I'm 34 days clean and wondering if it's normal to have ranging hormones? I feel like I've almost replaced my drug of choice with a new addiction. I haven't acted on it, but I seem to be falling in love with every man I see at meetings. I go home and fantasize about them. When is it safe 2 begin having physical contact with another human? I'm starved for physical intimacy.
HI Smitch and welcome. first let me compliment you on your clean time. 34 days clean is HUGE. It is not rare at all what your going through. The literature tells us so. You see, drugs has been an all consuming preoccupation for you for a long time. NOw that they are out of your life, there is this big empty void that longs to be filled. If you don't already, get a basic text and read about step 2. "coming to believe" is a way to begin to fill that void. It's pretty common to find people gaining weight, having alot of sex, exercising for hours on end etc, after becoming clean. These substitutes can be good, or not so good. Having healthy diversion is good but substituting one addiction for another is not healthy. talk to your sponsor about it. She can provide some important insights. Thanks for sharing and keep coming back.
Welcome SMITCH, I'm with Avid on this. When we put the drugs down we feel and emptiness inside that we feel we need to fill with whatever takes our fancy. We need to be careful at this time cause we are extremely vaunerable, wether we realize it or not. We are scared of going through this alone and we want some one to save us and make us all better, we can think," if I find a nice fella in the fellowship then I will be ok ". Hun this could not be further from the truth. When we first get clean we need to learn to love ourselves and build a relationship with a higher power. We all need to be patient when it comes to matters of the heart, the most important thing to keep in mind is that recovery must come first we are addicts and we need to be reminded that the most important thing is that we stay clean and keep ourselves safe and away from temptation.......
The bottom line for me is that if something makes me feel good, I want more of it. I must be careful of things that can give me a non-drug high, such as food, sex, relationships, exercise, gambling, shopping, etc. This doesn't mean I must totally abstain from food (impossible), exercise (unhealthy), or sex (difficult), but I must be mindful of my tendancy to overdo it. There is nothing wrong with sexual fantasies; it is acting on them that can get me into trouble. I got involved in a relationship at about four months clean. While it was not disastrous, there were some problems. Basically, I was obsessing on this person bway too much, and she pulled away. At eleven months clean (and having taken my first stab steps 1-12) I got in another relationship, which has been very successful: we've been happily married for 22 years and I have continued to stay clean.
