Gay Men and Addictions: Breaking the Grip via Gay-Affirmative Recovery
Coping with Addictions
Over many years of practice, I’ve come to have a pretty good idea about what you might be feeling when we discuss addictions.
You might feel bewildered about how you ever got to this place in life. Something that started out just being for fun has taken on a new, darker meaning. Alcohol that might have been fun at parties as a teenager or at clubs as a younger guy has grown beyond just a beverage to have fun with to something that you find yourself wanting or needing like it has a life of its own. Or another substance, like coke or crystal. At a certain point, sometimes without warning, you realize that it’s not fun anymore, but you also realize that “just stopping” isn’t as easy done as it is said or thought.
Or maybe it’s not alcohol or a substance, but it’s something to do, like sex. Where it’s not about enjoying your body, or another’s body, and just getting off as part of the humanity of being sexual, but it’s more like a chore, a compulsion, a “must”, like it was driving you instead of you driving it. Or maybe it’s gambling — at a horse track, or with the online gambling games, or poker/blackjack, with friends or at one of the casinos, in person or online. What started out as a thrilling, fun game to make some extra money has a grip that’s not fun anymore.
Or maybe it’s a person who is the addiction. Not really someone you love, but someone you feel connected to in a bad way, that you want to let go of, but you can’t. It’s not because you don’t WANT to, it’s because you feel you CAN’T. You know there is a difference, and the difference scares you, or makes you feel weird, helpless, frustrated, or just angry with yourself.
I get it. This is what my clients over the past 17 years have described addictions to be like.
So what does therapy with Ken Howard, LCSW, have to do with coping with all this?
It’s like this: I was trained as a therapist to work with people who have all of these kinds of addictions, and more, and to help them NOT feel or act the way they DON’T want to, and help them TO feel and act the way they WANT to.
In therapy for addictions with me, here is what typically happens:
- We talk about what’s going on that bothers you. You give it a name, descriptions, feelings.
- We talk about the ways to break the persistent patterns and learn a new way to think, feel, act, and behave.
- We talk about the resources, inside of you and outside of you, or around you, that will help you make those changes, and make them “stick”.
- We bring you up from feeling bad, frustrated, bored, helpless, or even miserable, and help you to get RELIEF and LIBERATION.
- I share with you my training in how addictions are treated by various psychological counseling techniques, my observations of how I’ve helped hundreds of other people with addictions overcome them successfully over many years doing this work, and I use even my own personal experience or those of my friends and colleagues to illustrate things that helped them, that might also help you.
- We work, together, and over time (sometimes surprisingly quickly), we frankly change your life for the better.
As a result, you feel freer, lighter, brighter, and more “authentic”. And you still get to have fun in your life — more fun than before, actually.
Sound good?
OK. I’m here when you need or want to see me about this.
If you’re not ready to come in and see me for this yet, try something faster. Sign up for my Newsletter, “Have the Life You Want!”, or listen to my Podcasts on iTunes for various tips that you might find helpful for positive, successful living in general.
If you are ready to come in and talk about things, let me know. You can email me at ken@gaytherapyla.com, or you can call me at 310-726-4357. Either is fine. You can make an appointment then, or you can ask me some questions that might help you feel more ready to make an appointment.
It’s important to remember that there IS hope. You let me know what you want to do.