The Bracelet

It’s December 17^th, 2022 “graduation day” from the first stage of my year long journey in rehab and to becoming physically, spiritually and mentally well for the first time in my life. I agreed to stay attached to some sort of formal rehab and live in sober living until October 2023 as conditions for my family supporting me during this time. They don’t have to monitor me, and I am able to get the help I need. I am fortunate, but I am still a mess. The remnants of psychosis are still swirling around, but the obsession to find out what happened during the three months I was in it, has lessened. It feels like there are a thousand butterflies trapped in my chest cavity that never sleep. I get angry at a hairpin and lash out and there is still a dark pit of pain that lies beneath it all. I don’t understand what is going on with my body, but it is familiar territory. Physically present but disconnected from everyone and me. I have lived like this my entire life, and I don’t know why. Tomorrow I will get my jeep back, move to a different sober living house and have some freedom. I will have a curfew, chores around the house, an uncomfortable twin bed, attend weekly house meetings and a roommate. Hopefully this one doesn’t snore like a freight train and kill a box of twinkies in the middle of the night like my last one, but first graduation.  I was commenting to my sponsor the last time we met how stupid I feel going to my graduation ceremony. It’s like look at me, I can be responsible. I am no longer a fuck up, well just not as much as I was when I was using. He said “It’s something to be proud about and I didn’t quit when it got hard and uncomfortable. It also lets new people in the program know it is possible.” The ceremony consists of sitting in a chair in the middle of the room and a coin being passed around the room and each person saying nice things about me and “charging” the coin with some sort of affirmation or well wishes for me and my continued sobriety. The clinical director is up first. I haven’t had many conversations with him other than a few hellos in the hall or been in couple of groups he ran. He starts out “Jeff came to us with a lot of distrust” and he continues about the progress I’ve made. My therapist is up next.  She starts with “the first time Jeff sat in my office and spoke, I went to myself, whoa. That was a lot”. It all makes sense now. I realize that why I have had such difficulty sorting through the remnants of psychosis and what I experienced is that the rehab I am at doesn’t understand what I have been going through. I’ve told them, but they haven’t listened. They don’t understand, they think it is all in my head and that time will cure it. By the end of the graduation, I’ve decided I can no longer stay at this facility for treatment until October. I need more help.

September 2022

It’s 9am and I’ve landed in Barcelona, Spain. It has been 14 years since I have been to Europe. My last trip was to Rome. I was a seminarian and I have vague recollections of Limoncello, amazing pasta, beautiful Italian men, gay bars, the Spanish Steps and Easter Mass at the Vatican, but back to this trip and Spain, which has taken about 16 hours. I didn’t sleep on the plane, and I’m exhausted. I have a 30-minute taxi ride south to Stiges and my first gay bear event of four that I will attend over the next year. I booked this trip after getting back from Puerto Vallarta just a week ago.  Something happened to me in PV, and I am not sure what, but I felt better when I got back. The whole inside me was lessened, but it has since returned. I arrive at the Hotel Calipolis, where I overpaid for an ocean front suite with a balcony that overlooks one of the gay beaches in the city. It’s also the headquarters for all the events. My room will not be ready until 2pm, so I store my luggage at the hotel and begin venturing around the city. Stiges is a mixture of colonial and modern buildings with narrow cobblestoned streets and alleyways that sit on the Mediterranean Sea. There are cafés, shops and restaurants crammed everywhere with people sitting outside sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes and a plethora of gay men. I am in love with the city. The vibe is just the right mixture of hustle and bustle, dramatic views, and sea smells to create the perfect first impression.  I found a café that looks out at the boardwalk, the beautiful men and the Mediterranean. I ordered coffee and avocado toast with an egg on top.  I fire up the 3 different hook up apps I have on my phone and get to work. It’s like Christmas morning; pages and pages of olive- and dark-skinned beautiful men, chiseled torsos and faces fill up the app screens.  The messages and “taps” start pouring in before I have a chance to set my parameters for my search. This is going to be a fun 5 days I think to myself. I begin responding to those I am attracted to and setting up hook ups for the next few days. Whether they happen or not, doesn’t matter to me. I love the game and the hunt, bigger, better, more. I am never satisfied with what I have and always look for something better.  My room ends up not being ready until after 4. I am enjoying myself. I can spend hours sitting and people watching, making up stories in my head about their lives.

I check into my room and within 10 minutes the first guy arrives. He has been on the beach all day in front of the hotel. He leaves his boyfriend on the beach and comes to my room. He is Moroccan. He was the first of 11 men I had some sort of sexual experience with over the 5 nights. At night I would walk the streets chatting with men and by day lay on the beach. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming. There were men from every part of the world and of all shapes and sizes. It was a judgement free zone. On my last day in Stiges I ventured to the nude gay beach. I had heard from various guys that it was a lot of fun, not everyone was nude and to get there early as the beach area was small and it would be packed. The beach area was in a small bay at the north end of the city. I wasn’t ready to wear my birthday suit, but instead wore board shorts and no shirt. I hadn’t been to a beach shirtless since I was a kid living in California. In public I have always been self-conscience about my appearance, especially the way the fat is distributed around my body. However, naked and while having sex I am in my zone. As I have mentioned in a previous post, I stick to my wheelhouse with men, so I figure by the time we are going to get naked, they know what they are getting, but at the beach, pools, lakes or basically any outdoor activity that required me to take my shirt off, I have avoided most of my adult life. I have sat from a distance and watched friends and family enjoy activities that I love, and I have allowed my fear of being judged for my body from living the life I want to live. So, this moment was huge for me. I ended up having a blast that day. I spent the day walking the beach, swimming and making out with guys in the Mediterranean, and meeting new friends. The attention I received was overwhelming for me and made me feel alive; seen for the first time in my life. One guy I met who was having a similar experience said, “it’s like 5 years of therapy crammed into 5 days.”  At sunset I headed back to the hotel and felt on top of the world. I felt better about myself, more confident than I had ever felt in my life. I stopped at one of the many street vendors selling various items. I wanted something to remember this day. Something to remind me of how I was feeling at this exact moment. Something, when I started to feel bad about myself in the future that would remind me that it is possible to feel good in my own skin. I picked out the bracelet.

I left Stiges and headed to Barcelona the next day. I spent two days there and I think I walked 15 miles in one day. I am not much of a planner when I travel and kind of go where the wind takes me. I never have any regrets when I get back from a trip, like I missed seeing something. I am content with seeing what I see and always enjoy the experience more than sightseeing. There is always next time. The pictures I take are more for Facebook and Instagram to continue the charade of an extravagant adventurous life, than for me. I rarely look at pictures I take as I would rather live in the memories. Pictures are never able to capture the full reality of the experience. If you have ever been to the Grand Canyon, you can understand what I am saying. I boarded the plane back to Phoenix, happy and content and ready to get back to life, but by the time the plane landed 16 hours later, the void of emptiness inside me had returned. I look to my bracelet for reassurance that I will be ok, but only feel a glimmer of the joy I had just felt days before leaving the beach.

December 2022

I moved into the new sober living house where Bo my first roommate, not the freight train snorer, from my inpatient program is also living. I tell him often that he saved my sanity when I first arrived at rehab and it’s great to be living back under the same roof.  When I had first arrived at the end of October fresh from the mental hospital, I was living in an altered state of reality that had begun 3 months prior. I quickly began sharing my experiences with him and he laughed in a way that told me it was ok. Bo wasn’t freaked out by what I shared, and he created a space for me to continue to open up more and more. The stories I shared became wilder and we laughed together, because it was just too unreal to believe. I guess that’s what made it even more entertaining to us both. When I told him about the guy Jingle Bells, the cum dump orgy and the Hollywood movie set I was on my last weekend of using, he about pissed himself, he laughed so hard. He has the most infectious laugh and one liners that land at the right time in every story I shared. We would stay up late every night smoking cigarettes sharing about the insanity of addiction. We understood each other in a way that only addicts can understand each other.  I will be forever grateful for his friendship.

 I picked up my jeep, spent a little time with my family, which was very emotional and headed across phoenix back to my new home.  I wanted to stay the weekend at my parents’ house, however, I am not allowed to spend a night away from the sober living house for the first 30 days. When I found out, I became instantly angry. I could feel the burning in my chest. I feel powerless in the decisions about my life. I have since realized that my anger comes from situations where I feel powerless in that I believe I should be in control. I have a bodily reaction to the feeling, the slow steady burn I feel in my chest. Now when I feel that I know the anger is coming, I can stop myself and look where I am feeling powerless and what my part in the situation is that leads to the feeling. In this situation, I am at fault. I used drugs, lost the trust of my family and put myself here. When I can get to the root of the situation, I am able to turn off the spigot of anger and settle back down, before I say something that is harder to repair.  I go back and forth calling sober living home. It is where I am living now, but it doesn’t feel like home. I guess I say home, because it helps ground me in today and keeps me from living in the future. I struggle with staying in the present, because I have never been happy here. Word choice matters and the words I use and how I speak about myself are more important than anything else I say. The reality is I am 51, living in sober living, a drug addict, have no money and an uber driver. I want to dress that up more, but it is the truth. The more I live in that truth the more real I become to myself and others. I am learning that this newfound vulnerability is working. I am beginning to feel a connection to others in a way I haven’t in the past. So, I settled in the to the house, not happy, but not angry either. It turns out it is a great mix of people from all walks of life with one thing in common.  We are a community of like-minded individuals helping each other stay sober.  

Saturday night I went to my first CMA (Crystal Meth Anonymous) meeting. It was different, wilder than AA, the people were crazier, and I felt at home. These were my people. They got me and I got them. I was able to share, through my crying, what the last 9 months had been like for me. I was in another judgement free zone. A few guys came up to me after the meeting, but one, Duncan, said he understood me. He shared that he had tried meth late in life and how it had done a number to him in a way he never expected. He was my age and was sober for 4 years. That simple gesture validated what I was experiencing and let me know that I was not alone. In that moment, I realized that by being vulnerable and sharing my truth, I can connect to others.  By being authentic I can let others in, and they want to know me. The real me.

Christmas came and went, but not without heartache. My family is disconnected from each other, and I am one of the main reasons.  There is not much I can do, other than stay sober and continue to work on myself and get better. There will be a time when I can make amends for those I’ve hurt and repair the trust I’ve lost, but I need to keep the focus on myself right now. I know I need more help than my current rehab can provide, so I spent the last two weeks of December searching for a new facility, while continuing at my current one. I didn’t want there to be any gaps in my treatment, because I was too fragile to be left on my own. Bo sent me a link to one he had heard about and on all accounts it looked perfect. I went to check it out and sat down with one of the owners. Right there I knew this place was different. The owners were going to be involved in my treatment. Not only are they all in recovery, they are therapists and lead some of the groups.  It seemed too good to be true. I felt as if I was being led to this place by some outside influence. The remnants of psychosis had its grip on me, and I was having difficulty distinguishing whether I was making this decision to move treatment facilities on my own or being influenced by someone I didn’t know. I sounded crazy and felt crazier when I was sitting down with the owner. I brought a friend from AA, whom I trusted and asked him to sit in on the interview. I needed another person to hear what was being said, so that I knew it wasn’t just in my head. The owner listened and asked questions, but never once did I feel he didn’t believe me. He validated my experience and offered help. I was able to push through the paranoia I was experiencing, because of the validation I received, and I also remembered that I had delivered Instacart to this facility at some point in the past three years. It was a sign to me that this is where I was supposed to be. I was holding on to reality by a thread and it was just the lifeline I needed to pull me back.  My first day there was January 2, 2023.

I met with my trauma therapist in my first week. She asked me why I left the other treatment center, and I said that I didn’t believe the place understood what I was experiencing and that the clinical director had said I had distrust of them when I first arrived, when he was speaking about me at my graduation.  I might have had distrust, but I was in an altered state of reality, and it was much bigger than distrust. She asked me what I would’ve liked to have heard instead? I said “I don’t know. I just need help. I don’t know what is happening to me?” Then she said “if someone else was involved influencing events, people and your electronics during your drug use while you were in psychosis, it doesn’t matter. You believe that there was, therefore, there was, and it needs to be treated as such. It is real to you. It is trauma to you. You might never get the answers you want, but I can help you.” I believed her and felt validated. What I’ve since come to understand is that I was in a constant state of trauma response the past two months while at my first rehab facility. My nervous system was in a heightened state of activity and couldn’t re-regulate itself. I was in a trauma flight response. The check in at my old treatment center was so traumatic to me, because of what I thought was happening and then I was sent to the mental hospital, so when I came back the second time, my body was in a protection mode. It wanted me out of there. The trauma from the meth uses and my check in was locked in my body and I was reliving it constantly but didn’t know it.  Within the week at the new center, my body settled down and I began receiving the help I needed. I have since learned that my anger, anxiety, isolation and my need for unhealthy external validation are all trauma responses from different events in my life.  Some were single events and others occurred over my lifetime. Being molested as a child, denying my sexuality for 46 years, not having an emotional support system growing up, being a child of an alcoholic, being an addict are just a few of the things that I never properly dealt with and didn’t realize how untreated trauma drove my emotional response in my daily life. I understand the different feelings that each creates in my body, and I can work through to the root cause. It’s not perfect and I don’t always catch the thought that drives the feeling in my body, but I am much better. My main therapist said that trauma, low self-esteem and attachment issues are the three main underlying conditions most addicts have in common, and it is working on those issues that I have seen amazing results in how I view myself, my past actions and my upbringing. I have compassion for myself, my family and others. I have used maladapted coping skills to survive my entire life. I now know different and have healthy coping skills at my disposal, so I am responsible for my actions moving forward in a way that I never have been.

It has been hard for me to look at my sex life. I’ve been open about it with my therapist, but protective and defensive about making any changes. I have been unwilling to admit there are unhealthy components to it nor has it had any negative effects on my emotional state. I justified the volume of sex by saying I am single, I am not hurting myself, I enjoy it and its part of the gay culture. My therapist is a much smarter man than me, so instead of coming at me straight on, he came at me sideways. He asked me to set boundaries around it. Once I was out of the lockdown treatment center and was driving my jeep, I was off to the races, having sex almost nightly with different guys. He knew this and knew if he told me to go cold turkey it wouldn’t go well for me. He asked me to set up three circles inside each other. In the center circle I was to write my no zone, like no sex with guys doing drugs, no bathhouses, no sex on first dates, no escorts whatever I wanted to put into it I could or nothing at all. The middle ring was the grey zone. Not ideal encounters, but not a deal breaker; guys in relationship or gay massages. The outer ring was to be full of my ideals; single guys, sex only when it seems right when I’m dating someone and sex only 3 times a week with different guys. Those are all part of my list. I came up with them and he challenged me a lot, but it was my list and my boundaries. He then said, if you break one of your boundaries, we will talk about it. I agreed. I’ve broken my boundaries twice in the past 3 months. I told him about both times. I learned something about myself each time I did. Something else happened over those three months as well. I began to see a pattern. When I felt lonely, isolated, hurt, overwhelmed, and rejected I sought out sex to make myself feel better. I looked for validation from an external source instead of sitting in my difficult emotions and processing them. I avoided validating myself. This sex cycle has kept me from learning to be present with myself and learn the necessary skills to validate myself and feel ok being alone.

March 2023

My sponsor asked me yesterday at the end of completing my 5^th step what my greatest fear was? I immediately said being alone the rest of my life. To not be able to experience real intimacy. Laying on the couch with my head resting in my partner’s lap while watching the newest Star Wars show. Holding hands with him walking down the beach. Sharing in each other’s joys and heartaches. Encouraging him to follow his passions. To be vulnerable in front of him and say this is me and allow him to love me and to love him. I’ve not had real intimacy with a man before, but this is what I think it is like. I am sure there is more, but I’ve come to understand that my behavior around sex is pushing me further from this ideal than closer. My trip to Spain was an amazing experience, however it did not do me any favors. The external validation I received was unhealthy for me. It was a temporary external fix to an internal problem. It gave me a high, like drugs and alcohol to fill an emptiness inside me and I began chasing the fix for more validation to feel good about myself. However, the effects wore off quicker each time. There isn’t a sexual encounter out there that was going to make me feel like I was enough. I didn’t know it at the time, nor did I know what was happening to me, I just knew I wanted more. Bigger, better, more.  I signed out of the hook up and dating apps three weeks ago. I’ve logged in a couple times and then stopped myself and looked at what is going on inside me. The last incident, I asked someone to hang out. He couldn’t, I felt alone and rejected. I was on the app before I knew it, but then I was off again. I stopped myself. The belief I have about myself that I am not enough and the fear of being alone drives this need for validation. Instead of looking to the bracelet for reassurance now, I look in the mirror and tell myself “I will be ok, and I am enough.”