Sometimes I take time out to think about how this program works for me. Then I have to wonder why it doesn’t seem to work for others. Just a thought. I know what goes on with others is really none of my business. But thinking about the 12th Step, it does make me think.
I was talking to a friend of mine earlier and we were talking about this. What is it that stops some people and makes them go back out and drink again? I know for myself that I was so desperate to stop drinking I was willing to kill myself rather than go on. My friend said it was just the desperation driven by his life collapsing in on him. The insanity and the unmanageability. We both had reached an end of some sort.
I went back to that 1st Step in the 12&12 and thought about what it said about those who would be willing to do what this program asks of us. To work these 12 Steps into our lives. Who would want to do it, unless they were going to die, if they didn’t? That I think was close to where I was. My friend said it wasn’t so much a thought of dying as it was the insanity.
I guess it’s because I see so many come and go. It makes me happy, when I see some come in and struggle, but finally are able to get on track and begin to recover. Watching it always makes me think, amazing. The change in others. And then I guess I have to stop and think that the others don’t think or feel they’re as bad as some of us were. What’s being asked of them is too radical.
I remember Fred’s story in More About Alcoholism. When he finally realized what his drinking was doing to him, he became willing to listen to what was being offered to him by AA. He said that the proposals being offered to him were not too hard to swallow, but the program of action he thought was pretty drastic. He was going to have to give up some of his ideas that he had hung on to for most of his life. Yet, he said, that once he made up his mind to do it, he felt that his alcoholism had been relieved. I guess he had a spiritual awakening.
That was what my friend said he had, what he said about Dr. Bob, when he had his last drink, and what I thought about just before coming in the doors. I must have had a spiritual awakening. I’ve read more stories in the BB and the Grapevine, and heard speakers say the same thing. They felt they had a spiritual awakening, after they looked back at what happened, when they came here. At some point early on I think that must be what made the difference.
My friend said that, when he first saw the 12 Steps and knew that was what this program was about, he almost balked. I did balk. But the key was already there. The realization that it was alcohol which was destroying my life and I was helpless in the face of it. And this program was the way out. Finding a higher power, who could change all of this and free me from the slavery to alcohol and change my life for the better. And it did.
Anyway, this is what I was thinking today. About the gratitude I have and my willingness to act in gratitude and continue to change. How fortunate I am to be sober. What a gift.