On the A.A. calendar it was Year Two. . . . A newcomer appeared at one of these groups. . . . He soon proved that his was a desperate case, and that above all he wanted to get well. . . . [He said], “Since I am the victim of another addiction even worse stigmatized than alcoholism, you may not want me among you.”
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, pp. 141-42
I came to you—a wife, mother, woman who had walked out on her husband, children, family. I was a drunk, a pill-head, a nothing. Yet no one denied me love, caring, a sense of belonging. Today, by God’s grace and the love of a good sponsor and a home group, I can say that—through you in Alcoholics Anonymous—I am a wife, a mother, a grandmother and a woman. Sober. Free of pills. Responsible.
Without a Higher Power I found in the Fellowship, my life would be meaningless. I am full of gratitude to be a member of good standing in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 42
Step Four is the vigorous and painstaking effort to discover what the liabilities in each of us have been, and are. I want to find exactly how, when, and where my natural desires have warped me. I wish to look squarely at the unhappiness this has caused others and myself. By discovering what my emotional deformities are, I can move toward their correction. Without a willing and persistent effort to do this, there can be little sobriety or contentment for me.
To resolve ambivalent feelings, I need to feel a strong and helpful sense of myself. Such an awareness doesn’t happen overnight, and no one’s selfawareness is permanent. Everyone has the capacity for growth, and for self-awareness, through an honest encounter with reality. When I don’t avoid issues but meet them directly, always trying to re-solve them, they become fewer and fewer.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 42
Step Four is the vigorous and painstaking effort to discover what the liabilities in each of us have been, and are. I want to find exactly how, when, and where my natural desires have warped me. I wish to look squarely at the unhappiness this has caused others and myself. By discovering what my emotional deformities are, I can move toward their correction. Without a willing and persistent effort to do this, there can be little sobriety or contentment for me.
To resolve ambivalent feelings, I need to feel a strong and helpful sense of myself. Such an awareness doesn’t happen overnight, and no one’s selfawareness is permanent. Everyone has the capacity for growth, and for self-awareness, through an honest encounter with reality. When I don’t avoid issues but meet them directly, always trying to re-solve them, they become fewer and fewer.
Step 4 was something I looked forward to honestly. I knew that I needed to see things differently to make a change. I knew that I was the problem and I didn’t know how to fix it. I honestly had NO idea how much this step would reveal to me. It’s simplified in such a way I could begin to see my patterns and my own BS. How I impact others and my own life. And what makes me tick. It took working with my sponsor to see more in step 5, but man, it was also quite freeing. I still have to do this work as things arise but I’m so grateful for this program for giving me an avenue to do this.
We finally saw that the inventory should be ours, not the other man’s. So we admitted our wrongs honestly and became willing to set these matters straight.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 222
Why is it that the alcoholic is so unwilling to accept responsibility? I used to drink because of the things that other people did to me. Once I came to A.A. I was told to look at where I had been wrong. What did I have to do with all these different matters? When I simply accepted that I had a part in them, I was able to put it on paper and see it for what it was-humanness. I am not expected to be perfect! I have made errors before and I will make them again. To be honest about them allows me to accept them-and myself-and those with whom I had the differences; from there, recovery is just a short distance ahead.
This was key in my recovery and this is what changed everything. It was hard to look at things differently…it turns out everything wasn’t just everyone else’s fault-I hadn’t looked at or taken ANY responsibility for my own actions or life. I truly thought I was such a good person and was a victim of circumstance. Nope. I was a martyr, I was a people pleaser and I allowed a whole lot of shit in my life. I did nothing to stop being used. I actually encouraged it instead. I willingly participated in harmful relationships and patterns, mostly to be accepted or to find love in all the wrong places.
Seeing the truth was hard-it hit me like a ton of bricks. But…this is what helped me to change everything. I did not anticipate that coming from the steps but truly seeing my side of the street for what it was allowed me to own it and change my actions for completely different results. And this is where EVERYTHING changed, from the inside out. I’m grateful for these steps and those who have taken them before me to show me how to change my life.
“This very real feeling of inferiority is magnified by his childish sensitivity and it is this state of affairs which generates in him that insatiable, abnormal craving for self-approval and success in the eyes of the world. Still a child, he cries for the moon. And the moon, it seems, won’t have him!”
THE LANGUAGE OF THE HEART, p. 102
While drinking I seemed to vacillate between feeling totally invisible and believing I was the center of the universe. Searching for that elusive balance between the two has become a major part of my recovery. The moon I constantly cried for is, in sobriety, rarely full; it shows me instead its many other phases, and there are lessons in them all. True learning has often followed an eclipse, a time of darkness, but with each cycle of my recovery, the light grows stronger and my vision is clearer.
We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society. Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it. This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any one of those about us. Of true brotherhood we had small comprehension.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 53
This message contained in Step Four was the first one I heard loud and clear; I hadn’t seen myself in print before! Prior to my coming into A.A., I knew of no place that could teach me how to become a person among persons. From my very first meeting, I saw people doing just that and I wanted what they had. One of the reasons that I’m a happy, sober alcoholic today is that I’m learning this most important lesson.
We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn’t control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn’t make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn’t seem to be of real help to other people. . . .
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 52
These words remind me that I have more problems than alcohol, that alcohol is only a symptom of a more pervasive disease. When I stopped drinking I began a lifetime process of recovery from unruly emotions, painful relationships, and unmanageable situations. This process is too much for most of us without help from a Higher Power and our friends in the Fellowship. When I began working the Steps of the A.A. program, many of these tangled threads unraveled but, little by little, the most broken places of my life straightened out. One day at a time, almost imperceptibly, I healed. Like a thermostat being turned down, my fears diminished. I began to experience moments of contentment. My emotions became less volatile. I am now once again a part of the human family.
And, speaking for Dr. Bob and myself, I gratefully declare that had it not been for our wives, Anne and Lois, neither of us could have lived to see A.A.'s beginning.
THE A.A. WAY OF LIFE, p. 67
Am I capable of such generous tribute and gratitude to my wife, parents and friends, without whose support I might never have survived to reach A.A.'s doors? I will work on this and try to see the plan my Higher Power is showing me which links our lives together.
I keep thinking about this today and I actually added “having support” to my gratitude list. Having support is really pretty rad. I’ve never really had that before, I was always the caretaker.
I spent most of the weekend working on my spiritual business, and while I may not have been able to receive help with what I was doing, I was fed meals instead. I took breaks at that time to connect to my support. To eat. To clean up. To be thankful and appreciate them out loud for the meal. But it’s so much bigger than that. Their support behind the scenes helps me do what my hp asks of me. And it’s honestly one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever had. My heart is full!
We want to find exactly how, when, and where our natural desires have warped us. We wish to look squarely at the unhappiness this has caused others and ourselves. By discovering what our emotional deformities are, we can move toward their correction.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 43
Today I am no longer a slave to alcohol, yet in so many ways enslavement still threatens—my self, my desires, even my dreams. Yet without dreams I cannot exist; without dreams there is nothing to keep me moving forward.
I must look inside myself, to free myself. I must call upon God’s power to face the person I’ve feared the most, the true me, the person God created me to be. Unless I can or until I do, I will always be running, and never be truly free. I ask God daily to show me such a freedom!
Doing steps 4 & 5 allowed me to have my first real look at myself. To see what makes me tick. Just quitting drinking did not do that for me. That look inside changed EVERYTHING. Working with someone else who understood and has had that same mental twist I had helped me to see my side of the street. How my actions were impacting my life. I was reminded it was a fact finding mission, it was not to beat myself up. I had to know more to change. And I had to take my hp with me. There’s a reason the steps are in the order they are and man am I ever grateful for this work.
. . . let us not suppose even for an instant that we are not under constraint. . . . Our former tyrant, King Alcohol, always stands ready again to clutch us to him. Therefore, freedom from alcohol is the great “must” that has to be achieved, else we go mad or die.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 134
When drinking, I lived in spiritual, emotional, and sometimes, physical confinement. I had constructed my prison with bars of self-will and self-indulgence, from which I could not escape. Occasional dry spells that seemed to promise freedom would turn out to be little more than hopes of a reprieve. True escape required a willingness to follow whatever right actions were needed to turn the lock. With that willingness and action, both the lock and the bars themselves opened for me. Continued willingness and action keep me free—in a kind of extended daily probation—that need never end.
It works if I work it. I have to continue to practice these principals in all of my affairs of I am going to stay sober. Picking up a drink starts long before I actually take that first sip. It starts with my recovery, my actions, how I’m handling life. If I’m feeding my resentments, for example, I’m getting closer to a drink-not further away from it. If I stop going to meetings, don’t connect with my program or others in it, stop connecting with my sponsor, etc it can really have that same effect. My alcholism is waiting in the wings anytime I stop working it, but it also wants to kill me. So instead I stay. I will continue to do this work. And because of that, I live a life far better than I’ve ever had before. And it keeps getting better. So for today, I’ll stay free and out of the prison I lived within in my past. And then I’ll do it again tomorrow.
The essence of all growth is a willingness to change for the better and then an unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entails.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 115
Sometimes when I’ve become willing to do what I should have been doing all along, I want praise and recognition. I don’t realize that the more I’m willing to act differently, the more exciting my life is. The more I am willing to help others, the more rewards I receive. That’s what practicing the principles means to me. Fun and benefits for me are in the willingness to do the actions, not to get immediate results. Being a little kinder, a little slower to anger, a little more loving makes my life better day by day.
To see how erratic emotions victimized us often took a long time. We could perceive them quickly in others, but only slowly in ourselves. First of all, we had to admit that we had many of these defects, even though such disclosures were painful and humiliating. Where other people were concerned, we had to drop the word “blame” from our speech and thought.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 47
When I did my Fourth Step, following the Big Book guidelines, I noticed that my grudge list was filled with my prejudices and my blaming others for my not being able to succeed and to live up to my potential. I also discovered I felt different because I was black. As I continued to work on the Step, I learned that I always had drunk to rid myself of those feelings. It was only when I sobered up and worked on my inventory, that I could no longer blame anyone.
Man, it was hard to see allllll the things I blamed on someone else, really had a TON to do with me. I can still spot things in others at time and like my sponsor says, “You spot it, you’ve got it”. I can use the world as a mirror to look inside now, because what I see in the world has a message for me as well. This helps me to heal in new layer and love a better life
. . . where alcohol has been involved, we have been strangely insane.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 38
Alcoholism required me to drink, whether I wanted to or not. Insanity dominated my life and was the essence of my disease. It robbed me of the freedom of choice over drinking and, therefore, robbed me of all other choices. When I drank, I was unable to make effective choices in any part of my life and life became unmanageable.
I ask God to help me understand and accept the full meaning of the disease of alcoholism.
