i'm emotionally wrecked

LegacyUser

Hi,
Not sure am I looking for advice or just to get things off my chest. I'm the son of alcoholic from broken home, and have struggled with gambling addiction in the past. I am over two years free and very proud of the progress I've made. However, I'm really finding it hard to cope with life. I have a wonderful wife, two perfect children i adore, good job, quite well off but I really dont like myself at all. I am average looking, in good shape bar a beer belly and very popular but I need more all the time. Lately, I am feeling as though I want more.
I have almost a craving for sex, cant stop thinking about being with other women, fantasising about my wife being with other men ( both in front of me and affairs ), wanting threesomes, swingers, everything. It's like a compulsion I cant stop.
I dont want to lose everything, but if I get the courage to take up offers that come my way, I dont think I have the strength to say no!
What is f*cking wrong with me?

Victor

Are you seeking the risk-taking that went with the gambling?

Jesus Wept

Victor wrote:

Are you seeking the risk-taking that went with the gambling?

Very astute Victor.

That sounds very plausable.

Perhaps a high octain sport could interest the OP, sky diving perhaps, helicopter flying lessons.

Wibbs

Nail on the head Victor. I think you may be missing the rush that gambling gave you and the addictive part of your brain is seeking a replacement. The extreme sports idea of The-Rigger makes a lot of sense and if it's anyway physical it'll get shot of the beer belly too.

seahorse

messed up wrote:

I dont want to lose everything, but if I get the courage to take up offers that come my way, I dont think I have the strength to say no!
What is f*cking wrong with me?

Hi Messed up. First off I want to point out that it won’t take courage to take up the offers that come your way; courage will be what it'll take to refuse them. As for what's wrong with you, as a recovering narcotic addict I think I can make an educated guess at that. What's wrong with you, in my opinion, is that you're an addict.

Most addicts tend to regard themselves as being people who've had problems with a particular substance or behaviour and categorise themselves as such, therefore (aptly, they assume) refer to themselves as alcoholics, narcotic addicts, gamblers etc. The problem with that very common trait is that it confers the problem in its entirety onto that particular substance or behaviour, leaving the addict wide open to be pulled back into addiction via any one of the numerous other addictive routes. When deprived of its primary addiction, the first thing an addictive nature will do is attempt to substitute. It is an urge that is innate to the addict and you are in no way alone. Ridiculously, when I was going through the first few months free of cocaine abuse, as soon as the powerful urge for cocaine began to wane, I developed a strong and throbbing longing for heroin, which I'd smoked many times, but never enough times in succession to develop the physical dependency (thank God) Luckily for me I knew what that urge for heroin was all about and was able to recognise it for what it was. It wasn't logical that I'd be longing for heroin, my body wasn't crying out for it; my mind was.

I'd strongly urge you to contact Gamblers Anonymous and begin attending meetings, especially what are known as 'step meetings'; meetings held with the particular purpose of teaching and encouraging you regarding how to incorporate the twelve step programme of recovery into your life. Since G.A. is a twelve stop programme its meetings have to be structured in the same way as the N.A. meetings I attended, and I can promise you, you'll be amazed to find every other person in the room either has struggled or is struggling with powerful urges to substitute their addiction.

I couldn't detail how forcefully that same realisation hit me without divulging stories about other peoples situations and feelings eerily similar to my own which I heard at the meetings, and I cant do that as there is a very strict policy of respecting the privacy of the speakers in those rooms, but take it from me; if you go to G.A. you'll find from the very outset that far from being alone, there are many other people whose problems reflect your own so closely you'll wonder if somebody's been reading your diary!

Please at least consider it; addiction is a curse that'll rob you of everyone you love in your life if you let it, which is exactly what'll happen if you give in to these urges and your wife comes to find out about it and leaves with the kids.

Best of luck to you.

jt_dublin

Hi MessedUp,
First of all, congratulations. In spite of your childhood, you have achieved a lot and you deserve to be very proud of this.

I come from a similar background (alcoholic parent - mother in my case, and a broken home - mother left when I was 12 and she died when I was 16). Growing up in that environment was traumatic. When I expressed any emotion to my parents about how sad and heartbroken I was feeling, I was told not to be upsetting myself. So eventually I detached myself from my emotions. This wasnt intentional. It was a survival skill to cope with the dramas, chaos and insecurity of my daily life. Outside of the home I didnt want to be seen to be different, so I hid the "family secret" and pretended that my life was "normal". Every day I would put on my mask, my "happy face", while inside I was falling to pieces. Because I was portraying this false identity, I grew up with a no real sense of who I was or how I was actually feeling.

Even though my childhood is now more than 20 years ago, the trauma of it all finally caught up with me and earlier this year as I more or less fell apart. I was so unhappy, an emotional wreck, felt very depressed and I knew that I had to talk to someone. So I started to see a counsellor and began to talk about how I was feeling. It was very tough at the start as I didnt really know how I was feeling or how to describe what I was feeling. In the 2nd session, the counsellor told me that it was like I was talking about somebody elses childhood and he was right. I had detached myself emotionally from it to protect myself from the pain. But I began to feel the emotions again. I was opening up the wounds of my childhood, talking about events that I had long since buried and it hurt like hell. But it had to be done. What happened to me in my childhood was in injustice and it needed to be acknowledged and validated instead of it being denied, buried, ignored. Only then could I move on from it, rather than having it holding me back and having a power over me.

My lack of a nurturing upbringing also impacted on my attitude to relationships and sex. I had no idea what love was until I got married. Even in my marriage I continued to have similar feelings to you about sex, sexuality and sex addiction. I thought about / fantasised about all types of sexual situations. I also discussed these with the counsellor and I am beginning to have a different perspective. It will still take time to change the old thoughts and patterns, but I will get there.

My advice to you is to find yourself a good counsellor. To get the best the counselling you will need to be very open and honest with them about what you are thinking/feeling.

There are also some websites and books that you could read.

Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Geringer Woititiz.

This is the website of the lady who wrote the book

http://www.drjan.com/index.htm

Take a look at the 13 characteristics of Adult children section and see if any of them ring true. Most of them certainly did for me. The book has a chapter that discusses each of the characteristics.

Other books that I found helpful were:
Co-Dependent No More by Melody Beattie
Beyond Co-Dependency by Melody Beattie
Homecoming by John Bradshaw
Family Secrets by John Bradshaw

There are also meetings for Adult Children of Alcoholics. You can find them thru this site.
http://www.adultchildren.org/

If I can be of any help, feel free to contact me.

Best of luck for the future.
JT.

LegacyUser

'The compulsive behaviour that many addicts and ex-addicts show is due to brain changes in the areas responsible for judgement. This leads to an inability to judge well in delayed discounting situations- what this basically means is that you are more likely to choose a smaller reward now over a greater reward in the future. Applied to the OPs situation this means that despite your great family and the desire to keep your marriage (which is a long-term goal or reward), short-term pleasure such as sexual indiscretions will seem more tempting. Cognitive behavioural therapy is often successful at teaching people to judge situations in a non-biased way and is really helpful for people struggling with addiction in general. Your doctor should be able to refer you to someone who could help.'