TED AND I SIT in the lounge for an individual session. I am not speaking, and he is patiently waiting. On his coffee mug the word coffee is printed in numerous languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, English. How simple, I think. How ordinary. The word coffee is simple and ordinary. And the manufacturer is so thoughtful to print the word in so many languages, cover all international bases. You know when you pick up the mug what you are drinking. In any language. No surprise.
In a gentle way Ted’s eyes try to read me—no, interpret me, or translate me into his own basic language where the word coffee always means “coffee.” Literally.
“I don’t think I quite understand reality,” I say. I try to explain how my imagination, my fantasies, seem as real, say, as Ted’s coffee mug. “Like if you’re doing drugs or something and have a hallucinogenic experience, are those perceptions real?”
“I think those perceptions are trance-induced delusions,” he says. “But addicts become so involved with them that the delusions become their reality. But in your sense, the way you mean it, no, not real.”
“But isn’t it just a different kind of reality?”
“When you were young, and your father hurt you, you changed reality by believing what he did was love. Then, that was the only way you had to survive the pain. So it was good, in that at least it kept you alive.” Yet that false belief was the beginning of the addict persona, he explains, which now has become so pervasive that it’s bad. “Now the addict creates a powerful and false distraction that inhibits your ability to live real life—or to resolve legitimate pain—such as your past.”
Yes, addictions keep all of us alive until, ironically, they kill us. Over the years, addicts become more hard-core. In my delusional belief that dangerous men love me, I re-create the past. It is the only thing to which I have been faithful.
“This is the only real world I know.” Ted nods at the lounge, at the unit, meaning the tangible world we see before us.
In Ted’s real world, the word coffee, therefore, remains one word, one substance. A minimalist approach to language. In Ted’s world less is more. Less is less is even better.
In addiction more is more. Hyperbole, exaggeration, connotation are even better, where the word coffee, for example, could connote man, woman, steaming cups of coffee spiked with rum, a thick rug beside a fireplace, discarded ski sweaters, a winter dusk with air dark as plums. In other words, even the word coffee could connote the word sex.
Ted says, “Now, how about if we move on to what we’re not talking about?” I look away, guilty. “Have you tried calling Gabriel?”
I pick up the plastic box filled with sand and tip it over.
“No,” I say.
“You keeping him in your mind, like a stash?” He waits. “I mean, I know how hard it is to change habits.”
Change.
Right before Ted said the word change he exhaled, so the word seemed to burst from his mouth.
Of course I know that I entered treatment in order to try to change. Yet in the way Ted uttered the word change, it’s as if I hear the word for the very first time.
I can change. Can I change? Flip a lever, flip a switch. That simple, that easy. And I will no longer even think about calling Gabriel.
Change: Behavior. Clothes. Language. Thoughts. Me.
But suppose I can’t change?
And suddenly the word and its meaning—that I am capable of change—is so terrifying that my addict absolutely does not want me to know this word, does not want me to change. Yes, as Ted said: it does want to keep me trapped in bad behaviors.
Ted persists. “You might be surprised by how powerful you feel if you focus on your feelings,” he says. “Not theirs. Put that energy into understanding yourself. You already know those men.”
I tuck my legs onto the chair and lean my head back, exhausted just thinking about the words power and change. “Suppose I’m nothing without them,” I say.
The clarity of his blue eyes urges me to understand his truth rather than my own unreason. “You aren’t.”
He hands me a pass to have dinner with Andrew—a week from now. Since I live too far away to drive home, Ted suggests that Andrew and I meet at a restaurant in Atlanta. Instructions accompany the pass: I am to drive directly to the restaurant and back. No detours. I am to be back at the unit no later than ten P.M.
I watch Ted with steady eyes. I am capable of following the instructions. To follow the instructions implies I can change.
My addict glances at Ted and smiles. I am not capable of following the instructions. On my way back to the unit I will visit Gabriel. I am not capable of changing.
“Ted, wait.” I drop the pass on the coffee table. “I don’t want it. I’m not ready.”
“The other day you could hardly wait to get out of here.”
“I know. But Gabriel—”
“Afraid you’ll visit him?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
He smiles. “That’s honest, anyway.”
“I just keep thinking—suppose, just suppose he’s different. Suppose he’s a dangerous man who is spiritually capable of loving me. Then both my addict and I could be happy.”
“Whether he’s spiritual or not—and I suspect he’s not—you’re still ‘using’ his spirituality as an excuse to act out with him. He knew you would. And maybe he tries to create that illusion. It’s like when you wear your addict clothes—or flirt at parties—that persona.” He leans forward as if I might better understand what he is saying. “Besides, pretending these men love you isn’t going to make it happen. You don’t love them, either.”
I don’t love them, either. “I don’t?”
“Do you?”
“Gosh, I mean, no, of course not. I mean, I can fall in love with a man because of the way he looks in sunglasses.”
“Speaking of reality—”
“I guess ‘sunglasses’ aren’t exactly valid barometers of love.”
“If you ‘create’ these men in your head, you can ‘uncreate’ them just as easily. They’re just men. They may be dangerous, but you’re the one who gives them that power and that quality. You make them into something they’re not. They’re not Greek gods or superheroes or mythical creatures. They’re just ordinary. Regular guys. Just men.”
“Just men.”
“Besides,” Ted adds, “why didn’t you have sex with Gabriel? What stopped you?”
“Well, he didn’t show up that night.”
“What else?”
“I didn’t—don’t—even want to have sex with him,” I say, without thinking, almost before I realize what I’m saying. “It is about control. You’re right. But when I think that he, or any man, desires me, I have some. And I feel so powerful.”
Ted settles back in his chair. “Most sex addicts don’t like sex—any more than alcoholics like alcohol.” The tone of his voice says: Hear me, believe me, listen. “You tell yourselves you like it, whatever the addiction. But why would anyone like something that’s killing them?”
Ted picks up the pass and hands it to me again. I put it in my pocket. I stand to go, but hesitate. Ted, about to write something on his legal pad, glances up.
“I called Gabriel,” I say.
“I know,” he says.
“More than once.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“You’re an addict,” he says. “But I’m pleased you trust me enough to tell me.”
Still I pause. “It’s just…it’s so hard to say no to a man. If he wants me.”
“But hear what they’re really asking you. What they’re really offering.”
Nothing, I think. Less.
“You know,” Ted adds, “one of these days you are going to have to start dealing with Andrew. Get honest with him. Tell him about these men. Your other life.”
But he’ll leave me. Hate me. I’d feel so ashamed.
“You might want to start trying when you meet him for dinner.”