One thousand, eight hundred, twenty-seven days without a drink — one day at a time. But who’s counting? Well, I am. Five years is a long-ass time without taking a drink, considering that I drank daily for seven years, and at least weekly for 25 years, leading up to September 23, 2015. ...
Since March, I haven’t been to an in person 12 Step meeting. I’ve been to meetings, just not in person. And really, at this point even as we’ve had in person meetings open back up and some have gone to a hybrid mode (in person and zoom at the same time), I have no intention of going back for the foreseeable future. Not because I don’t need meetings, I do, but because I am not quite ready to go sit in a room with other people in recovery who may or may not be taking this pandemic seriously. ...
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Fundamentally, the 12 Steps are a roadmap for change as well as a guide for living a rich and full life. Whether one calls it a spiritual awakening or something else is immaterial. Some folks do feel that they have undergone a monumental psychic shift as the result of working through the steps. Others feel that the change is more subtle. ...
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. At this point in our journey we’ve presumably learned how to identify patterns of behavior and how they lead us to make mistakes as well as how to make amends for our failures. Step 10 asks us to practice these skills as we move through life. ...
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Most of us are taught from an early age that we must apologize when we do something wrong. We hear the words of a parent to a toddler: ...
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Let’s be honest, making a list of people who we have harmed can be a daunting task for anyone. No one wants to think about the mistakes they’ve made in life and how these mistakes have impacted others. Many of us have made poor choices in our active addictions. ...
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. If you’ve been along for this ride with me, you probably know it was a foregone conclusion that I rejected the notion of a deity removing my shortcomings when I got to this step. ...
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. When I first read the steps, step six seemed to be the step that would cause me to go over the edge. On the surface this step appears to be pulled directly from a nineteenth century revivalist sermon. The language is extraordinarily troublesome for a guy like me. ...
We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Early in recovery (and as a recovering Catholic), this step reminded me of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, better known as Confession. In my younger years this meant going into a stall where there was a thin veil between me and a creepy old man who wanted me to admit all my failures in life. It was particularly important to discuss impure thoughts and impure actions. That’s right, sex fantasies and masterbasion. This was supposedly the only way to actually commune with God, through another human being, in a creepy space, talking about creepy things. Is it any wonder that I became agnostic? ...
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. This step scares most people. The language feels foreboding, heavy, daunting. It sounds really hard. And for many people it is really hard. This step is all about getting honest with ourselves. Some of us have suffered grave consequences and some of us have not. But we all know in our hearts that our addiction has caused harm. And so we must get honest about what we’ve done in our lives. Honest about how we’ve hurt ourselves and others. Honest about how our addiction affected others in our lives. ...
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. ...
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. ...
This one is gonna be messy – honest and messy, like me. The rooms of 12 Step Fellowships are triggering for me. Not in a “I’m gonna need a drink” way, but triggering none the less. They have been since day one. ...
If you’re like me, the idea of an interventionist god, who is going to fix you, who is going to save you, simply does not resonate. And if you’re like me, you were probably told that you don’t need to believe in God to practice the 12 steps. You may have been told that there is a difference between Spirituality and Religion. And when you insisted that there was too much God talk in the steps, you were probably pointed to the chapter “We Agnostics” in the Big Book. ...