I was thinking about someone, who is struggling to stay sober. Got a message and wished I could talk to them to find out what’s wrong.
I talked about this with a friend of mine today and wondered, if it could be about the Second Step. I don’t know. Just a guess.
I know that when I came in I wasn’t prepared to go the spiritual route. All I wanted to do was stop drinking. I had had it. I had hit a bottom that I never want to forget and I don’t. I was kind of like the last two pages of the First Step in the 12&12. You know, the insistence that we have to hit bottoms. Why? Because, who is going to be willing to do what is necessary to make the changes that will bring about sobriety, unless we know that we’re going to die. I sure knew that. I had almost cashed it in, when I decided to kill myself on the last day. Total despair.
But then hope came in the person of a man, who told me that there was a place where men and women met and stayed sober together. Really? That changed everything. People could actually get sober and stay sober? And they did it together? Yes! I wanted to go there and I did.
But, when I found out that it was going to have to be through a higher power, living a spiritual life, I balked. Look, all I wanted to do was not drink again. Thank you very much.
Came to believe. The Second Step. My sponsor kept insisting I read the 4th Chapter in the BB. I kept putting it off, because I had been educated in the Seminary. Theology you know. I knew what an agnostic was and why bother reading about it? I think that was about the time my sponsor told me that I had been educated beyond my intelligence.
So, I did. And that’s when I saw what this program was about. Live a spiritual life or die an alcoholic death. Not much of a choice. I remember Sandy B., saying, when he got to that chapter, that he wanted to call a doctor and ask him just how bad an alcoholic death might be. Made me laugh. I almost had the same thought. Truth was that I knew it was not the way I wanted to go.
What did I do? At the moment I read that, I decided to begin to lead a spiritual life. I knew that wasn’t going to be easy. I didn’t come here to be a saint or a little goody two shoes. I came to stop drinking. Period. But if the only way I could stay sober was to live a spiritual life, then so be it.
So the Second Step I found was the key to the door into this program. Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. Well, in that first meeting I saw that higher power. Something bigger than and outside of myself. It was right there in front of me. Men and women, who had something I didn’t have. They had the power not to drink and I wanted that. So, my first higher power became the group of alcoholics in that meeting.
Someone said that faith comes from hope. When the hope becomes a reality we begin to believe. The evidence of sober people, who were living a better and saner life than I had, began to turn the hope I got in that meeting into faith. Something I could believe in. I could see it and touch it. It was real.
Thus began my journey into sobriety. My journey into faith. My journey into a spiritual life and then into sanity. Not always easy, but in the course of it, I changed and began to love this program. As a result of applying these Steps into my life I know I had a spiritual awakening. Despite my misgivings. I think I was waiting to see if the program would fail me. It never did. In a sense it surprised me. I can look back, as I did to day with my friend, and see all the changes, which came about as a result.
But I had to want sobriety over everything else in life. I had to be willing to do what others had done. And I got that willingness and courage and strength to go on from the men and women in this program. I knew doing this program alone would have been futile. Alcohol had already proved to be my master. I needed help desperately or I was not going to survive. I got it and am ever so grateful for this way of life. Thank God and the people who saved my life. I am ever grateful.