Couldn’t help but think today how often I hear alcoholics say that they did everything they could to either avoid Step One or just weren’t aware of it. Always makes me wonder what is wrong with people like us. I know when I got an offer to get sober, although I knew nothing about AA and the Steps, I surrendered and turned myself over to getting sober.
We were talking to another person coming back again after a “slip”. Once again I couldn’t help but go back to the 12&12 and the First Step. I had to talk about what it said in there about the need for bottoms. The pain that is caused by our alcoholism within us. What it is that makes us decide we need to surrender and seek sobriety. I almost could see that pain on the face of the one returning today and it told me they had a chance to stop drinking and get sober.
Then I heard another alcoholic, who obviously doesn’t see alcoholism as a disease. I have to stop when I hear that, because I know from the past history of this program the disease aspect. Not only that but I remember when a couple of university med schools were able to find the genes which caused people like us to have this disease. In fact I remember one doctor, who studied this disease tell us that, if and when the alcoholism skips a generation and comes back in the next, it provides proof of this as a disease.
I also remember another doctor, who thought he knew what he was doing and could get alcoholics well, almost fall flat on his face in doing so. He could not understand why, when he thought he knew what this was all about, AA was working for the alcoholic. That was when he decided to go to meetings and watch what was going on. That’s when he found out the spiritual aspect of this program and it changed him. He found he had something new to think about when it came to this disease.
And that’s what almost all of us talked about with this person returning. The spiritual answer. Not a religious answer, but one that is dependent on what makes sense to the individual who is trying to get sober. I know we sometimes almost sound alike in our ideas of what it is that has changed us and helped us to stay sober. Not always, but for the most part. Few of us ever go into details about our Higher Power, the God of our understanding.
We leave that up to whoever wants this program and needs to make that decision.
Anyway I often go back to that First Step in the 12&12 and think about what it said about our listening as only the dying can listen. When it came to that Step that is about what I had to do. In the beginning it was the only thing I would listen to, because I wanted to avoid having to listen to anything I didn’t like. Such as spirituality or some of the other things these Steps required of us. All I can say is that I did finally listen and began to put this program into action as the result of my old sponsor and those old timers back then.
Looking at this person coming back today I had to once again stop and think about what it was that worked for me in this program. And, of course, it all began with the Second Step for me. What my sponsor got me to look at and do. That was exactly what changed my mind and my life. When something like that comes into my life I can never forget it. It is exactly why I have so much gratitude and am willing to reach out to others and try to pass the message that works in here along to them. To give away what was so freely given to me.
Made me come home and step aside and think about staying sober today. I also had to be grateful that someone came up to me after the meeting and shared their pain in a situation in their life. Like with the person coming back I have the feeling of being given a gift and it puts me into a place of peace and happiness. Grateful to my Higher Power, this program, and the other alcoholics like myself.