Page 60 of All the Way to the River

A s of this writing, I’ve been clean and sober for almost exactly five years.

This still makes me quite a beginner, in comparison to many of my fellows in twelve-step recovery.

There are people in these rooms who have earned thirty, forty, or fifty years of sobriety—and whose wisdom is as deep-rooted and weathered as an ancient oak.

Compared with such monumental souls, I am a mere kindergartener—five years clean and still learning how to tie my own shoes.

But still, five years clean is an important milestone, because they say it takes five years of sobriety before you even begin to get your marbles back.

This makes a certain amount of sense: If you’ve been insane your whole life, then it might take a minute for your brain to land in clarity and finally start thinking straight.

The process of healing and awakening takes time—more time than I could ever have imagined.

It took me three years and three different sponsors to work my way completely through the twelve steps—which was a humbling experience for someone who has always considered herself to be an accelerated student.

But it was hard . It took me nearly a year just to do the infamous step four (in which we make “a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves”), because I had so many shadows and secrets that needed to be sorted through and inventoried.

It took an awfully long time to complete step eight, too—which is the part of the process where you are invited to make direct amends to all the people you have harmed through your addiction.

Let me just say: I had a lot of amends to make .

And I still have some to make, because it’s a lifelong process.

But amends making can be a tricky and even dangerous step for sex and love addicts, because we must be careful not to reconnect with anyone who might trigger us to act out again, and we must also be cautious about not marching back into the lives of anyone who might be severely injured by our reappearance.

Our actions injure people at the level of the heart, after all—and if we have already hurt someone’s heart once, we must be careful not to hurt it again by popping back up to say, “Hey, man! Me again! Sorry about all that!”

With the guidance of my sponsor, I was able to make direct amends to many of the people whom I had harmed in my past—wherever it seemed safe and responsible to do so.

Some of those people didn’t want anything to do with me, and I get that.

But some of those conversations were so beautiful and healing that it brings tears to my eyes right now just to think of them.

The capacity of people to find forgiveness in their hearts for each other’s frailties will never stop astonishing me.

One person’s response in particular brought me literally to my knees with its grace.

And now I can say with amazement that—because of this amends process—some of my exes, along with some other people whom I harmed over the years, have become my friends.

Honest friends. Friends for life, I dearly hope.

But the very best gift I have given to myself during these five years of recovery has been the celibacy that I’ve maintained throughout the entire process.

Celibacy is not a requirement for my program (sanity is considered the far more important goal), but I came to understand at a very deep level that I have needed to be completely alone with my heart, my mind, and my body in order to focus on getting well.

And I have needed that aloneness, for once, not to be rushed.

I’ve heard it said that addiction is giving up everything for one thing, while recovery is giving up one thing for everything.

So I gave up my one thing —my desperate and exhausting lifelong pursuit of romantic enmeshment—and slowly, miraculously, I have gotten back everything .

My vitality has returned; my financial security is steadily being restored; my self-esteem is growing; my friendships are deepening; my creativity is soaring; and peace of mind is mine to enjoy.

And for the first time in my life, my body belongs to me .

Nobody is interfering with it anymore, or turning me into an object of their pleasure or control.

Nor do I wish anymore to pimp out my own body in order to get my unmet emotional needs serviced.

I can meet my own emotional needs now, with respect, care, and patience.

And I tend to my body as if it were a beloved pet, or a garden, or a valuable and miraculous treasure—for it is, indeed, all those things.

Five years into my recovery, the team of doctors and therapists and shamans whom I once employed to take care of my physical, mental, and spiritual health are all gone.

The hormone-replacement treatments and “plant medicines” that I used to consume are gone, because their work is no longer needed here.

The antianxiety pills and antidepressants and sleeping pills are gone.

Alcohol is gone. The pouring of my time and treasure into other people—in order to win their love, desire, and approval—is gone.

I no longer volunteer to be the orderly in other peoples’ internal mental hospitals, nor will I allow anyone to make me into their nurse or their purse.

As a result, every single relationship in my life has changed since I got sober: Some have deepened; some have shifted; some have ended.

Nothing is what it was before, and everything is better.

And at this very moment, I can report that my heart is resting calmly and firmly within my body, not having flown off (just for today) to land upon, or within , someone else.

Other things have changed, too—more obvious, external things.

Somewhere during the writing of this book, for instance, I took a set of clippers to my head and shaved down my hair to a velvety stubble.

This seems important to our story—given the fact that Rayya and I first met because she was my hairdresser.

She was one of the few people who could ever make my frizzy mop of “duck fluff” look gorgeous.

This was one of the things—one of the many things—that I always needed her for.

But now I tend to my hair all by myself, by buzzing it off once a week and never giving it a moment’s thought otherwise.

Rayya would’ve hated this haircut on me, by the way. She liked her women to be soft and pretty and traditionally feminine. You know who else likes their women to be soft and pretty and traditionally feminine? Almost everybody in the world, as it turns out. But lately I find that I do not care.

Let me be more clear: I cannot care .

I cannot start caring about looking attractive and pleasing to other people (especially men) or I may as well throw my hard-earned sobriety straight into a ravine, never to be seen again.

Anyway, I like my hair this way. I recognize myself better when I have no hair.

And I love the freedom of it—of being able to jump in and out of rivers, lakes, and oceans with a sense of absolute liberation.

I recently stopped putting Botox and fillers into my face, too, and I barely wear makeup anymore.

I look in the mirror now and I see a woman who is exactly my age—and that feels accurate and honest. She looks like an interesting person, but she isn’t trying to look any hotter or younger than she is.

I see a woman who is fully present and available to herself, to her work, to her friends and fellows, to God, to the world itself.

This is my sober life, and it is good.

Having said all this, though, I must acknowledge that we have been here before .

Readers of my earlier work may remember that I reached nearly this same level of peace and tranquility back when I was in India, in the middle of my Eat Pray Love travels, after months of disciplined prayer, meditation, and retreat.

At the end of my stay in the ashram, I really felt like I had found it—that I had reached inner contentment at last. And in many ways, I had found it.

The only problem was I didn’t have a program to help me keep it.

Left unsupervised, and with no community, or sangha, to support me, I dropped all my spiritual practices and returned to my old ways of being.

I just picked up all my addictions and dysfunctional behaviors again, exactly as Rayya had done when she left the structure of her recovery program behind.

And eventually I drove my life off a cliff all over again.

My prayer, my humble and sincere prayer, is that I will get to keep my peace this time.

Now, this is the place in my story where I should probably mention that I am allowed to pursue a new relationship if I want to.

A few years ago I was “cleared to date” by my sponsor—meaning that she considers me emotionally stable enough now to seek out a healthy relationship, should I want one.

While I am touched and moved by her vote of confidence in me, I find that for the first time in my life I am not longing for a partner—and that itself is a miracle.