A newcomer recently asked how long withdrawal from lust could possibly last, and I want to share my personal experience, strength, and hope on that topic from my current vantage point of one year sober. There are two points that seem really important to me:

1. It’s really bad!!!
2. It ends!!!

There is no way I would still be in SA if I continued to feel the intense withdrawal that I had at 10 hours or 10 days sober. When I got sober I couldn’t sleep. I’d wake up some nights every hour; my hands shook; I got a muscle twitch under my eye that I’d been free of since I gave up narcotics in 1994. I cried hard every day; I felt suicidal, and I wanted to use all my old addictions.

I remember telling my sponsor that I felt like a cocaine addict whose own body and brain were covered in cocaine packets—constant craving and availability!

A lot of my acting out had been on the computer, and I still had to deal with a computer five days a week at work. Ads triggered me; walking triggered me; being alone triggered me; being with people triggered me; showering triggered me; life triggered me. I thought I was going to claw my own skin off.

This only lasted three weeks!

In the year since, I’ve felt bad—angry, scared, triggered, lusting, etc.—but I have never felt as bad as those first three weeks of physical, emotional, and social withdrawal from the lust drug. What helped me most to deal with withdrawal was contact with other SAs who told me what worked for them. I talked to my sponsor every day, usually for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. I went to a meeting most days. After the worst of withdrawal wore off, I went to 90 in 90. I wore ski gloves to sleep which had strong elastic around the wrists. This stopped me from acting out, and it also gave me peace of mind so I could sleep a little. I prayed before bed and asked for freedom from lust and disturbing dreams. I exercised. I covered the mirrors in my house (to prevent objectifying myself). I changed the clothes I wore. I took long hot baths with lavender oil every night. I cried—A LOT! Every time I wanted to act out, I called my sponsor. I walked around with my one day chip in my hand.

For those three weeks I wondered if this was the supposed “miracle of recovery” that members of SA were promising me. It wasn’t; that came after the worst of the withdrawal symptoms and hangover phase wore off, and I began to feel the blessed freedom from lust and serenity that my Higher Power intended me to have.

I’m so incredibly grateful to have made it through withdrawal. I don’t know if I could do it again. There is a Twelve Step saying: “I know I have another relapse in me, but I don’t know if I have another recovery in me.” Just for today, I don’t want to do that research!