Early Recovery

Making Amends

/ Tim / 1 Comment

It’s a toss-up as to which is the more dreaded step in our list of twelve: step four, where we were asked to look at ourselves and our past, or step nine where we are asked to make amends to other people. It’s one thing to admit what we have done to ourselves and our sponsor, who, by that time, we know has a sympathetic ear.  It’s quite another to go and talk to someone we have wronged, admit our faults, say we’re sorry and are willing do our best not let it happen again in the future.

I think it’s important to know what we are talking about when speaking of making amends.  It is the act of making compensation for an injury, loss or insult; it is improving one’s behaviour in order to rectify that fault.  In other words, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again and this is what I wish to do to make up for it.  Making amends goes beyond an apology. It is a promise to make the changes necessary so that it will never happen again. It is a promise to compensate in some way for the wrong I have committed.

This step is probably most dreaded because we tend to believe that we have no control over the outcome.  What if they shut me out?  What if they refuse to forgive me? What if they don’t think it’s enough? What if repaying monies owed or replacing goods isn’t acceptable. It would be dreadful indeed if this step was focused on receiving forgiveness from others. It is not.

One of the remarkable aspects of this step is that when I approach another person to make amends, I am not asking for their forgiveness. I do not beg for their pity, mercy or understanding of me and my disease.  I hope I may be forgiven, but if not, my amends is still successful because I have admitted my fault, asked for forgiveness and offered compensation all for my own recovery. Forgiveness is, in fact, beside the point of this step.

I recently heard someone share his story at a meeting.  His sponsor suggested that as an amends to his parents that he cook dinner for them once a week.  His mother protested, saying that just having him come over for dinner was enough for her.  His sponsor insisted and he acquiesced.  And so every week for a year he planned a menu, bought the necessary groceries, rode the bus over to his parent’s home on Thursday afternoon and cooked for his parents.

On the surface, he was making up for all of the lies, the let-downs, and the disloyalty he had shown his folks over the years of active addiction. Beneath that, he gave back to his parent a son they thought they had lost.  They learned how to relate to each other on many different levels.  He showed them that their lessons on punctuality, responsibility and respect had not been completely lost.  He himself learn what it means to be a son to his parents and the rewards of his relationship with them. As an added bonus, he learned the very useful skill of cooking; with each dinner he gained new self-confidence and challenged himself by preparing more complicated recipes. What a wise sponsor that man has.

It is important to go about this step with a sponsor.  Perhaps one may work through what appear to be the easier amends first before handling the more difficult ones.  A sponsor is a guide through this process.  Role playing before the actual event may alleviate some of the ‘pre-amends’ anxiety. A sponsor will also help in determining which amends, if any, shouldn’t be made. Simply saying: “I might feel bad,” isn’t enough to let one off the hook in this step.  I take responsibility; I did the deed. I admit to it, I offer compensation and I change my ways.

While we may not like the idea of this step before we begin, it is worth noting that it is rare when an offer of amends is rejected.  Sometimes what has been weighing heavily on our minds can’t even be recalled by the other person. For most people, it is enough to know that we are sorry and are working our recovery.  Receiving forgiveness for our wrongs? That is the icing of the cake.  Step nine provides further concrete to our foundation on which to build our lives in recovery.  I am just scratching the surface in this blog. Fortunately there is a wealth of knowledge about this step in the literature on the shelves of meeting rooms and in the experience of other recovering addicts and alcoholics.

♥  ♥  ♥

Please like and share this blog, not to stroke my ego, but for those who need the courage, strength and hope to start and continue their journey down Recovery River. I would appreciate it if you would sign up and follow as well.  My intention is to post Mondays and Thursdays.   Please comment and offer suggestions.  I’d love to hear from you.

Peace

 

Living the Program

/ Tim / Leave a comment

I am an addict.  It doesn’t matter what substance I used, how often or how long I used it, or how long it’s been since I’ve used it.  I am and always will be an addict. I am grateful that I have some time in my program, but I must always be aware that I am just a couple of bad decisions away from a crash and burn.  I know from hearing others in meeting rooms how easy it is to slip up and what can happen if I do go out again, and it won’t be pretty.  I have never heard of someone who came back to their program talk about how wonderful it was while out there using or drinking again.  “The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.”(Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 30) This idea must be crushed and obliterated from my mind.  My ego tells me I can be different from everyone else.  Experience, my own and others, warns me that I am not.

It’s not sobriety that has brought about the changes in my life. It’s the spiritual awakening that is the result of working and living the 12 steps. Not drinking and not using may mean that I am sober and clean.  But they don’t give me sobriety. In my early thirties I stopped on my own once for about five years. But I wasn’t really sober: I was fighting against my desires to escape life.  I really wanted to have a beer with friends, a glass of wine with dinner or share a joint, but I knew I shouldn’t.  And I wasn’t the nicest person to be around because I still had all of the ego charged character traits that I always did, only now they weren’t being softened by that gentility of the first pipeful or shot. My recovery was missing something.

That something, I believe, was the spiritual experience, or awakening.  A psychological shift in thinking that has allowed me to surrender, stop trying to control everything, and realize that I was the greatest threat to my existence.  I was drowning in the river of life and still trying to swim upstream.  If I wanted to really live, I had to understand that when it came to certain things, I was completely powerless.  If I just stopped thrashing about, I could at least float with the current.

Surrender on this existential level wasn’t that hard. There really wasn’t much left to give up. I had lost my dignity and self respect.  I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror.  My liver was enlarged and who knows what other physical problems I was on the verge of encountering. I had alienated most of the people around me and was finding comfort in gloomy establishments with people who were living much like I was. My life was circling the bottom of the toilet bowl. Somehow I still had enough sense to see that I was on the path of losing myself. So in spite of my misgivings and preconceptions of what recovery was all about, I showed up at a local meeting and took my place at the table.

I understand that I was ready to surrender, to try something else because my way wasn’t working.  A friend of mine calls it his Gift Of Desperation.  I was powerless and I couldn’t manage my own life.  That was my first baby step into the program.  The eleven remaining steps helped me to recover and slowly brought me about to a more awakened state of being and opened me to a relationship to a Higher Power.

My life today is changed from what it was before.  My sobriety today is of a different quality than I had when I quit solo for five years. It is different because I work at living a twelve step program. I know that this is a lifelong process, and it is one I do willingly because I like the changes in my life and my being.  Today I like who I am and I can look at my reflection in the mirror without cringing.  The changes in my life are not because I am put down the bottle or the pipe. They are a result of working all twelve steps of the program and awakening to the spirit.   I am finally enjoying the trip down the river.

♥  ♥  ♥

Please like and share this blog, not to stroke my ego, but for those who need the courage, strength and hope to start and continue their journey down Recovery River. I would appreciate it if you would sign up and follow the blog as well.  My intention is to post Mondays and Thursdays.   Please comment.  I’d love to hear from you.

Peace

 

Connecting with Spirit

/ Tim / Leave a comment

Reconnecting with my Higher Power is the most important part of my recovery.  When I came to the meeting rooms it was to get rid of my addiction, not to be prostletized.  In fact I stayed away from twelve step groups for more than two years because I wanted nothing to do with God, religion, or Christianity.  I tried counseling, meditation, acupuncture and even my own willpower to get clean and sober but nothing worked.  Not for long anyway.  I knew I had to do something to make a change. I was desperate enough that even though I feared I might end up under the thumb of some bible thumping, born-again fundamentalist, I went to that first meeting. That’s how beaten down I was.

I found, very soon, was that my preconceptions were unfounded. I didn’t have to believe any set of rules or dogmas,  bow to any statues or light candles while chanting. I was given suggestions.  In the second step I “…came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.”  It was a gradual thing, this opening up to something other than myself.  I heard others in the room speak about their experiences with their higher power.  It didn’t have to be the God I grew up with.  It could be anything that had a power greater than me.  And, at that point, there were a lot of things that had plenty of power over me including my addiction, alcohol and drugs.  I learned that I could choose my own my higher power, a ‘God of my understanding’.

Gradually I changed my focus to some sort of a spiritually based power.  Gradually I began to form a connection with something greater than me.  I didn’t really understand what I was doing, but I was told to do and I was beaten down enough by that irrepressible demoralization I have spoken of before, that I did what I was told.  I was told to ‘act as if’.  Act as if I were happy, act as if I were sober, act as if I liked who I was, act as if I was connected to my higher power.  At first, I felt like a fraud.  I felt I was pretending to be something or someone I wasn’t.  But it was explained to me that we all do that when we start anything new.  When we begin a new job, we act as if we know what we are doing.  When we go to a new social situation we act as if we are cool, suave and in control even though we have no idea of the dynamics of the people around us. And, gradually we do learn and we can stop ‘acting as if’, because we finally know.

That is how it was with me and that new Higher Power I found through the program. Gradually I started to want serenity, courage and wisdom.  Gradually I wanted to talk to that Higher Power, though it was more of  a one sided chat at first, I continued.  And gradually I began to see results; the main one being that I was sober for the first time in years. I wasn’t made to believe, I came to believe. Gradually that connection to my Higher Power was made.  And finally, I came the realization that my Higher Power always has been connected to me, is with me now and will always be with me.  It’s a knowing that I have in my head and feel in my chest.

Oh, I still have times of doubt.  I sometimes wonder if I am talking to a wall.  I still feel lonely at times.  I bristle when people want to say the Our Father at the end of the meeting or I hear some say how Jesus is their higher power.  But I have gradually come to realize that while we walk the same path, we can focus on different things along that path.  Who am I to say that my way is the only way? As long as I don’t think of the guy who stares back at me in the mirror is my higher power, then I have a good chance of staying sober.

It is only in step one that alcohol and drugs are mentioned.  Where as a higher power, God,  a power greater than oneself is mentioned in six of the steps.  So I find it ironic that people talk about the ‘spiritual part’ of the program.  For those who forged the original twelve steps there was no doubt, this is a spiritual program period.  This program is restoring my connection to my Higher Power.  In fact, the twelfth step tells us that if we have worked the previous eleven steps, it will result in a ‘spiritual awakening’: a realization of the connection with something greater than myself that has helped to break that cycle of addiction. We will have exchanged bottled spirits for a spirit that cannot be contained.  I am grateful.