In the script, sincerity

Count me among those who watched and was moved by Tiger Woods’ statement last Friday.

I didn’t see it live, but watched the replay twice. I watched with the eyes of someone who has spent years in and around Twelve Step programs, someone who has been graced with double-digit years of recovery from a disease that nearly killed me. I watched as someone who experienced a wide variety of addictions ranging from alcohol to drugs to sex to food to exercise. I watched, and was struck by how far Woods was from other celebrities caught in similar scandals — his contrition was absolute rather than conditional, his willingness to recognize his own grandiosity spot on and welcome.

It was scripted, of course. But we make a huge mistake when we imagine that a rigid dichotomy exists between the “scripted” and the “heartfelt”. Indeed, in my experience, reading a statement of amends aloud was invariably more sincere. For those of us who have struggled with what might be called sex addiction, we are accustomed to seductive behavior. I learned early on that I can write from the heart more easily than I can speak from it. As someone who is very comfortable — perhaps too comfortable — speaking extemporaneously, I know that if I start making it up as I go along, I will tend to shape my words and my cadence and my rhythm in ways that I hope will get a specific reaction. Years of acting and improvisational work and years in the classroom have made me an stute reader of audiences — if I can deviate from a script, I usually will. That is particularly true when I’m conveying something difficult and painful.

My Twelve Step sponsors not only made me write things down, they made me write out the amends I was to make. The late Jack Kissell insisted that I not deviate from a written script when I made amends. He was a stage actor, and saw in his sponsee that same performer’s need to pander to an audience. He asked me to write out my amends statements, and read them to him first — and then, if the time was right, read them verbatim and without embellishment to the persons who needed to hear ‘em. For me — and I suspect for most of us accustomed to getting what we want through the application of talk and charm — there is much to be said for the honest virtue of a simple script from which no deviation is possible! And when I saw and heard Tiger reading his statement last week, I thought I saw a fellow addict doing exactly the right thing at this stage of what will be a long recovery.

Sex addiction is real. I’ve been addicted to many things: drugs (prescribed and illicit); alcohol; pornography; sex; sugar; dieting and compulsive exercise. For me, addiction has both a physical and a mental component; as the AA Big Book puts it, it is always both “an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind.” I’ve experienced the cravings as pressing physical imperatives, and I’ve experienced them also as psychological obsessions that will not release their grip. What was true of opiates was true of affairs with women; what was true of vodka became true of the need to run and run and run and run. Addictions move laterally as we grow. Letting go of all of them is a very, very long process. And sex certainly deserves to be considered an addiction in the same category as addiction to alcohol or opiods – the compulsion is similar in its inexorable demand, and the damage the addiction wreaks is no less great.

So, two cheers for Tiger. When you’ve been proved a fraud and a liar, when you realize that you’ve become so tangled in a self-spun web of deceit that even those who love you most can no longer trust you, you’re near your bottom. And when you get to that bottom and you ask for help, when you let others who know better guide every facet of your recovery process, when each day becomes simply about doing the next right thing — then, then, then you are available for the miracle. It’s no guarantor of forgiveness; I’ve lost more than one marriage to my compulsiveness. Sometimes folks forgive you but still can’t love you; sometimes they still love you but can’t live with you. Your recovery must progress regardless. I learned all that, and by some strange grace, I still remember that lesson.

In his discomfort as he stood before many of his loved ones, reading haltingly from a prepared script, Tiger looked and sounded genuine to me. We who spent years having only a passing relationship with the truth will never convince everyone we have at last found sincerity. But when we do as he did last Friday, and read from a text in which we accept full responsibility for actions that have no excuse, we’re taking one giant step forward. Here’s hoping that the fierce urgency of the newly sober remains for Tiger in the months and years to come. And here’s giving thanks that after so many wrong things, he’s done the next right one — and done so in a way that is congruent with the most effective and life-transforming recovery strategies known.