March 1

”Ego has a voracious appetite, the more you feed it, the hungrier it gets.” Nathaniel Bronner Jr.

Hmm, I can relate a little to appetite, my addiction certainly has one. And it was an appetite that tended to have no end, a bottomless pit that was never satisfied. And based on the number of years I was in it, I would certainly agree that it got hungrier and hungrier over time. What I needed to consume to satisfy the craving had to get bigger, riskier, or simply more. My recovery had to look at ways to starve my addiction, to take away all the food and attention I was giving to it. Some of that work was fairly easy, but it only took me so far in helping to push away my cravings. Eventually I realized that my addiction was covering up a deeper need. And that need was my spirituality that had been covered, ignore, and displaced for too many years. The best way for me to defeat my addiction was to find the ways to nourish my soul. This is where focusing on my outer circle became crucial. Making new habits, focusing on all the healthy ways to take care of myself is what worked to diminish my dependence on my addiction.

Affirmation The choices I make can feed my recovery, or feed my addiction. I will pray for the guidance of the God of my understanding to make the right decisions.

August 27

”In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.” Honore de Balzac

I lost track of the countless hours I spent looking for that perfect moment, a picture, video, angle, position, whatever it was that was the holy grail that was going to give me exactly what I needed. The saddest part is that I rarely, if ever, even found what I was being driven to seek out in the first place. And did I ever throw a lot of sand and gravel aside in my hunting. My sexual appetite, most especially the mental part, was a bottomless pit that was always craving something that I just couldn’t quite grasp. So I continued to throw endless amounts of stuff into it in the hopes that something would satiate it, but all that tended to do was make it even more hungry. Recovery has been a diet of sorts. And it’s a good diet in the sense that it makes me focus not so much on all the bad things I shouldn’t be feeding myself with, as it is on reintegrating all the good, healthy ones that I have neglected to use. This has really helped me to stop seeking those “perfect” highs that didn’t exist and allowed me to gain true pleasure from the real world and real experiences. The pearls I sought were always close at hand, I just couldn’t recognize them for what they were.

Affirmation May I find the true pleasures in the world around me, in nature, beauty, song, music, laughter, hope and joy.