AA talks a lot about surrender, but I’ve never been completely clear on what exactly people take from that. For me, ive always known that alcohol kicks my ass and I’ve done it anyway, does that mean I’ve always sort of surrendered to the knowledge that alcohol isn’t my friend?
Interested to hear what YOU take surrender to mean in regards to your recovery.
For me surrender means forgetting and accepting. Forgetting my fears, my biases, my resentments, forgetting everything that is negative and accepting responsibility for my present reality.
To surrender. It’s a complex and abstract concept.
Fighting addiction:
It’s like trying to swim against the current of a swift river, in an attempt to reach the mouth where all the small streams meet. You can try, with all your might, but the river of addiction will eventually wear you out and you’ll drown.
To surrender:
Stop swimming against the current and let it take you down stream. Where it takes you is unknown and the waters might get choppy, but if you ride it out, you will eventually end up in the calm waters of the sea and the possibilities are endless; from there you can go wherever you please.
Surrender is acceptance. Surrender is courage. Surrender is faith.
I tried absolutely everything to drink like a gentleman then I tried everything not to drink like a gentleman and still be happy about it but my life always became unmanageable. I was desperate and also convinced that I would be able to control my drinking but I could not win that fight no matter what. I’m no spartan, I’m not going into a battle on a daily basis knowing I can’t win so the only option left was concede defeat and either surrender or die.
I still think I can control my drinking but as well as the word surrender I’ve also learnt the definition of insanity.
This is beautiful Stella. 
Every word of it. I wish I could have done this 20 years ago.
I cannot believe how tight I held on to resentments.
And the thing is, as I look back, I kind of think it’s funny ( in a way; not really) that I really thought I could control everything.
Boy it was exhausting
For me Surrender means that I have stopped trying to hold on to what clearly doesn’t work for me, drinking (and all the bad habits that prompted me to drink in the first place).
If I may, I’d like to borrow that explanation and keep it in my tool box…it’s a good reminder that drinking also does not work anymore for me…
Thanks for the views everyone, plenty for me to think on.
I guess to me surrender means acceptance
Yep, I had to surrender to the facts that yes I am an addict and yes I need help.
For me alcoholism is like my shadow. I can try to deny its existence and live in the dark believing that it doesn’t exist but also depriving myself of seeing everything nice and good. Or I can step out to the light but try to fight it, try to outrun it, try to detach it from myself, but it’s just fighting windmills, simply impossible. Or I can accept it (surrender) and have an eternal buddy as a reminder that not everything happens exactly in a way I imagined and it’s all right.
As soon as I decided to go to rehab, I surrendered to the fact that I am an alcoholic. Knowing and admitting it and not feeling bad at all about it. When someone comes up to me and asks if I want a drink I say no and just leave it at that. If they ask why, I look them in the eye and tell them that I am a raging alcoholic and that I’ve been sober for a long time. That usually nips it in the ass. If they’re even MORE curious, I answer all the question’s they ask.
That to me is surrendering. Admitting to yourself that you are an addict and are taking active steps to go Sober because you’ve Surrendered to that crystal clear Fact.
I guess for me “surrender” is the aspect of thinking:
I AM an alcoholic,
This stuff IS addictive,
If I continue to drink my life WILL be impacted negatively,
Moderation is NOT an option.
So many times I went around the Ferris wheel of pseudo-control, or thinking I was giving up something good…
So I give in, I don’t even want to moderate, I don’t even want to see booze as a good thing anymore, or a treat. It isn’t, it’s Satan’s piss, and I’m an addict.
This makes so mich to sense to me after reading.
Thabk you.