surrender

Principles before Personalities

/ Tim / 1 Comment

I have a buddy in the program who has stopped going to meetings.  He’s returning to his program after just under ten years in and another four years out again.  Right now he has under six months.  He says he is fine.  He’s doing his readings and studying his books at home and he’s doing daily meditation.  He told me he has stopped going to meetings because his former sponsor is there, and he feels that the former sponsor is looking at him ‘funny’.  The community is very small here.  There isn’t an option for him to go to other groups.

I heard from another friend, a recovering alcoholic with well over twenty years in the program.  He has stopped going to meetings because there is too much discussion about drugs along with the alcohol.  He’d like to go back to the old times with completely closed meetings and no mention of any drug.  “There are other groups for that.”

I have been hearing similar and other gripes since I became a 12 step member.  Both AA’s and NA’s twelfth tradition reminds us to: “…place principles before personalities.”   What does that mean?  To me, it suggests that I remember the principles of the program: recovery, unity, service, honesty, humility, forgiveness, hope, integrity, love, discipline, perseverance and spirituality.  Not everyone is going to have all of these principles down cold.  (I had to look them up, to be sure, while writing because I couldn’t have named them all.) Some days I’m more honest or forgiving than others.  This tradition tells us that these principle are far more important than the defects of character in those who impart them to us.

I must remember that what is important is the message and not the messenger.  In our case, the medium is not the message.  Recovery is much deeper than those who present it.  Were it not so, for example, AA would have died out when Bill Wilson, the founder, passed on.  Something that is true doesn’t become false simply because I don’t like the person who is telling it to me.  Trust me, many people delivered a message to me that I needed help long before I began my trek in recovery.  Of course, in my sorry state I’d get angry with them and use even more ‘just to show them!’

We will always meet people who irritate or bother us in some way, in and out of our meeting room.  We don’t like to be told what to do and how to do it.  We don’t like to have to do anything.  When someone is sharing I can focus on their speech impediment or their ugly shirt, or their hot body,  instead of listening to what they are saying and that probably isn’t what the program is about.

Early on in my program I heard someone talk about the 70-20-10 Rule.  He said that seventy percent of the time, what you hear in a meeting is good solid stuff that can be stowed in your tool box and brought out later to help you through a difficult situation. Twenty percent of the time, what you hear will have you at the edge of your seat; it’s exactly what you need to hear at this time.  It is as if your higher power is speaking directly to you.  And ten percent of the time, what you hear is an opportunity to practice your patience and tolerance.  This rule has proven to be true for me, and others have told me so as well.  However, what is my twenty percent, may be your ten percent, and visa versa.  Our higher powers just works that way.

There’s an old joke in AA:  What do you need to start a new meeting?  A resentment, a coffee pot and a friend.  If your recovery is at risk because you can’t get around the personalities in the room or how things are managed or what people are doing, then find another meeting.  Try attending on-line meetings, start your own meeting, do anything that protects you from your disease.  If sobriety is my number one priority, then I don’t have the luxury of cherry picking.  I need the program more than it needs me.

Periodically I attend Al-Anon meetings.  These folks have a lot to teach me about life.  I particularly like a part of their closing statement:  In closing, we would like to say that the opinions expressed here were strictly those of the person who gave them.  Take what you liked and leave the rest….We aren’t perfect.  The welcome we give you may not show the warmth we have in our hearts for you.  The message delivered by the personalities around the table and the principles intertwined in that message are what keep me sober, not the personalities who deliver them.  Keep coming back.

Thoroughly Followed Our Path

/ Tim / Leave a comment

These words are in the first sentence of the chapter, “How it Works” in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, the grand daddy of all twelve step programs.  The author originally wrote: “Never have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.”  Those around him convinced him to change to ‘rarely‘, to soften the statement a bit.  However, the longer I have been on this path, my River of Recovery, the more I understand the truth in the original statement.  I have yet to hear a person who has relapsed claim that it happened while they were ‘thoroughly’ following the program.

The twelve steps are a recipe for recovery.  Each part is integral to the result.  If you don’t follow the recipe to bake a cake, you won’t get the cake you want.  It’s a matter of following the instructions, adding the ingredients in the manner described and baking, waiting patiently for the result.  Each ingredient is necessary.  Each action is necessary.  Whenever I say to myself, ‘Oh, I don’t need to find a higher power,’ I am not following the recipe.  If I tell myself, ‘I don’t need to look at myself in step four; it’s everyone around me that is the problem,’ then I won’t find the sobriety that has been found in twelve step programs since it began more than 82 years ago.  If I want the results that other have gotten,  I have to follow the recipe to the letter.

Discovering sobriety is not easy.  Those twelve steps seem simple enough, but their application takes time, practice, failure and success.  Like anything else in life, there is no short cut.  There is no ‘worm-hole’ that I can travel through to get sobriety.  I have to do the work.  No one ever got sober with a drink in their hand or half an eight ball up their nose.  It just won’t work.  I have to put down whatever I’m addicted to and make the change.

This is hard work.  Going through withdrawal, D.T.’s and all the other immediate consequences of no longer putting this substance into one’s body is damned hard. Fortunately, I don’t have to do it alone.  I have others in the program that I can lean on.  I may need professional help.  I may need to be in a detox or rehab centre for this process.  My disease doesn’t want me to change.  It likes having the booze or drugs in my body.  Addiction tells me that if I don’t have it, I will die; I know that if I do have it, I will die.  I make a change to survive.  This is change and for whatever reason, we resist change.  We want everything to stay the same.  But without change, everything will stay the same: an addict who is still using is still an addict.

I have to stick with it.  And yes, at first, it may be hard, and I may fall and I may struggle to quit again and again.  Through all of this I must remember I am not the first person who has struggled with this.  Other’s made it, I can to.  Giving into temptation is not an option this time.  I am following the recipe of the program.  I will not take a short cut.  I will do the work.  Over and over I tell myself this.  This is my mantra.  Others have done it, I can too!  Even if I fall, knowing that I had two weeks or two months of clean time before, means that I can do it again and maybe achieve more;  I get back up again.

The miracle of the program is that, very soon, thing do change and get better.  Soon I get over the physical effects of withdrawal.  Very soon I can see changes in how I feel when I wake up in the morning, how my health is improving and how it becomes easier to say no. The emotional, mental and spiritual effects of withdrawal still need a pile of work, but at least my head is clear enough to make a start on those changes.  The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  In order to take the journey, I have to take the journey.  Thoroughly following the path of my twelve step program is the recipe that has worked for me.  I am grateful for where I am today: and my journey continues.  I am grateful that the program will continue to work for me as I continue to “…trudge the Road of Happy Destiny.”

Surrender

/ Tim / Leave a comment

“In order to win, you must surrender.”  That is one of the first enigmas of life that I encountered when I started my journey down Recovery River.  Hell no, I thought.  You have to fight to win in this life.  That’s what I had been taught.  You come up swinging or you get your revenge some other way.  I had my masters in passive-aggressive behaviour. Life is tit for tat.  You’re nice to me and I’ll be nice to you.  You piss me off, and look out! I didn’t do surrender. Surrender is loss.

There are few of us who come from a ‘functional’ family.  Most of us grew up in families that were somewhere between the Cleaver’s in Leave it to Beaver and The Addam’s Family.  As a result, we arrived at adulthood with ideas and beliefs about life that were unbalanced.  If a drug, alcohol or other addiction, either our own or that of a family member, was thrown into the mix during our early years, those ideas and beliefs are even more distorted.  When I arrived for treatment, I had to admit that my best ideas, plans, thoughts and theories about life had brought me to that point.  Something wasn’t working, in fact it was pretty much broken.

I was told to surrender.  I had to admit to myself that my choices in life weren’t in my best interests. I had to admit that they were leading me to an early grave.  I had to see that the river I was paddling upon was not the one I wanted to be on.  There were no bucolic scenes of grassy banks with hopping bunny rabbits and Bambi. What I was witnessing was a combination of the burning river in Cleveland and the contamination of Love Canal. I was a gawd awful mess. Something had to change.  I had to give up what I had thought was true and accept that I didn’t know much of anything when it came to life.

I had few friends, and those were drinking buddies.  When there was nothing left to party with, they left.  I couldn’t wait to walk the one block home from the liquor store to crack open a bottle and take a swig.  I fell off bar stools, slipped on steps, staggered and sometimes drove home from the local bar.  I gravitated to whatever was cheapest to get my sought after high.  I was losing my partner, I was alienating my family, I couldn’t remember what I had done the night before, or any night the past week.  Was that working for me?

It’s hard to admit, that for a long time I thought that I was normal.  “Everyone has blackouts.  I’m just looking for a good time.  Ya, sure I stumble and fall, big deal! Sometimes I overdo it ‘a bit’, so what?  I work hard, I deserve to party.  What do you know about my life? I can handle myself,  get out of my way.  I can stop all this whenever I wanted to, I just don’t want to so get out of my way.” What I slowly came to realize was that I couldn’t.   I had lost my grip on reality, only I was probably the last one to know it.

I will forever be grateful to whatever power it was that got me the help that I so desperately needed. Here I learned that cold fact that my best thinking had brought me to this place of desperation.  I had to admit that I couldn’t do it alone.  I had to admit I while I still had a house, car and family, I was no different that the guy in the back alley drinking cheap wine from a box and smoking whatever was offered.  I needed help.

I swallowed my pride and found myself with a group of other like minded folks who gave me this enigmatic slogan: “Surrender to win!”  Fortunately I was beaten down enough by life, that I agreed with what I was told.  I gave up.  I did what they told me to do.  I admitted that I didn’t have life’s answers.  I looked around and saw folks that seemed to be happy, laughing, smiling and willing to lend me a helping hand.

After a number of years on Recovery River I am grateful that I know I don’t have all of the answers to life.  I’m grateful that I have a willingness to learn, to seek and to ask. I am grateful that I let go of those beliefs that were literally killing me.  Now I’m one of the folks who seems to be happy, laughing, smiling and willing to lend a hand to anyone who is reaching out for it, And I smile when I hear that phrase being told to a newcomer, “You gotta surrender to win at this man!”  I know that a wonderful journey of discovery is about to begin.