No Hangovers –
February 3, 2020 – Most people assume that sex after sobriety is probably boring at best, awkward and clunky at worst, but that it gets better with time. That’s what I assumed, too. But, in reality, it hasn’t been that straightforward. For me, sober sex has been a journey from celibacy to erotic epiphany to neurotic dry spell. And I am really, really, really hoping this isn’t how the story ends. “Death by dry spell” is not what I want on my tombstone.
Before I went into recovery for opioid addiction, I could have counted the number of times I’d had sober sex on both hands. Also, before I got sober, I often used sex in unhealthy ways that had nothing to do with drugs. Sex was a way to escape both pain and routine. It was a way to feel okay about myself when self-acceptance seemed impossible. I don’t consider myself to be a sex addict, but I didn’t want to recreate any of those patterns in my new sober life, either. And so I stayed celibate the first six months of my sobriety…
