I reflect over the last couple of years and have come a long way. I went to the edge of sex and drug addiction and came back. I looked right over that edge and skated the rim, but by the grace of God never fell, never abandoned myself like I did in my younger days. I identify with AA because I am 20 years sober, but it’s hard to identify with NA being only a few months clean. I can identify with being 20 years clean from heroin, meth, coke etc, but that goes over like a lead balloon at NA. And it feels a bit disrespectful to their total abstinence model.
I identify even less with SLAA and people sharing being powerless over letting some dude suck their cock in a public toilet or not being able to stop jerking off to porn in the next room to your wife. I haven’t been to one of those meetings for years. I thought I might have to, but since getting into a committed relationship my sex addiction has disappeared. I would be naive to think it has gone for ever, but for now it’s a problem I just don’t have.
The novelty of being rich has passed. I still love my BMW, but it no longer gives me that special feeling. I live in the renovated mezzanine of my warehouse and enjoy all the nice new furniture, but it’s still a warehouse. I’m ok with that and have no desire for a big house in the short-term. You don’t even get much for a million dollars in this market. What I would spend on the repayments we have decided to invest into continuing to fix up this place. We just added a room for my 13 year old daughter who says she wants to live here and even enrol in school here – we will see if she goes to class. I have leased the warehouse next door so have plenty of storage and can convert more of the storage space here into living areas. Ricky wants a big walk in wardrobe, combined nursery for when we have a baby. It will be nice to be able to build that for her.
I have fear around not making her happy. I feel like a pussy saying that. I don’t want to disappoint her. We spent our Saturday’s inspecting houses because I wanted to get a feel for the market and I also found that it made us ask ourselves questions about our potential living space that we wouldn’t have otherwise asked. As you walk though you imagine yourself living there and get a feel for what you want. She would hate most them, but then fall in love with one and be disappointed that we weren’t in a position yet to buy. It’s an emotional journey.
Then the owners of the house we were living in wanted to sell and we weren’t keen on showing people through our home so we moved back into the warehouse while we decided what we wanted to do. The move was challenging since we needed to finish the renovation and furnish the warehouse while move out of the rented place – such quality problems. Anyway, we are enjoying living in the warehouse more than we thought and she isn’t keen for another move so we have decided to stay here for the foreseeable.
I feel like I dodged another debtor bullet. I was prepared to buy her a million plus dollar house just so she wasn’t disappointed. I wanted the esteem and feeling special of a house that signified I was a success. I had the car, the wife, and now I would have the house. Oh, how the disease manifests. I suppose DA recovery is about dodging bullets. I will likely always have moments of insane thinking around my finances. The beauty of the program is that that I will catch them in time. I will be restored to sanity before it’s too late.
It happened with drugs again last week. I hurt my back and resorted to codeine which I rarely take. That didn’t take the pain away so I took a Tramadol, which I take even less often. That took the pain away and I enjoyed the high – which I knew I would. Oh, the sweet warm blanket of pain killers. I know how addictive it is after getting mild withdrawals after only 3 days a few years ago so I figured I had a 2 day window and hoped the pain would be gone by then. I took it for 2 days and then stopped, but the pain was still there. And my head was messy because of the tramadol. Even though I didn’t have any physical withdrawals, I think I had emotional ones. Ricky got the shits because I became unavailable and cold. She said it was like a few days after one of our psychedelic parties.
To make the timing even worse it was school holidays and I had both daughters here. I hardly see the 10 year old and I was looking really forward to spending a whole week with her. But I rendered myself completely emotionally unavailable. Then we got a lockdown so I couldn’t even go to face to face meetings. Poor me, poor me. Not really. It passed. I stayed clean, went to online meetings, prayed to God, wrote my blog, my back got better, and I spent a bit more time with the kids. In prayer I realised once again that God was in charge – Tramadol will tend to make you forgot that. And that things had happened for a reason that was above my pay grade to understand. An important lesson was the pain would have been better than the Tramadol.
And so I stayed clean and didn’t manipulate my way into borrowing a million dollars for a house to show how successful I was. But now I want to spend all my money on crypto….
Red Pill Recovery 