Page 57 of All the Way to the River

W ithin a week of coming to twelve-step recovery for the second time, I had found a sponsor and begun to work the steps.

This time, I made the decision to do everything that was suggested to me by the fellows in my program—trusting that the collective wisdom of multiple generations of recovered addicts was probably something I should listen to and respect.

It was suggested, for instance, that I go “no contact” with all my “qualifiers”—meaning that I let go of anybody with whom I was currently obsessed and anyone I was still fantasizing about in any way.

So I walked away from them all.

It had to be done: I could not get sober from love addiction while still engaging with the objects of my desire any more than you can fix the engine of a car that you are still actively driving down the highway.

Some of those people I was able to explain myself to (“I am not well, I have never been well, and I need to go get well”), but in other cases, my sponsor and I decided it was too unsafe for me to even explain my disappearance, because any further contact with these people might stimulate my fantasies (or theirs) all over again, thereby pulling me back into dra matic entanglement.

In such cases, my sponsor suggested, it was best for everyone involved if I simply blocked their phone numbers and left.

I also unfollowed a bunch of people on social media and deleted a vast number of potentially triggering photographs from my phone so I wouldn’t accidentally run into any of my old heartbreaks or fantasies as I was scrolling through my life.

I also deleted a bunch of old text strands and got rid of any songs that stimulated fantasy or longing.

(This is called a “digital detox,” and goddamn it, it was hard—but I did it for the same reason a recovering alcoholic pours all the liquor in the house down the drain.)

Continuing the spirit of a cleanse, I even deep-cleaned my church, getting rid of a lot of Rayya’s things in the process.

I shipped some of her belongings to friends and loved ones, put some of them in storage, but also threw away a lot of junk that she had hoarded over the years.

Sometimes I could feel Rayya protesting this cleanse from the beyond—like when she watched me throw out a massive contractor’s garbage bag filled with ancient and literally rotting old sneakers, some of which didn’t even have matching partners—but I overruled her objections, shouting at the sky, “ You didn’t even want these things, Rayya!

That’s why you stuffed it all in the back of a closet!

I live in this house now, this is my house, this is where I live—and I will love you forever, but I’m not gonna make my home into a museum of your un-dealt-with shit! ”

(If any of my neighbors were disturbed by the spectacle of me shouting at ghosts while I took out the garbage, well … I suppose they were getting used to me now.)

Withdrawal from addiction felt, as promised, like hell.

It was stressful, but it was also tedious—which I had not expected.

I was accustomed to living a life of high drama, and now things felt kind of …

boring. My sponsor helped me to understand this tedium, explaining that boredom is nothing more than a cover for anxiety—and that anxiety is what drives us to seek out all that drama, excitement, and distraction in the first place.

In fact, drama and boredom are both symptoms of high anxiety, signaling a deep inability to simply be .

When serenity is either unavailable or unattainable, only drama and boredom will ever be on the menu.

And given the choice between drama and boredom, of course an addict will choose drama every single time.

Which explains my whole life, pretty much.

But now I was being asked to put away both drama and boredom, and to simply feel whatever arose within me—exactly as one would do in meditation.

And what was arising was grief, sorrow, loneliness, and despair.

Frankly, it was making me crawl out of my skin.

I started using the word scritchy (a combination of scratchy and bitchy ) during that time to describe how profoundly uncomfortable I felt.

It was difficult to know where to find comfort, especially since I could no longer medicate myself with my oldest and deepest fantasy: that someday in the future a magical person would show up, fall in love with me, and fix everything.

Nobody would be showing up now.

There would be no fixing of anything.

Only feeling .

Feeling and praying, and then feeling and praying again.

So that’s what I did: I felt, I cried, I slept, I felt my fear and sorrow, and I prayed.

I was instructed to make a list of “top-line behaviors”—healthy and esteem-worthy actions (like exercising and eating well and getting enough sleep)—that I could use to replace my “bottom-line behaviors” (like flirting, fantasy, intriguing, and sexual acting out).

I did exactly what was suggested of me, but I kind of thought it was all bullshit.

I mean, how could eating a salad replace the electric high of white-hot passion?

“What will be the reward for all this discomfort?” I asked my sponsor after a particularly bad night of loneliness and restlessness.

“Can you live without knowing the answer to that question?” she asked.

“Can you just walk through these steps and work your program without any promise of reward? Can you do what your sober predecessors have done, and trust that more will be revealed? You, who took so many risks as an addict; can you take the risk of sobriety? Can you take the risk of not knowing what your future will look like? Do you have the courage for that?”

Maybe, I guess?

It was hard to be sure.

I felt like shit, was the thing.

I lost all my energy during withdrawal and often felt like I had the flu.

I couldn’t write, I couldn’t exercise, I had trouble making plans.

My mind kept returning to ancient suffering that I never wanted to think about again—incidents from over four decades ago that I had kept buried for years.

This was the last place I wanted to go—but this was the trauma that lay hidden beneath all the pain, and now it was demanding to be addressed.

Feeling those feelings was horrible, and I hated it, but I talked about it in meetings and found plenty of love and support in the rooms. I called my sponsor every day and took every suggestion she offered.

I took solace from old-timers who told me in simple terms that withdrawal is indeed excruciating—but it’s a pain that will eventually end, whereas addiction is a pain that will never end.

One night, in a desperate “outreach” call, I had a conversation with a kind and reassuring fellow addict who promised me that if I had the courage to go all the way through the experience of withdrawal without reaching for anything to take the edge off (“not a man, not a Mastercard, not a muffin, not a martini”), I might have the chance for a true spiritual awakening.

“Just stay in your lane and work your program,” she promised, “and the day will come when you won’t even want anymore the things you used to crave with all your heart.”

I thought to myself, This fool must be smoking roofing tar, if she thinks I will ever not want the things I crave with all my heart .

But I took her direction—because honestly, at this point in my life, what choice did I even have?

So I stayed in my lane.

I worked my program.

And most of all—hardest of all—I felt my pain.