1st Step ACTIONS

We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable.

In the first series that I wrote for this blog, I shared my experience, strength and hope based on my first experience of AA's 12 steps.  The second series was more philosophical, as I considered the principles behind the steps and how they apply to life in recovery.   This series, the third one, is all about actions, the steps within the steps that help the person in recovery to be, and to stay, sober.

I remember sitting in a clubhouse with another alcoholic who was beginning to work the steps after I had been sober a while.  He asked a lot of questions, all of them good.  The tone of the conversation began to bother me, however, because this person was spending too much time trying to figure why he (or she) was an alcoholic without considering the actions that help the alcoholic to step up and to step out of the problems that lead one into AA.

Eventually, I redirected the conversation by asking this person, "Do you know what the most important  body part in AA is?"  The first response, which was wrong, was "the head."  The next response, which was equally wrong, was "the heart."  The following response was "the liver."  Wrong again.

At last I shared my opinion.  "It's you ass," I said, "Your ass is the important body part in AA.  You have to bring it to meetings.  You have to take it to places where you may help other alcoholics.  You have to do stuff, important stuff, so that you spend less time in your head and are governed less and less by your emotions"

AA, as I have been taught since the first meeting that I attended, is an action program, and this series is an honest effort to look at the actions that help the alcoholic to work each of the 12 steps.


1. Be honest about why you are in AA.
Nobody comes into AA on a good day.  I know that I didn't.  Life was spiraling downward, and I was looking to stop the spiraling.

I put off going to an AA meeting for years, but the fact that I even thought about attending a meeting before I spent a night in jail following a DUI suggests that I belonged in AA years before I arrived.

While I did not have any doubts about whether I was an alcoholic or not when I arrived, some men and women do, but let's face it, if one has to ask if one is an alcoholic, then one probably has a problem, because this person is not in a chocolate factory wondering if he or she is a chocolate bar.


2. If you have any doubt about whether you are an alcoholic, then go out and drink exactly one drink per day for one week.
If the thought of going out and drinking only one drink seems absurd to you, because you know that the first drink leads to the next one and eventually into oblivion, then this experiment may not be necessary.

When I came into AA and someone suggested controlled drinking, I was overwhelmed by fear.  If I could control my drinking, then I would never have driven drunk or spent a night in jail in the first place.  

For men and women who continue to drink in the face of mounting consequences, the only option is to abstain from drinking, which is why AA is an abstinence program.  Alcoholics who do not take the first drink never become drunk; those who ignore this simple truth will drink and drink again, and in so doing, will continue to suffer and to inflict suffering.

3. Admit that you are powerless over alcohol.
Admitting that one is powerless over alcohol is not as dramatic as it sounds (which is disappointing given how much alcoholics enjoy drama).

I admit that I am powerless over alcohol every time that I walk into an AA meeting; walking into an AA meeting, in fact, is one of the most honest things that I do.  By walking into a meeting, I am not able to lie to anybody, including myself, about why I am there.

If I am to experience power, I have to distance myself from that over which I am powerless.  If I notice that the place where I live is engulfed in flames, I do not stay inside.  I step outside of the place where I may be most comfortable and ask for help.


4. Admit that your life has become unmanageable.
The list of people who were willing and able to help me is much longer than I thought that it was when I stepped into the program.

Bridges had been burned.  Relationships had faltered.  The mountain of debt before me seemed insurmountable.  Life had become unmanageable, and the evidence was glaring.

Sure, I was tempted to blame anybody and everybody for the problems in my life, but the cold, hard fact was that I had driven myself over the cliff and distanced myself from people who were willing to break my fall.

I thrashed around flexing muscles that only I could see, and when my vision began to clear, I had to start accepting responsibility for the consequences of my actions that included the decision to take the first drink.


5. Stop talking, and start listening.
In the first meeting that I attended, I sat with tears in my eyes before sharing.  One of the sad facts of this scene, as I remember it, is that I had to speak.

By speaking, I placed myself on center stage.  The self-pity, which was authentic, was also a way of calling attention to myself.  While it was important that I spoke, that I admit that I was, and am, powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable, it was also important that I start listening, because all of the information that I had to share at that point in my sobriety was about the illness.

Soon, it became evident that I would have to look outside of myself for healing.  Something out there was more powerful than alcohol, and by this stage in the program, I was clear that it was not me.

1st Step PRINCIPLE: Honesty

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol---that our lives had become unmanageable.

I have attended AA meetings throughout the United States, and in many of the clubhouses where I have attended meetings, a list of 12 principles appear alongside of the 12 steps and 12 traditions.  

The principles

The principles on this list differ from clubhouse to clubhouse.  The differences are not drastic, but I feel that I should acknowledge them in the beginning of this series so that if the principles that I discuss here are different from the ones that appear in the place where you attend meetings you will understand why (alcoholics, in my experience, are reluctant to trust other people, so I am careful to nuance what I say in an effort to establish credibility from the beginning of this series).

The practices

The principle practiced in the first step is honesty, and honesty, in my experience, does not come naturally to alcoholics.   Before I came into the program, I was able to twist any story to say whatever I wanted it to say.  Often I deceived others; sometimes I deceived myself (especially when I thought that people believed the same lie that I had been telling for years).  

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth

Fundamentally, honesty is about telling the truth, and yet it is much, much more.  Honesty is not simply the absence of lying; it is telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth regardless of whether it advances one's personal agenda.  It assumes knowledge of one's self and situation and a willingness to share this knowledge with another person so that he or she may be helped.  

The result of honesty is trust.  One starts trusting his or her judgment and the judgment of others (for me, trusting others came first, but I am sure that for some, trust starts with one's self).  Being able to trust another person over a long period of time results in loyalty, and with a sense of support and experience with being supportive, one comes to feel part of the group to which he or she belongs.

Admission

In AA, the first act of honesty is admitting: 1) that one is powerless over alcohol; and 2) that life is unmanageable.  "Admission" language assumes that something is concealed (or at least one thinks that something is concealed).  It also implies wrongdoing and hints at willingness to change.

Admitting that one is powerless over alcohol and that life has become unmanageable bumps up against one's pride, and even though I was humiliated when I came into AA, I still had an extraordinary amount of pride, especially for a person who was recently released from jail.

Practicing the first step imparts life skills that help beyond not drinking, but when one comes into the program, not drinking may be all that one can think about, because the consequences of his or her drinking sit like elephants in the meeting room.       

Be yourself.

From an early age, I was taught to, "Be myself."  Later in life, I wondered, "What if one is an asshole?"

The line between being an alcoholic and an asshole is fine.  With enough to drink, I always was myself, and this self was an asshole.  Of course, the next morning, I would blame whatever I did or said on alcohol, and yet as I stepped into recovery, I began to think of myself as the person who did and said all of these embarrassing things.

Being one's self leads to a better quality of life.  Being one's self while drinking alcoholically leads to consequences that lead one into the program, and being one's self while suffering these consequences, leads to the admissions of powerlessness and unmanageability.

Be open to being empowered.

One of the biggest lies that I told myself was that alcohol helped me to relax.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  When I drank, I gave myself permission to go to the darkest and most vitriolic places in my psyche and to be honest about how I felt about other people.  All of the feelings that I expressed were negative, and sharing these feelings did not bring about trust or loyalty.

Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, "Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery."  For me, as an active alcoholic, nothing was harder than speaking the truth about myself, though flattering myself was one of the few practices that I did well.  The opposite was true with respect to my thoughts and feelings about other people.  I preferred criticizing to complimenting, which led to feeling increasingly disconnected from my peers.

Be willing to change.

When I came into AA, this pattern had to change.  I had to begin to look as critically at myself as I looked at other people, and I had to begin to overlook the qualities in other people, especially members of AA, that led me to dark and vitriolic places so that I could let them help me help myself.

Given where I was when I came into the program, it was not difficult to find men and women who seemed more empowered than was I.  Life seemed more manageable to them, and yet I still found myself judging them by some ridiculous standard that, in the end, was more alcoholic than sober.

When I stepped up and accepted responsibility for the actions that led me into AA, I opened myself to the possibility of life without alcohol.  I was not sure if this life would be better, but I was convinced that it would not be worse.  For the first time in a long time, I was being honest with myself, and with time, I started being more honest with other men and women, and slowly but surely, I started feeling better about myself again.

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.