Is “Love” Your Drug of Choice?



Roxy Music- Love Is the Drug

For those of us who grew up in an alcoholic household, it’s been easy to confuse love with lust. After all, many of us as children never experienced true love as we were growing up. When our teen years hit, and our hormones kicked-in, it was easy for us to think that lust was love. So lust became “Love” to many of us.

It was all too easy then to “fall in love (lust)” with anyone who threw crumbs of attention our way. First, we confused “attention” with “love attraction.” We mistakenly thought that anyone who showed an interest in us was actually in love with us, when in fact, they were just being friendly. And we easily confused sex with intimacy. Sex is a form of intimacy, but only when Love is actually the true motivation for sex.

I remember attending a CODA meeting once where a lady admitted that she had confused lust/neediness with love/intimacy for years. Love (actually lust) became her drug of choice. She mistakenly thought that if a man wanted to have sex with her it meant he loved her. At the very least, she believed it meant that she had some personal worth. So sex became her means of filling up the emptiness inside of her. It became her way of emotionally medicating, even if it meant having sex with a man she loathed.

Love is a beautiful experience between two equal people who mutually hold affection in their hearts for each other. Love means sharing experiences, good and bad, with each other; sharing similar interests, and truly complimenting each other’s happiness over an extended period of time. In real love relationships, sex becomes only a part of the relationship. It becomes an expression of real love.

There is no authentic love in “Hi, my name is __________ and let’s jump into bed.” That is pure lust that has only one purpose: To fill up the empty spaces inside of us that exist because we have refused to love ourselves. Once, through Recovery, we begin to love ourselves, we are no longer willing to accept lust/sex for love. Recovery helps us to regain our own personal sense of worth and value. So we are no longer willing to abuse ourselves through casual sex, which can never meet our need for authentic intimacy and real love.

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