Category: The 12 Steps

Step 3: This is Going To Require Some Help

‌Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

I must admit that upon reaching this step my thoughts were something along the lines of this: “So, here we are. Face to face with the religion inherent in these steps. God. Him. I’ll never be able to deal with this.

Many people told me something along the lines of “but it’s God as you understand Him. Not helpful. My understanding of God was that he was that relative who came over at Thanksgiving, got drunk, insulted everyone, and pissed in the bathroom floor before leaving in a huff. That was my experience with the God of my childhood.

It wasn’t until I understood that I could let go of that God, the God of my childhood, that I was even able to consider this step as it is written. And, to be honest, even then it triggered me.

I was not ready to give up my free will or my life to a deity. I read and re-red the step. I dissected it over and over and completely missed the critical words in the step.

Care of.

When I noticed these words in the step I felt like I’d been thrown a life line. Maybe I could work with this?!

My sponsor at the time told me to read the Third Step Prayer in the Big Book and you say it every day for two weeks. I didn’t do that. I couldn’t get past the archaic language. It ruffled my feathers so much that I decided to “fake it til I made it” – bad advice in my opinion but that’s another blog post.

After two weeks I told my sponsor that I was ready to move on to step four. “No your not, you haven’t done step three yet.” I don’t know how he knew that but he did and I confessed that I couldn’t get past that language and he told me to write it in my own words. Apparently I am not alone in this because the blog post about re-writing the 3rd step prayer is the most viewed post on this site.

Even after writing that post I was not sure if I’d done it right. I continued to search. I’ve read many alternate versions of this step in Secular AA sites and books and I like this version from The Alternative 12 Steps: A Secular Guide to Recovery a lot:

Make a decision to be open to spiritual energy as we take deliberate action for change in our lives.

When I break down this step today, I’ve eliminated all the references to a deity and spirituality. For me, it’s really quite simple.

I can’t do this on my own. I need help from a variety of sources and I need to be willing to ask for it, regularly.

Posted on by damien 1

Step 2: It’s Not What I Thought

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I cringed when I first read this step. In my mind, that capitalization of the word power clearly meant something. And that something was an interventionist God that was going to fix me. I was having none of it.

I’ve written extensively about my struggles with the God Talk in AA. It all comes down to a spiritual trauma inflicted upon me by a person in authority in the Roman Catholic Church. Quite simply God is a trigger for me. How could I possibly work through a step that triggers me?

Not very well is the answer. I spent months, wrestling with this step. I read countless books about alternate takes on the steps. I read about Buddhism and the steps. I read about secular versions of the steps. I read and talked and tried to reframe it in a way that would work for me. And I failed. Nothing satisfied my angst.

Then one day I was re-reading a journal entry that I wrote shortly before getting sober. If there ever been a moment of clarity captured in words in my life this was it.

‌September 21, 2015
Severna Park, MD / 65F, Cloudy

I cannot keep living like this. This is not living. This is a slow, painful suicide. What else can I call it, but that. Night after night of not quite enough booze to kill me has to be taking it’s toll.

I am terrified of the thought of AA. Terrified of not having a drink ever again. Terrified of the stigma that society puts on people like me. The ones who can’t drink within reason.

The first few gulps at the end of the day seem to put my world back on it’s axis. Level things out — but it almost always ends in guilt and shame. Deep senses of depression.

So, I have to make a choice. I have to stand like a warrior and fight against this foe who is trying to and eventually will kill me. It’s time to stop this madness.

It’s time for AA.

It literally jumped off the page at me. There was, in fact, a power greater than me that restored me to sanity. That power was my own mortality. I knew that if I were to continue drinking I was going to die a slow and painful death. I knew that I was not ready to die. I knew that I needed help and that I would find that help in AA. And that gave me hope.

Today I firmly believe that the power greater than ourselves referenced in step two need not be the same as the God of our understanding that makes its first appearance in step 3. The power greater than ourselves is what ever makes us seek help. It’s whatever gives us the hope that there is a way out of the mess we find ourselves in. For many people, that power is the God of their understanding, but it doesn’t have to be.

Step two is all about hope. Hope is so important in early recovery. Without the hope that things would get better, that I would get better, I could never have achieved a week, let alone a month, or even years of continuous sobriety.

Hope and Faith are sisters. My wife has told me that I have a strong faith. At first I thought she must be joking. How could an agnostic like me have a great deal of faith? But she pointed out that I always believe that things will get better, that things will work out, even in the most horrific and tragic of situations. I believe that because my life experience has shown me that it’s true. That’s resilience.

When I look back now, I can see that I’d already taken step 2 when I walked through the doors of AA. I just didn’t know it at the time. What I did know was that I had hope and even faith that things would get better. With time I came to understand that with support I would be able to stop drinking and live a rich and full life.

Posted on by damien 2

Step 1: No Control, Negative Impacts

 

This is the first post in a series that I’m working on about the 12 Steps and what they mean to me in my recovery.

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and that our lives had become unmanageable.

By the time I finally made it into the rooms, I really didn’t care what this step meant. I was defeated and I was ready to surrender. I’d performed the mental masturbation that many of us perform about the exact meaning of the words of this step so many times in the two years that lead up to me entering the room of that 6:00 AM meeting on September 23, 2015 and I’d finally decided that really, it just didn’t matter. The pain was too much to bear any longer. I would figure it out later. Or I wouldn’t. I had no idea. I just knew that I needed help and that I couldn’t do it on my own.

I’d been hung up on two words in this step for years. powerless and unmanageable.

I’d reasoned over and over again that I couldn’t be powerless over alcohol because there were times when I could have just one drink. In my mind powerlessness had to mean that I had absolutely no control. That I couldn’t go a day without drinking. That I had to be drinking in the morning, dawn to dusk. I saw it in a very black and white way. It never occurred to me that having one drink at lunch, waiting a few hours, and then drinking half a fifth, wasn’t exactly the portrait of self control.

And unmanageable. My life was not unmanageable. I had never had a DUI. I’d never missed a day of work. I’d never stolen. I’d never had a bar fight. I’d never done anything or suffered any significant consequences as a result of my drinking.

It never occurred to me that the pain I had in my right side under my ribs, might be considered unmanageable, even if I knew that it was surely a sign of my liver being inflamed. The bruised tailbone that resulted when I slipped on the ice while drinking around the bonfire in the neighbors driveway during a snow storm couldn’t possibly be a sign of unmanageability. Temporarily losing my hearing in my left ear might have been, in point of fact, be a sign that my life was going off the rails — but I sure didn’t register it as such. Nor did it seem odd to me that I carried a pack of wet-ones in my briefcase because my bowl movements were either horrendously loose or incredibly sticky and I had trouble cleaning my rear.

I had solutions to these trivial problems. I was managing fine.

I may not have suffered dire consequences, but I suffered. I suffered from shame and guilt. I have said to people that while I never lost any possessions, any privileges, my wife or my family, I lost something that every alcoholic loses at some point.

I lost my self respect.

Oh, the delusions of addiction.

With time, I learned that Step 1 was a 100% accurate depiction of my drinking. I may have never felt powerless over alcohol, but alcohol certainly held a power over me. And my life, while I was barely holding it together was not manageable.

Today, I think of Step 1 a bit differently. Instead of dissecting the words of the original step, I think about what it means to me. And what it means to me is that I can’t drink normally and when I do drink it doesn’t improve my life.  I know for a fact that if I have a single drink, all bets are off.  I know that I am powerless over alcohol after that first drink.

I also know that if I were drinking, it wouldn’t improve my life in any way.  In fact it would negatively impact my life.  All of those mysterious ailments I mentioned earlier — from the pain under my ribs to the shit sticking to my butt — they are all gone.  And those aren’t the only ways drinking impacted my life negatively.  I’ve been able to do things that I could have never dreamed of doing when drinking.  From simple things like going to the store after 7:00 PM without risking a DUI, to being an adult leader in my son’s Cub Scout Pack and a Committee member in his current BSA Troop.

So today, when I think of Step 1, I think of it as follows:

I admitted that I couldn’t control my drinking and it was negatively affecting my life.

Prior to entering the rooms, I spent a lot of time trying to answer the question, “Am I an alcoholic?”   I googled it.  I took the tests (dishonestly).  I asked my wife (who told me that I was the only one who could answer that, as Al-Anon had taught here).  I asked my friends (who had no idea what the full picture was).  I questioned the meaning of the words powerless and unmanageable.

I was asking the wrong questions.  The only question that needs to be asked is: “Does my drinking negatively impacting my life?”

If you ask yourself this question and your honest answer is yes, and you’d like to change it, then you’re ready to take Step 1.

Posted on by damien 4