Well, I for one just gained all my libido back after being on methadone for 2+ years after a ten year opioid addiction, so I can completely relate to and understand going from 0 to 60 over the course of a short time. It led me to making some very, very shall we say less than skillful decisions that ended up doing some serious harm. All that I post here is not mere opinion, but thoughts arrived at after loads of good times, fun, silliness, poor choices, experiences for better and worse, as well as hard work, honesty, self compassion and years of gaining new insight.
Am I suggesting anyone spend all day meditating? Only if you are so lucky as to be able to get a chance to work with an amazing teacher and are comfortably able to do so financially, something that is next to impossible for 99% of us in the west. Even if that were more practical for us it would not solve all our problems. The most meaningful insights gained from meditation and mindfulness are those when we can wake up and apply to the normal, every day type activies and experiences - the small stuff not so much the landmark, major moments in life.
So I do believe learning a bit about mindfulness and developing a practice would be helpful in terms of the OP finding himself and learning how to relate not only to women but, more importantly, also to himself in new healthier, kinder, more compassionate and loving ways. Not only that, but he would be able to achieve and appriciate what his libido so craves in deeper, more meaningful and enjoyable (read: pleasurable) ways, over the long term and in the here and now, all sooner than he might think.
Neither meditation nor mindfulness is about ignoring our true nature as human beings or human desire. Rather they are all about embracing the magesty of what it means to be us, empowering us through helping us get more in touch with our Buddha nature, resulting in our becominy more skillful when it comes to the fullfilment of desire. This may not lead to aquiring more pleasureful moments, but it is not like one could aquire a moment of time and bottle it for later enjoyment like some tasty new beverage
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
The fruits of our labors in practice will be to aquire new tools and skills that enable us to, among other things, experience pleasure in more fullfilling, meaningful ways.
Minfuldness and meditation are both about ways to address the suffering inherent in our lives, in ways to reduce the harm we cause to ourselves, the ones we love, and our world. We can accomplish this by reorienting ourselves, by skillfully changing how we relate to ourselves, our loved ones and the world around us. Pain in life is inevitable but suffering is unecessary. We can eventually see for ourselves how suffering is caused by unskillful action, by acts driven by lust, greed, ignorance, and selfishness and self-centeredness. Mindfulness is all about taking responsibility for yourself and how your affect others and your enviroment, how you relate to your world, and ultimately how to navigate the rivers of life, regardless whether you find yourself swimming upstream or down, in healthier, freer, more sustainable ways.
I used to think nothing was more fun than fucking on heroin. And true, the chance to make love for 12 hrs straight is amazing. But learning how to best experience the pleasures of sex and share such intimate, beautiful moments with another person? Few things in life can beat that.
To actually answer the OPs question:
Have I
had to be more ethical in recovery than pre recovery? Hell no! Has it been good for me? Hell yeah! My morals are nothing new for me, but getting my ethics to begin to really reflect them has been what has changed.
I made the same mistakes pre recovery that I did post sobriety. Big difference is that now I have actually started learning from them, sobriety makes that oppertunity a possibility for the first time, and engaging more fully in my recovery has made real change possible in so many diverse arenas of my life. Learning from my experiences and putting insight to use has been crux of the real change, but I still make mistakes. I never will be perfect, after all. My practice is all about the importance of making mistakes, learning from them, and growing as a result into more of a human being,although not always a better one.
I'm just having more meaningful fun these days. There is so much more peace in my life these days than ever before. There are far better things to do with the object of my desire than to just mess with it in the hopes of satiating my own purely temporary carnal desire.
