me to a place of reflection about my body. Deprived of level headedness, I laid in bed, and my body embarked on its craving for a happy ending massage. Radical honesty. It’s emphasized repeatedly in the AA Big Book as an absolute prerequisite in order to recover from addiction. What’s my radical honesty now? I don’t care how much numbing myself with pain killers endangers my SPAA defined sobriety status ---no looking at pornography, no masturbation, and no sex outside of a committed relationship.

However, I lock and jail these addictions, a day at a time, and the counter statistics echo the handiwork of a Miracle Maker, the concept of my Higher Power--- The Triune God. No alcohol: 6 years, 11 months and 18 days. No marijuana: 209 days. No SPAA slips: 88 days. No compulsive eating: 88 days

This Power greater than myself abounds also in the following communities of recovery and their meetings in which I participate. Overeaters Anonymous, Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous. Although not often, but as well… Narcotics Anonymous.

If I had gone out to get the happy ending massage, if I had consented, since addictions are progressive, I would have been in deeper pits of black tar sex addiction than ever those pits of black had been in past decades. $25,000 on American Express during one week end at Mustang Ranch in Nevada. Pitiable and incomprehensible demoralization. The abyss. But by the grace of God, no. A grace unmerited and without which I would have probably overdosed myself to death or committed suicide. Instead, today, I listened to member shares at AA and SPAA meetings… and learned and empathized.  I prayed for 15 minutes, I listened to an online Catholic Mass, I danced to exercise music for twenty minutes, and I practiced Spanish for 15 minutes. By the way, my body DID NOT want me to practice my audio daily Spanish lesson. My body rarely does. But I do sense the good type dopamine of feelings of self-fulfillment engendered when I find myself talking in Spanish with an Ecuadorian, mostly being understood and mostly understanding. (A Californian, I have lived in Ecuador a decade)

When I work the SPAA program, thus decreasing the frequency and intensities of my objectifying women…I then can experience whatever it’s like to getting to know a female human being as the human being she is.