He kept relapsing until he changed what he was looking for.

I’m a low-bottom drunk. I was in active addiction for almost forty years. I was finally dragged into the Program fourteen years ago. Now, I’ve been sober for two years and three months. You do the math.

Why in the world did it take me so long in the Program to get sober and into real recovery? I had the same information I did years ago. I had the same support. I had the same sponsor for years before I got sober (God bless that man’s patience).

During the last three years of addiction, I threw up for days every time after I acted out—dry heaving, spitting up blood, waking up in the middle of the night with night terrors, and not being able to think clearly. And yet, I kept going back out there. (Remember the whole low-bottom drunk thing?)

I told myself I wanted to stop. I couldn’t do this anymore. I loved my wife and my family.  I was, and will continue to be, completely and totally powerless over lust forever. So what changed? Well, first, I had to get discovered. Again. It was devastating and horribly painful. The pain I caused my wife was, and is, unacceptable. I’d been caught two times before. I’d been threatened with divorce before. Anyone in S-Anon learns pretty quickly that they can’t control the addict (And if you think you can, good luck with that).

After almost eighteen months of sobriety, it hit me—at its core, getting sober boils down to one simple thing: I changed what I was looking for.

I’m going to geek out for a minute. There’s a part of the brain called the reticular activating system. We go through the world bombarded by millions of stimuli every day. If our brain didn’t filter out most of it, we’d be completely overwhelmed and unable to function—much like me before my morning coffee.

Let’s say you want to buy a new car and you’ve settled your dear old heart on a particular black SUV. Suddenly, you start seeing that black SUV everywhere. And no, the manufacturer didn’t suddenly flood the market with them. It’s because—trumpets, please—you found what you were looking for.

Now translate that into just about everything. If I look for a reason why everyone I deal with is an idiot, I’ll find it. If I look for how everyone seems to have a better life, house, car, spouse, or clothes than me, I’ll find that. And, of course—an all-time favorite—if I look for a reason to resent my spouse and take no responsibility for myself, I will most definitely find that. 

Looking back with rigorous honesty—when I couldn’t get sober in the Program—I was looking for a way to get the benefits of recovery but still hold on to lust. (In other words, I was totally bonkers.) When I was desperate to get rid of lust (during the last few years), I was trying to get sober in secret, not coming out with the truth in the rooms because I was desperately afraid that somehow my wife would find out. (Bonkers again.) The results speak for themselves.

So when I hit a huge bottom and was determined to get sober, I first looked for every way to heal my brain from my addiction. Whatever time and energy I had put into looking for a reason to act out one last time or notice someone who triggered me (because, hey, I can handle that), I instead put more time and energy looking for the message of recovery and sobriety. If I wasn’t at a meeting or working my Step work, asking my sponsor what I should do next, or calling up an oldtimer, I was listening to a recovery talk. I fell asleep every night to a recovery talk for at least the first 90 days of recovery to reprogram my brain.

What’s more important for me is that all along I wasn’t just looking for sobriety. I’ve been looking for recovery.

I’ve said it until I’m blue in the face—I’m not interested in just avoiding acting out today. That’s not why I’m in this program. I’m here because I’m looking to live a life of integrity, love, connection, joy, and service. The basic requirement, just like the foundation of a dream house, is sobriety. And if I spend all day looking for the things that help my recovery, it’s a lot less likely that I’m going to lust today.

So now when I go to the grocery store, I look for groceries. And I find them. (Except for that one obscure thing my wife always puts on the list that is impossible to find. There’s always that one darn thing.) Do I still get triggered by certain images of women? Of course—I’m a sex addict and always will be. But if I’m looking for recovery, then I’ll use one of my tools and be able to move on.

Based on all I’ve written, if you think everything is smooth sailing for me, you’d be wrong. I’m incredibly flawed. Way too often, I look for excuses for why I did or didn’t do something that was my responsibility. Too often, I look for how I’m right and someone else is wrong. The list can go on and on. The point is that as long as I keep working to shift what I’m looking for—one little thing at a time—then hopefully, I’ll get better one little thing at a time. And that’s just it: if I keep looking for the right things, eventually, I’ll find them. Except for that one darn sock I lose in every load of laundry. If someone has some ESH for how to find that, I’m all ears.