When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 86)
In recovery circles, people often throw around the idea of living “one day at a time”. This passage is one of the descriptions of what you do one day at a time and hopefully at some point what you do all of the time. The passage is specifically describing Step 11 and is tied to Step 10, but is way more important than just that. Recovery is not about being able to check twelve boxes that indicate you have completed twelve magic steps and then living happily ever after. Recovery is a process of gaining much more than that:
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 58)
Recovery is not a matter of just doing a bunch of things; recovery is about “grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.” The things you do in recovery have been designed to guide you to that end.
Working the Steps is designed to help each of us understand and to develop a way of living your life and that way of living is centered on being brutally honest.
The passage we started with gives us a key example of some of the things we are to be brutally honest about and by being brutally honest about these things on a daily basis we are working on making this the way we live our lives.
According to that passage on page 86, we are learning to live a life:
free of being resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid
where whenever you have done any of these things or anything that may have hurt another person you apologize to them
where you are open and honest with others about even the deepest and darkest areas of your life and you cease to have those secret destructive areas in your life
where you are kind and loving towards all people
where you not only live positively, but you are always looking for how you can improve
where you no longer focus on how comfortable you are or are not and live a truly unselfish life
where you check on these things in the morning, in the evening and throughout each day to quickly catch when you are messing up in one of these areas and fix the problem immediately.
In other words: RECOVERY IS THE PROCESS OF CHANGE. THE AMOUNT OF RECOVERY YOU EXPERIENCE IS EQUAL TO THE AMOUNT OF POSITIVE CHANGING YOU DO. Areas in your life that you are not willing to change are areas in your life that are keeping you from recovery. UNWILLINGNESS TO CHANGE IS UNWILLINGNESS TO RECOVER. UNWILLINGNESS TO CHANGE IS A DETERMINATION TO STAY THE SAME. If you are determined to stay the same you can only expect the same results. If you stay the same, you will do the same and relapse is inevitable.
Change is an incredibly hard thing to do and few people have the desire to completely change the totality of how they think and act. Most people are willing to change a few particularly bad areas of their lives. Most people just want to change a few isolated areas and somehow live happily ever after somehow getting vastly different results while still living basically the same way they have been.
A key ingredient required for all of this is the “rigorous honesty” that is required for all of these things.
Not only do you need to be brutally honest with yourself about the all of these areas, but you need to regularly talk with others who are brutally honest with you. I don’t mean periodically either. That passage describes discussing these things with these people at once in an effort to gain their outside “rigorous honesty”.
A person who is incapable of this kind of rigorous honesty an particularly those incapable of being brutally honest with themselves are one of those unfortunates that will not experience recovery.
YOU CAN HAVE RECOVERY IF YOU CAN SEARCH FOR, FIND AND ACCEPT THE FACTS THEN DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO CHANGE ACCORDINGLY.
This describes one of the main struggles of recovery while at the same time describing the facts that are the hope for recovery. Recovery is change and change is hard yet can be achieved.
Think of how all of this is tied to “The Promises” you hear recited at many Twelve Step meetings:
We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 84)
The question is not: “Are these things possible?” The question is, are you willing to work for them. That means are you willing to be brutally honest and are you willing to be completely changed in the process?
Make this year, make each day, make each minute, make each interaction, make even each thought an experience of brutal honesty and an opportunity for significant change in your life. Live the new lifestyle “one day at a time” and one rigorously honest change at a time and have a rigorously honest, happy New Year.
A cornerman giving instructions. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Thoroughly Followed or Thoroughly Ignored
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 58)
This is a fairly well known passage from the Alcoholics Anonymous book and it contains some key concepts that are often missed by those claiming to be working or to have worked recovery. The really odd thing here is that the key parts are put out there so clearly that it would seem that you would have to work pretty hard to miss those key points.
The first sentence says it just about as clearly as it could be. It basically says; if you want the recovery program to work you have to do the actual recovery program. “It works if you work it!” and it wont work if you don’t work it!!!
You have to “thoroughly follow” the same “Steps” that the people who are writing here took. You have to do the same if you want to expect the same. If you do something different, then you can expect something different.
I have recently encountered and have heard a few discussions about people who did a bit of this and a bit of that from the Twelve Steps and then believe; “all will be fine.”
I would have to say that that if I went to a recovery program (in this case a Twelve Step Program) and put my future in the hope that what those people offer is my hope then I would have to do whatever they wanted me to do.
Many people go into recovery with this hope and somehow don’t do what the people tell them they are supposed to do. Then such a person person decides not to do what they tell him/her to do to as recovery or only some parts of it? If this person is not doing the program they outline, what exactly is this person doing? Is just being around people working recovery doing nothing or just the few things you are comfortable enough to get sobriety really a recovery program?
The supporting evidence these people use for this reasoning are reasons like: “I’ve been sober six months now”, “I feel like I’m better, so I don’t need this stuff”, “I am losing interest so that means I’m done” and on and on.
The truth is that these people are not working recovery and not doing recovery, they are avoiding the work of recovery.
The minute you start cutting corners happens to be the minute you cease to be working recovery. Either you completely give yourself to the simple program or you do not. There is no kinda doing it.
All of this cutting corners and justifying it to yourself is really foolish when you look at the facts. The fact that you decided this program would work and went there and did something else is foolish enough without lying to yourself and others to keep it that way.
Lying to yourself is not being honest with yourself. According to this passage those who cannot be honest with themselves are doomed to epic failure.
If your recovery program finds its foundation in lies you tell yourself and to others, how can you possibly hope to grasp and develop “a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.” If you are not doing the things that you felt could help you change and then lying about it knowing that one of the key goals is a lifestyle that demands rigorous honesty, you are making the choice to fail.
For any of you who are going into recovery or are already in recovery here are some facts to consider:
If you don’t trust that the people you are working with or the program you are working with can give you recovery; why would you waste your life and time and everybody else’s lives and time.
If you do trust them and what they do and yet do not do everything they tell you to do are you really trusting them? NO!!! You do not really trust them (refer back to the previous statement)
If you do trust them and what they do and yet do not do everything they tell you to do as the path to freedom can you really expect the results that are supposed to come from doing those things? NO!!! Expect some other results (such as relapse perhaps)!!!
If you have done recovery like this and do not see any problems (yet), please go back and do whatever it is that you trusted until you started to trust the lie. Do not allow yourself to be one of those “unfortunates”!
We have begun to learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people. We have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct, and are willing to straighten out the past if we can. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 70)
This a segment from the part of the Alcoholics Anonymous book that describes the things that should have happened if you did your Fourth Step correctly. In other words if these things have not happened, you are absolutely not done with your Step Four and should not be trying to move on to Step Five. The change you were looking for has not happened. Or, should I say, the change the authors felt you needed t get sober have not happened.
Look at this passage describing one of the focuses of Step Five:
They took inventory all right, but hung on to some of the worst items in stock. They only thought they had lost their egoism and fear; they only thought they had humbled themselves. But they had not learned enough of humility, fearlessness and honesty, in the sense we find it necessary, until they told someone else all their life story. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg 73)
The implication of this passage is that one of the reasons that there is a Step Five is to help each person get rid of MORE egoism, get rid of MORE fear, and get more humble. This means that a big part of Step Four is to get humility, fearlessness and more honesty according to passage. Step Five merely takes you deeper.
Consider this passage from a page before we start actually reading about doing the Fourth Step:
Whatever our protestations, are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, or our self-pity?
Selfishness and Self-centeredness! The archenemy of every alcoholic and addict is self focus. This is supposed to be addressed in Step Four directly. If you do not deal with the selfishness and self-centeredness then you stay the same. If you stay the same then you are the same and can expect the same results at some point. In other words: If your recovery does not change you deeply, then you have gone through recovery and come out the same. If you are the same you can expect to do the same at some point no matter how long you manage to put it off.
Indeed, the attainment of greater humility is the foundation principle of each of A.A.’s Twelve Steps. For without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all. Nearly all A.A.’s have found too, that unless they develop much more of this precious quality than may be required just for sobriety, they still haven’t much chance of becoming truly happy. (12 Steps and Twelve Traditions pg. 70)
The focus of Step Four and Step Five (and in reality of all of the Steps) is the attainment of humility. I know I have crossed this bridge a few times, but because it is such a key focus of all we do this topic has to be more of a bridge we cross over daily in our commute to our one day at a time recovery instead a bridge we pass over and never look back at again.
The obvious question that comes up when having this humility conversation is: “What about the people who are not humble who have sobriety time?” I say to that question: “Bring three of those people to your mind.” (I personally know a bunch) How do you like to be around those people for a long time? Honestly speaking, those people make me want to gag myself with a jackhammer.
Some are so miserable and angry about everything they encounter that I kinda have to resist the natural urge to avoid conversation with them. The kind of person who gets up to share and describes how jacked up life is and the world and on and on yet throwing in the but I’ve been sober “X” amount of years (and people clap and cheer etc.). Not to say that their recovery time is a bad thing. I’m also not talking about the fact that all of us have those days and periods of time. I’m describing the person who meeting after meeting, day after day, conversation after conversation and year after year has the same attitude and those same conversations.
I remember thinking to myself, when hearing guys like that over and over again; “If that is all there is to recovery, then I would rather keep using. If sober is that miserable and being miserable is my motivation for wanting to be sober I’m stuck choosing between sober and miserable and drunk/high and miserable.
This passage says that sober and miserable is not the goal at all and that gaining humility is the answer.
Another form of this being not “truly happy” because of not getting enough humility is seen in these people who cannot fell comfortable or good unless they are taking control of everything. They always know more or have to get a word in or have to declare constantly how great they are etc. Is not all of that truly the diametric opposition to humility. The most opposite you could possibly get to it.
If a person were this “truly happy” why would said person be so unhappy (or the disguise they use for this “uncomfortable”) when not in control? Translation: What kind of “truly happy” person needs to derive any kind of positive feeling from the manipulation of others.
I spoke on this previously so I will not go over this passage in detail but if you want to truly get a look at this kind of person look at pgs. 60, 61 and 62 in the Alcoholics Anonymous book. The passages that use the example of the actor who wants to run the show and thinks if everyone would just act the way he/she wants them to all would be fine.
This person is not “truly happy.” This person is sick (still sick) and manipulative.
I am not saying: “Ooooh, you evil person!” I’m saying there is a key obstacle that still has not been overcome that desperately needs to be (for your own good and the good of those around you).
Now back to what all of this has to do with the Fourth Step. What does killing your selfishness, self-centeredness and gaining more humility look like in Step Four?
Referring to our list again. Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened? Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. Where were we to blame? The inventory was ours, not the other man’s. When we saw our faults we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly and were willing to set these matters straight. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 67)
The book asks you (as a resentment list) to write down everyone you have ever been angry at in your life.
In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. We listed people, institutions or principles with whom we were angry. We asked ourselves why we were angry (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 64)
Without going too far down this rabbit trail, you list angers because people generally do not know all of their resentments off of the top of their heads. Most people have five or so they can think of and that’s it. But, if you list every time you have been angry (even if the other person never knew) then you are likely to realize that many of those (if not most) are some level of resentment, some of which you try to hide from yourself.
So if done like this, you end up with a massive, itemized list of every person who has ever ticked you off throughout your whole life. Have you begun to “learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even your enemies” or have you just unearthed a whole lot of uneasy feelings, many of which you had neatly packed away to not think about. When do you start looking at them as “sick people” you have hurt by your conduct and become willing to straighten out the past?
This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended we said to ourselves, “This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.” (Alcoholics Anonymous pgs. 66– 67)
First we look at them as people who are spiritually sick. Sick in ways that are much deeper than just being the messed up person who chose to tick me off. Two pages before, the authors use this same “spiritually sick” concept to describe the problem that has made us alcoholic/addicts and that made us hurt other people.
The question here is, “Could it be that these people are suffering from a similar inner sickness that you suffer from.” Is it possible that their real problem is that they need help that they may not even know they need like you and the rest of us recovery folks?
Then you are asking for tolerance, pity, and patience. The kind you show a sick person who accidently does something that you do not like because it is some symptom of their sickness. Like a friend who has a week to live who vomits on your clothes. What kind of person gets mad at that person and beats the terminally ill person up or cusses them out?
Next you are looking to be helpful to that person. Instead of being a part of the problem, you are looking to be a part of the solution. In other words; you are a sick person and this is a sick person. You are trying to get better and have some ideas now about what it takes to get better. You have encountered a person who is trapped in a similar sickness and you know how to point that person in the direction of getting better. You can choose to overcome the urge to retaliate and look for ways to truly be helpful (even if it’s just dropping a tidbit of information that person may not even consider for many years) or you can just jump on the crazy train with that person and fan the flames of craziness in that person’s world while restarting whatever fires have been put out in you.
The fire starters and the people who fan the flames of others are continuing down the path of selfishness and self-centeredness and away from the key focus of Twelve Step recovery: “The attainment of greater humility”.
Key to all of this is to seek freedom from the anger that normally rises. They did not say resentment, the authors stressed “anger”. Anger is really the feeling that there is this right to be angry which is really the spiteful desire to punish another person between your own ears in your head. You may spew some of your own crazy on that person or others (or you may not) but in reality in trying to beat them up inside your head, you are in truth only beating a hole in the rock that is on top of your neck.
That person did something to you: “How dare they hurt someone as important as you?” Forget the “sick” person part and the “how can I be helpful” to this person part. This person had the nerve to hurt ME!
Another fine definition of “selfishness and self-centeredness” which is the root of our troubles.
After listing every person who has ever angered you in your life, you need to go over this with each and every person on the list. You need to take this view of every person on the list and find an answer to the question: “How can I be helpful to him” or her?
Then comes the deep part: There is a test to see which ones you have been successful at making these changes on and the ones you haven’t so you can go back and work on those ones some more.
Referring to our list again. Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened? Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. Where were we to blame? The inventory was ours, not the other man’s. When we saw our faults we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly and were willing to set these matters straight. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 67)
Now, you take this list of every person who has ever ticked you off ever and ignore that very fact completely. All you have right now is a list of what is wrong with everyone else in the world and you may or may not have included yourself a few times on this list. What did you do before or during whatever thing is listed to the listed person(s) that was in some way just not right? If nothing what did you do to this person that was not right after this thing occurred (instead of looking for “How can I be helpful to” this other sick person)?
Is it not true that if you were not helpful to this person you were probably hurtful?
The situation or the person may have required a calm discussion. It may have needed a firm but caring confrontation. It may have required the police be called and an abusive person arrested for their own potential growth and you to leave so that that person has opportunity to see that being abusive is not okay (even though he or she may never see it you focused on trying to be helpful instead of retaliation etc.) . It may mean telling parents, principles and proper authorities about being abused as a child to get that person proper help and to save other children from such abuse. (An abused child will not have done anything to the person as a child but often as adults abuse themselves with resentments. Those who were abused as children often also never even begin to think about how to be helpful to that person. This is a deep part of the resentment and the self-protection manifesting. That may mean demanding that person get help or you will expose them etc. An abused child is never to be blamed but as an adult we have to take on responsibility to be free and to be helpful).
This is a deep and often painful look at what is wrong with you and not everyone else. The “How can I be helpful to him” or her part is not just some cool psychobabble that the Twelve Step people invented. It is the end zone for this part of Step Four. It is the “attainment of greater humility” overcoming “Selfishness and self-centeredness” part. If you don’t get this change, you are the same except now you have an itemized list of everything and everyone that ever worked your nerves.
Or you might even be worse; you may be one of these people who has like three or four people listed and ramble on and on about not having resentments only to either relapse or to white-knuckle struggle your way through some abstinence while selfishness and self-centeredness keeps you never able to enjoy the world for what it is.
If we have been thorough about our personal inventory, we have written down a lot. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg 70)
This is a lot of work and a tremendous amount of stress. Well one would expect there to be a tremendous amount of work and a tremendous amount of stress in the process of getting a tremendous amount of freedom.
A person chained up in a cage can get free from the chains and become free to roam within the cage and some can even get to roam around the whole prison which are levels of freedom but are not truly free. We want true freedom and it is possible.
Next we launched out on a course of vigorous action, the first step of which is a personal housecleaning, which many of us had never attempted. Though our decision was a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face, and to be rid of, the things in ourselves which had been blocking us. Our liquor was but a symptom. So we had to get down to causes and conditions.
We went back through our lives. Nothing counted but thoroughness and honesty. When we were finished we considered it carefully. The first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong. To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got. The usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore. Sometimes it was remorse and then we were sore at ourselves. But the more we fought and tried to have our own way, the worse matters got. (Alcoholics Anonymous pgs. 65– 66)
How to Survive The Holidays Pt 5 – Insanely Trivial Excuses
But there was always the curious mental phenomenon that parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check. The insane idea won out. Next day we would ask ourselves, in all earnestness and sincerity, how it could have happened.
In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like. But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 37)
Let’s talk about the “insanely trivial excuse” described above. But before we go into that let me answer the big question: Why? Those of us who are around others in recovery regularly, often hear a whole lot of these “insanely trivial excuses” in early January from a bunch of people who relapsed or those who relapse and are trying to explain to the rest of us some “insanely trivial excuse” for why the relapse at New Years does not count as an actual relapse.
Here is the truth about this “insanely trivial excuse”. It is the excuse we arrive at to use at all, Not the excuse to get intoxicated, high, mess up our life, etc. It is the excuse we arrive at to tell ourselves and others that any amount (even the tiniest, teensy-weensy, itsy-bitsiest, little bit) is going to be safe for me. That means ignoring the truth that we have all heard repeatedly: You can never use intoxicating substances safely again.
These observations would be academic and pointless if our friend never took the first drink, thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion. Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than in his body. If you ask him why he started on that last bender, the chances are he will offer you any one of a hundred alibis. Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really makes sense in the light of the havoc an alcoholic’s drinking bout creates. They sound like the philosophy of the man who, having a headache, beats himself on the head with a hammer so that he can’t feel the ache. If you draw this fallacious reasoning to the attention of an alcoholic, he will laugh it off, or become irritated and refuse to talk. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 23)
If you are an addict or an alcoholic then the fact is that intoxicating substances make you self-destructively stupid. With the use of even the tiniest, teensy-weensy, itsy-bitsiest, little bit comes the risk of absolute destruction of yourself, of everyone and everything you care about, of those that care about you, and the real possibility of seriously hurting or killing yourself or others. In other words there is no excuse even close to big enough to carry more weight than the potential pain, agony, and destruction that will result from a relapse. In light of this fact, any excuse is not only “insanely trivial” but is also insanely stupid. Using anything in any amount is a relapse period. A sip of a beer, a sip of champagne, a quick hit of a joint, just a little, whatever; it is still a relapse and the penalty is way, way too great. That is why any excuse; no matter how convincing it may sound is just like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer to make your headache go away.
My goal here is not to make anyone feel bad or guilty etc., the goal is to make clear the idea that there is no reason that you can come up with that is a good reason for you to use. If you come up with a reason it is simply a way of lying to yourself that you have found that will work to trick you into destroying yourself.
During the holidays it is not uncommon to find other people trying to make these excuses for you. They are trying to convince you that champagne does not count or that marijuana is not a drug, or that blah-blah-blah is not your “drug of choice” so it does not count.
Let’s just put it plainly: Your problem is getting high and your uncontrollable desire to get high. Yes most of us who are addicts and alcoholics have a high we most definitely prefer, but we use because we like being high. If I use something that can make me high if I continue to use it, I am probably going to have a strong urge to keep using it or to go and use whatever it is that I prefer to use to get high. Whatever the reason and no matter who is giving it to me THERE IS SIMPLY WAY TO MUCH RISK AND FAR, FAR TOO LITTLE TO GAIN!
A person or group of people that chose to try to force you to do something that you do not want to do and that has the potential to absolutely destroy you is probably someone you might consider not spending time with.
If you had an unexplainable urge to hurt yourself such as an uncontrollable urge to stab yourself in the head with a knife, we would keep you away from knives. Any excuse you came up with for having a knife would be considered unreasonable and we would find a way around it (such as cutting your food for you etc.). It is also probable that we would not give you other sharp objects either even though your obsession seems to be with knives. Scissors, pencils, ice picks, etc. would have to also be out of the question.
Now let’s say that you get to a relatively stable state and can be in public but still have to just avoid sharp objects in case you might trigger something that makes you suddenly do the same thing again. You go to a gathering of your friends and they entertain themselves by trying to make you play with sharp objects. They keep telling you, “It will be okay,” “Maybe if you just touch a few sharp objects with us here to protect you, you will get over it completely,” “Your problem is with knives, not these. You’ll be fine,” “Nobody ever kills themselves with pencils,” and similar statements.
Are these people really safe for you at that point? Can these people really say they have your best interests in mind or honestly say that they care about you? Aren’t these people simply entertaining themselves by risking your life?
All over the world on New Year’s Eve, there will be similar conversations. “It will be okay, because_____” “Maybe if you just use a little with us here to protect you,” “Your problem is with _______, not _____. You’ll be fine,” “Nobody ever kills themselves with _______. It will be fine” The same questions apply:
·Are these people really safe for you at that point?
·Can these people really say they have your best interests in mind or honestly say that they care about you?
· Aren’t these people simply entertaining themselves by risking your life?
All of this falls under these “insanely trivial excuses” we have been talking about.
In the “To Wives” chapter of the Alcoholics Anonymous book (written to non-alcoholic wives of severely alcoholic men specifically but actually true information for anyone dealing with any addict/alcoholic: as well as being true and deep information for those of us who are the addicts/alcoholics) there is some basic information that can help in dealing with others and in weeding out the people who are not safe for you:
We find that most of this embarrassment is unnecessary. While you need not discuss your husband at length, you can quietly let your friends know the nature of his illness. But you must be on guard not to embarrass or harm your husband.
When you have carefully explained to such people that he is a sick person, you will have created a new atmosphere. Barriers which have sprung up between you and your friends will disappear with the growth of sympathetic understanding. You will no longer be self-conscious or feel that you must apologize as though your husband were a weak character. He may be anything but that. Your new courage, good nature and lack of self-consciousness will do wonders for you socially. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 115)
Like I said it was written “To Wives” but is a truth on several different levels. Be open about your problems to the people you will be around. If you are an addict let them know you are an addict working through sobriety. If you are an alcoholic do the same. Be humbly open.
Will you be uncomfortable; absolutely. Will some people treat you differently; yes absolutely. But, that is way better than destruction, horror and remorse of a relapse.
Any person who you share this with who cannot handle the information, or who in spite of this information feels the need try and gets you to use or uses this information to somehow hurt/annoy you: THAT PERSON IS NOT SAFE FOR YOU TO BE AROUND ESPECIALLY DURING HOLIDAY GATHERINGS!
Openness and honesty can add to your defenses. Part of those explanations you give to these people should include the fact that you cannot safely use any intoxicating substances whatsoever and your sincerely asking them to help you not do so. This is an added level of defense against your “insanely trivial excuses”, but all of this assumes that you are far enough along in your recovery to attend such gatherings.
This may take consultation with sponsors, mentors, counselors etc. as you might not be the best person to make this judgment call, but some of us are simply not ready for these sorts of events. If that is true, then it is a fact. If you have an idea that you are not or may not be ready and you start looking for reasons to convince yourself that you are ready, you have again begun the search for “insanely trivial excuses”. If you are not ready, spend the time working on becoming ready for future gatherings. Find a recovery meeting or event. Have a recovery gathering of your own with others in the same boat. Work on steps with your sponsor while everyone else is getting drunk and arrested.
The bottom line is take whatever drastic measures are necessary to remain sober through the holidays even if it means missing them all together. Remember, whatever reason you (or anyone else) can come up with to use ANYTHING is an “insanely trivial excuse” and is “insanely STUPID.”
Remember also that the “insanely trivial excuse” as stated in the passage at the beginning, is an “insanely trivial excuse” to take the first drink, hit, puff etc. It is the first little that is the relapse because in truth there is no tiniest, teensy-weensy, itsy-bitsiest, little bit. IT IS EITHER YOU DO ABSOLUTELY NONE OR IT IS A RELAPSE.
This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 30)
To begin with, when a person is starting recovery, the minimizing and denial must stop! One of the struggles that many have in early recovery is this idea that I have problems and I am going a little overboard, but I am “not that bad” (not a serious alcoholic or a serious addict). In other words I am fairly normal, but I am just overdoing it a bit.
In one story located in the Alcoholics Anonymous book there are two examples of what this looks like…
We told him what we knew about alcoholism. He was interested and conceded that he had some of the symptoms, but he was a long way from admitting that he could do nothing about it himself. He was positive that this humiliating experience, plus the knowledge he had acquired, would keep him sober the rest of his life. Self-knowledge would fix it. (Alcoholics Anonymous pgs 39-40)
We first saw Fred about a year ago in a hospital where he had gone to recover from a bad case of jitters. It was his first experience of this kind, and he was much ashamed of it. Far from admitting he was an alcoholic, he told himself he came to the hospital to rest his nerves. The doctor intimated strongly that he might be worse than he realized. For a few days he was depressed about his condition. He made up his mind to quit drinking altogether. It never occurred to him that perhaps he could not do so, in spite of his character and standing. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg 39)
These are both excerpts from the same story, but both descriptions come from the observations of the members who were trying to work with him. Listen to how Fred himself describes this (after his big relapse):
“I was much impressed with what you fellows said about alcoholism, and I frankly did not believe it would be possible for me to drink again. I rather appreciated your ideas about the subtle insanity which precedes the first drink, but I was confident it could not happen to me after what I had learned. I reasoned I was not so far advanced as most of you fellows, that I had been usually successful in licking my other personal problems, and that I would therefore be successful where you men failed. I felt I had every right to be self-confident, that it would be only a matter of exercising my will power and keeping on guard. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg 40)
This mindset says; “All that recovery stuff you are telling me is interesting, but I am not so bad that I need to do all that.” That is often a lie and it tells a person that he or she can just pay attention to what he or she is comfortable hearing. “If it’s something I find uncomfortable or I don’t like it, I can just ignore it because all of that is for people who are worse off than me” (like the person or people talking to me).
On page 568 of the Alcoholics Anonymous book states that:
Willingness, honest and open-mindedness are the essentials of recovery. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg 568)
Let’s look at this kind of thinking and all how it resists these three essential mindsets:
WILLINGNESS = If a person is suddenly faced with the reality that he or she is a serious alcoholic or addict and a person comes who not only offers a solution but is living it comes along it would seem like the reasonable choice to make is to try to do whatever that person does. That would also imply that if there are parts that you do differently than that person, then you will clearly get different results. The more you choose NOT to do, the more different your results.Are you willing to do exactly what that person did to try to get exactly the same results?
HONESTY= In the case of Fred, in the story discussed above, he was in the hospital being confronted by doctors and others with similar problems who were diagnosing him as pretty advanced in his alcoholism. Even though he knew he had lost control to some degree and it had clearly led to some problems, he somehow convinces himself that he is more of an expert than the doctors, addicts, alcoholics and anyone else that might have tried to tell him differently. At what point does a person move from misled to flat out lying to himself or herself?Recovery requires being brutally honest with yourself and working to fix whatever problems are observed.
Open-Mindedness= Even if it is hard to swallow, when both experts and people who have had the same experiences agree that your problem might be worse than you think it is, you should probably assume you might be wrong and they might be right. If a person who is not really an addict were to do all of the things an advanced user has to do to achieve sobriety, that person will still get many benefits (or at the least does no real harm). On the other hand, if a person who is an advanced level alcoholic or addict doesn’t do the things it takes to get sober the problem worsens.Lying to yourself is part of alcoholism and addiction and an open mind is a must if you are to get past it.
A person who is still driven by the lie that he or she is not as bad as the facts show clearly, or who knows it is a problem but justifies it by picking someone and saying, “At least I’m not as bad as that,” is failing to work the first step. No matter what that person says, writes, does etc. as long as that mindset persists, the lie will win and at some point tell that person it is okay to use again.
THE LIE MUST DIE OR THE RECOVERY IS JUST PART OF THE LIE!
The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed. (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 30)
Wade H. Recovery Net 