Tag: willingness

Are You Ready (Do You Know You Are Drowning?)???

3rd Rescue Method. If the arms be difficult to...
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 Are You Ready (Do You Know You Are Drowning?)??????

If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it-then you are ready to take certain steps.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 58)

If you are trying to get or hoping to get recovery, then you absolutely need to ponder these two thoughts. 

  1. Do you want what we have and if so
  2. Are you willing to do anything, including some things you absolutely do not want to do, to get the lifestyle of freedom we have.

These questions are vital to any hope of recovery.

Over the past few weeks I have encountered an inordinate amount of people that are trying to begin recovery who are court ordered or otherwise brought to recovery by another individual.  When I see people like this I usually wonder what their answer to these two questions is.

I heard one fellow, when asked if he considered himself desperate say that he didn’t know.  My immediate first thoughts were, “If you do not know if you’re desperate or not; you probably are not.”   A desperate person usually knows that he/she is desperate.

I have discussed this previously, but desperation is key to being willing to do all of the uncomfortable, unpleasant and sometimes outright scary things that are asked of you in recovery.  For example:

  • People who are not desperate will not be thorough and honest about their Fourth Steps.  There will always be some things that are left off of it, minimized, softened or only partially described on it. 
  • People who are not desperate will not have the strength or desire to make amends to the people that are hardest to make amends to. 
  • People who are not desperate will not take a brutally honest look at themselves as it is too painful.

Desperation is the motivation to go towards and fight through the most uncomfortable parts of working through recovery.

We, in our turn, sought the same escape with all the desperation of drowning men.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 28)

That is desperation:  The desperation a drowning person for oxygen.  In light of this example, the idea of being desperate and not realizing you are desperate is a completely foolish idea.  If a drowning person was somehow completely unaware of how desperate the situation is, that person would have no motivation to seek air. 

  • “I probably need air, but I can probably wait.” 
  • “Yeah I know I need air and could drown, but I’m just not ready yet.” 
  • “I wish I could be desperate for air like other drowning people, but I just can’t see it like them.”
  • “Yeah, I know I need air, but I’m not like those other drowning people”

All of that sounds really silly.  Well that is how the idea of recovery without understanding the concept of how desperate you are sounds.  This understanding of desperation is a big part of working Step One and is necessary to even begin the Twelve Steps.

For those of us who sponsor others or are looking to sponsor others, this is an extremely important concept.  It is how you are to know if somebody is even ready for you to work with them.  Look at this passage explaining how to get sponsees:

Do not be discouraged if your prospect does not respond at once. Search out another alcoholic and try again. You are sure to find someone desperate enough to accept with eagerness what you offer. We find it a waste of time to keep chasing a man who cannot or will not work with you. If you leave such a person alone, he may soon become convinced that he cannot recover by himself. To spend too much time on any one situation is to deny some other alcoholic an opportunity to live and be happy. One of our Fellowship failed entirely with his first half dozen prospects. He often says that if he had continued to work on them, he might have deprived many others, who have since recovered, of their chance.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 96)

The implications of this passage are that if a person is not desperate there is no sense in working with that person.  That person is better off being released to discover how desperate his or her situation is. 

On a deeper level, if you are willing to give of your time, your life and your knowledge to someone why invest all that effort on a person who is not ready.  What about the people who are ready that cannot find someone to help them while you are off wasting time with someone who is not truly ready.  It’s literally letting a desperate person who could be saved die slowly while you are trying to save a person who doesn’t want to be saved.

If you are a sponsor or otherwise work with people in recovery, this must be a major consideration.  If a person does not have this level of desperation for recovery you have to try to get that person to understand how desperate his/her situation is.  If that person cannot reach that level of desperation, you have to be strong enough to let that person go and hopefully get that understanding through life experience.

If you are a friend or loved one who is trying to help a person who needs recovery then trying to make that person work recovery in a way that he/she is not interested in is expecting that person to succeed in recovery without that desperation.  That person has to realize how desperate he/she already is and you can try to explain it to him/her.  If you cannot talk that person into that understanding then you may have to use what many people call “tough love” to help that person understand.  That does not mean punishing that person, but that does mean letting the person suffer from the natural consequences of his/her actions. 

If that person get’s locked up, he/she needs to find bail elsewhere.  If you told that person that, “Next time you are out” then the next time you have to put that person out.  If every time you give that person money for something responsible that money disappears, you are going to have to stop giving him/her money etc. all of that in the hope that he/she will realize that he/she desperately needs recovery at all costs. 

That is what people are describing when they use the term “hitting bottom”.   The understanding that the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of going through recovery. 

If you are the person that is starting recovery or even if you have been working recovery, you need to look at your own desperation and ask yourself are you this kind of “ready” for recovery.  That requires some deep honesty and searching and if you cannot say a definitive “yes”, that means some deep changing of your entire mindset is necessary.

It may seem like we are telling you that complete misery must be a part of someone’s life before recovery is possible and that only the miserable recover.  In some ways that is true, but it is not the misery that is key; it is the desperation which in many cases can only be realized when miserable.  That misery can force a person to realize that he/she wants change and more importantly make that person desperate to get it.  Then that person is ready to take the steps.

 

Stay sober my friends…

Wade H.

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Am I Willing To Let Go

Am I Willing To Let Go

If we can answer to our satisfaction, we then look at Step Six. We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable? Can He now take them all – every one? If we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to help us be willing.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg 76)

If a person has done a thorough Steps Four and Five that person is ready to start working on Step Six.  That means the person has gone through every anger and resentment in his or her life and has not only worked on getting over the emotions of the situation, but has learned to see each incident so differently that he or she is so concerned about the other person that it is terribly hard to have resentment or anger.  That means that he or she has looked through every fear and has realized how each one is a destructive force in his or her life.  That also means that he or she has looked through every sexual encounter and thought learning to see those differently also.

Then in Step Five this is all discussed with another person and with God having the expectation of both a feeling of some level of release but also that the person hearing all of this will dig a little deeper to help the person see his or her own challenges a little clearer.

If this all goes correctly it is not the end of these things, it is just a clarifying of what is really wrong with the person.  “What are the real problems behind my problems?”  This is not just a clarifying of how “jacked-up” a person is.   This is a clarifying of what is really wrong so that so that he or she works on the right things.  In other words going through the past, looking at every struggle in your life to see what you need to do to be free of those struggles.  Then going over all of this with someone else and with God to get a deeper outside perspective of all of this.

I just went through a lot of stuff so lets slow down and take a clearer look at what the desired end result of Steps Four and Five are.  Think of a person going to the hospital and just kinda doing whatever the other patients seem to be doing as treatment and hoping it will fix whatever is wrong with you.  This is where Twelve Step Programs become less and less “cookie-cutter” and become far more individualized.

In a perfect world, by the time you have reached this point, you have a list of your more serious problems that came out of what you have done in Steps Four and Five that is used to work Steps Six and Seven.

We hope you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from Him. If you have already made a decision, and an inventory of your grosser handicaps, you have made a good beginning.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 71)

If do not have a list like this and you are trying to work on Step Six, get together with your sponsor, grab your Forth Step and work together to make one.  You are actually not finished with Step Five until you make one.

We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable?  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg 76)

There are a couple of important points here:

  1. Things “which we have admitted are objectionable” is a very important part of this step.  A HUGE part of transitioning from Step Five to Step Six is having admitted (fully) that the things that are listed on your list of “grosser handicaps” that you came up with in working Step Four and your sponsor helped you add to or come up with in Step Six are deep problems that need to go.  If you do not feel all of these are problems that need to be dealt with, it is okay.  YOU ARE NOT READY TO WORK STEP SIX.  Get together with your sponsor and other mentors and work on HONESTLY getting to that point.
  2. The sentence: “We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable” lets us know what the main point and end goal of Step Six is.  Step Six is about complete willingness.  “No matter what happens” kind of willingness.  “No matter what I am feeling” kind of willingness.
  3. Then comes the details of Step Six:  “Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable?”  So, if you feel the things listed are problems that you need to be free of then its time to look at yourself and do a “complete willingness” check.  Are you completely willing TO LET GOD remove all of those things AT ALL COSTS AND NO MATTER WHAT?

That is a big question.  There is a deeper question here than what many people reading this understand.  “What if you can only learn to be free of these things through discomfort?” 

For example, what if you are so “hard-headed” that you tend to not learn things until there is no other alternative.  In other words what if you are the type of person who will not truly decide changing something until not changing has become so painful that you clearly see that there is no other choice.  In such a case, the only way to get you to change is to cause you enough pain to force you to see the need to change.

In other words you may need great discomfort or outright pain as part of the process of change.  Are you so convinced of the need to change that you are willing to ASK GOD to hurry the process of change for you AT ALL COSTS AND NO MATTER WHAT?  Even if the process is painful, uncomfortable, and nearly unbearable, I want to be changed so desperately that I am ready for this and ready for it to all happen as quickly as possible so I can be changed.

I know that by now, many of those reading this automatically are thinking; “No thanks, I’ll pass.”  That is actually the normal response.  That is exactly why this step is here.

Step Six is not simply a checking to see if you are ready, it is the Step where you grow to a point of being ready.  Then, when you are ready, you go to Step Seven.

Can He now take them all – every one? If we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to help us be willing.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg 76)

This is where you spend time with God, your sponsor, other mentors and yourself getting ready.  Step Six.  Think of it this way:  “Can he take them all, no matter how – every one of my “grosser handicaps” or “character defects?”  If you cannot answer “yes”; GREAT!  You are on the right Step.

Step Six is for when you are WILLING TO BECOME willing to let God remove all of your defects of character by any means necessary.

Step Seven is for those THAT ARE ALREADY willing to let God remove all of your defects of character by any means necessary.

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Starting Step 1 – The Lie Must Die

at a meeting
Image by smussyolay via Flickr

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:

  1. 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?
  2. 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.
  3. 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)