When someone is
trying to get sober, whether from alcohol, drugs or both, there are various
methods out there for that person to try. There is harm reduction, which in my
opinion just kills someone slowly (see previous blog for more details). Some
people white knuckle it. Others take medication such as Antibuse or Campral.
The problem with medication, particularly Antibuse which makes you puke if you
drink, is that it may stop you from drinking but does not get rid of the mental
obsession of wanting to. The bottom line I learned from my addiction was that I
didn’t have a drugging or drinking problem but a thinking problem. Alcohol and
drugs were but a symptom of a larger problem. I did not know how to live life
on life’s terms. After several attempts to become sober I finally found a
method that works for me – the 12 Steps of Recovery. This is how I did the 12
Steps.
Step One – We were powerless over alcohol and our
lives had become unmanageable. The first word of this Step is extremely important – “we”. This reminds
me that it is a “we program”. Before entering into the Fellowship of Alcoholics
Anonymous I was always trying to quit on my own, under my terms. It wasn’t
until I finally admitted defeat and asked for help from others, facing the same
disease as me, that things started to get better. It was easy for me to admit I
was powerless over alcohol (and all other mind altering substances) as it had
control over me. I planned my day around alcohol, I spent all my money on
alcohol (and drugs). I ignored my family and friends for it. My addiction had
all the power and I had none. I had a physical allergy to alcohol and a mental
obsession with getting it. My life had become extremely unmanageable. I
couldn’t pay my bills, I had run-ins with the law, I couldn’t be depended upon,
I quit jobs before I got fired. Most importantly I couldn’t manage my feelings.
Any feeling I got I numbed out through self-medicating. Basically I had to
admit that I could not safely take a drink or drug again. I could not
accurately predict what would happen if I were take that first drink or drug.
Step One is the only Step that I had to take 100%.
Step Two – Came to believe that a Power greater than
ourselves could restore us to sanity. I was stuck on this step for awhile due to the fact
that I waffled between atheism and agnosticism for years. I finally got over it
when it was pointed out to me that the Step was “came to believe” not “believe
right away”. That simple statement helped me move on. The second part of the
Step discusses my lack of sanity. I had to admit what I was doing was insane.
Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over
expecting a different result. Every day (and it was daily by the end of my
drinking/drugging career) I would wake up and say today is going to be
different. I’m only going to have a couple of drinks and no drugs. I would take
that first drink and all my good intentions would evaporate and I would do the
same thing I did the day before. The next day I would awake making the same
resolution only to fail at it again. I had become insane.
Step Three - Made a decision to turn our will and our
lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. The first Three Steps are not action Steps.
You are coming to realizations about yourself and your disease – that you have
one, that only a higher power could alleviate you of this disease and that your
way wasn’t working out. In Step Three I am asked to make a decision. Merely a
decision. A riddle often used to explain the first part of this Step is: there
are three birds on a wire. One makes a decision to fly away. How many are left?
If you answered three you are correct. The bird merely made a decision it did
not start to fly away yet. The second part of the Step is turning our will and
our lives over to a Higher Power. When I first began this step I didn’t know
anything about my higher power. I still don’t know much. I like to keep it
simple – there is a Higher Power and I’m not it. All I know at the beginning of
my sobriety was that I had to stay sober. That was my Higher Power’s will for
me. As I began to move on into the Steps and discover my character defects my
Higher Power’s will expanded to me striving to rid myself of those defects.
Step Four – Made
a fearless and moral inventory of ourselves. People tend to complicate the hell out of this step
when they don’t have to. I like to follow the recovery slogan – Keep It Simple.
Why complicate things when I don’t have to? The Big Book of Alcoholics
Anonymous explains how to do this step. Make a list all of my resentments,
write down what they affected in me (self-esteem; lack of control, etc.) and
look at the part I played in it. The Book tells me to take a look at my sex
life and to investigate my motives when having relations with another human
being. Simple and straight forward. I didn’t need to fill out some form with
100 questions.
Step Five –
Admitted to God, ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our
wrongs. Again I kept it simple. I read my moral inventory
to my sponsor. As I shared my Fourth he shared similar things with me so that I
knew I wasn’t alone. Following my Step Five (and following the meeting I went
to afterwards) I went home and did the Seventh Step Prayer:
My
Creator I am now ready that you shall have all of me good and bad
Please
remove every defect of character that stands in the way of my
Usefulness
to you and my fellows
Grant
me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding. Amen.
Steps Six and Seven - Were entirely
ready to have God remove all these defects of character. And Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Steps Six and Seven are when I began to work on ridding myself of my character
defects and shortcomings. I know I will never be completely rid of some of them
but as the Big Book tells me I strive for progress not perfection. For me these steps are a big part of my
emotional sobriety. I had put the proverbial plug in the jug but I also had to
learn how to change my behaviours, thinking and reactions to emotions. This is
an on-going process that I will do for the rest of my life.
Step
Eight – Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make
amends to them all. Again I kept it
simple the list for this Step was made up of the names from my Step Four
resentment list. As time went by and my memory cleared others would be added to
this list. I looked at the names and prayed for the willingness to make amends
to those people. I started with the easiest and made my towards the hardest –
the willingness came when it was meant to.
Step
Nine – Made direct amends whenever possible, except when to do so would injure
them or others.
Again as in Step Eight I began to make amends that were the easiest to make and
then worked my way towards the ones I was having trouble getting to. Again I
was able to make amends when I was meant to. There was one incident where I saw
someone who was not on my list who I hadn’t even thought of. It clicked in my mind
that I owed this person an amends. He was in the driveway of his parent’s house
and I zipped over there in my car, blocked him so he couldn’t drive out and
proceeded to make amends. It went extremely well. The hardest amends I had to
make was to my Mom who had passed away a couple of years prior to me getting
sober. I was told, from those who had gone before me, to go to the cemetery
where she was buried and make amends there. The first time I tried I felt silly
and didn’t feel that I had made amends properly. I tried again with similar
results. The third time seemed to work and I felt I had cleared my side of the
road. As I am Jewish it is customary to leave a rock on the gravestone of the
person you are visiting as a symbol that you were there. I left my silver chip.
Almost five years later I would return to that cemetery to bury my father. In
my grief I saw the silver chip was still on the stone. It was a reminder that
Alcoholics Anonymous is there for me in times of happiness and grief and would
support me through thick and thin. Not all of my amends went well. One person
refused to accept them and I had to accept that. I do not make amends in order
to get something in return. If I do get forgiveness it is just an added bonus,
but not to be expected. There’s a reason the Ninth Step is not near the
beginning of the Steps as one has to be prepared for the amends not to go well.
If I make amends in the early stages of my recovery and it does not go well it
could cause a resentment which any alcoholic/addict knows could send one back
out drinking and drugging. There were some people I couldn’t make amends to
right away (for various reasons). This did not mean that I stopped moving on in
the steps. I could not stagnate for that could have devastating consequences. I
moved on to the next step with faith that my Higher Power would put the rest of
the people I needed to make amends to in my path when the time was right.
Step
10 – Continued to take personal inventory and when were wrong promptly admitted
it. – This step I do
on a regular basis. Some people do it at night time but I try to do it
throughout the day. I usually can tell, from that uneasy feeling in my stomach,
that I have done something. I then make the proper amends. If I do this Step
properly I will not have to do a Step Four for anything new.
Step
Eleven - Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact
with God, as we understood Him,
praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. I do the Step
Three, Seven and Eleven (St. Francis of Assisi Prayer) prayers on a daily
basis. I look to the Eleventh Step prayer as a guideline to strive for. It
lists all of my character defects and their opposites. Being Jewish I had never
said The Lord’s Prayer, which is recited at the end of meetings in my area. I
would join hands but not say the prayer. In my Fifth year of sobriety I
listened more closely to the words and decided that they were actually good
guidelines to live by and began to say it. I’ve also started realizing there
are not coincidences in my life but God-incidences.
Step
Twelve - 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.
The Big Book’s Spiritual Appendix tells me a spiritual awakening is a
personality change sufficient enough to bring about recovery from [addiction].
I am a recovered alcoholic (I no longer have to drink or drug to live – the
obsession has been removed from me) I have had a spiritual awakening. I carry
the message to other alcoholics (addicts) by speaking at meetings, sharing at meetings,
setting up chairs at meetings, taking down chairs at meetings, greeting people
at the door, welcoming newcomers and many, many other ways. For it is only by
giving it away (the message) that I am able to keep it.
I do my best to live these Steps
on a daily basis. So far they have worked for me. They worked where no other
type of program had worked before. When I see in the new or hear that a friend has
died due to the disease of addiction, I have to say But For the Grace of God Go
I.
Dave the Dude
