Made a Decision - Steps One through Five

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The Steps and 12 Traditions and Why we “Work” Them.

                 

                      

        “The Steps protect me from myself; 

          the Traditions protect AA from me.”

 

“A.A.’s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their nature, which if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole.”   

And:

“A.A.’s Twelve Traditions apply to the life of the Fellowship itself. They outline the means by which A.A. maintains its unity and relates itself to the world about it, the way it lives and grows.”  

      (From the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, my favorite AA book).

 

When we do all 12 steps initially we do them to the very best of our ability. More will be revealed about ourselves as we continue along our road of recovery. We will “work” some of these steps every single day and others we will dip back into when we realize more work there is needed.

 An example of that is the Fourth Step. Some people do a Fourth Step once a year every year. Others do another Fourth Step when they feel the need. And sometimes we will do a Fourth Step item on only one item - once it has been "revealed" to us. 

(And don’t let anyone “should on you”. There is no right or wrong way to do any of the steps - just as long as we do them.)

Here are some bullet points and a few personal comments on all 12-steps. Today’s blog deals with Steps One through Step Five: 

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

Step One is the ONLY step we have to take 100 percent. It is our foundation for recovery.

In it we will remember what got us to AA in the first place. If you are struggling with Step One, consider the following:

Bullet points for Step One:

1.  Think back to your drinking times. Did your drinking cause you problems in your life? Often? Did you ever swear off alcohol, but then found reason to drink again … and then again? 

2. Did  you ever feel “powerless” in your ability to stay away from having a drink?

3. Did your drinking ever get out of control? Did it sometimes (always?) become “unmanageable?”

4. Were any aspects of your life - relationships, job, finances - affected by your drinking?

5. How did you feel when you finally admitted to yourself that you were powerless over alcohol? What was that moment of clarity (surrender) like?

6. Remember - If you want to drink, that’s your business. But if you want to quit, that’s the business of AA. Accepting Step One puts you firmly onto your path of recovery.

Step Two - Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

This step is the “whoa” step for many newcomers. They balk at the whole idea of a Higher Power, because they either don’t believe there is a God or they do believe there is a God, one who seeks to punish them for all their “bad behavior.” 

Many newcomers struggle for months, even years, with the entire God concept … but as our Big Book tells us, we only have to turn to a God as we understand Him (or Her).

My first sponsor once asked me to list on paper all the qualities I would want to have in a Best Friend.

 I wrote things like humour, loyalty, strength, intelligence, a sense of fun, a lot of laughter, courage, etc.

My sponsor then said, “OK then - that’s now your God as you understand God. Those are the qualities you’ll ultimately find in your Higher Power. Rely on THAT God. Stop overthinking it.” 

(And you know what? She was right.)

Bullet Points for Step Two:

1. We do NOT have to be believers in the beginning. Many newcomers believe that AA in itself offers a “Power greater than ourselves” able to keep its members - and us - sober. After all, people in AA are sober and staying sober where we could not

2. AA members over time generally (but it is NOT a requirement) come to rely on a “God of our own understanding.”

3. Some members can never accept anything but the G.O.D. ("Good Orderly Direction) of their AA group as their Higher Power. And that's fine

4. AA is NOT a religion.

5. AA, however, is a spiritual program.

6. Sanity is achievable. 

Step Three - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

What? Turn our will and our lives over to something other than ourselves? No way! 

That’s the usual reaction when confronted with the reality of having to take our paws off our own life and invite God to take over. Pause now and consider where our own control and guidance has left us in our lives. Maybe this God idea could point us toward a better quality of life? Worth a try?

Bullet Points for Step Three:

1. MADE A DECiSION to give AA a try.

2. Attended lots of meetings online and (when it's safe and possible again) in person.

3. Asked a God of our own understanding (often called HP, or Higher Power) each morning to keep us sober for that day.

4. Thanked HP at bedtime for our having had another sober day.

5. Found an AA member with experience in living by the 12-Steps of Recovery to “sponsor” us by guiding us through all the steps. A good sponsor will share his/her own experiences with us and explain how working the steps has kept them sober.

Step Four - Made a searching and thorough inventory of ourselves.

Step Four is where the "take action" steps begin. Here we begin to actually “work the steps.”

Many newcomers fear Step Four, but once they move forward they will discover they’ve been afraid of a paper tiger. There is no harm in any of the steps. Step Four introduces us to the truth about ourselves - and the truth will set us free!)

Bullet Points for Step Four:

1. The Big Book of AA outlines how to do Step Four. Read it and think about it.

2. Take up any questions you may still have with your sponsor.

3. Set aside a morning or afternoon when you won’t be disturbed. Sit down with pen and paper or a notebook and go to it. Use the Big Book outline as your guide. Take prayer breaks if needed.

4. Some people prefer to just write their Fourth Step autobiographically and that can work, too. The goal here is not perfection. The goal is to get this stuff down on paper. My first attempt at a Fourth Step was biographical. I later did Fourth Steps using the Big Book as my guide.

5. Remember to add the positive things about yourself to your inventory. No one is all bad - not even terminally-unique you.

6. If this is your first time doing a Fourth Step you should be able to complete it in two to four hours. That will get on paper the immediate things for working on in your early recovery. (More will be revealed in future Fourth Steps.)

7. If a Fourth Step Workshop is available to you, sign up for it - and then show up and take part.

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

Why?

If God knows all our secrets and forgives them, why do we have to hang all our dirty laundry out there in front of a person?

Because to walk a spiritual path we must learn all about humility and obedience to God’s will. Our Higher Power needs us to step out here in faith that Step Five is one of our most important steps along that path.

And it really is.

Bullet Points for Step Five:

1. No one wants to do a Fifth Step. Do it anyway.

2. AA’s founders recommended doing a Fifth Step immediately after getting our Fourth Step down on paper. (I say the same). 

3. Set aside a morning or afternoon with your sponsor, a trusted friend, your priest or rabbi, or anyone you trust (but not a live-in partner) and read your Fourth Step aloud to them. 

4. We are as sick as our secrets. Get everything (ALL of it) out in the open. 

5. Your Higher Power didn’t bring you this far to drop you on your head. Do the most thorough Fifth Step you can. The benefits will very soon reveal themselves to you.

We'll have a look at Steps Six, Seven, Eight and Nine in the next blog. Till then, keep sober and keep smiling. Smiles are contagious!

  

 Made a Decision

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               Women in the “Fellowship.”

Women in AA should always remember “The Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous was written in an earlier time, penned by white men for white men.  The Founding Fathers of AA initially weren’t even sure women could get and stay sober in the AA program. 

"... In the beginning we could not sober up women. They were different, they said ..." From the book "Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age".

I was working as a journalist (now long retired) when I got sober. During my first year or two in recovery I wanted to rewrite the Big Book. I thought the language in the Big Book was dated at best and sexist at worst.

But I’m glad I left the book alone, because over time I have learned everything a woman needs to stay sober really is already right there in the Big Book of “Alcoholics Anonymous” - just as it was written.

We just have to become open enough to receive it.

(And the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions is well worth our study, too).

 I’m pleased, however, that other women have in recent decades written books aimed more at reaching women in recovery.

Among them, the book A Woman’ Way Through the 12 Steps, by Stephanie S. Covington, is now a recovery classic that has helped scores of women. 

 I also think the most important thing a woman in recovery can do for herself is to join an all women’s group - or start one if necessary.

 (I’ve helped start two of them, one in the USA and one in the UK. The UK group faded away, but the other is still going strong more than 35 years on). 

 Women’s groups themselves have been around since the 1950s, by the way, so if you are trying to get one started in your own area don’t let anyone bully you into thinking they’re something “new.”

 

I am not writing this to man bash. I adore the men in AA. Nearly all of the people around me in my early recovery were men. Without them I would never have stayed sober. Their courage, direction, compassion and humour propped me up in my weakest moments.

But many men in AA still sometimes get all huffy when women decide to form a group just for them. They'll give all kinds of reasons why a women's group isn't necessary, too. I've heard them all.

The men will say a woman alcoholic is no different from a man alcoholic, that women think they're special (dangerously "unique") when thinking they need their own group, and some men will even bluntly say, "What's so private you women can't talk about it in a regular meeting?"

(I suspect men fear we want our own meeting just so we can talk about them!)

I'm going to digress here (as I often do) to leave AA for a moment and tell you about a study of men and women I once read:

In that study, each person was asked what they most feared regarding the other sex when involved in an intimate relationship.

Most of the men questioned said they feared, if they let themselves be vulnerable, the woman might laugh at them.

The women said their biggest fear was their partner might become angry enough to kill them.

So, given that information, we return now to recovery:

While it is obviously true both men and women can become alcoholics, the results of "our" disease - and our fears - impact our lives in very different ways.

All drunks are shamed by the society they live in, but until they’ve reached the lowest point in their drinking, men are perceived as “someone who just doesn’t know when to quit.” 

Women at that stage (or even before) are perceived as bad women. Period.

A man staggering along the street drunk is still often seen as a figure of fun. A woman in that condition is seen as disgusting, or in some cases, as a target for sexual assault. 

 

 And women alcoholics who live with abuse in their homes often turn to the bottle for comfort, thereby inviting a whole new level of abuse, especially verbal abuse.

Being constantly told we are "terrible mothers, rotten housekeepers, lousy cooks, disgusting women, lazy bitches, whores, scum - or worse -is hardly the recipe for feeling good about oneself.

A woman who finds she can not stop drinking feels like a failure already, so the verbal abuse just fuels self-loathing like red hot coals stoke a fire.

I have been a member of groups in several countries and in every one of them there have been women who never spoke. They were always there, they listened, they stayed sober, but they never spoke aloud in a meeting. They couldn't.

These were women who had been abused as children and later, often when quite young, went on to marry abusive men. Their voices had been silenced all their lives.

It was only when those women became members in women's groups, and came to understand their thoughts and feelings had value, that they began to speak.

I have known such women. I have sponsored such women. So I am now, and always will be, a champion of women's AA groups.

And here's the best news of all - and it's for all of AA:

Once the silent women discover their self-worth they venture out into regular AA meetings where their wisdom and compassion enriches and benefits everyone.

 Made A Decision - Slip'n and Slid'n.

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In 1960, one of AA's founding members shared his thoughts about those who return to drinking after having been in AA. He wrote the following:

"Slips can often be charged to rebellion; some of us are more rebellious than others. Slips may be due to the illusion that one can be 'cured' of alcoholism.

"Slips can also be charged to carelessness and complacency. Many of us fail to ride out these periods sober. Things go fine for two or three years - then the member is seen no more.

"Some of us suffer extreme guilt because of vices or practices that we can't or won't let go of. Too little self-forgiveness and too little prayer - well, this combination adds up to slips.

"Then some of us are far more alcohol-damaged than others. Still others encounter a series of calamities and cannot seem to find the spiritual resources to meet them.

"There are those of us who are physically ill. Others are subject to more or less continuous exhaustion, anxiety, and depression. These conditions often play a part in slips - sometimes they are utterly controlling."

In my own case, and purely by the grace of God, I have not had a drink of alcohol since I attended my first meeting in Alcoholics Anonymous.

That fact makes me blessed, not superior.

The thought of having a slip scares the hell out of me, because I have learned from the slips of others that our disease of alcoholism progresses whether we are drinking or not. We will never return to the happy early days of our drinking, we return to an advanced stage of alcoholic hell.

Sadly, however, I have witnessed many AA members who have not been as fortunate as I have been. I have had dear friends in the program who picked up a drink to suffer another period of "research" on the horrible effects alcohol has on those like us.

Some of those who "slipped" did make it back to the rooms. None, however, returned to tell us how great it was to be back out there drinking again. All of them had just added more new horrors to their previous horror stories about our disease.

I, too, (like every recovering alcoholic) have been close to picking up a time or two during my recovery, but I'm so grateful I did not. Hearing those horror stories probably played a big part in that. It's one more reason to continue going to meetings, that harsh reminder of what awaits us when we do not.

There's a recurring theme heard from those who have returned to AA after drinking again. They invariably say: "I slipped after I stopped going to meetings."

Never forget we in AA have a chronic terminal illness. Other chronic terminal illnesses (like many cancers, kidney diseases, diabetes) all require very painful treatments involving needles and horrific medical procedures.

Our primary treatment for our deadly disease is to get our ass to a meeting!

And we can SEE the results of our treatments in the faces around us in meetings. Group members often arrive with frowning faces to share stories of their horrible day. But, by meeting's end, they are smiling and joking with other members about how their day doesn't seem quite as bad after all.

There's an old AA saying we might want to write down - right up there on the wall in big letters will be fine!

"Meeting Makers Make It!"

 

Made A Decision

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                    Some odds and ends today:  

About Prayer:  

                    “Most people don’t pray, they only beg.”

 

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About Meditation: 

“There is no such thing as a bad meditation. 

There are just different experiences 

at different times.”

 

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"Let no alcoholic say he cannot recover  unless he has his family back. His recovery  is not dependent upon people. It is  dependent upon his relationship with God,  however he may define Him." 1. TWELVE AND TWELVE, pp. 50-51 2. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, pp. 99-100

We Are Worthy - (letter to a sponsee in early recovery):

“God don't make no junk” and God made YOU. 

So to think you are not good enough, or unworthy in any way, is putting yourself ahead of God's own opinion of you.

 

Look in the mirror and say, out loud, "I love you."

Do it every day until you like what you see.

Do it every day until you believe it.

 

And until you do love you, remember 

God loves you.

We in AA love you.

I love you.

 

Self-love comes over time when we stay on track in our recovery.

 

I know you listen to AA taped talks  - do more of them and less of the negative stuff found on line.

 

Stay safe and well. 

 

 

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Let us resist the proud assumption that since God has enabled

 us to do well in one area we are destined to be a channel 

of saving grace for everybody.

 

A.A. COMES OF AGE, p. 232

 

 

 

 

 

For Those who Still Want to Drink

 

I’ve seen a lot of people come into AA and then leave and return to drinking. 

Some of them have died drunk. 

Some of them have suffered permanent brain damage from that binge.

 And some make it back “into the rooms” and continue their sober journey.

Of those older, battered, and now wiser who do return, I have never once heard any of them say:

 

 “IT WAS GREAT!”

 

“I LOVED DRINKiNG AGAIN.” 

 

“MY FAMILY WAS SO PROUD OF ME FOR PICKING UP A DRINK.” 

 

Nope, not a single one of them I’ve known personally has ever said 

that - or anything like that. 

 

 

 

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I posted the following on my Facebook Page one day:

 

“Some good questions to ask ourselves:

 "What is trying to emerge in my life? 

What is my gift to share? 

What is my purpose? 

Why am I here on the planet? " 

 

And I got back this response from a fellow AA member new in recovery: 

“Been fucking asking this all my life. Screaming out to god who am I and what 

do you want from me?” 

 

My response, based entirely on knowing how WE have a disease 

of perception:

 

“Be calm. Your answers COULD be:

1. What is trying to emerge in my life?  

  

               Good Balanced Recovery

 

2. My gift to share? ...

 

Good Balanced Recovery.

 

3. Purpose? ...

 

        To learn to love myself, and teach others how to love themselves, 

and our planet.

 

4. Why am I here? ... 

 

       To love the planet, and all those on it, back to health by applying numbers 1,2, and 3, above.

 

 

 

 

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If you think you have a problem with alcohol, 

you probably do.

 

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When we are asked to chair on a topic it's always best to 

come up with our own ideas when we can, 

but here are a few suggestions for when our brains 

draw a blank. 

 

1. Any of the 12 steps.

2. Gratitude

3. Service and how it keeps us sober.

4. Sponsorship

5. Any one of the slogans ... one day at a time;

 first things first; keep it simple; let go and let God; etc.

6. Helping others in recovery. Reaching out to those in need.

7. What to do when we feel "stuck" in our recovery.

8. Greeting newcomers and making them feel

 welcome and needed. (Especially important in 

these times of zoom!)

9. AA Literature. Why we need to read it.

10. Our favorites among the AA selection of books 

and brochures.

11. The many benefits of forming AA friendships.

12. Relapse. Alcohol is cunning, baffling, powerful

 - and patient!

13. Dealing with grief and staying sober.

14. The healing power of laughter - especially

 learning to laugh at ourselves.

15. Morbid reflection, how it leads to depression 

and how to avoid it. (Gratitude! Trust God. Help others.)

                                 ... and so on.

 

 

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How do I know if my spiritual experience is real?

 

“... it is certain that all recipients of spiritual experiences

 declare for their reality. The best evidence of that reality

 is in the subsequent fruits. Those who receive these gifts

 of grace are very much changed people, almost invariably 

for the better. This can scarcely be said of those 

who hallucinate." 

 

From an AA talk by Dr. Bob  in 1960

 

 

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"We alcoholics are sensitive people. It takes some of us

 a long time to outgrow that serious handicap."

 

 

Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition

The Family Afterward, pg. 125

 

 

 

 

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To help each other, is to help ourselves.

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And one final thought for today: 

 

It's easier to stay out of trouble

 than to 

get out of trouble.