Addiction as Medicine

All addictions are self-medication for something.

For me, the medication was for my guilt. Why did I feel guilty?

I thought that I had caused my son’s physical disability. I thought that I was a horrible person that needed to be punished. I thought that my son “took the hit” for me being a bad person.

Throughout my teenage and young adult years, I would avert my eyes away from disabled people. I did not see their value. I could not relate to or understand the necessity to modify any physical barriers to accommodate disability. I never thought I would be affected by disability. It is something that happened to other people, and not me.

Then my son was born with cerebral palsy. “ Fuck you God!” was my response. I believed that God wanted to teach me a lesson about disability by allowing my son to be born disabled. I felt resentment because I thought I should be the disabled one, not my innocent son.

But I had taken a fertility drug to get pregnant. And I wasn’t on bed rest like I should have been. And I had a high-risk pregnancy and delivered prematurely and it was All my fault. I wonder how many other mother’s think they caused their child’s disability? Perhaps it is a common thought.

This rage at God and the sadness and guilt I felt caused me to have dysfunctional coping skills. I drowned myself in sex and food addiction. When I was not acting out, I would just feel my sadness, guilt, and anger and that was an uncomfortable way to live. I needed to self-medicate by utilizing my addictions.

Ultimately, I learned that my belief system about causing my son’s disability and being punished by God was not true. I write about this mindset change in my book, My Secret Life as a Sex Addict. How I repaired the Damage.