Just thinking about staying sober for this day brought up the idea of what’s probably key to this process. I think it’s in the 3rd Step in the 12&12. Willingness to unlock the door.
I don’t know what brought up all that resistance I had early on in sobriety. Something inside of me rebelled against the idea of turning my life and my will over to the care of a God of my own understanding. Probably the negativity and all those old ideas within me. I just wasn’t ready. I was ready to not drink anymore, but not for what would sustain me in sobriety. I needed help.
That help came in the person of my sponsor. He knew I was stuck and his direction and words were just what I needed. First he had me go back to the BB and read the Doctor’s Opinion again and again. In reading it I found it began to make sense. Particularly the doctor’s description of what was wrong with an alcoholic like myself. Everything in there began to become clear for the first time.
What I discovered was exactly what my sponsor had said to me. That I didn’t know that I didn’t know. I only thought I knew. It was the start of letting go of some of my old concepts I had held so dearly. That intellectual pride began to crumble. Maybe it was true that what I thought I knew was of little use to my staying sober. It was just like the good doctor said; I couldn’t distinguish between the true and the false.
I had already developed a faith in a higher power. To me that was the group. But what was I to do when the group wasn’t present to help me through difficult situations? By this time I had several examples of others, who had thought just like I had. One was a man, who had been swept out in a rip tide off of Ocean City, Md.
His higher power was the group, also. But there he was in the Atlantic Ocean, too far from shore. He couldn’t pray for help to his group. He found the God of his understanding in the ocean and got back to shore.
I also remember another man I knew, who found the 3rd Step solution in the middle of a prison riot, when he and his sponsor had taken a meeting there. In the chaos of tear gas, riot guns going off, and a fire, he discovered the God of his understanding. I didn’t have a situation like those two men, but I was no less in the same need.
Finally I was to read what Dr. Jung said to Rowland H. in the BB. I knew that I needed the same thing. I knew that I needed that psychic change Dr. Silkworth talked about in the opening pages of the BB. It was these things and all the words in between, which changed my mind. I began to unlearn all the wrong things and learn a new way of thinking and living. I found the key and unlocked the door.
I was thinking today that I often have to go back and find that key. If I’m to stay sober, I will need to know where it’s kept. My thinking is faulty and so is my willingness from time to time. But with God’s help and so many others like myself I know that each day I will be able to open the door again.