stay sober

This has been so worth it. Although this will be something I continure to do, I think I’ll cross it off my list on 43 things when I’ve done it for a whole year.

Step 5 – Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

When I worked Step 5 for the first time, I knew I was committed to recovery. This step, while similar to the therapy that our generation has become familiar with, is still different, vastly different. A good therapist listens to a patient talk, complain, question, and whine. Then the therapist offers suggestions and assists the patient in looking inward for a solution to problems. Step 5, while therapeutic, is not therapy. It is a cleansing, spiritual experience that paradoxically turns the burden of shame into a cleansing power. It gave me the opportunity to rid myself of secrets I thought I’d die with. It was the first time in my life that I ever completely trusted another human being and thus myself and my God.

One of the appeals of Christianity, one of the ways it is marketed, is the promise of eternal life in exchange for a confession of sins and an extension of faith. I was taught as a child that God would forgive me of my sins if I asked him to. Dutifully, I prayed “God, forgive me of my sins.” No one ever taught me to look at my life and to seek forgiveness for specific sins, to admit individual wrongs. By the time I reached adulthood I had been drinking alcoholically for years. In no way did my guilty conscious want to consider my “sins” or even stop to ponder my own wrongness. There was too much pain involved in that. Convinced of my own unworthiness, I never prayed and became more and more isolated.

When I stopped drinking and began the process of getting truly sober I was absolutely startled by what I learned. It is a symptom of the disease that alcoholism is to feel as if you are unique, different from all others. I either looked down at you or I looked up to you. I felt no one was on the same level as me. Boom, I found out all alcoholics have similar feelings. Over and over I met people who could feel alone in a crowded room, just like me. I learned this by sitting in smoky rooms, listening to people talk more honestly than I ever thought possible.

When I took my own “searching and fearless moral inventory” in Step 4 I saw how wrong I’d been in many of my relationships. I saw how my ego-centered life was killing me. I realized emotional growth is impossible for a practicing alcoholic. I remembered the parts of alcoholism that are not pretty or trendy: driving drunk with my kids in the car, utilities turned off because the money was blown on booze, liver damage at age 22, being caught stealing liquor from a bar my boss was remodeling, pissing in my pants, 2 DWI’s and on and on and on. My wife and kids were gone and I was reduced to renting a bedroom form my retired grandparents. That’s alcoholism. It ain’t Jim Morrison or Dylan Thomas. Taking a sober look at my life I realized how everything else had been made secondary to obtaining and consuming enough booze to escape, escape, escape.

By taking an exacting self-inventory I wasn’t merely admitting that on occasion I was naughty. I wrote down exactly what I’d done. I read the whole thing through out loud to myself and to God. Then as an act of faith, I asked a fellow drunk, one who had been sober for a few years, to listen to me. I told him the things that aren’t talked about in meetings. Surprisingly, he laughed at some of the things I thought were the most deplorable. He matched my own stories with his own. When I was done he asked me my deepest, darkest secret. I told him. When I was done, most of the shame I’d felt for years was gone. He reminded me that later on in the process of getting sober there were steps I would work to make amends to the people I’d wronged.

During the last ten years I’ve had several opportunities to hear other recovering people give their fifth step. It is such an honorable feeling to be trusted to that extent. I’ve seen alcoholics who wouldn’t work this step, who wouldn’t trust enough to do it, get drunk over and over. It’s not about admitting how “bad” you are. It’s finding out you are not terminally unique. It’s finding out you can trust. It is a demonstration to yourself of your own faith and your own willingness to go to any length to achieve a sober, useful life. It is the realization that you don’t ever have to live that way again.

This is the fourth in a series of essays on my personal experiences on working a 12 Step Program. Originally put to paper in the 30’s by the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12 Steps are now used by dozens of self-help organizations including Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Adult Children of Alcoholics, Sex Addicts Anonymous, and others

“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

The fourth step is the first that actually required me to get off the couch and do something. In 12 Step lingo, the fourth step is the first of the action steps. The first step required me to realize my powerlessness over the sickness which ruled me. After completing the second step, I accepted that only a power greater than myself can restore me to a sanity. For me, like most folks, the third step resulted in the decision to release personal control to something or someone we call God. Having taken those three steps, I was ready to use my realization, acceptance and decision to DO something. True spirituality is more than philosophy. It is action, plain and simple. The true giants among us are strangers for they do not talk or publicize themselves or their beliefs. They DO….

Practically speaking, there are certain areas needing to be addressed in a personal moral inventory. (BTW, do not be put off by the word moral, you get to decide what it means, not Jesse Helms, not Ted Kennedy)

1. First I listed those people, institutions or principals that I resented. From resentment spring most forms of spiritual sickness. I asked myself these questions: Why are you angry? What area of your life is affected: self esteem, security, personal relationships (including sexual ones), ambitions? The first time I attempted the fourth step, I looked at my entire life. I saw that the world and the people in it are often very wrong, but I had to look deeper. I realized that I had been dominated by the world. I also realized how others have spiritual ills too.

2. I asked myself where had I been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened.

3. I made a list of my fears and asked myself why I had them? Did they come from a misguided sense of self-reliance?

4. I examined my sexual conduct? Where had I been selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate? I got it down on paper and looked at each relationship. Was it selfish or not?

My personal experience with the fourth step was initially painful until I realized I am not much different than anyone else. I learned through looking at my resentments how forgiveness is something I do for me and not for the one I resent. Too many times I’ve been alone, silently or vocally hating someone while they’ve been fishing, or shopping at Wal-Mart, or whatever. They were definitely not thinking about me and my little basket of hurt feelings.

I learned how most fear is self centered. I am scared of not getting something I want or I fear losing something I already have.

I have to remember I am not a bad person becoming good. I am a person with a spiritual dis-ease trying to find ease.

Next, Step Five: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

“We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.”

The first time I heard this step I was appalled by what I saw as an abdication from personal responsibility. I remembered the essays of Emerson on self reliance that I’d read in school. Images of Christian Scientists burying their insulin deprived children sprang to mind. ” What an escapist crutch”, I thought. Here I am locked in a life or death struggle with booze and this third step is pretty much asking me to surrender. How can I win in this struggle if I surrender?

As in the second step, no sudden, dramatic action is called for. What this step asks for is a decision to be made. The logic behind this is clear to me. Before I encountered the 12 steps, I had tried to find happiness. Doing the very best I could do with the resources I chose to work with, I was a beaten, hopeless, suicidal wreck at the age of 22. No matter what I tried in order to find happiness, it eluded me. My way did not work. Having worked the second step, thus realizing that repeating the same behavior over and over while expecting different results was nothing but insanity, I realized I needed a new way to approach life. Self will run riot resulted in the bottom I had hit. I needed to find a way to trust God enough to let him direct my will and care for me.

All around me I saw other people who had made the third step decision. Not many of them were the Religious hypocrites I despised. They were alcoholics like me. They were parents, soldiers, lawyers, and housewives. They were people trying to live a spiritual life in the face of their acknowledgment of addiction. No one told me God is this way and only this way and if you don’t agree you’re going to get drunk or go to hell. Nor was I told I had to immediately accomplish the task of turning over my will. I just had to make a decision. I could trust in the process to show me how to follow through on my decision.

I was warned, due to my brokeness there would be many instances where I would snatch decisions away from God to make them myself. A lifetime of self centeredness and ego-centric behavior sometimes takes a lifetime to get rid of. I was constantly reminded, to get help, to be reminded that no man is an island.

There are many in recovery who use only the first three steps to remain sober. It is possible. These steps are reflective and meditative. The real fun and life changing growth occurs in the rest of the steps, the action steps. Get ready!

This is the second in a series of essays on my personal experiences on working a 12 Step Program. Originally put to paper in the 30’s by the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12 Steps are now used by dozens of self-help organizations including Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Adult Children of Alcoholics, Sex Addicts Anonymous, and others.

Step Two"Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity"

The key to this step is not the belief in the existence of a “higher power”. I have no problem believing in a power greater than myself. While I normally associate this power with the deity, it is not necessarily so. The power generated by this group of distant e-mail writers is a power greater than I. The power of myself and one other spiritual seeker united in seeking is greater than I alone. Something more than the belief in the existence of the power is needed.

What is needed is the belief that a higher power will actually make positive changes in my life. My cynical nature often tends to believe that spiritual seeking is a form of group hypnosis and all the power arising from it is self generated. Blind faith for me has never worked. I have not been able to sustain a blind following of any discipline, so I choose to use the observant form. I have been able to live a life free from that addiction which slides me into a lumpen, lonely, bitter man-child when I have used my perception of God to fill that hole in my soul I believe we are all born with. I have to fill the hole with something. God works better than booze.

The other operative word in this step is “sanity”. These steps are all about restoring one to sanity. My personal definition of sanity is “to repeat the same behavior over and over expecting different results.” Every time I drank and expected to not get drunk, or expected my wife to accept it, or my children to ignore it, or not to black out, or not to finish the 12-pack, I was practicing insanity. The person who thinks that one more shopping trip or buying just the right sport utility vehicle will bring them happiness is just as insane. So is the guy who wants yet another one night stand or the overeater who gets giddy when the new buffet opens in town. If every time you do X it causes Y to happen, you are insane if you still do X while expecting it to produce Z.

I believe that the compulsion to practice my insanity cannot be banished away without a replacement. To not give in to my spiritual dis-ease, I must find something that gives me ease. I don’t have to do this all at once, a’la Moses and the burning bush. This step starts with the words “Came to believe…”. This is indicative of a process. No sudden conversion is required. No timetable is specified. As my understanding of God increases, my acceptance of his power increases.

Note that “God” is not specifically mentioned in this step, nor is the actual restoration of sanity. All that is required at this point in the journey is coming to believe in a power greater than the self along with the realization that a spiritual sickness is present. There is no religious requirement, no call for action other than a meditative realization.

Next Step Three – “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.”

I think I know why 12 Step programs seem to be the most viable solution to the problem of addiction. Addiction truly is a spiritual disease (read-not at ease). There is something in an addict that causes him/her to recklessly seek an escape from this mundane/boring/unfulfilling world into another plane. There is a certain rationality that explains (not justifies) this behavior. The chemical alteration to reality is an alteration nonetheless. Many, many people never desire to alter anything around them. Blithely accepting what is in front of their eyes, they accept everything, question nothing and only get upset when the cablevision goes out. You’ll not find them in bars or crackhouses nor in churches or temples. The seeking of an altered reality continues often until death, which is not always hastened by the chemical indulgences. This lifelong seeking is not easy and takes a great deal of willpower and focus. The acquiring and consuming of the reality altering “stuff” requires much work, dedication and relentless pursuit of the “score” even if that means only another drunken drive to the liquor store. Sometimes, with an intervening force, the addict is temporarily removed from his chemical and begins a pursuit of spiritual ascendancy without chemicals. He must divert the energy previously used to feed his habit to seek some other god, some power greater than himself. It must be a continued, non-complacent pursuit for the allure of the easily available chemical substitute is constant and omnipresent. The spiritual hunger is always there if not always felt or acknowledged.

Choosing to use is not necessarily the easier softer way. It is not a sign of laziness or a lack of moral fiber. No one as a child decides to be a junkie when they grow up. Following a life based on the spiritual principals of a 12 step program is ultimately cheaper, less damaging, and healthier than using but following the path does not make the nonuser better or smarter and the user dumber or worse. There are no light cases of addiction.

I went to breakfast with my sponsor. He and I along with a couple of other guys started a Sunday morning Big Book study. This will be the second time we’ve been through it. We stayed for the 11th step meeting.