Archive for the 'Addiction and mental illness' Category

Spared from relapse: of divorce, sex addiction, and angels in hoodies

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 04, 2010
in Addiction and mental illness, Divorce, Memories and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 16 Comments

I got an email yesterday, asking me about advice for dating again after a divorce. It’s a post I intend to get to next week.

But something in the query reminded me of an another question I’d been asked by a mentee of mine. The mentee asked “Since you got sober and had your conversion, have you ever come really close to slipping back into old behavior?” The answer I gave dovetails with that of what one does after a divorce. I’ll share a story.

It was summer 2002. My third wife, E., had told me she didn’t want to be married to me anymore. E and I had met online (Matchmaker.com) in January 2000; she was finishing her doctorate at Fuller Seminary, I was 18 months sober and falling in love with Christ all over again. She had never been married before. I was eager to build a life with someone who shared my faith, shared my values, and was willing to accept a very troubled and turbulent past. E and I moved quickly; we were engaged within weeks and married in early 2001.

As I’ve written before, my third wife and I had terrific intellectual and theological compatibility. We also had very little physical chemistry. I saw that as a plus. I had grown mistrustful of “heat” with another person — in my experience over the course of many years and many relationships, the most intense sexual relationships were invariably the most unhealthy. I ought to have known better, but at this stage of my recovery, I equated heat with danger. I thought of the line I’m too lazy too look up (but I think it’s from one of the translations of Medea), the one in which a Greek chorus prays for a “small fire” of love, just enough to warm a house — but not a big fire, which will invariably burn the house down. Having burned down many houses, as it were, I was ready for something different.

My third wife did me the great favor of leaving me. We were not cruel or unfaithful or dishonest. We were incompatible in a very basic way, a way that could not be overlooked. She was unwilling to settle for kindness and conversation alone; she wanted passion, and that was something we could not generate. She promised me that I would thank her someday for leaving. I have done so. She is remarried, as am I. I hope that her new marriage is joyous.

In any case, back to 2002. I was heartbroken when E left. I also experienced a brief crisis of doubt. I doubted God. I doubted the wisdom of staying sober. The perfect narrative of fall and recovery had been shattered; I wasn’t supposed to get divorced again, not now that I was sober and faithful. In my mind, I had done “everything right this time” and still things hadn’t worked out. And as a consequence, I began to flirt with the idea of going back to old behavior. I don’t mean drinking again — that option wasn’t on the table. I meant returning to casual promiscuity.

I moved out of the home E and I shared in early October, 2002. I had rented a small apartment a few miles away. And I had a date lined up for that first weekend with a woman I’d known for years. To heck with celibacy again, I thought; I’d done that as a healing tool before. What I wanted was new skin. I was in danger of going back to a pattern I’d stayed away from for many years.

But I never went on that date. The day before I moved out, one of my favorite students, Katie, came to my office. Katie had taken a few of my classes, and regularly visited me in office hours. Katie had been “out” for quite some time; she had been in the first gay and lesbian history course I had taught at PCC. Katie had been dating her girlfriend, Jackie — whom I knew vaguely but who hadn’t been my student — for about six months.

Katie was in tears. She told me that Jackie had been chronically unfaithful to her. Jackie was sexually compulsive, she said, hooking up with and having nearly-anonymous sexual encounters with both men and women. Jackie kept pledging to stop — and kept breaking those promises. She had begged Katie to stand by her, and Katie had tried, but was now at wits end. “I’m ready to leave”, Katie told me. “But I was wondering if you would be willing to reach out to Jackie. I know your story, and I know you went through some of these same issues. I trust you, Hugo, and I was wondering if you could take Jackie to some meetings and see if you could help her.” Continue reading ‘Spared from relapse: of divorce, sex addiction, and angels in hoodies’

In the script, sincerity

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 23, 2010
in Addiction and mental illness
. 2 Comments

Count me among those who watched and was moved by Tiger Woods’ statement last Friday.

I didn’t see it live, but watched the replay twice. I watched with the eyes of someone who has spent years in and around Twelve Step programs, someone who has been graced with double-digit years of recovery from a disease that nearly killed me. I watched as someone who experienced a wide variety of addictions ranging from alcohol to drugs to sex to food to exercise. I watched, and was struck by how far Woods was from other celebrities caught in similar scandals — his contrition was absolute rather than conditional, his willingness to recognize his own grandiosity spot on and welcome.

It was scripted, of course. But we make a huge mistake when we imagine that a rigid dichotomy exists between the “scripted” and the “heartfelt”. Indeed, in my experience, reading a statement of amends aloud was invariably more sincere. For those of us who have struggled with what might be called sex addiction, we are accustomed to seductive behavior. I learned early on that I can write from the heart more easily than I can speak from it. As someone who is very comfortable — perhaps too comfortable — speaking extemporaneously, I know that if I start making it up as I go along, I will tend to shape my words and my cadence and my rhythm in ways that I hope will get a specific reaction. Years of acting and improvisational work and years in the classroom have made me an stute reader of audiences — if I can deviate from a script, I usually will. That is particularly true when I’m conveying something difficult and painful.

My Twelve Step sponsors not only made me write things down, they made me write out the amends I was to make. The late Jack Kissell insisted that I not deviate from a written script when I made amends. He was a stage actor, and saw in his sponsee that same performer’s need to pander to an audience. He asked me to write out my amends statements, and read them to him first — and then, if the time was right, read them verbatim and without embellishment to the persons who needed to hear ‘em. For me — and I suspect for most of us accustomed to getting what we want through the application of talk and charm — there is much to be said for the honest virtue of a simple script from which no deviation is possible! And when I saw and heard Tiger reading his statement last week, I thought I saw a fellow addict doing exactly the right thing at this stage of what will be a long recovery.

Sex addiction is real. I’ve been addicted to many things: drugs (prescribed and illicit); alcohol; pornography; sex; sugar; dieting and compulsive exercise. For me, addiction has both a physical and a mental component; as the AA Big Book puts it, it is always both “an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind.” I’ve experienced the cravings as pressing physical imperatives, and I’ve experienced them also as psychological obsessions that will not release their grip. What was true of opiates was true of affairs with women; what was true of vodka became true of the need to run and run and run and run. Addictions move laterally as we grow. Letting go of all of them is a very, very long process. And sex certainly deserves to be considered an addiction in the same category as addiction to alcohol or opiods - the compulsion is similar in its inexorable demand, and the damage the addiction wreaks is no less great.

So, two cheers for Tiger. When you’ve been proved a fraud and a liar, when you realize that you’ve become so tangled in a self-spun web of deceit that even those who love you most can no longer trust you, you’re near your bottom. And when you get to that bottom and you ask for help, when you let others who know better guide every facet of your recovery process, when each day becomes simply about doing the next right thing — then, then, then you are available for the miracle. It’s no guarantor of forgiveness; I’ve lost more than one marriage to my compulsiveness. Sometimes folks forgive you but still can’t love you; sometimes they still love you but can’t live with you. Your recovery must progress regardless. I learned all that, and by some strange grace, I still remember that lesson.

In his discomfort as he stood before many of his loved ones, reading haltingly from a prepared script, Tiger looked and sounded genuine to me. We who spent years having only a passing relationship with the truth will never convince everyone we have at last found sincerity. But when we do as he did last Friday, and read from a text in which we accept full responsibility for actions that have no excuse, we’re taking one giant step forward. Here’s hoping that the fierce urgency of the newly sober remains for Tiger in the months and years to come. And here’s giving thanks that after so many wrong things, he’s done the next right one — and done so in a way that is congruent with the most effective and life-transforming recovery strategies known.

“I’ll show you!” Of fidelity, reciprocity, drunkenness, and fear

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 10, 2010
in Addiction and mental illness, Memories, Relationships, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 31 Comments

I got a note from a former student of mine last week. Sophrosyne writes:

I know it has been a while since I’ve spoke to you, but I am going to lose my mind or at least it feels like it. I have been dating this man for seven months and two weeks ago I made the mistake of driving drunk. This is an extremely sensitive issue for him because three years ago he lost a girlfriend (she got hit by a drunk driver while driving) and a best friend (similar scenario). I know it was a terrible mistake to make, it was something I’d never done before and am quite sure I will never, ever do again. I didn’t get caught or into an accident, and that is a miracle. But my boyfriend found out anyway.

Ever since the incident he has been very upset with me. He has remained in the relationship, but I feel that he is being very disrespectful. He has been hanging out with past lovers and ex-girlfriends, spending lots of time with them on the phone and in-person (something he had agreed not to do when we got together.) I don’t know what to do or think. He tells me he loves me, but I feel like I am being punished. I made the decision to give him one month as of February 1st to either try to forgive me and move forward or I will walk away from him.

I feel like a fool for tolerating his behavior, but at the same time I did make a mistake. In his mind, he feels that driving drunk is worse than cheating. I need advice…I am having difficulty sleeping, eating, studying, just functioning. I don’t know what to do.

Soph gets that she made a mistake, one that could have had deadly consequences. Since she gives her word it was a one-off, I don’t know that there’s much more that can be said about her drink driving incident.

Many years ago, when I was much younger and far more willful than I am now, I behaved similarly with a girlfriend of mine. “Ethel” and I had met in a sober living house, and despite warnings from those who knew our fragile state better than we, we embarked on an instant and intense relationship. We ended up spending eighteen months together on and off, moving into our own place when we were both thrown out of the sober living situation. As it turned out, I had an easier time getting sober than she did (though this was long before my last relapse in 1998). While I began to put weeks and months together, Ethel had a hard time staying clean for more than a few days at a time. For the first time in my life, I found myself in a co-dependent relationship with an addict whose disease was, at least in its obvious manifestations, worse than my own. I drove home from school each day, my stomach in knots, wondering if Ethel would be sober — and if not, in what condition she and our little apartment would be.

Eventually, I started cheating on Ethel. My rationalization was much the same as that of Soph’s boyfriend: I was giving myself some emotional protection from hurt by seeking consolation with others. Ethel found out (when it came to covering up my infidelities, I was about as subtle as a kibbutznik at a D.A.R. convention). We had volcanic arguments. I justified my cheating by pointing to her drinking, suggesting that if she wanted me to be faithful, she needed to be sober. I insisted that I was entitled to a quid pro quo relationship (I remember that even as I made it, the argument sounded false, ugly, and hollow.) Ethel pointed out that the thought of me sleeping around was hardly an encouragement to get sober. And on it went, month after month. I “cheated at” Ethel; she “drank at” me. It was one of the more painful relationships of my life, both because I was (despite my inability to live up to any sort of commitment) desperately in love with Ethel, and because I was choking on my own sense of fraudulence and narcissism.

Soph and her boyfriend aren’t quite where Ethel and I were. But it seems clear that he too is using the “quid pro quo” argument; he too is “cheating at” his girlfriend. Soph is not chronically drink-driving (something Ethel did with alarming regularity, even after her license was suspended), but she is being punished just the same. Of course, her boyfriend’s fears are powerful, linked as they are to his own painful memories of loss. Many of us respond to fear by trying to anesthetize ourselves, which is one reason why I so regularly cheated on Ethel. Flirtation and intrigue with others outside of our primary relationship, even if physical sex doesn’t take place, is a powerful prophylaxis against getting hurt — it is a marvelously passive-aggressive response. On some level, Soph’s boyfriend probably knows that he is dodging the issue and taking the easy way out, and I suspect that stings him.

Fidelity, for the umpteenth time, is not just a promise to a partner. It’s a promise to ourselves: a promise that we are not the sort of person who will quickly turn into a liar or a cheat. Obviously, if a relationship comes to a clear and final end, then the expectation of fidelity ends with it. But while a monogamous relationship continues, part of being a grown-up is not making one’s fidelity contingent on the other person’s day-to-day behavior. If my wife is cross with me, or annoys me in some way, I am not justified in seeking sexual or romantic solace with someone who will, ahem, “understand.” The whole “I’ll show you!” aspect of conditional monogamy is not only juvenile and reflective of an incomplete understanding of what a relationship requires, it is clear and incontrovertible evidence of fear and the inability to self-soothe. Soph’s boyfriend is entitled to be angry that she drove while drunk. He is entitled to share with her his own particular reasons for reacting so strongly to the incident. And she does owe him a promise that it won’t happen again.

But Sophrosyne doesn’t owe her beau her patience while he displaces his anger and anxiety into flirtations, intrigues, or worse with his exes. Her mistake is not a justification for his abrogation of his commitment to put all of his romantic and sexual energy into her. And despite her serious error, she has not lost her right to demand that he not only bring her all of that energy, but bring her his pain and fear and his truth as well.

What does kill us can’t make us stronger: a note on youth, drugs, and mentoring

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 15, 2009
in Addiction and mental illness, Memories and Mentoring
. 10 Comments

The front pages of both the Pasadena Star-News and the Los Angeles Times today have major articles on the death of Aydin Salek, a popular and promising senior at South Pasadena High School who succumbed to apparent alcohol poisoning after a weekend party. Salek, the son of Iranian immigrants, represented his entire high school on the local board of education, was a staff writer for the student newspaper, and was widely regarded as a leader of his class. He died after consuming a large but undisclosed amount of alcohol; one factor in his death may have been that his friends, worried about getting in trouble for drinking underage, initially transported him by car to the house of another friend whom they thought knew CPR, rather than taking him directly to the hospital. An investigation continues.

I didn’t know the boy, but am confident that many kids I know did; many of my students here at the college come from South Pas, as it’s known, and that school was a major feeder into the All Saints youth program which I helped lead for seven years.

Of course, it’s an unspeakable tragedy to have a child die young. If I were inclined to turn this post into social commentary, I would note that the death of a student leader at a middle-class suburban high school receives front-page attention across the region, while deaths due to drugs, alcohol, suicide or homicide among the student bodies at less prosperous institutions happen on a weekly (if not daily) basis in Los Angeles County, but almost never make the front pages. (The Los Angeles Times this morning even printed a timeline of the final hours of Salek’s life. The last time Southern California’s paper of record offered something similar about an overdose was the day after Michael Jackson died.) If I were the parent of, say, a Hispanic or black teen in South Los Angeles who had died in a similar manner — and whose death was noted in a single sentence deep within the paper — I might be a bit miffed at the rather obvious classism of the Salek coverage.

But I’m not going to belabor the point; the Salek family doesn’t need anyone suggesting that their grief is undeserving of respectful coverage.

What I’d like to post on, briefly, is the heartbreaking reality that on some occasions, a single mistake can indeed ruin or even end a life. I blog a great deal about the resilience of young people (and of human beings in general). I’ve railed against the myths of male weakness and of female frailty. I’ve seen the damage done by baby-boomer “helicopter parents” who infantilize their teenage children, and — against all historical evidence — imagine that this generation of adolescents face greater peril than any before. I’ve seen time and again how well-meaning parental concern becomes a teen’s crippling, even incapacitating anxiety. Empowering young people means allowing them to risk more and more each year that they grow; healthy parenting (as I am beginning to learn firsthand) means resisting the powerful urge to cover the child in bubblewrap.

I’ve written many times about my own life, noting that I abused alcohol and drugs for many years, starting in high school when I was considerably younger than Aydin Salek. My drinking career began at a high school party in April 1982, and ended sixteen years turbulent years later. I was hospitalized many times, had my stomach pumped again and again, catheters and IVs inserted up and down my body. Recklessly and willfully and episodically, I put toxin after toxin into my system. My sexual habits were compulsive and undiscriminating, and though I ruined quite a few relationships and a couple of marriages as a result, my body remained strangely impervious to harm. I never “caught” an STI or HIV, when people who did far less than I did, did.

I talk about this narrative to stress the possibility of change and transformation, an enduring theme in my writing and my mentoring. I leave out details of the sort that seem overly titillating or likely to wound; I’m keenly aware that my daughter will someday wince at the words I write, and I do my best not to compound (in advance) her embarrassment. But I worry that the message that many of the young people I work with get from me is “You can survive anything, and therefore it’s okay to try anything. Look at Hugo — he screwed up six ways to Sunday and is now blissfully sober with his lovely wife and child. If he can make it through the drugs and the booze and the other compulsive acting-out behaviors, so can I.”

I like to attribute my survival to divine grace, excellent therapy, wonderful Twelve Step sponsors, and my own tenacious will to live. But the truth is that there’s another factor I’m less inclined to credit, and that’s pure old-fashioned luck. To be honest, “luck” doesn’t fit my worldview; it isn’t something I can encourage others to pursue, it isn’t something I can directly credit God or my therapists or my “program” for. If it could be drunk or snorted or smoked, I did, and I survived (though I needed a few urgent medical interventions along the way). I have — gratias deo ago, baruch hashem — no enduring physical or psychological damage to my body. I have scars a-plenty, but they are all on the surface. And the plain truth is that a great many people out there, including some I knew and loved, did the same things I did and they didn’t make it.

That we can survive anything isn’t a guarantee that we always will. Resilience varies, and what might kill one leaves another bruised and sick but otherwise unscathed. Those of us whose hearts were just a bit stronger, whose timing just a bit better, whose guardian angels a bit more attentive — we make a huge mistake when we look back on our lives and imagine that luck wasn’t a huge part of our survival. And when we talk to young people, who are often both a cynical and superstitious lot, we need to emphasize that our good fortune might not be theirs.

Many young people know Nietzsche’s famous maxim that “What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger” (Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker). I’ve never liked that much, which might be a surprise; Yeats came closer to the truth when he pointed out that “too long a suffering makes a stone of the heart.” I’ve seen people survive trauma but remain incapacitated by it physically and mentally for the rest of their lives. But the real problem with the Nietzsche maxim is that in order for the second part of the statement to come true, you need to manage not to die — and young people are, for all their surprising durability, not impervious to lethal substances — and other choices with lethal consequences.

We who were strong enough or lucky enough or graced enough to have both survived and thrived mustn’t reinforce the myth of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Yes, I have a certain amount of wisdom as a result of the life I’ve lived, but I’m not at all sure even now that I might not have turned out to be a better, kinder, and more successful human being had I been a little less reckless in my younger years. The pain I caused others left lasting injuries; even now, I suspect my mother still fears another phone call in the middle of the night. Though I did no lasting injury to body or mind or soul that I can discern, I can see the damage I inflicted in the people who still won’t speak to me after all these years, and in the flash of suspicion I see sometimes on the faces of my nearest and dearest.

Not every kid who drinks too much meets an unfortunate end like Aydin Salek. We must avoid hysterically overselling the risks; when we do, we earn the derision of young people who know better. (Think of the sex ed scenes from Mean Girls for an example.) At the same time, we mustn’t be too blasé about the fact that sometimes, some kids really do die doing things that others do with impunity. Striking that balance in a way that resonates with young people is at the heart of good mentoring, teaching, and coaching, and it is something to which I am re-committing myself today.

Jack Kissell, 1930-2009

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 19, 2009
in Addiction and mental illness and People
. 0 Comments

I read this morning of the death of Jack Kissell, a legendary figure in Southern California recovery circles, and my “sponsor” (on and off) for many years during the 1990s and the beginning of this decade.

Alcoholics Anonymous and the legion of Twelve Step programs that sprang forth from it have always insisted on, as the name implies, anonymity for its members. (In my writing, I’ve danced very close to the edge of “outing” myself, of course, but on this blog claim no membership in any particular organization.) For years, it has generally been understood that the anonymity requirement ended with death; it is common in public obituaries to note a long-standing period of sobriety in AA or other groups. Jack, who died at 79, died with 38 years sober.

In my recovery, I’ve had many sponsors. Two have stood out: my friend Jenia B., a woman just four years my senior but with (today) over a quarter century of sobriety who brought me into the heart of what is often called “the program”, and Jack Kissell, who took me through the twelve steps with insight and humor and Irish relentlessness. Jack sponsored hundreds of men and women around the country, and how he found time to talk so intimately and warmly with each is simply miraculous. For years, he and his beloved Jean lived in an apartment near the water in Redondo Beach. Time and again, I drove down to see him, to “read him my inventory” or talk about a specific problem. We always finished our conversations by moving from a discussion of sobriety to Jack’s second-favorite topic, Notre Dame football. I saw him on the stage many times in productions across Los Angeles; he was a delightful character actor who could, like so many sober alcoholics, perform both menace and vulnerability with ease.

I’ve referred to Jack before on this blog, never by his full name. It was Jack who taught me to “do the NEXT right thing”, who taught me what fidelity really looked like, and who gave me - at least for a short time — the gift of celibacy. And it was Jack who first taught me these lines:

If you want what you’ve never had, you have to become what you’ve never been. To become what you’ve never been, you’re gonna have to do what you’ve never done.

It is not the melodrama of a eulogy that leads me to note that I might very well not be alive without his wisdom, his kindness, and his love. Jack Kissell and I hadn’t spoken since 2000, after a foolish falling-out. (The fault was entirely mine, and I confess I held a entirely unjustified resentment against Jack for a long time.) I always meant to call him again, and never made the time. I am glad that while he was my sponsor, I was able to express my profound gratitude for his loving presence in my life, and glad that I am now able to give public credit where credit is due. I know that many folks have found comfort in things I’ve said or written that I learned from Jack, and they ought to know his full name.

We’re all on a journey, going through a process, and it would be far more lonely and far more terrifying without the wisdom of those just a bit further down the road. Jack’s gone farther along now, to the other country, and in due course, all whom he loved and sponsored will follow him there. But the good he did — for he was a very, very good man — will last, kept alive by the many he taught who will, over and over again, repeat his insights.

Sobriety, gratitude, and ambition

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 09, 2009
in Addiction and mental illness
. 5 Comments

I was talking with an old friend of mine recently, a fellow with whom I got sober many years ago. He and I both have double-digit years clean from drugs and alcohol. We spoke of how far we’d come, and shared memories of the “bad old days”. There’s an old maxim (perhaps from Cicero) about the delight one takes in remembering past sufferings, and addicts who have a long time clean and sober live the adage more fully than most. We’re not wistful for a painful past, mind you, merely keenly aware of how far it is that we’ve come. The swapping of old “war stories” serves to remind us of the miracle of recovery.

In the first few years of transformation after hitting rock bottom in 1998, I considered it a miracle that I was even alive and well, not in prison or confined to some other sort of institution. That I had kept my teaching job and even acquired tenure while leading such a dishonest and self-destructive existence seemed evidence of a huge portion of unmerited grace. I was overwhelmed by gratitude, and in case I got complacent or self-congratulatory, was surrounded by friends and family who reminded me of my past at every opportunity. As a result, I set modest goals for myself: keep my job, stay sober, “suit up and show up” for life. Eventually, the goals expanded to include the pursuit of an enduring and successful marriage. And in time, the goal grew further: to bring a child into this world. Everything I’ve wanted has come, though not without prayer and effort and disappointment along the way. For someone with my track record, with my history of mental illness and addiction, these are extraordinary blessings — and it would be unmitigated gall to ask for anything more.

But I also recognize that contentment is close cousin to complacency, and complacency doesn’t serve me (or most other addicts) well. I’ve got a job I love which provides income and fulfillment (a combination that eludes many). I’ve got a marriage and a healthy child and a community of friends. My extended family loves me and trusts me, and I them. But particularly since HCRS was born, I’ve felt within me this gnawing sense that there is more to be done, that I am in danger of not fully living up to my potential. It isn’t just about making more money, though that is perhaps part of it — it’s about the danger of not achieving all it is that I’m called to be. The as-yet unwritten books are clamoring to be composed, the more public life that I’ve alternately shunned and longed for urges me to think beyond the rhythms of the academic calendar and domestic duty, to put myself “out there” in new ways.

This growing ambition contends with another voice in my head. This voice reminds me, over and over again, of my troubled past. It doesn’t shame me; rather, it warns me not to overreach, not to push too hard, not to want too much. It asks: Where is your gratitude for all that you’ve accomplished? Where is your humility? Isn’t it enough to be healthy, employed at a job you still love, needed by family, adored by the miracle that is your daughter? It asks: What sort of hubris is it that says “I still want more”?

I don’t ever want to lose sight of how far it is I’ve come. Most people who’ve been handed the diagnoses I’ve been handed, who’ve struggled with the addictions I’ve struggled with, are not as blessed. Some of my old friends are dead; others are still in the grip of a disease that will not let them go. But I do not honor them by adopting a false modesty, a distorted humility. There is more to be done, much more to be done, and I am aware as I’ve never been before of the tragedy of unmet potential. I’m choosing now to push for “more” in every sense, even as I give fervent thanks for how far I’ve come. Gratitude is good, but not when it becomes an excuse to ignore the hunger to push on, to go further. For me, the hunger is to reach a wider audience and to be ever more creative in finding ways to do so. And I’m determined to silence the voice that says an addict like me has no right to ask for more.

A note on relapse

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 26, 2009
in Addiction and mental illness
. 4 Comments

Among my friends in recovery, and among some of the young people I mentor, there seems to be a small epidemic of “relapsing” going on. A “relapse” or a “slip” refers to a return to old, addictive or self-destructive behavior after a period of sobriety, abstinence, or healthier decision-making.

I’ve worked to give up many things in my life, behaviors or habits which were hurting me or those around me. Alcohol, drugs, self-injury, sexual acting-out — I’ve had years away from these, and have a considerable amount of what in Twelve Step circles is called “time” away from these. One day at a time, as they say, I work to keep my spiritual foundation strong and my boundaries in the places that they should be. I don’t struggle with a lot of temptation anymore around alcohol, drugs, or sex — though I’m not vain enough to believe that I’m incapable of a future slip in any of these areas. Continued growth, as they say, is contingent on regular (daily) spiritual and psychological maintenance.

I do have habits I have a harder time letting go of. Though I don’t smoke regularly any more, I’ve had the occasional cigarette a time or nine over the years, though none since Heloise was born. I’ve given up diet sodas again and again, and then gone back to them — my compulsive consumption of caffeinated aspartame is something I fight against on a daily basis, usually losing the struggle. And though veganism has been an easy lifestyle to adopt, it has by no means ended some of the binge/purge behaviors that have characterized my relationship with food and my body since puberty. (I don’t throw up or starve myself anymore, and that’s progress.)

One mentee went back to using internet pornography compulsively last week; another returned to an abusive relationship she had had some success in leaving. Other friends have relapsed on drugs after some time “clean”. And I’ve been pounding down more soda than usual. It’s been “relapse week” all around, and so I thought I’d write a bit on the topic.

Whatever it is you’re trying to give up, whether it’s a bad relationship or a destructive habit, relapse of one sort or another is going to be part of the recovery process. I often point out to people that I went to my first AA meeting in April 1987, when I was nineteen — and got sober “for good” (God willing) more than eleven years later, after years and years of going in and out of the program. Whether the issue was alcohol or drugs or cigarettes or unhealthy one-night stands or cutting myself, I didn’t succeed in giving up what was unhealthy the first time I tried. Depending on the behavior, I’d put together a few weeks or months or even years before, as a result of one setback or another, relapsing spectacularly. (I had six years clean and sober from alcohol and drugs between 1990-1996 before a major slip.) Continue reading ‘A note on relapse’

“Think it through”: a note on a tool for dealing with unwanted thoughts and fantasies

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 13, 2009
in Addiction and mental illness and Emotional and Sexual Boundaries
. 12 Comments

I mentor — and in 12 Step parlance, sponsor — a number of folks working to overcome various addictions. Part of any program of recovery is sharing what you’ve learned with those newer to the transformation than you. I’ve written often of the rule of three, which I see as central in my own progress. I make sure that every work (or almost every week) I connect with someone with more wisdom and experience and “time” than I have; a second person who is a peer both chronologically and experientially, and a third person, almost always much younger, who is just beginning recovery or a spiritual journey. Even for introverts, the rule of three can work (I’ve seen it).

One of the issues that came up a lot for me when I was getting sober from my various addictions (alcohol, drugs, sex, food, and so forth), was dealing with the intrusive thoughts about relapse. I struggled enormously with the compulsion to “act out”, and at times in my early recovery it seemed as if virtually every situation in which I found myself presented a fresh set of “triggers” designed to get me back into old and destructive behavior. I had plenty of relapses along the way. (I went to my first AA meeting in 1987, but didn’t get sober “for good” until 1998 — eleven years of walking in and out of a revolving door.) I made countless promises to stop drinking and using, and countless promises to be faithful to wives or girlfriends. I would cobble together weeks or months of recovery until I encountered a seemingly irresistible temptation of one sort or another (the “accidental” discovery of a large cache of benzodiazepines in a family medicine cabinet; a surprise encounter with an old flame or a fellow newbie in a recovery program), and I would “fall” again. And even as I put together large periods of abstinence from destructive and dishonest behaviors, I was tormented by dreams about using and intense fantasies about hooking up with unfamiliar, as yet unexplored skin.

My sponsor gave me a tool that is the point of this post, one that I share with those whom I mentor. When it comes to intrusive thoughts or seemingly irresistible fantasies about doing something that is almost certainly a bad idea, there’s no point in fighting the thought. Saying to oneself “don’t think about that” doesn’t work well. If one is told in a firm voice, “Don’t think about elephants!”, the first thing that pops into one’s mind is probably a pachyderm. Rather than fighting a futile, shame-filled battle against one’s fantasies, it makes more sense, my sponsor said, to give oneself permission to have the fantasy. But — and here’s the key — one doesn’t have permission not to think the fantasy all the way through. I was told that if I wanted to drink again, I could imagine the heat of the liquor in my throat, the soothing warmth in my belly, the delicious sense of calm suffusing my whole body. But, I wasn’t allowed to stop there. I had to continue the fantasy. I had to envision the nausea, the stumbling, the peeing on my self once I passed out. (Yes, I was a wet-the-bed drunk. I know, TMI.) I needed to continue the fantasy into the next day — the hangover, the guilt, the fear of seeing people again, the worry about the harm I had done, that awful sourness in my stomach and soul.

With thoughts about acting out sexually, I was told to do the same thing. I couldn’t just do the pleasant parts of imagining taking someone new in my arms for the first time, the taste of her mouth and the thrill of slipping the clothes from our bodies as we tumbled into beds, backseats, or bushes. I needed to think through the awkwardness to come, the fear of being discovered, the shame of knowing I had crossed a line (for the umpteenth time) I had sworn not to cross. I had to imagine not just the erotic aspects of a desired encounter, but all of the possible harsh, inescapable consequences. I couldn’t stop the fantasies half-way through, in other words; I was allowed to daydream all I liked, but only if I carried the reveries to their inevitable conclusions.

By the time I was given this tool, I’d had enough deceit-ridden hook-ups and binges that I couldn’t possibly have any serious illusions that the next time — if there were to be a next time — would be different than all the times before. I knew what was so sweet going down would be so vile coming back up; I knew what seemed so transcendentally ecstatic at 1:00 in the morning would leave me feeling empty and shame-filled twelve hours later. It was a great tool my sponsor gave me; it liberated me from the seemingly hopeless responsibility for policing my mind, but it forced me to introduce the reality of consequences into my fantasies. There was an element of psychological aikido to the idea; rather than resisting what seems so irresistible, I was told to flow with the thoughts as they came, and using the sheer force of their flow to carry them past the point where I would normally stop. I was liberated to want what I wanted — but only if I went past the point where I had initially wanted to go.

The tool worked for me. It helped diminish the urges by connecting cause and effect more clearly in my mind. The sort of temptations I struggled with a decade a more or ago rarely come to me now, but come they occasionally do. I don’t fight the thoughts that come, or shame myself for having them; I calmly let them wash over me, and I ride them like a wave that rolls all the way to the shore. I know that I can’t stop the fantasy before taking it all the way, to the ecstasy — and past it, to the devastating consequences beyond. I recommend this “think it through” tool to the young (and not so young) whom I mentor, whether they call themselves addicts or not. From what I hear, it often works nicely for them as well, and I thought I’d share it today on the blog.

Equally addictive, not equally pernicious: more epic fail from Mary Eberstadt

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 28, 2009
in Addiction and mental illness, Mass media and Porn
. 50 Comments

Mary Eberstadt is on a roll. A few months ago, she announced that “food was the new sex“, a conclusion I found historically inaccurate at best and deeply wrong-headed at worst. Clearly, however, our Mary has found what she regards as a fertile field; she’s back this month with Is Pornography the New Tobacco? (Since all good things seem to come in threes, prizes must go to those who guess the topic of her third installment. I’m tempted to write a first-century theological satire, based on debates among early Christians about changing purity laws: “Is Divorce the New Pork?”)

Like her food/sex thesis, Eberstadt’s suggestion that “Big Porn” mimics the earlier tactics of “Big Tobacco” seems alluringly insightful, but falls apart under scrutiny. She returns to her trope from the food-sex article by offering us “Betty” (a thirty-year old woman in the 1950s) and “Jennifer” (a contemporary thirty year-old) and contrasting their views on porn and tobacco.

Like many of her friends, and also like her husband Barney, Betty smokes cigarettes. She does so unselfconsciously and throughout the day — in the kitchen and most other rooms of the house, during her housecleaning, on the front steps, around the children, in the car, at the movies and in restaurants, even walking down the sidewalk. It’s not the sort of thing she gives much thought to, though when she does she sometimes feels conflicted. For Betty, the issue of tobacco may raise certain questions of expediency (she worries about the money she spends on it). She also wonders from time to time about its possible effect on her health, as people by 1958 are starting to talk about that too.

On the other hand, despite these occasional personal misgivings, Betty does not see smoking as a moral issue in its own right. It is rather, she believes, a matter of individual taste.

Jennifer, on the other hand, takes a similar stance on pornography:

On the one hand, like Betty, she does not think that this particular substance — in Jennifer’s case, pornography — poses any genuine moral issue. On the other, again like Betty, when she does stop to think about it she feels conflicted. From time to time, her boyfriend Jason has persuaded Jennifer into watching some together on the internet. On the outside, Jennifer goes along with this gracefully enough. On the inside, though, she is not so sure she likes it — more precisely, that she likes Jason liking it. One thing she is certain of is that Jason knows more about pornography than she does. She has more than once caught him unawares while he was watching it, and she’s overheard allusions to it among his friends.

Even so, and despite her occasional misgivings, about pornography as such Jennifer has the standard-issue generational opinion of her time. She is not a Kantian about it. She has her own personal likes and dislikes; she assumes everyone else does too. In sum, she does not think that pornography, when made by and for consenting adults, is morally wrong. She thinks it is a matter of individual taste.

Eberstadt is absolutely right that social mores change over time. This is not news. That which was unclean becomes clean; that which was permitted is now banned. (Think of the shift between the Torah and the New Testament on pork and divorce, for example, which I referenced above.) Of course, we have a responsibility to do more than accept social changes with a fatalistic shrug; we do need to be particularly critical about the ways in which our own sense of what is acceptable causes us to turn a blind eye to suffering. Continue reading ‘Equally addictive, not equally pernicious: more epic fail from Mary Eberstadt’

Father Joseph Martin, 1924-2009

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 16, 2009
in Addiction and mental illness, Father and People
. 0 Comments

Today would be my father’s 74th birthday. He’s been gone almost three years, and I think about him almost every day. That he never got to hold his granddaughter Heloise Cerys Raquel is a source of great sadness; the hope that I have that he sees her now is a great comfort. And most importantly, I pray that the gentleness he bequeathed to me comes through my words and my fingertips when I hold my baby girl.

Today I note the passing, too, of an influential figure in my recovery from addiction. Many an alcoholic or addict who went through treatment in the ’80s or ’90s will recognize the name “Father Martin”. Joseph Martin’s “chalk talks” about alcoholism, depression, and anger were marvelously insightful and comforting. His common-sense approach to the disease of alcoholism (and I remain a passionate adherent of the disease model) continues to shape how I think about my sobriety, though I haven’t seen any of his tapes in over a decade. Along with John Bradshaw and Leo Buscaglia, Father Martin was one of those popular (and often amateur) psychologists whose writing and whose VHS tapes were script and soundtrack for my recovery. Joe Martin saved a lot of lives, and made a lot of lives better. May there be joy and laughter as he comes to the far side of the Jordan.

Unlearning flirting and letting go of “feigned fascination”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 09, 2009
in Addiction and mental illness, Flirting, Memories, Physical affection, Relationships and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 19 Comments

I’ve worked with a mentee of mine for about a year who, while immensely bright, struggles with some sexual compulsivity issues. (Yes, this mentee is also in therapy; I’m not overstepping my role.) “Kelly” read this old post of mine about flirtation, and brought the subject up with me last week. Kelly asked: “How do I go about unlearning flirting? It’s like second nature to me, and it gets me in so much trouble.” I gave Kelly some tips, and thought I’d roll them into a post.

First off, I realize that when I talk about “unlearning flirting” it raises an obvious question: why would someone want to unlearn such a pleasurable and innocent pastime? For most people, flirting (once they figure out what it is) is exciting and pleasant; it offers an opportunity for thrilling little boosts to one’s self-esteem without great risk. It makes a lot of people feel just a bit more alive. Then again, the same might be said for alcohol. Some of my friends can take one or two drinks and stop; my experience over many years was that I couldn’t. I tried for years to drink in moderation, and failed spectacularly — all of my growth in the past decade or so has come since I became completely sober. No half measures for me in this area of my life. Kelly is someone also struggling with chemical dependency, but the primary addiction seems, to my experienced layperson’s eye, to be sexual compulsiveness. It is something with which I am all too familiar from my own life — and it is something which led me to conclude that at least for me (I speak for no one but a select group of my fellow addicts), flirtation was unhealthy and destructive.

I’ve written before about flirting, but never in detail about how I “unlearned it.” It was more difficult to do than quitting drinking, but for my recovery, just as essential. And the first step, of course, was acknowledging that flirting (or as I called it in Twelve Step programs, “intriguing” - used as a gerund) was making my life unmanageable. I was good at it, if by good we mean able to elicit positive responses from the folks with whom I flirted. I wasn’t always looking for sex itself (though I rarely turned that down); rather, I was looking for validation. The addict in me cared far more about ego gratification than about orgasm; knowing that I had aroused interest or desire was usually sufficient to satisfy me. At times, sex itself became a rather tedious, obligatory postlude to what had really mattered, which was getting the reassurance that someone wanted to sleep with me, or was at least interested in me on a physical/romantic level. It took me a while to realize that this was what I was doing; it was much more flattering to think of myself as a hyper-libidinous (if decidedly nerdy) Don Juan figure than to acknowledge the truth that I was just pathetically insecure, trading on chemical attraction and all of its attendant rituals to get the attention I craved.

I made an inventory of what I did when I flirted. I’d been practicing flirting since eighth grade, and over many years I’d developed a “bag of tricks” that tended to serve me well. (Parenthetically, these tricks were hopelessly ineffective in certain other countries. Traveling through Italy one summer when I was twenty, I gave up early on — whatever “game” I had had been developed with North Americans very much in mind!) Flirting was about words, of course, but also glances and the gentle but insistent erosion of normative physical boundaries. I realized I changed my voice, very slightly, and tended to hold a gaze just a second or two longer than the American standard. I leaned in towards people, affecting shyness or boldness based on what my intuitition told me would work. And I remembered the cardinal rule that my uncle Wolfgang had taught me when I was about ten: “Hugo, if you want to be popular, remember to be interested in what other people tell you. Even if they bore you, remember a few things that they say and ask them questions about what interests them. They will be fascinated that you find them fascinating.” I’ve never forgotten that last line, and it was the foundation stone on which all the little tricks were built. Continue reading ‘Unlearning flirting and letting go of “feigned fascination”’

Learning to long for what is good for us: some thoughts on sexual recovery for unquiet minds

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 25, 2009
in Addiction and mental illness, Favorite Posts 2009, Relationships and Sexuality
. 14 Comments

Yesterday’s post about emotional affairs and betrayal elicited this comment from jennyfields:

I am relating to today’s post on many complicated and vague levels. I wonder how this applies to “entertaining” fantasies that would be an emotion betrayal of yourself instead of a partner. Is it the same thing or is it different? Where is the morality when it’s only to yourself that you have made certain promises?

I know quite well what jennyfields is referring to, both because she and I have corresponded and because it’s an issue I’ve had ample opportunity to consider in my own life. I’ve written before about the issue of feminist men and the problem of heterosexual desire, and that touches a bit on the topic jennyfields raises, but not entirely. What she’s talking about is breaking unhealthy sexual patterns, and how to cope with the intrusive fantasies that often arise as we make our way in recovery.

Lots of us, for example, have a history of being attracted to people who are not good for us. Call it the “bad boy syndrome” or what-you-will, but it’s common enough to be the subject of biting humor and endless reflection. Women and men, queers and straights, a great many folks have struggled to reconcile what our head tells us is healthy with what our libido (informed as it so often is by childhood traumas of one kind or another) or our heart longs for. And a great many of us, myself very much included, developed unhealthy patterns early on in our sexual relationships. To use one classic example, a young woman who had an emotionally distant father may form destructive sexual relationships with inappropriately older men, hoping (whether she’s conscious of it or not) that she will be able to earn attention and validation through sex. Assuming her father didn’t sexualize her inappropriately, sex for her becomes the one missing element that made her invisible to the older man she needed most when she was small — and thus she pushes that sexuality front and center in her adolescence, hoping that it willl be the missing piece of the puzzle. That’s a hard habit to break. Some men may get into the “knight in shining armor” pattern in which they seek out women whom they imagine need them desperately — which often leads them to become the so-called “Nice Guys(tm)”.

I had so many unhealthy patterns that they intersected and wound ’round each other into a perverse patchwork quilt of romantic and sexual dysfunction. With an addictive personality since birth and a drinking problem (well-concealed at first) since I was fifteen, it’s no surprise that the women I was drawn to were often close to my own level of emotional stability. And though my first two wives (the ones I was married to in my using days) were very different from each other, and though some of the women I dated were remarkably stable, my “unhealthy type” was usually the same. I liked my fellow addicts, preferably with a dual diagnosis of manic depression to boot. When I was newly single after my second divorce, a clueless acquaintance, hoping to “get me back out there”, asked me what sort of women I was interested in meeting. Without skipping a beat, a cousin of mine who was part of the conversation said “Hugo likes short-haired brunettes with sex addictions, high IQs, eating disorders, and a bipolar diagnosis.” Continue reading ‘Learning to long for what is good for us: some thoughts on sexual recovery for unquiet minds’

“Turning down the volume on KHGO”: reflections on overcoming a personality disorder

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 30, 2008
in Addiction and mental illness and Narcissism and Borderline Personality
. 14 Comments

A couple of years ago, I put up this post about overcoming my own mental illness. In particular, I wrote in response to this post by the Happy Feminist about her relationship with her narcissistic father.

In my years in and around the mental health system, I was consistently diagnosed not with depression but with a personality disorder. More precisely, I was regularly described (by several psychiatrists) as having “cluster b” personality disorders: Narcissistic, Antisocial, and everyone’s favorite, Borderline. Based on the traditional criteria, I hit each and every one of the criteria for the last of these, and many of the crucial ones for the first two. From late adolescence until the cusp of thirty, as I cycled in and out of doctors’ offices and hospitals, these diagnoses were offered again and again. And in my 2006 post, I talked in general terms about my recovery, conversion, and transformation. But I didn’t get much into specifics.

I’ve corresponded a bit with Jan at Planetjan, who has written quite a bit about dealing with folks with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. (See her first, second, and third excellent pieces.) She wrote something that stirred me up a bit, for understandable reasons:

How is a personality disorder different from mental illness? I had a hard time initially wrapping my head around this one. A mental illness (schizophrenia being the most widely known) can be treated, with varying degrees of success, with medications or cognitive therapy. Most mental illnesses are caused by brain cell synaptic disruptions, most of which are believed to be genetic in origin. I have friends who are bipolar and as long as they take their meds, any symptoms subside and they feel and act relatively “normal.” Mental illnesses typically present themselves in late adolescence or early adulthood. The onset of the mental illness is often sudden and profound. A mental illness descends over a person’s personality like a heavy wool blanket feels on an already warm summer night.

A personality disorder, on the other hand, is all pervasive. The DSM-IV describes a personality disorder as “an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectation of the individual’s culture, is pervasive and inflexible, has an onset in adolescence or early adulthood, is stable over time, and leads to distress or impairment.”

With mental illness, a person’s personality is blanketed, or suffocated, by the onset of the mental illness. But the personality of someone with a personality disorder is virtually interwoven into every fiber of that blanket. Unravel the blanket and you unravel their personality.

So someone doesn’t have a personality disorder; they ARE the personality disorder. These personality traits are so deeply ingrained that they defy change.

Bold emphasis mine.

I’ve heard this distinction between mental illness and personality disorders before, of course, though rarely so succinctly expressed. And of course, it brings me up short. Looking at my life narrative, three possibilities suggest themselves as a response to her position (widely but not universally held by the psychiatric profession) that personality disorders “defy change”:

1. Despite being diagnosed with cluster B disorders again and again over more than a decade by a number of doctors, perhaps I never really had a personality disorder — the shrinks were wrong. I just met a whole bunch of the diagnostic criteria, but not the disorders themselves.

2. The diagnoses were correct in the first place, and I’m fooling myself — and a lot of other people — when I claim that I have “overcome” the pernicious influence of these disorders on my psyche and my life. I may have gotten better at disguising the NPD and the Borderline characteristics of my identity, but they still dominate my identity at its very foundation.

3. Jan, and a great many doctors, are wrong. Personality disorders, as powerful as they are, can be overcome.

I want to believe #3, and most of the time, I do believe #3. I seldom give much credence to #1, largely because of the preponderance of evidence over a fairly significant period of time. I do worry, less and less as I grow older, about #2. The fear that I am broken, “maimed from the start” by an aspect of my identity that can be hidden but never erased, comes up occasionally. I know that I have aspects of my personality which continue to meet the diagnostic criteria for at least some of the named disorders, even if I do what I imagine is a very credible job of keeping them from becoming manifest and obvious to others. Continue reading ‘“Turning down the volume on KHGO”: reflections on overcoming a personality disorder’

Oprah, weight, hubris, humility: on addictions we overcome, and the addictions we don’t

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 10, 2008
in Addiction and mental illness, Eating disorders and Food
. 22 Comments

Oprah Winfrey announced this week that she’s deeply “embarrassed” at having put on more than forty pounds in the past two years. Our nation’s most public and beloved yo-yo dieter, Oprah has been gaining and losing, gaining and losing, in front of hundreds of millions of people for more than two decades. She’s tried liquid diets, she’s worked with some of the world’s best trainers, she’s made the spiritual and psychological connection between eating and emotional needs. She’s done it over and over again, and — at least in her eyes — she’s “failed” at the task of overcoming what she sees as her addiction to food.

There’s a lot to unpack about Oprah in general, as well as her very public quest to be trim and fit. She deserves tremendous credit for her willingness to risk humiliation and to admit embarrassment; whether the issue is recovery from sexual abuse or overeating, Oprah has always been brave about connecting her private story to her public work. As someone who does the same thing (on a much smaller scale, with a blog and a classroom instead of a massive global franchise), I am repeatedly inspired by Oprah’s blend of raw ambition and near-naked transparency. That’s a rare combination, and it’s an enviable one.

From the standpoint of those of us interested in fighting “body fascism”, we could wish that Oprah could demonstrate greater self-acceptance. While on the one hand, it is perhaps comforting to some that even the powerful and the wealthy can suffer from low-esteem, to others Oprah’s plight makes their own struggle seem all the more hopeless. If Oprah, with all the vast resources at her disposal, cannot permanently overcome what she sees as a shameful addiction to food, who can? If Oprah, whose achievements have made her an icon (and, in the case of Barack Obama, perhaps something of a king-maker), still suffers from the pressure to live up to an unattainable ideal, doesn’t that make clear how utterly absurd and destructive it is for any of us to be chasing that ideal so relentlessly? These are questions worth asking. Continue reading ‘Oprah, weight, hubris, humility: on addictions we overcome, and the addictions we don’t’

Pornography, empathy, and the misuse of the disease model: some further thoughts on a way forward

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 06, 2008
in Addiction and mental illness, Porn, Sex work, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 90 Comments

I’m easing back into blogging this week. I have a bad cold, my first in months, probably contracted over the course of various recent travels. My wife and I spent Rosh Hashanah with the Kabbalah Centre International in Dallas, Texas last week; on Friday we flew up to Northern California for a weekend at our family’s country place in the hills northeast of San Jose. We went, in the damp and the bluster of an early autumn storm, to the Cal-Arizona State Homecoming game in Berkeley on Saturday afternoon. And our plane finally landed at Burbank Airport at 10:30 last night. I’m a bit groggy, but hoping to feel better as the week goes on.

And the emails! Folks, if you’ve emailed me recently, please be patient. I’m more than a little swamped. (Seven — count ‘em, seven — with questions about older men/younger women relationships in the last week alone. Flattering but overwhelming.)

The discussion thread below my post on “rethinking a virulent anti-porn/sex work stance” is approaching 200 comments, and is still quite active (and, all things considered, reasonably civil.) Amber Rhea put up a lengthy and thoughtful initial response at her place, and both she and Ren took issue with this remark I made in the original post:

I am keenly aware that porn can play a part in reducing our ability to connect with each other as full and complete creatures of light. Porn, it still seems to me, is the enemy of empathy.

That deserves some more explanation.

Empathy, of course, is the ability to not only imagine what an other person might be feeling(sympathy), but actually to understand what an other person understands, feels, and experiences. Contemporary English often confuses empathy and sympathy to the point that even many scholars seem to disagree as to the precise boundary that separates one concept from another — a point driven home to me in a few minutes of googling about this morning! Here’s one possible definition, from an article for physicians:

The origin of the word empathy dates back to the 1880s, when German psychologist Theodore Lipps coined the term “einfuhlung” (literally, “in-feeling”) to describe the emotional appreciation of another’s feelings. Empathy has further been described as the process of understanding a person’s subjective experience by vicariously sharing that experience while maintaining an observant stance. Empathy is a balanced curiosity leading to a deeper understanding of another human being; stated another way, empathy is the capacity to understand another person’s experience from within that person’s frame of reference.

I like that last bit, and it’s relevant to the experience that I think a great many men have with heterosexual pornography. One of the valid criticisms that gets thrown at Robert Jensen is that as a man writing about men’s use of pornography from a feminist perspective, he centers men’s experiences and reactions; his Getting Off contains relatively few women’s voices. (Given that he was writing a book about how pornography impacted men, rather than an overarching cultural critique of commercialized sexuality, this seems like a fairly reasonable editorial decision to have made. The problem, if there was one with Getting Off, seems to lie in his fairly brief and caricatured descriptions of the women who work in pornography — more certainly could have been done to hear what they were saying.) In any event, both Jensen and I come to the same conclusion: almost regardless of the conditions under which pornography is produced, the impact upon the men who “consume” it regularly is often a decreased ability to connect and empathize with other human beings. Continue reading ‘Pornography, empathy, and the misuse of the disease model: some further thoughts on a way forward’