INTRO: Twelfth Step

The twelfth step assumes a spiritual awakening: "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry the message to other alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs."  In AA meetings that I attend, this statement is interpreted as both threat and promise.  For the person who has had a bad experience with religion, the suggestion that being and staying sober is somehow contingent on his or her having a spiritual awakening is terrifying.  For the alcoholic who is open to, and maybe even hopes for, a spiritual awakening, this statement is encouraging.

The second assumption made in the twelfth step is that the spiritual awakening that occurs is the result of these steps.  The step does not specify which ones (and the ones that make the biggest difference probably differ from alcoholic to alcoholic).  For me, the first step helped me more than any other during the first year, and then once the craving passed, the tenth step became essential to achieving and maintaining the emotional balance that is a hallmark of serenity.  The point is that the program brings about change worth celebrating.

One of my most satisfying moments in sobriety was sitting in a meeting in which a man whom I sponsor was recognized for completing his first year.  The changes in his life were obvious to me, as, I suspect that, the changes in me were, and are, obvious to my sponsors past and present.  Noticing the changes in somebody else, like noticing their faults when I was drinking, comes more naturally than noticing what is happening with me.

To me, the twelfth step is about helping another alcoholic to achieve sobriety, regardless of the form that this help takes.  Too often, this step is reduced to participating in interventions.  The "carrying the message" language certainly points to helping another alcoholic by assisting with an intervention, and yet there are other methods for sharing one's experience, strength and hope.

Following my DUI, I was not able to drive for a few weeks.  During that time, my sponsor would give me rides to two meetings per week.  One day, when he arrived to take me to one of these meetings, I said, "Thanks for working the 12th step!"  Meaning: By giving me a ride to a meeting, you are helping me to be sober, and I appreciate your generosity.  What he heard, however, was: "Thanks for coming to perform an intervention."  He panicked.  He thought that I had started drinking again until I was able to explain what I meant.  Later, we laughed about this episode after we shared our understandings of the twelfth step.

AA is not a linear program; it is cyclical.  The steps have to be practiced again and again and again.  When I come to the end of a cycle, I begin again, and hopefully, every time that I repeat the steps, I am able to dig more deeply into the principles behind them and to practice these principles with more confidence and serenity so that when I help other alcoholics, as a sponsor or as one who shares during meetings, they will be overwhelmed by the experience, strength and hope that has changed me.

INTRO: Seventh Step

The wisdom that other alcoholics share at meetings is essential to recovery.  In the beginning of my AA experience, I was desperate, which, among other things, meant that, for the first time in a long time, I was at a place in which I was willing to listen.  Almost all of my adult life, I thought that I deserved more than I had, and yet by the time that I crawled into AA, hoping against hope for a better life, I recognized that I did not know everything, and I wondered if what I did know would help me to feel good about myself and the mark that I was making in, and on, the world.

To quote another alcoholic, who spoke eloquently in one of the first meetings that I attended, "I felt like a piece of shit in the center of the universe."  I felt badly about myself and judged myself by standards that would not allow these feelings to change, and yet I craved the spotlight and believed that if people really knew me, they would be able to find something amazing in me that I could not, or would not, find in myself.

I was humiliated when I came into AA, and the distinction between humiliation and humility may be helpful here.  Humiliation is not just feeling like a piece of shit; it is knowing that others share one's low opinion of one's self and fixating on this knowledge.  Being handcuffed, bailed out of jail and appearing before a judge confirmed that I was not better than anybody else.  The law that applied to people that I dismissed as less sophisticated than me also applied to me, and I had to come to terms with the fact that I was not any better at obeying the law than I was at moderating my drinking.  Something had to change.  I had to ask for help.

Humility, which is one of the objectives of the seventh step, enables a person to be comfortable in his or her own skin without having to set himself or herself apart as better than the rivals that he or she manufactures out of thin air.  Being set apart leads to feelings of loneliness.  Humility allows one to be part of a group without establishing a place in the hierarchy.

A humble person is comfortable on stage and working behind the scenes.  He or she finds value in everything that he or she does and in the world around him or her and is fulfilled by whatever it is he or she is doing.  A humble person is not weighed down by guilt or shame.  This person is open-minded and opened-hearted enough to accept whatever the God of his or her understanding gives to him.

The action called for the seventh step is to "humbly ask God to remove his (or her) shortcomings."  This step assumes that the person in recovery is increasingly comfortable with the God to whom he or she was introduced step three and that this person is no longer in denial about the guilt, pride, shame, arrogance and fear that led to the consequences that led him or her into the program.  The trust that one places in another person in step six is extended to God in step seven.

In my experience, one's faith in himself or herself grows in proportion to his or her faith in God and in other human beings and vice versa.  This faith is made possible through self-awareness, the beginning of which is the searching and fearless moral inventory in step four.  For me, saying what I had to say to the God of my understanding was not as difficult as saying what I had to say to another person, because the God of my understanding was with me in the past, is with me now and will be with me in the future.  Plus, I did not worry about the God of my understanding saying anything to anybody about what I confided in this God.

Obviously, I was only beginning to trust again, and yet by this stage in recovery, it seemed as if life was beginning again, which signaled a drastic change in my thoughts and feelings.  I was not as anxious as I used to be.  When I came into AA, it seemed as if life was crashing around me, but suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, though I am sure that it was by virtue of the steps, I started believing that something beautiful could be built from the wreckage of the past.

    

INTRO: Fifth Step

The longer I drank, the more I often drank alone.  I sat at bars by myself and would drive home from them almost every night.  When I went out with other people, I would drink as they did, at least in the early years, and drink more after we said "goodnight".  Often I would stop on the way home to purchase more alcohol to drink before I went to sleep.  At some point, I stopped going to sleep and started passing out night after night.

I do not remember much about the accident that led to my incarceration.  When I attended my first AA meeting upon my release from jail, I was not feeling much but fear.  Alcohol does that to a person.  It takes away  his or her ability to remember; it takes away his or her capacity to feel.  

Statements like "alcohol does that to a person" make less sense after the fourth step than they do after the first one.  Even though I knew that I was powerless over alcohol, I chose to take the first drink hoping that alcohol would numb senses and calm fears.  Irrationally, I thought that it would help me to forget the past and set me up to succeed in the future.  It did neither one, because I insisted on dwelling on the past and fearing the future, and in so doing, found it impossible to live in the present.

Looking at myself honestly and sharing this story with another person helped me to accept myself as I was without beating myself up or blaming all of my problems on alcohol.  The moral inventory helped me to recognize how much I lied to myself about who I was and how my drinking affected others.  It helped me to start being honest with myself so that I would eventually be able to trust my thoughts and feelings.

The fifth step opened me to the possibility of trusting God and other human beings.  It is about practicing the honesty that the fourth step demands with somebody other than one's aggrandizing and loathing self.  There were few surprises when I did my personal inventory.  In my gut, I remembered how I wronged others.  The challenge was being honest enough to write down these wrongs.  Then, once they were written, the challenge became speaking them aloud.

The fifth step says that we "admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."  Notice that the audiences are God, ourselves and another human being.  The God of my understanding was familiar with my offenses, as was I, so what I was doing in the first part of this step was simply acknowledging what was already known, and there is power in knowing.  Admitting the exact nature of my wrongs to another person was the bigger problem, because one of the problems that I was admitting was how I struggle with pride.

The word "admitted" appears in the steps for the first time since the step one in which "we admitted we were powerless over alcohol".  For me, this language serves as a reminder that all of the alcoholic's problems are related.  Both the first step and the fifth step are about letting go of that which stands in the way of being who we are and of being well.  

Taking the fifth step with another person is an intimate act (which is not to be confused with a romantic one).  It establishes faith in the possibility of a mutually affirming relationship with another person.  It help one begin to trust again.  It empowers one to set his or her sights on life on the other side of the consequences of alcoholic behavior, and about this much I am sure: this life in relationship with God and neighbors is far, far better than drinking alone. 

INTRO: First Step

The first visit to an AA meeting was a humiliating experience for me.  Even more humiliating was being cuffed and incarcerated the night before I accepted that I belong at AA meetings.  For years, I would wake up in the morning, recognize that I had a problem, vow not to drink that day, be drunk by bedtime and repeat the process the next morning.

Repetition is a quintessentially religious act.  I drank religiously---every day, often with gusto, regardless of the circumstances.  Drinking became more and more important to me, inching its way up my priority list.  I considered myself to be a religious person.  I was committed to doing well personally and professionally, but it did not occur to me that doing well and being well would require me to stop drinking altogether until I faced the consequences of a DUI.

The DUI was not the problem.  Drinking was.  Had a DUI not brought me into AA, I am sure that other consequences of my actions would have caused me to face my problem.  In the beginning, I was anxious and desperate.  I did not know if the DUI would cost me my family or my job.  I was afraid of where further drinking would lead, and I was afraid to start facing life without the comfort of alcohol.  

AA's steps and traditions were posted in the fellowship halls of churches that I attended for years before coming into the program, so I had some idea of what to expect.  The first step is about power and the alcoholic's lack of it.  There are two big, bold statements in this first step: 1) We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol; and 2) that our lives had become unmanageable.  

I am smart enough know that I should not drive after drinking, and I am compassionate enough to care that drinking and driving may have consequences for everyone that I meet on the drive home.  One of the problems with drinking is that it impairs judgment.  Once I start drinking, I am not able to stop.  This is the essence of powerlessness, and it leads to unmanageability.

I have not had a drink since I attended that first meeting.  I have not had a second DUI either.  Sometimes I feel powerless but am increasingly comfortable with the fact that I am not all-powerful.  I am better at managing life now than I was when I came into the program, because what I do repeatedly has changed.  I practice the steps of AA, which provides more structure and comfort than alcohol ever did.