Today we were able to go back and once again talk about the Second Step. I always love to talk about this Step, because it was this which totally changed me. It was one thing when I surrendered to that First Step, even though I knew nothing about it. After all I had no knowledge of AA or alcoholism. All I knew was that I had long ago lost control of my drinking alcohol and it was tearing me down. I was depressed and in despair. I couldn’t go on, so suicide was the only answer I knew.
Then another man, a patient at the clinic I worked at, was being treated by a very good medic, who had been drinking that morning. This man was a sober alcoholic and asked him why he was drinking in the morning, when he should be paying attention to taking care of patients. And that’s when he told him about AA. Then my medic friend I often drank with, came and told me about this program, and that gave me hope. And the hope did for me what I desperately needed.
That night I prayed and turned my drinking alcohol over to the God I understood. I turned alcohol and my life over to this Higher Power. All of it. And the next day I woke up and alcohol was gone for the first time in so many years. I was sober for the first time in years and I entered this program a few days later. I have been sober ever since.
The reason I’m writing and thinking about this is one of things I think about, when I began to practice this Second Step. I mean I can never forget how this Step changed me. That first page in the BB has that statement, which helped me to become open to this way of life. It stated that I had to begin to live a spiritual life or die and alcoholic death. That made me willing to do what it asked of me, and to also turn myself over to my Higher Power.
But there was something in that BB, which was the beginning of more help.That was the story of the young man, who had gone over to get Dr. Carl Jung to help him get sober. He had done what he needed and then went back out and drank again, and then ran back to Dr. Jung. Jung told him he could not help him. That no one could. Except he told him that he could attempt to have a spiritual experience. And the young man did and he got sober. It changed him. And that’s what the Second Step meant to me.
Anyway my old sponsor was the one who directed me to study this Step and begin to practice this way of life. And so the First and Second Step had begun this way of life for me. I never want to ever forget that. I began to learn to stay sober one day at a time. I followed these directions and everything else, all the Steps and practicing something I really lacked. Spirituality. It has worked and I am very grateful for all of this.