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Our friend Webster defines “addiction” as “compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal.”
The number of different addictions (which today includes the title of compulsive obsession behaviors) seems to be growing at a rapid rate. The ones that normally came to mind used to be alcohol, nicotine or heroin. Today we also know that candy, food in general, gambling, shopping, the Internet, video games, exercise, pain medication, meth, sex, addiction to addiction treatment, methamphetamine and even people addiction are all serious problems. Some, like gambling, shopping, eating and computers are compulsive behaviors. These seem perfectly normal and one wonders how it can become an addiction. Shopping for example; what is wrong with that? It’s a perfectly healthy activity isn’t it? And what’s wrong with eating candy? Other than having a high dentist bill……and maybe as you get older the worry about diabetes. But life is so short. Don’t we all deserve a few rewards, especially for all we’ve been through?
A saying from my childhood comes to mind, All things in moderation. At the time I figured it had nothing to do with me; it applied to old people. But as I find myself moving closer to that age group I realize it makes perfect sense.
How do we become addicted to things potentially harmful to us? What started
Those of us who were abused as children find that the bad memories are so painful that we must do something to distract ourselves from them. This is an unconscious decision. The rule of thumb is that anything we are doing that is for the purpose of not facing unpleasant things is not a good idea. If it hasn’t already, it will soon become something that has painful repercussions.
In my REPAIR program I liken these painful memories to a physical wound. But what happens to a wound that becomes infected and is not treated? The infection begins spreading throughout our body. In the case of child abuse that has gone untreated we want nothing more than to remove these memories and the only way we know how is to become addicted to something that is powerful enough to keep the memories at bay.
Eventually a painful price must be paid for addiction to a substance or an activity. I watched the father of my children die from cirrhosis of the liver. Before beginning recovery I attempted suicide, more than once. My addiction to my abuser, my addiction to sex, and my addiction to cigarettes were symptoms of a much deeper problem. The day I realized that my addictions were not treating the cause of my depression started out with an innocent trip to the pharmacy. As I waited for my sleeping pills and my anti-depressants I saw a pile of brochures about different pharmaceutical products sitting on the counter. The words on the front of the brochure, Losing your freedom of choice is a bitter pill to swallow leapt out at me. I felt as if I’d been rammed in my gut by a two by four and grabbed the brochure as I struggled to hide my tears. I hurried home and scotch taped it to my mirror. I read it over and over and thought about how my abuser was controlling what I wore, who I spoke with on the phone, where I went and most of my daily activities. Knowing that he may even control what I taped to my mirror, I began sobbing. It was my moment of truth. I simply had not seen how my addictions ruled my life and were heading me towards a cliff.
A few days later, after a visit to my family doctor where he said he would no longer accept my response to his continued question about whether my father had sexually abused me, I entered recovery.
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Marjorie
McKinnon is an incest survivor who ran away from home at the age of 18
after five years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse at the hands of
her father. She spent the next 27 years going from one abuser to
another until in her mid-forties, while married to her third domestic
violence abuser, she entered a program for recovery of her own devising
that she later called REPAIR. During recovery, she found out that her
two older daughters had been sexually abused by her second husband. Her
youngest daughter was raped at gunpoint by a masked bandit when she was
17. This accents the reality that child sexual abuse and incest is a
multi- generational problem. Children of an untreated incest survivor
stand a five times greater chance of being sexually molested themselves.Marjorie is the author of fourteen books and four volumes of poetry. Her memoir, I Never Heard A Robin Sing is currently in Kindle version on amazon.com. Six of her books have been published by Loving Healing Press: REPAIR Your Life: A Program for Recovery from Incest & Child Sexual Abuse, REPAIR For Kids, REPAIR For Toddlers, REPAIR For Teens, The REPAIR Your Life Workbook and It’s Your Choice! Decisions That Will Change Your Life. All are available through any major on line book distributor. Six of these books are in 101 libraries throughout the world. She also has five novels and two other non-fictions that are available as Kindles on amazon.com. She is the founder of The Lamplighter Movement, a rapidly growing international movement for recovery from incest and child sexual abuse that emphasizes the importance of REPAIRing the damage. There are currently 82 Lamplighter chapters in ten countries. Two of these are in women’s prisons, a project near and dear to Marjorie’s heart. She is working to get chapters in all of the women’s prisons in the US. The Lamplighter Movement website is at http://www.thelamplighters.org. Marjorie’s writer’s website is at
http://www.marjoriewrites.thelamplighters.org/index.html.
Marjorie and her husband, Tom, were both McKinnons when they met on a genealogy website. After a 16 month long distance courtship they were married in the year 2000 in Melrose, Scotland, taking their final vows in the ruins of Melrose Abbey. Tom is the illustrator of her children’s REPAIR books. They live in the Sedona, AZ area along with their Golden Retriever, Guinevere.
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