TWELVE
STEPS AND
TWELVE
TRADITIONS
Step
One
(Continued…p. 22)
When first challenged to admit defeat,
most of us revolted. We approached AA expecting to be taught self-confidence.
Then we had been told that so far as alcohol is concerned, self-confidence was
no good whatever; in fact, it was a total liability…. we were the victims of a
mental obsession so powerful that no amount of human power could break it.
There was, they said, no such thing as the personal conquest of this compulsion
by the unaided will… The tyrant alcohol wielded a double-edged sword over us:
first we were smitten by an insane urge that condemned us to go on drinking,
and then by an allergy of the body that insured we would ultimately destroy
ourselves in the process. Few indeed were those who, so assailed, had ever won
through in singlehanded combat. It was a statistical fact that alcoholics
almost never recovered on their own resources. And this had been true,
apparently, ever since man had first crushed grapes.
۞۞۞۞۞
I had a very
good friend who had been struggling with addiction to alcohol, heroine and
cocaine. One night I gave her a ride home from jail after she had been arrested
for her own protection. The police found her wandering the streets in a drug
induced daze the night before. I marveled because this woman had been sober a
few months and this arrest… for whatever reason… was a violation of her parole
for some serious felonies. As we drove in silence my mind raced for some sort
of lecture, even a word or two, a gesture… like a slap on her face or something
Zen that would snap her attention. Truthfully, I was afraid for myself as well
as her because I knew that it would be so easy for me to do the same. Finally,
I couldn’t restrain myself, “Why, with all that is hanging over you… why did
you do it?”
Her response
was the best I have ever heard from anyone in this situation… she didn’t answer
defiantly with a list of offenses, excuses and faults… of other people or
herself… nor did she cry out in the despair I knew she must have felt… she
simply and flatly answered; “Because I am an addict.”
Those
four words said it all. The first step in recovery is not to parrot these words
but to know what they mean deeply… to admit it thoroughly… She saw her self as
she is with humility and acceptance. She got serious about her recovery from
that day on. Years later she told me that her answer that night was what got
her sober. She realized in those four words that no human power was going to do
the trick for her and surrendered her addictions to God. It was the First Step
in her recovery.
geo 4,712
No comments:
Post a Comment