“I can’t get not satisfaction” – lyrics, Mick Jagger
She was never a playful little girl. She felt anxious and listless and her mental climate was foggy. Always. Didn’t know about drugs as a teenager. Nobody gave her any. “The boys told me that I have beautiful eyes and tits. I had neither, and so I knew they were lying,” is what she says.
But she loved the excitement of meeting a boy, sometimes just through seeing him or wanting to see him. She began to live for that. She needed that fix for her mood. Romance became the raison d’etre, her reason to live. Later on she would have to leave her partners when the thrill was gone.
She knew she had to do something to create a life, a source of income, because her budding love & sex addiction had become non-negotiable. When her dad gave her the option to finance a University education or a substantial endowment for a marriage (whenever that would be) she knew she had to choose the education, as he was not going to agree to any marriage partner she would pick. Her criteria were simply not socially acceptable.
So she decided to move very far away from limiting and useless social mores, cross the ocean, and live in LA, where she had contact to some famous musicians. The plan was to study at UCLA and be in a good mood in an endless-summer kind of lifestyle. It seemed to be a promising location where nothing would stand in the way of sex, drugs, and rock’n roll.
The reality was harsh. She was unbearably lonely, tried to connect here and there at the Rainbow Bar & Grill on Sunset Strip (it was the 70ies) on weekdays after midnight, wondering why she met weird guys. The results were not to write home about. While she was dancing with oblivion her beautiful purse (the coolest ever) was stolen around 3am with everything in it. There she was, alone, in a foreign country, far away from her L.A. home, with no one to help her out – and her journey through addiction had not even really begun. She was just putting together the parameters for the life of an alcoholic woman. For 10 years she’d give it her all. She married the best husband of them all, had a perfect baby girl, and got a Master’s Degree with straight A’s. And then she just had to go and seek some more excitement that she called fun. She tried to get some consolation from her silently increasing despair and found that love is not so easy to come by when you’re needy like that.
Eventually, she decided to move far away from the realm of the hungry ghosts. Her best thinking was to take her 4-year old daughter, get into a relationship with a 20-year old guy, move back to the U.K, and marry him. Her poor dad was exasperated… but she had no interest in compassion then. 15 years of heroin addiction followed, and that’s the truth.
Many years have passed since. She is back in L.A. clean and sober. When she works with recovering addicts she sees that most of them are willing to give sobriety a chance, but they still think, “Girls, they wanna have fun.” As long as the pursuit of breathless excitement remains their # 1 priority it will take them out. This is what she observed over and over. The way she sees it, “It’s sad when you look on, but it’s bitter when you’re in it.”
The pursuit of fun & excitement got demoted from #1 position. In AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) and SLAA (Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous) she gets the chance to find some peace of mind as long as she makes recovery her #1 priority. Sex & love addiction must be addressed for what it is – the desperate pursuit of mood-alteration at any price. Some call it fun, but it is just another face of alcoholism, where everything is sacrificed for departure from reality. No good life to be had.
The difference between chemicals from the outside or (endogenous) chemicals released by the brain is negligible. It’s the result that matters. She looked at what it did to her self-esteem, career, social standing, and her sense of peace. She began to see her daughter’s eyes - and she made the choice to give her permission to be happy rather than robbing her of hope.
Today her focus is on bringing love and compassion … and this is what she gets in return. She has become a trustworthy and respected person. She's come a long way.
“After a while the finesse, charm, and good looks start to fade along with the good judgment” – quote, AA speaker