I was sexualized at a very young age. At the age of four I was repeatedly molested. I believe that really set me up for a bad situation with sex. Then, I was sexually assaulted as a teenager. That’s when my addiction really took off. I know these experiences didn’t make me an addict, but I feel like this trauma really accelerated my addiction and kept me using for many years. I hadn’t realized that I was living with PTSD and trauma.
Sex, like my drug addiction, became a regular part of my life. For the better part of 20 years, I was always having anonymous sex with drugs and alcohol. After being around Crystal Meth Anonymous for a while, I realized I had sex like a gay man when I was using. I related to the folks in CMA much more than when I talked to the sober women in AA.
I started working as a stripper–or whatever you want to call it–when I was 20. I always say “stripper,” but there were definitely lots of things that happened in the backroom. So I was getting paid for a lot more than just stripping. Eventually it became kind of a full escorting experience. Some people actually glamorize the escorting and “rent boy” world. But at the end of the day, it’s really not glamorous at all. At first it feels great getting paid for sex, but you have to go with the ugliest and most terrible people who treat you like dirt. It’s demoralizing!
At the strip club, I used to buy these capsules from one of the girls–I think she called them yellow jackets. They were half MDMA, and half crystal meth. That’s when I really went off the deep end.
It got to the point where I was thinking of taking business outside of the club. I had a client pay me $1,000 to leave with him. I was going to do it, but suddenly I had a major panic attack. I talked to the strip club “house mom” and told her my plan. My rent was due the next day and I needed the money–but I really didn’t want to go with him. I had planned to sneak out the back entrance so he wouldn’t find me. The house mom told me I didn’t have to go home with him and that I had to give back the money. I didn’t go through with it. Later I found out that this guy had been exposed in the New York Post as a “stripper killer.” He had murdered two other girls in the same scenario. That was a stay-alive moment–one of my first true Higher Power experiences.
That’s when I tried recovery for the first time. I was still dancing when I found out a girl at the club had gotten sober. I noticed this change in her and thought, OK, what’s going on with Tiffany? She told me she was going to AA. So I went to a meeting–and that was the last time I worked as a stripper.
I decided I wasn’t going to work in a strip club anymore but I still did a version of that—bottle service and nightclub work, which was still kind of like prostituting myself. I had to wear the short outfit, show the boobs and do all this extra stuff for the clients like sitting on their laps. It was really just a downgraded version of stripping.
That was how I was trying to stay sober: going to meetings, but working in a nightclub surrounded by drugs, booze and a lot of the same behavior. At that point, I had never addressed any of my trauma. I believe that’s why I couldn’t stay sober the first time–I was just shoving all that stuff down. When I tried to do the Steps with a sponsor, I would always get to the Fourth Step and say, “You know what? Peace out, I’m done!” I was just treading water in my early recovery.
Then I met my ex, Michael. Up until that point I’d thought of myself as a party girl—I drink, I do ecstasy, I take all these other drugs, but I don’t do them like real addicts do. He’s the one who introduced me to full-blown crystal meth addiction. He showed me all the ropes of using meth.
The insanity is that I stayed with him for four years and the whole time I told myself that this was his issue. After all, I hadn’t started doing crystal yet–I was going to meetings and every time I relapsed, I would blame him. I told myself I had to drink and do Xanax to deal with his drug use. His crystal meth addiction was driving me insane.
During this time, a doctor told me I had to have my right kidney removed. When I was using and having sex, I was never careful about being safe.There was a lot of damage from the drugs, alcohol, and infections that I’d gotten from sex— the worst bladder infection I’d ever had. The bladder infection went straight to the kidney and became septic. I was in the hospital for 30 days.
I was completely obsessed with this guy, knowing he wasn’t good for me, and I ended up in the hospital because of him. The doctor had to put a stent in my kidney while I waited for surgery. But I actually went back and had sex with him again six weeks before the operation. We knocked the stent out during sex, and I had to be rushed to the emergency room to have it put back in. And that still wasn’t enough to make me stop! This is how I know I’m an addict.
I had my surgery and lots of foxhole prayers followed. I thought, If I come out of this surgery, and everything’s fine with my kidney, I’ll never use again. But that was a big fat lie–because this was 2003 and I didn’t get sober until 2006.
I stayed sober for a short time by doing a geographic to L.A., convinced that it was all Michael’s fault—that he was the problem. I blocked his number and was planning to change my life and go to makeup school, which I actually did for a while. But then I unblocked him one time, and after one phone call, I was back on a plane to New York.
We kept breaking up and getting back together over and over until we finally broke up for good. I decided we would just be friends and hang out. I could be cool and use with him. If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em, I thought. I decided I wasn’t going to do program anymore. I was going to do crystal meth every day and hang out with Michael and his new girlfriend–the one I found out he was cheating on me with. My last six months before recovery were spent using every single weekend, smoking crystal, and staying awake for three days with him and his girlfriend. I thought it was super classy.
I was having a reverse affair–he and I were hooking up behind her back the same way that they did when we were a couple–in the same apartment we had lived in together! It started getting even crazier, because the group of people that we hung out with were all full-on swingers. We’d have these crystal meth orgies with them and anyone else who would come by my ex’s apartment. I had no self-control, just none!
Finally I came back into recovery through AA, and this time went through all 12 Steps with a female sponsor. I told her the whole truth about my life. Her story was truly horific—a survivor of sexual abuse by her own father. It turned out that she was in trauma therapy at the time and she recommended it in addition to my Step work, so I went twice a week for eight years.
A year later I found CMA and started working with my new sponsor, John, and did another Fourth Step. I realized that there was so much speed in my story, that I hadn’t even put in my first Fourth Step in AA. For me it was always about being skinny, and not eating–about being snatched. I traced some of that behavior going all the way back to my ballet days. Back then everybody did diet pills, ephedra and whatever was prescribed.
For my recovery, I needed all of it—12 Step recovery, therapy, and trauma work. I love CMA because I see these issues a lot in the rooms. Our level of trauma when it comes to sex, is so deeply rooted that if we don’t do the work to deal with our issues, it’s never going to get better.
My sex life has gone through different stages over the last 17 years in recovery. I was abstinent during my first year–not because it was recommended, but because I couldn’t. I was such a mess. I thought, Who wants to have sex with this tragic situation right here? So I just kind of put everything to the side.
Then I went through another stage. The sex that I had early on was important, because it taught me that I could actually have sex sober. I had never ever had sober sex in my entire life. I’d always believed that drugs made sex better, but when I think back to those days it was just sloppy and terrible. I can’t even remember if I had any pleasure doing it–I just did it!
Eventually I realized I was doing the same thing that I had done before I got sober. All of my earliest sober sex experiences were basically hookups—I wasn’t really dating. I had written a sexual ideal with my sponsor, which was: no married men, no bisexual guys, and no people that are working in the sex industry. I also wanted to at least know their name and have some kind of initial connection–not just completely random hookups. I did that for the first three or four years. It was nice to learn that I could enjoy sex—any kind of sex—without getting high.
Then during the middle part of my recovery I changed my sexual ideal. I wanted to try actually dating people and see if it would develop into anything. So I created a plan to go on at least three dates before I had sex. Unfortunately, my ideal remained an ideal, because I was never able to accomplish it. I always ended up having sex on the first date. But I tried. I went on actual real dates and got dressed up, and met them for dinner. But the second I went out with someone that I was physically attracted to, I couldn’t not have sex with them.A few times I tried the trick of going on dates with people I wasn’t attracted to–just to achieve my ideal–but then I never wanted to have a second date with them.
At some point I realized it wasn’t even about the sex itself–it’s that I’m actually socially uncomfortable. Being an introverted extrovert, sex became my way of dealing with that discomfort. I’m awkward around straight guys, but I know how to have sex! So on these dates, it was like: Let’s just get to the sex! I don’t want you to know the real me. I’m too nervous to show you who I am. So if I just have sex with you, I can get it over with.
Then my next stage, right before the pandemic, was pretty emotionally desolate. I had some major ridiculous romantic obsessions with people I knew weren’t available. I had a week-long hookup with a guy I met at the Grand Canyon, and we carried on long-distance for another six months. I knew nothing was going to come of it, but we had a real connection, great sex, and he was sober. That felt like progress.
The reason why I set that sexual ideal in the first place was to see if I actually wanted to get to know someone–and whether there could be anything beyond the sex. Because, surprise surprise, a lot of people who are in long term relationships stop having sex after a while. Everyone in a relationship tells me that. But I’ve never known how to connect with people that way. I need to learn. I don’t want to go back and just have hookup sex either. I’ve already had plenty of sex—honestly, a lot for a woman. It just doesn’t appeal to me anymore. I’ve developed so many other great aspects of my personality. What’s the point of anonymous hookups?
The good news is that going through the12 Steps and doing all the work has separated me from the trauma sex. It doesn’t trigger me to want to do drugs or drink. I don’t have the same sex drive that I had when I was younger, and I definitely don’t have the same sex drive that I had when I was on drugs. I think that many of us who’ve done sex work or experienced trauma and abuse reach a point where we no longer have sex because of our trauma, but because we want to. We’re able to view sex in a healthier light.
Today I feel very content in my sober life. Sex isn’t a big priority for me anymore. I’m not looking to check out or escape, and I don’t need that validation for my identity. I’m learning to like the real me. And the real me is actually pretty chill. I don’t always have to be “on,” or perform, or be funny, or be a diva. I can just be me.