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[Victims No Longer: The Classic Guide for Men Recovering from Sexual Child Abuse](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006053026X?ie=UTF8&tag=befrprll-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=006053026X)





About Author

About eBook

Vivere tells the true story of a person, David, from his physical, mental,
emotional, and male sexual abusive childhood into drug and alcohol
addiction, AA recovery, and his search for Spiritual Truth. David shares
with the reader his innermost thoughts and feelings from his childhood
that resulted, unknown to him, in his soul-sickness. He then shares in
detail how his soul-sickness ambushed him into the horrors of drug
and alcohol addiction. He shares both his feelings and the strange
mental twists of the alcoholic mind. He shares, in graphic detail, how
his anger, frustration, terror, and depression, after many years,
resulted in Delirium Tremors, hallucinations, and eventually
detoxification. He shares the painful shattering of his denial system,
his withdrawal process, and his miraculous recovery in Alcoholics
Anonymous. He shares his thoughts and feelings as he proceeds
through the AA Program of Recovery. He then shares his thoughts and
feelings as he experiences he attempts to rebuild his life only to
experience one defeat after another because he cannot confront and
deal with the emotional hangovers from the male sexual abuse that he
suffered as a child. David reaches the brink of suicide before he can let
out his repressed emotions and he shares the painful experience that
is sexual male abuse recovery.

Preview

I was outside in the yard when I heard a voice in my mind screaming, "Go rape your daughter!"

Over and over I heard this and then I felt the most intense sexual feeling that I have ever had in
my life. I still had some sanity left, I told myself, because I knew that a beer would quite the voice.
I ran into the house and gulped down a beer. The voice started to quite down so I had another beer.
It was this incident that convinced me to take Louise' suggestion, that I see her family Doctor. I did
see her Doctor at his office in Quincy Massachusetts. I was shocked to learn that besides being
Louses' family Doctor, the physician was also the Chief Physician at the Quincy Detox. Well, after a
through exam, and a number of medical tests, the Doctor told me that, he thought he knew exactly
what was wrong with me, and that, he had a prescription that he knew would cure me. God, I was
excited, because here was someone who could cure the debilitating anxiety. I can remember him
sitting behind his desk as he wrote out the prescription and handed it to me.

When I read the prescription it said, "AA for one year".

I was angry, and asked the Doctor, "What kind of bullshit was this?"

He calmly told me that, "I believe that you are an alcoholic. I know that you do not believe that you
are, therefore to prove the point to yourself, if you are an alcoholic you will not be able to take this
prescription".

Incredible, I remember saying to myself that the Doctor wanted me to give up the one thing that, I
believed, kept me together. I thought the Doctor was crazier then I was. Louise, however, was not as
convinced, as I was, of the Doctor's insanity. I went to AA, not because I had a drinking problem but
to show the Doctor that he had made a mistake. In short, I went with the, "I'll show you" not the, "I
need help" attitude.

I went through the motions, in that, I joined a Group and I got a Sponsor. I read the literature, but
didn't understand it or accept it. I went to a lot of AA meetings, and I was told to identify and not
compare. I was told that "comparing", meant that I compared my drinking to the speakers'. For
example, if I heard a speaker say that he drank in the morning and I said to myself that I did not
drink in the morning, then I was comparing. If I said to myself I have felt like drinking in the
morning then I was identifying. I compared with the stories rather then identifying.

In the morning, I asked a Power Greater then myself to help me to stay away from a drink for that
day, although I did not believe such a Power existed. Each day that I asked, however, I did not
drink. This went on for nine months, after which, one Saturday I was again home baby sitting my
daughter while Louise went shopping with our son Richard. Again, I was thinking of raping my
four-year-old daughter. These thoughts frightened me. Not only, because I believed them to be
somewhat insane, but also because of the intensity of the feeling these thoughts generated in me, I
was not sure if I would do something that I really did not want to do. Again the solution to this
problem was to go get a beer. My past experience had shown that a beer would put these thoughts
to sleep. After years of experiencing these kinds of situations, and treating them with alcohol, it is
not hard to imagine how I came to believe that I was either possessed by a devil or had some form
of mental illness.

I had to admit that maybe the Doctor had been correct and that I was alcoholic. I had heard at the
AA meetings that, if you were alcoholic and continued to drink that, "things would get worse."

Well for me, they were not bad enough that I would even consider going to AA meetings. It was the
insane thoughts in my mind, and the intense negative feelings that they generated that were the
problems, not my drinking. I, obviously, had a very hard time understanding that alcoholism is a
threefold disease, physical, mental, and spiritual. I didn't understand that the physical part of the
disease is the drink itself. Even when I did not drink I was still two-thirds sick, that is, mentally and
spiritually. I did not understand that the insane thoughts, like those that I had that suggested that I
rape my daughter, were alcoholism. The alcoholic mind will invent and create any situation necessary
to get to the next drink. I didn't understand that the spiritual part of the disease was the loss of
values. I had so little self-respect and/or self-worth that I just surrendered. I did not have any
spiritual resources to resist alcohol's demands; when it said, "shit", I squatted. I didn't understand
the mental obsession and the physical compulsion that separates the alcoholic from "normal"
drinkers. Unknown to me, the mental obsession, inside of me, expressed itself in such a way that if
I was not drinking I was thinking about drinking. The physical compulsion was, for me, once I had
the first drink I would drink until I passed out. Once I had one drink every pore in my body
screamed for another, and another, and another. Saddest of all was the fact that I did not
understand the insanity of what the AA people called "denial". Denial, as the AA people explained to
me, was denying the Truth. They had explained to me that the alcoholic could be living in a
dumpster but denial would be telling him that everything is fine, life is good. This, of course, is
insane, however, the alcoholic believes, and believes passionately, that what denial tells them is the
gospel truth! I didn't understand that without a miracle, to breakthrough the denial, the denial would
insure that the alcoholics would, eventually, kill themselves. I didn't know what alcoholism really was,
yet, I was going to handle it my way; I didn't need AA.

Louise and I sold our home and moved to Quincy to be closer to her family. We purchased a large
eight room Garrison Colonial and things, for me, appeared to be on the mend. But the guilt that I
felt got to me. I had not had a drink for nine months, and I knew I didn't have to drink, if I went to
AA meetings. With each drink I took, I got more and more guilty. I had to get rid of the guilt, but
how? In addition, I was also experiencing the free-floating anxiety, more frequently, and with greater
intensity which meant, of course, that I was constantly afraid of imaginary things. I was beginning to
have serious doubts about my own sanity. After giving these situations a lot of consideration, I
decided to do what my mother and father did, and that was to seek out a psychiatrist. I am not sure
how I ended up with the psychiatrist that I ended up with, but when I first went to see him, he
prescribed these little blue pills he called Valium. Oh, how beautiful these were at first. I had ten
milligrams three times a day, every day. If I needed more I took more. And I continued to drink. It
was not unusual for me to put a Valium in my mouth and wash it down with a cold beer. The
psychiatrist, to me, was simply a drug pusher because he never, ever, dealt with the real issues. In
short, the doctor practiced Valium therapy not psychotherapy.

This went on for two and a half years, after which I was truly frightened out of my mind. It did not
matter how many of those little blue pills I took, because the fears and guilt would come back and it
always came back more severe. One evening, Louise and I had dinner guests. After dinner we sat
around the dinner table and just talked. At some point in the evening, Louise and the dinner guests
said that they had had enough to drink. I do not understand how people can think that way, but at
the time I continued to drink. For some reason, I felt self-conscious, or maybe even guilty, that I
was drinking and they were not, so I decided to go get a coke. I sat at the end of the table sipping
on my coke when I got up, went to the refrigerator and got another beer. I filled a glass with the
beer and sat down in my chair.

As I lifted the beer to my lips, my mind was saying, "I do not want this drink" over and over, as I
swallowed the beer.

It was then that, I knew that alcohol would kill me and I was powerless to stop it. After all, when I
would drink against my own will, I knew that alcohol had total control of me. As a result of this
knowledge, I felt raw terror. Panic set in because I now knew that, what they had said at AA
meetings, that there were only three places for an active alcoholic to go, jail, the insane asylum, or
the grave, was indeed true. I did not want to believe it, but this experience impressed upon me that,
what I wanted no longer mattered. Alcohol would eventually kill me, and I could do nothing to stop
it. I had lost the ability to choose. Alcohol would make all the decisions, and I would obey until I
either went insane or died like my cousin, Ann, who died in her forties in Boston's skid row. Yes, it
was this experience that made it clear to me that I was in a life or death situation.

I was then, so desperate, that the very next day I called my older sister, who was an active member
of AA, to find out where I could find an AA meeting? She told me that, her group was meeting at the
local church on Sunday morning at 10:30 AM I agreed to meet her there on Sunday. It was Saturday
so I only had to go twenty-four hours to get to the AA meeting! It was the longest twenty-four hours
of my life. At ten o'clock the next morning I was at the meeting. I was shocked to find that this was
easily the largest AA meeting that I had ever gone to. Why, there were easily two to three hundred
people at this meeting. My sister introduced me to the group members. We had a couple of cups of
coffee, smoked a few cigarettes and sat through the meeting. After the meeting I decided that I
would join this group so I put my name down in the group's calendar. The group chairperson asked
me what was the date of my last drink and I told him yesterday. He told me that, today then would
be my sobriety date that was in November 1978.

The group I joined was a cross-section of society. We had men and woman who were doctors and
lawyers, business people, firemen, policemen. We also had laborers, steelworkers and
longshoreman. We had the highly educated and the uneducated. We had men and woman from all
walks of life, of many different races, and of every religious persuasion. There was the one common
denominator. These were all people who had suffered enough abuse from alcohol that they, like me,
were trying to stay sober a day at a time.

The old-timers, as my sister called them, where the carriers of the group's message, which was as
one of them told me, "You never ever have to drink again, even if you want to."

I found this message simply incredulous, considering my previous experience, where I drank the
beer that I did not want to drink, and now here is the old guy telling me that, even if I wanted to
drink that, I didn't have to. I didn't understand how this was possible.

They told me to get a sponsor, so I picked someone and asked him to be my sponsor. He accepted
and gave me his phone number and suggested that I call him. At this time, I was working in Boston
and taking the train into South Station. One of the members of the group told me about an AA
meeting that was held at a restaurant near where I worked at lunchtime. I decided that, I would try
to get to this meeting the following week.

Louise was not as enthused about my going to AA meetings as I had hoped she would be. My
drinking and drugging had curtailed our sex life. In fact, I had gotten to the point where I would
pass out before I could kiss her good night. Generally, I would wake up in morning in a wet bed,
because I was too drunk to get up in the middle of the night to go the toilet, so I had urinated
where I was, in bed. This type of behavior did not contribute to a healthy, much less sexual,
relationship with my wife. Louise had taken to acquiring X-rated films for our private entertainment in
order to fan the flames of passion. Earlier in our marriage, I remember a time when things were
going a bit dull. Louise's' idea of improving our relationship was to get away for weekend orgy. We
would go to a motel on a Friday evening and never leave the room until we checked out on Sunday
evening. Somehow Louise kidded herself that these sexual adventures brought her and me closer
together, when in reality nothing could be further from the Truth.

Many years later, I was told that, "Good lovers are not necessarily friends, but good friends make
the best lovers".

I was not yet wise enough to realize that, Louise and I were lovers, but not friends. Because we were
not friends, she resisted my going to AA meetings because she did not want to lose control of me.
To live with me when I was drinking and drugging, when I was passing out at night, and urinating in
bed, a person would have to be either sick themselves or have an ulterior motive. The ulterior
motive is to have control and manipulation over another human being, which of course is a sickness
in its own right. When I drank, Louise had control of me, because I was like a little kid who never
grew up and she liked it this way because, she was the Queen, and I was her subject. My getting
sober was a threat to her monarchy. Rather then being grateful that I was getting healthier, she was
threatened that my sobriety, if any, might mean that she would lose control of me. She would have
to come down off her throne and be a real woman in a man/woman relationship. The prospects
frightened her and eventually lead to situations that I couldn't even contemplate at that time.

I went to the noon time businessman's AA meeting and sat next to a member who introduced
himself as, Steve. He asked me where I worked, and I told him, and he responded that, he knew
another member who worked there, who might be able to help me. He told me that the man's name
was Jack and he gave me his phone number. I thanked him for the member's name, and told him I
would call Jack. I asked Steve what group he was a member of and he told me. I told him that, I
thought that my cousin was also a member of that group, and I told Steve my Cousin Frank's name.
Steve burst out laughing and when he got control of himself he told me that, my cousin was his
sponsor. I thought this was an incredible coincidence and told Steve so. Steve sternly looked me in
the eyes and told me that, a coincidence is when God works anonymously.

I thought to myself, "What rubbish, there is no God."

I remember sitting next to another member at this meeting when he told me, "You know, Dave, I
believe in reincarnation?"

I thought to myself, "Is everyone in this organization on some kind of God drug?" as I smiled to the
member and said, "That nice."

He laughed, and told me that the day would come for me, where it would be either believe or die. He
said, he hoped, I would make the right choice. I thought the guy was a balmy as Steve.

One day at work, I picked up the phone and called the number that Steve had given me. A voice on
the other end of the phone identified himself as "Jack". I told him where I had gotten his number,
and that I was new. He told me that, we could go out for a cigarette, and that he would meet me
outside. I went down twenty-five floors in the elevator, wondering why I doing this. I meet Jack
outside, at the agreed upon place, and something very strange happened to me. I looked Jack in
the eyes and felt a great sense of Peace. I said to myself, "there is something very different about
this guy". I could feel it. I noticed that, around his eyes there seemed to be a, well, gentleness that
defies description. I was in awe, and said to myself, "whatever it is this guy has I want and I will do
anything to get it". I also believe that it was miraculous that I, a person who did not trust men,
would find it within myself to trust Jack with my life.

Jack and I began having lunch together and talking program. Not since my grandfather, had I felt so
comfortable around another man. So much so that, I found myself telling him things about myself
that, I thought would go to the grave with me. I never ever told Jack anything that shocked him.

He would simply smile and say, "Yes, I understand."

I came to realize that, he knew me better then I knew me. He would always say to me when we were
discussing an old situation or incident, "Feelings, feelings, feelings Dave. This is a program of
feelings. Don't tell me what you think, what do you feel?"

I came to understand, through his gentle prodding, that I had no idea what I felt. Jack helped me to
identify what it was that I felt. One day, I asked Jack to be my sponsor.

He asked me, "What are you willing to do to get and stay sober?"

I responded that I would do, "Anything."

He said, "OK, then I will be your sponsor as long as you do what I tell you to do."

He told me later that, if I had not said that I was willing to do anything to stay sober he would have
declined being my sponsor.

I was going to about six AA meetings a week. I would get up, shower and dress, have a little
breakfast, and then take the train from Quincy to Park Street Station, and walk up to the office on
Beacon Street. The group members had told me, to ask a Power Greater then myself for help to stay
sober, by getting on my knees the first thing every morning. They told me that, if I did this I
wouldn't drink that day. I was embarrassed about letting Louise see me pray, so I would go into the
bathroom, close the door, and then get on my knees, bending over the toilet, to pray. It never
seemed odd to me that, I felt embarrassed to let my wife see me pray. I wasn't embarrassed when,
I would throw up in public from drinking too much, or when I would have to be driven home from
family gathering, because I had drank so much that, I couldn't stand. I wasn't embarrassed, the
countless times that I had wet the bed, but for some reason I was embarrassed to let her see me
pray. And because I did not believe that God existed, I prayed to whatever was keeping my sponsor,
Jack, sober.

The group told me to do, what they called, "90 in 90", or 90 AA meetings in 90 days.

They explained to me that this was to combat the alcoholic or drug addict behavior know as
"budding" or building up to a drink. They explained that, the budding periods were predictable, and
experience had shown that the first year is the hardest, because it contained three budding periods.
The first, usually occurred, at between three to six months, the second, between six to nine months,
and the third, twelve to fourteen months. I, of course, thought this was all bullshit. My ignorance
demonstrated itself, in the fact, that I knew a lot about alcohol but nothing about alcoholism, and
my arrogance demonstrated itself, in that, I was unwilling to learn from those who knew more then I
did.

Jack told me once that, "An intelligent person learns from their own mistakes, and a wise person
learns from the mistakes of others".

I was neither wise nor intelligent; in fact, I was stupid because I was stubbornly not teachable. Well
the inevitable did happen. I hit that first Budding period and all the old fears came back. With the
fear I became very guilty. I was really frightened, and fearful that, I would lose my sanity like my
father. So rather then talking to my sponsor, or any of the members of my group, I called my drug
pusher, the psychiatrist. He was more then willing, for the usual office visit fee, to write me a script
for Valium. I went down and got the prescription filled as soon I could. I was in a panic, because, the
fears were so intense that just living one-day was impossible. I simply had to quite the demons
within. I also knew that I could not drink. I would get up in the morning and instead of saying my
prayers I would swallow a Valium. If I felt any emotional or mental discomfit during the day, I would
swallow another Valium.

I had only been doing this for about four or five days when, while I was at an AA meeting one night,
a member of my group came up to me and said, "You know Dave we do not take mind altering
drugs in this program".

And the son-of-a-bitch walked away! "How the hell did he know?" I had asked myself at the time.

When I got home that evening I had another Moment of Truth. I have come to believe that, God
provides each of us with a number of what we call the "Moment of Truth". I was feeling very guilty
because I knew that I should not be taking the Valium if I was a member of the Program. I was
torn, because I knew the other members were staying clean and sober, but how I did not know. For
me, I believed that the Valium would help me, yet another side of me told that I was kidding myself.

This battle went on, within me, until I got a clear thought that said to me, "You are either in or out of
the Program, which is it?" I became very frightened, because, I knew without the Program I would die.

I was in that place they call, "AA or Amen". I remember that, I got out of bed, and went into the
bathroom, picked up the bottle of Valium, opened it and flushed the contents down the toilet. I felt
very fearful, because although I made a decision to stick with the Program I did not believe, in my
heart, that the Program would work for me. It is one thing to read a description of fear and terror, it
is quite another to experience soul terror. I got back into bed and although it was warm in the
house, my body became very cold. I started to shiver with the cold. Then I began to shake. My body
was alternating between, hot and cold, while I was shaking. But my body was shaking on the inside.
Then came what I call the music which was more like buzzing sounds in my head. I began to see
things, creepy crawly things. They were coming out of the walls and ceiling. I was so very frightened.
I was terrified of dying and paranoid of living. I felt that I wanted to die but I didn't want to die. That
was the physical side, but the real pain was in my mind, because the fears and guilt that I felt was,
indescribable. I would get into bed to try and sleep and then I would become afraid that if I closed
my eyes I would not wake up so I got out of bed and wandered around the house. I would get tired,
and go back to bed, and then get fearful, and get up again. And all the time, I was shaking, and hot
and cold, and hearing the music and seeing the bugs.

The next morning, when I got to work I called Jack, and told him what I had done and what I had
experienced. He told me, to meet him, in an empty office on the ninth floor. I got there before he
did, and sat on the floor waiting for him. I was overwhelmed with guilt and shame that; I had come
to where I was. I felt that I was either going to die or go insane. I became very frightened. I knew
that I was in desperate trouble and that I needed, if not a miracle, help. But God was dead, the devil
won at Calvary, so where was I going to get the help I needed? I felt, totally, hopeless. I was
overwhelmed with the feeling of self-loathing that I had been so stubborn that I had refused to ask
for help. I honestly believed that, I was beyond help, and that, for me, life was over.

With these thoughts and feelings, I began to crawl around the office on my hands and knees,
bawling and crying and saying, over and over, "Will somebody please help me!"

This was how Jack found me when he arrived. I was a totally defeated and shattered human being.
My soul was shattered, as a rock thrown through a window breaks the window into a hundred small
pieces, so was my soul shattered. Life for me was over, but I couldn't die. What was I to do?

I was in this state when Jack knelt on the floor beside me, put both of his arms around me and
whispered in my ear, "God Loves you and so do I".

"Love me", I thought, "I am so dirty. How could anyone love me"?

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