Category Archives: Twelve Steps

May 13, 2016 · 7:00 am

Self-Loathing: it’s a thing

Whatever I write here, it’s going to fail epically because my words can’t capture the feeling of self-loathing. I’ll just end up looking like some pompous dork who thinks she knows shit, so she posts, “Hey, everybody!! I know ALL ABOUT self-loathing! Yeah, um, it’s like, when you hate yourself!” All you guys reading are going to wince in response, saying, “Whoa–” and hurry to click your way outta here. OMG – I’m so embarrassed. Cause here it is, me again, tainting everything with that gross, defective me-ness and fucking it all up. Why? Because there’s just something fundamentally wrong with me! Cause I just plain SUCK!

Okay, that was a simulation. Really I’m okay. 🙂 But if you didn’t recognize that mental path as familiar turf, you should probably skip this post. Chances are, if you’re an alcoholic, you know it well. Self-loathing is that voice that volunteers ruthlessly condemning “insight” when you’re tired or sick or PMSing – or sometimes even when things are fine.

Self-loathing is particularly pronounced in alcoholics/addicts as the flipside of self-aggrandizement. We develop an oversized ego that attempts to compensate for our weak sense of self-worth. You can envision it as a big, technicolor-shelled snail waving antennae of “I’m so totally awesome!” that, when you flip it over, reveals the oozy slime of “I so totally suck!” Scientifically speaking, relief derives from becoming a humble, right-sized little snail like Spongebob’s. That’s why we need the 12 Steps.

Before I came to AA, I believed the voice of self-loathing was unique to me. As described in my addiction memoir, I first experienced it in preschool, a feeling that other kids could all consult a script I lacked. In my teen years through recovery at 34, I thought of that voice as “brutal honesty” or “facing facts.” When it was on, any sense of my own basic okayness struck me as self-satisfied idiocy. It seemed to declare truths I’d always known deep down.

The only person I’d ever heard speak self-loathing was my alcoholic father. “As soon as I wake up,” he’d confess, “I say to myself, P—,” (our last name) “get your lazy butt out of bed! You’re gonna louse something up today, you no-good schlemiel!” Sadly, Dad never got sober, and gradually his self-loathing developed an immunity to the alcohol that had once curbed it.

By contrast, when my sweet son was only 6, he cried to me one night before bed: “I just feel sorry for anyone who has to be around me, because I’m such a horrible person! I don’t feel sorry for me, I feel sorry for them. I just wish I could be anybody else! I hate me!”

Hugging him didn’t help. Telling him he was wonderful didn’t help. What helped was explaining to him what I’m about to tell you.

Self-loathing is a thing. It’s a voice, an entity unto itself, a part of our mind that tells us the same stuff over and over. My sponsor taught me to call it “the worm.” My son and I named it “the mean voice.”

Having a name for self-loathing, recognizing its voice when it speaks, takes away half of its power. In meetings, when I first heard others describe their self-loathing, I was floored. How could John possibly experience self-loathing? He’s such a wonderful guy! Karen is so funny and smart – how could she possibly think she’s shit?

In my experience, most non-recovered alcoholics (and some Al-Anons) vacillate between thinking they’re the shit, and thinking they’re a piece of shit. Normies must experience this phenomenon too, but A) I doubt their swings are as extreme, and B) people outside the program rarely admit to things that make no sense, even to themselves. We in recovery, however, admit to everything and thus discover we’re not alone, which opens the way to healing.

Getting rid of self-loathing entirely is not, at least in my experience, possible. What we can do through the steps is label its voice and take away its megaphone to render it fairly harmless.

Steps 4 and 5 showed me my fundamental human foibles. Steps 6 and 7 narrowed them to flaws I could, with god’s help, stop practicing – self-pity, self- importance, and harsh judgement of others – all platforms on which self-loathing stands. Steps 8 and 9 allowed me to set straight past wrongs to arrive at a clean, guilt-free slate. Today steps 10, 11, and 12 keep me current, connected, and useful.

How does this weaken our sidekick, self-loathing? Working those steps and many years of living a spiritually-based life have drawn from my core a certainty that god loves me. Despite many human shortcomings, I am fundamentally good – because god guides me toward goodness. Ultimately, that’s the sunlight the vampire of self-loathing can’t endure.

And yet – even after 21 years of sobriety – self-loathing still won’t die. It hurls insults at random intervals. “You’re alone cause you’re boring and no one wants to be with you!” “You’re wrong and shameful!” “You’re full of inherent, bumbling dumbness!”

It helps to make friends with that voice. Like someone suffering coprolalia – the Tourrette’s symptom of uttering profanity – it just can’t keep quiet! It’s trying to beat the world to the punch, blurt out the worst so no one else can surprise us with it. Stripped of its accusations, self-loathing amounts to nothing but another guise of fear.

The quickest strategy I’ve ever heard for dealing with self-loathing is my friend Brenda’s. She named her self-loathing voice Carl. Why Carl? No particular reason. Now, whenever it crops up and tells her she’s a failure, no one likes her, etc., she just rolls her eyes and says simply, “Shut up, Carl.”

It works!

Did John F. Kennedy ever think incredibly dumb things or occasionally fart with a quizzical inflection? Of course he did! But he alone knew it. Because we know ourselves more intimately than does anyone else alive, we must love ourselves – screw-ups and all – with equal fervor and humility.

Take that, self-loathing!

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Tagged as 12 steps, AA, Alcoholism, Self-loathing, sobriety, spirituality, twelve steps

April 29, 2016 · 7:00 am

The Wisdom of the 12 Steps

Context:

Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol… They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks…

— “The Doctor’s Opinion”

Alcoholic Anonymous

A dry alcoholic – one who’s merely ceased drinking – is a miserable one. I certainly was. I needed booze. For over 15 years it served as my medicine, my magic doorway to relaxation and social confidence.

Throughout my first two years sober, intense nervousness and insecurity made me miserable. Tension ran me so ragged that my body eventually decided, “Can’t do this anymore; we’re shutting down” – and I sank into a depression no Zoloft could touch. I had not worked the 12 Steps.

Once I worked them, I discovered lasting relief. The unbearable uptightness of being doesn’t vanish in minutes as with as with alcohol, but by slow degrees as the steps change the way we view ourselves and the world.

A book called The Art of Happiness recently fell into my hands. Quick story: after meeting a young Saudi Arabian friend for a farewell coffee before she returned to her country, I took her to my favorite Tibetan gift shop nearby. It stands about a block from where recently a huge natural gas explosion obliterated three businesses and shattered every storefront window for blocks, so they’re still boarded over. All except those of the tiny Tibetan gift shop. It’s owner, a likewise tiny man, is constantly cheerful.

“And why didn’t your windows shatter?” I asked him with a half-smile.

To what was clearly a frequent question, he shrugged: “Mine shattered in a past life.”

I chatted about having heard the Dalai Lama address a university crowd in a crammed sports arena about ten years ago. “What you could see was that he was really having a great time with it. The school was giving him this honorary degree, so he was supposed to be all solemn, but he kept making these silly asides and cracking himself up. He was just too happy!”

The little shop owner handed one Dalai Lama book to me and another to my Muslim friend. “You want these,” he said simply – and offered us a screamin’ deal. We three corners of the world smiled at one another.

The wisdom of the ages for how to live life is, in my opinion, distilled in the 12 steps of AA. That’s why every suggestion from the Dalai Lama in this book (penned by an American psychiatrist dude who interviewed him ) aligns with their principles – though his words are based on 2,500 year old teachings and ours on a 1939 text by a New York stock broker, an Akron proctologist, and 100 newly sober drunks.

Trust in the innate goodness of all beings – oneself included. Though in the wake of two world wars many Western anthropologists jumped on the “humans are intrinsically selfish, aggressive assholes” bandwagon (African Genesis, The Selfish Gene), Buddhist traditions maintain the opposite. The Dalai Lama points out that “a calm, affectionate, wholesome state of mind has beneficial effects on our health” not just emotionally, but physically, implying it’s how we’re designed to operate. The 12 steps are founded in this same assumption, that beneath our self-centered, erratic behavior lies our truer nature. We look to our higher power to “restore us to sanity” via the spiritual cleansing the remaining steps provide.
We cause much of our own suffering. “In general, if we carefully examine any given situation in a very honest and unbiased way, we will realize that to a large extent we are also responsible for the unfolding of events,” says the Dalai Lama. This is the heart of steps 4 & 5, where, arriving at the fourth column of our inventory, we identify our part in what happened.
Happiness differs from pleasure. “True happiness relates more to the mind and heart. Happiness that depends on physical pleasure is unstable; one day it’s there and the next it’s gone.” This quote correlates to a passage from Step 7 in Twelve Steps and Traditions: “Never was there enough of what we thought we wanted. In all these strivings, so many of them well-intentioned, …[w]e had lacked the perspective to see that character-building and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfactions were not the purpose of living.”
Happiness springs from compassion. The Dalai Lama emphasizes repeatedly, “We weren’t born with the purpose of causing trouble, harming others. For our life to be of value, we must develop basic good human qualities – warmth, kindness, compassion. … Genuine compassion is based on the rationale that all human beings have an innate desire to be happy and overcome suffering, just like myself. And, just like myself, they have the natural right to fulfill this fundamental aspiration.” This view lies at the heart of steps 8 and 9. When we make restitution to former rivals, we go to them in this spirit of compassion.

Service to others is our purpose. “There is no guarantee that tomorrow at this time we will be here… I believe that the proper utilization of time is this: if you can, serve other people, other sentient beings.” This idea lines up with a passage from the Big Book not quoted enough, probably because it runs so counter to self. “At the moment we are trying to put our lives in order. But this is not an end in itself. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us.” (p.77)
Recognize suffering as a teacher. Dalai Lama: “By… eliminating afflictive states of mind such as craving and hatred, one can achieve a completely purified state, free from suffering. Within a Buddhist context, …[pain] serves to encourage one to engage in the practices that will eliminate the root causes of suffering.” Here’s the same idea in AA’s 12 & 12: “Under these conditions, the pains of failure are converted into assets. Out of them we receive the stimulation we need to go forward. Someone who knew what he was talking about once remarked that pain was the touchstone of all spiritual progress. How heartily we A.A.’s can agree with him, for we know that the pains of drinking had to come before sobriety, and emotional turmoil before serenity.”

There are many more parallels, but I’m out of room.

Thanks to the steps, ease and comfort come to me now because I enjoy the world I live in, not because I’ve vanquished it for a few hours. But there’s still a long way to go. For instance, the Dalai Lama says he never feels lonely or wishes he could marry, whereas I still get lonely quite frequently and am codependent as hell. But that’s okay: it’s progress, not perfection – right?

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Tagged as 12 steps, AA, Alcoholism, Dalai Lama, recovery, sobriety

March 5, 2016 · 6:30 am

The Power of Powerlessness

About a year ago, I used to frequently pass a billboard claiming thousands of “stubborn” men who avoided seeing a doctor would die that year. This photo isn’t from my street, but our local billboard met with the same (funny) response:

While I don’t know about the billboard’s claim, I do know when it comes to stubborn alcoholics, even more will NOT seek out a program of recovery this year, which is why in the U.S. alone 2.5 million years of potential life will be lost, shortening by an average of 30 years the lives of those 88,000 who’ll die.* Instead, despite an inner knowledge that they’re addicted to alcohol, millions will (yet again) marshal their willpower to decide not to drink so much. Never mind how many times such resolutions have failed! Never mind that they and everyone they live with can recognize night after night that they’re drunk as usual! They’ll simply refuse to accept the fact that they’re powerless over alcohol.

The Big Book tells us, “The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it to the gates of insanity or death.”** But even more simply resign themselves to permitting the self-disgust, degradation, and pathetic caricature of chronic drunkenness to taint their inmost conscience and closest relationships for the rest of their lives.

Why? Because they believe so ardently in the preeminence of their own minds! They insist their brains have the power to enact choices of free will that, research increasingly indicates, they simply do not have. For an addict, Emersonian self-reliance means, in fact, an imprisoning cycle rather than freedom of choice.

Gabor Maté, in his book on addiction, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, explains our predicament as follows:

We may say, then, that in the world of the psyche, freedom is a relative concept: the power to choose exists only when our automatic mental mechanisms are subject to those brain systems that are able to maintain conscious awareness…

Electrical studies of brain function show that… the interval between awareness of the impulse and the activation of the… impulse is only one-tenth to one-fifth of a second. Amazingly, it’s only in this briefest of intervals that the [cerebral] cortex can suppress behavior it judges to be inappropriate. …[But] in the split second before the impulse emerges into awareness… the brain carries out what is called preattentive analysis… the unconscious evaluation of what [is]…essential or irrelevant, valuable or worthless. The cortex is primed to select actions that will achieve [these] goals…

“Those habit structures are so incredibly robust, and once they form in the nervous system, they will guide behavior without free choice.”***

In other words, before we even know we’ve thought of having a drink, the brain has cleared the impulse. The cortex may occasionally summon a “but wait!’ counter-insurgence, but more often the drink idea advances to GO and collects $200. Maté calls this condition “brain lock.” AA calls it the “curious mental blank spot.” In either case, with an internal sigh of “oh well!” we take the drink (just this one time) and tell ourselves we decided to.

Our brains are broken. They cannot be fixed.

~

I knew none of this when I came to AA wanting to die. When I first heard the statement, “I can’t fix my broken brain with my broken brain,” so much became clear to me! For one thing, I understood why I’d fought tooth and nail against “surrendering” to AA. Who wants to admit she can’t trust her own brain? No one.

The ego lays claim to omniscience, at least within ourselves: I know all about me. My thoughts are accurate. To admit a glitch in my thinking has rendered me unable to choose, unable to correct myself, unable even to see what I’m doing while I’m doing it – this goes against all instinct. It’s on par with admitting mental illness or, as Step 2 forces us to swallow, insanity.

Yet a deeper part of me – my soul – heard the resounding truth of that phrase. I realized I had no answers, and that AA, no matter how foreign, offered one.

So I gave up.

I admitted I was powerless.

And do you know what happened? Miracles!

First, I quit drinking. Second, I began to see I was maladapted to living, that I’d never developed the skills and insight to “manage” life’s choices. Third, I discovered it wasn’t too late to learn.

The remaining 11 steps reconnected me to the god of goodness I’d known in earliest childhood – to the nurturing powers of Love and divine wisdom. To maintain contact with them, all I had to do was adopt the 12 steps as a way of life.

At first, mind you, that idea repulsed me, too.

Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess his faults to another and make restitution for harm done? Who cares anything about a Higher Power, let alone meditation and prayer? Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to carry AA’s message to the next sufferer? ***

Not early sobriety Louisa! I did these things because I had to. Today I do them because I get to – because they fill me with freedom and fulfillment. Drunk, I blathered about climbing Mount Rainier. Sober, I did it – 3 times! Drunk, I dreamed of writing a book. Sober, I wrote it – check the sidebar! Drunk, I longed desperately to be liked. Sober, I love more people than I’d ever have believed possible.

Mount Rainier: click to enlarge: 14,411′

THAT is power, guys. It’s just not mine.

~

The most important 1st step is the one I take today, the one I re-experience every morning, every hour. My compulsion to drink is 100 times stronger than my cortex’s resistance. Alcohol kicks my ass, has its way, calls the shots, rules my mind. But luckily, it’s the same for you! Alone, each of us has no power to fight this thing. We bloat, soggy and mollified in the dregs of our lonely cups. But connected to god and fellow alcoholics through AA, we tap into a Power that lifts us above the limitations of our broken brains – to heights we never dared imagine.

* http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm

** Alcoholics Anonymous p. 30

*** In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Chpt. 26

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Tagged as 12 steps, AA, Alcoholism, drinking, recovery, sobriety, Step 1

January 24, 2016 · 10:38 am

Step 3 and Happiness

I’ll have 21 years sober on Friday, which is kinda unbelievable to me. That’s long enough to be of age to drink. Where did the time go? How did I get so friggin’ old?

No matter. My life’s damn good. On this ordinary Saturday I slept in til 8:00, then texted alternately with two sober friends – one joking about the “sober paws,” the other mired in grief, both of which I get: life lived fully awake is both a blast and painful as hell. Meanwhile, my 14-year-old son put an adolescent chicken on my head, because he and I are close and sometimes like to let our chicks scuttle around the house like cheeping Keystone Cops. I soon left for a ballet class where, keeping up with an advanced group, I nailed a few turns and jumps that pleased me. Came home to write this so I could postpone cleaning my house for the big fat 21st birthday party I’m throwing a week from tonight. Just normal life, and I’m happy.

Twenty-one years ago, I felt alone in a dead, condemning world from which I longed to vanish.

What’s made the difference?

Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood God.

When I first tried Step 3, I completely misunderstood it. I thought I was supposed to give up my will and live exclusively by god’s. Short of lying down and waiting for a windstorm or something to throw me into action, how was that possible? But that’s not even remotely what the step says. Look at the exact wording: we still have our will, but we’ll turn it over to god’s care. Or at least, we make a decision to do so. God’s will, you’ll note, isn’t mentioned.

Personally, I have a problem with the notion of god’s will or god’s plan for me. Why? Because each strikes me as a product of need. Will strives to realize an intention; plan foresees a chain of events that will bring about something desired. I don’t see god as having either.

People in my Near Death Experiences group who’ve been shown their futures describe it more as a 3-D Plinko board of endlessly branching possibilities. They say the spirit showing it to them had no agenda – any series of choices was dandy, including death. My own NDE was different: I was told “You’re not finished” and sent back against my will, revived by CPR despite lethal levels of drugs still in my system.

So let’s just say, if god does have a will or plan for each of us, it’s a super flexible one. Let’s say you planted two tiny genetically identical elm tree seedlings 50 feet apart. Then you came back 100 years later to find two huge, swaying, graceful elm trees. Would you expect them to be identical? Would one of them be wrong? Of course not. Because each grew into its own uniqueness. Incomprehensibly detailed variations make up the richness of this world. And if god wants anything for us, it’s that we grow into our incomprehensibly unique selves.

Unfortunately, growth seems a lot more complicated for humans. The trouble comes from dealing with fear and pain, and encountering the voice of ego which promises to protect us from both. I grew up with so much fear and pain that I poured all my trust into ego. What else was there?! As an alcoholic, I found booze boosted ego’s power, generating a workable substitute for the self-worth I lacked. My world shrank smaller and smaller as I pursued ease and comfort in the bottle. I learned nothing about myself or how to live. I hit bottom as a 15- year-old girl in 34-year-old body.

Step Three opens the door for learning. AA’s “psychic change” is what happens when we stop listening to ego and start seeking a deeper truth. Good Orderly Direction (GOD) was the term offered to help me ease into my own conception of god. I learned to subject each idea to this test: does it feel like Good Orderly Direction?

Working the 12 steps with a sponsor exemplified Good Orderly Direction. The process taught me spiritual principles – like gratitude, humility, love, and service – that shape a worthwhile life. I learned that they’re realized through daily acts of empathy and kindness, and that when I live in accordance with them, I can generate self-esteem by doing esteemable acts.

I’ve learned that meditation pays off in the ability to distinguish my awareness from my thoughts. A babble of ego-thoughts still passes constantly through my brain – stories of envy, self-pity, resentment, and how I could fix everything. Today I can detach (usually) from them, knowing (usually) that they’re worthless. I can sometimes glean the aftertaste of regret before I do the wrong thing.

I’ve learned that, for me, the biggest challenge of sobriety is self-honesty. Honesty with others is easy: I’m an open book. But to change the things I can, I have to be willing to see the need for change – and I don’t like to. I’d rather pretend things are fine. Or, if I do make a bid for change, it’s still a challenge to do the footwork and then LET GO of the results. Whenever I’m obsessing – needing to get what I want or for someone else to do/see what I want – I’m trying to boss reality, to shape it to my will – which is obviously insane. So the more life beats me up, the better I get at letting go.

As a result, I’ve learned some of most freeing stuff: that what seems urgent is usually not important, and what’s important is usually not urgent. I’ve learned the wisdom of “Don’t just do something! Sit there!” Life flows around me; people flow in and out of my life; I’m powerless over virtually all of it. My attitude alone is mine to choose, but no longer mine to choose alone.

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January 9, 2016 · 5:50 am

AA Newcomer Fears

My newest sponsee and I were reading the Big Book together the other night, with me passing on to her all the margin notes my sponsor passed on to me so many years ago. When we got to this passage in The Doctor’s Opinion, I had her change the pronouns as my sponsor had had me do:

~~Men and women~~ I drink essentially because ~~they~~ I like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while ~~they~~ I admit it is injurious, ~~they~~ I cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To ~~them~~ me, ~~their~~ my alcoholic life seems the only normal one. ~~They are~~ I am restless, irritable and discontented, unless ~~they~~ I can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which ~~they~~ I see others taking with impunity. After ~~they~~ I have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, ~~they~~ I pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless ~~this person~~ I can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of ~~his~~ my recovery.

Next I asked her (as I’d been asked) to read it aloud and tell me if she identified. Over the years, the response has varied, but for newcomers seeing this passage for the first time, it’s often tears. One tough, independent woman of Inuit descent, single mom to a disabled boy, could not finish reading the passage for weeping. She murmured, “This is me. This is my life.”

(But her life changed. She’s been sober nine years.)

My current sponsee has a few years sober, but she, too, was moved. In the silence following her simple “Yes,” I could see her travel back in time. She said, “I remember… I came home after my first AA meeting, and I sat on the couch, and I just cried and cried and cried. Life seemed over. I couldn’t see the future – anything – without alcohol.”

Though it’s been almost 21 years, when I’m sitting with an alcoholic who remembers, I, too, remember my first meetings. I knew I was an alcoholic. I still couldn’t speak those words, but inside I’d rounded that corner. Yet the vacuous terror of living without booze, of identifying with AA crap, and going to meetings for the rest of my life, felt like such a horrific, endless nightmare that I almost preferred to slop my drunken way toward death – privately.

Here are some of the things I feared:

My life would be boring
I’d have to pretend to like stupid AA people
AA would feel cultish like an Amway scam
I’d never feel deeply relaxed and happy again
I’d never feel wildly excited and happy again
“Psychic change” was mumbo-jumbo – I’d feel this bad forever
Steps 4 and 9 would be degrading, so I wouldn’t do them
Step 12 would mean consorting with weirdos, so I’d never do that one, either

Now, AA works by attraction, and I don’t mean to promote anything. I can only report what I’ve experienced and how I’ve changed, and maybe offer tidbits of advice. I’m just one sober drunk.

Meetings vary tremendously, but if they’re based in the Big Book, they’re about the solution. I got sober at folksy meetings in Olympia, then switched to lesbian meetings in Seattle. For a few years I preferred hipster meetings where everybody had tats and pierces and spoke in strings of profanity. I’ve also felt at home at meetings in Boston, LA, Hawaii, and Greece. Yet any meeting is only as good as the stepwork of people attending. I avoid informercial (“everything’s wonderful since I worked the steps!”) meetings, and bitch sessions (“but at least I didn’t drink!”). Look for meetings with fun people who exude the energy you want, who speak honestly of their struggles but apply the solution.

Friendships formed when I started going to gatherings outside meetings. Old friendships deepen, but I keep making new ones; today I have more friends than time to see them all. This Sunday I went snowshoeing with five kick-ass sober women who say ‘fuck’ a lot. We laughed and shared frankly and the young ones dropped their pants for bare-ass-in-the snow pics – which I can’t show you ;). But each of them has a quiet side, as well; each has known devastating misery.

Ks bdaysnowshoe

Boring is how I’d describe my life of drinking and faking coolness in contrast to the wide-awake, life-savoring ride of sober spiritual growth. Even the most painful experiences, walked through sober, are valuable teachers.

Conformity is an anathema to every alcoholic. It’s the disease that’s the same for all of us, and the “way out” – i.e. living by spiritual principles. Through trial and error, we each find our unique spiritual path. “And how’s that workin’ out for ya?” is all a wise sponsor need ask.

The psychic change grew in me oh so gradually as I worked the steps. Taking Step 3 made me ready for 4-7. Doing 8 -11 finally opened the door for 12. Each time I repeat all 12 steps, I see a little deeper.

Have I changed much? Hell, yeah. For instance, these past few months I’ve gotten up early every first Saturday and driven downtown to help cook breakfast for about 150 homeless people. In the past, it was all about me. But last Saturday, on a freezing cold morning, I was dishing out cheesy scrambled eggs, first server on the line. I greeted each person directly, recalling a few names, with my heart overflowing. “Nice hat! Cheesier or less cheesy? It’s nice and warm in here, and so are these eggs!” Faces lit up – they thanked us, wished us Happy New Year. Some laughed with me. The sausage guy next to me remarked, “Boy, you sure are Miss Sunshine, aren’t ya?”

And I am. Except it’s not me, not my light. It’s Light that shines through me because of all I’m connected to. Today, I have something to give. And, as that new sponsee texted me the other day, “I’ve never felt so happy in my life!”

Hey, guys! We are everywhere! Thanks for 290,000 views in 2015 – and that ain’t even counting RSS, email, or most Facebook tags. WordPress says you visited from 166 nations. I never dreamed my little free blog would attract so many readers.

If I’ve helped any of you anywhere to stay sober another day, I’m super grateful. I mean, sure, I’m glad if people like my writing and stuff, but even gladder that we all share this thing, this gift, and this connection – and “get” each other. Love to all of you!

Nations in white had no views, yellow few, greenish more, blueish LOTS.

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October 27, 2015 · 7:30 am

The Alcoholic’s Power of Choice

“The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink.”

Alcoholic Anonymous, p. 24

Alcoholics cannot choose to not drink. We lack the power to decide whether or how much alcohol we’ll consume. If we had that power, we wouldn’t be alcoholics. We’d just be people who drink too much.

If that’s all there were to it, once we recognized drinking was destroying our love, life, and liver, instead of experiencing “a complete failure of the kind of defense that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove,” we’d yank back our blistered, half-cooked hands and just stop drinking. We certainly wouldn’t need a program of recovery or a spiritual connection to do so, and I wouldn’t need to write this blog.

Given our powerlessness, then, it really makes no sense to say, “I’m an alcoholic and I choose not to drink today” – though we often hear that very line spoken in meetings. Some saying this may be clueless about their condition. But others may be using shorthand for the power of choice we alcoholics do retain. As alcoholics we have one daily, hourly, by-the-minute choice that can make or break our sobriety, and this is what it looks like: we can work toward the solution, or we can regress toward the problem.

What’s the problem, again? We’re maladjusted to life. Drinking was our old solution. Take it away via abstinence, and we’re up shit creek without a paddle. Undeveloped emotionally, we’re Tiny Tim with his crutch cruelly kicked away. We still have to cope with and navigate everything that overwhelmed us before, but now try to do so exposed and unarmed.

So the choices we make in sobriety are really about how to render the real world comfortable, livable, and even a joy – by staying in touch with a higher power. We choose thousands of times every day, not only in our actions but in how we elect to perceive – and every choice will fall into one of those two categories: toward the solution or toward the problem. Which wolf do you feed?

When newcomers ask me, sometimes desperately, what’s going fill that empty chasm in their gut, what’s ever going to take the place of alcohol and drugs, the solution is hard to verbalize because it resembles a sense they don’t have yet, or a feeling they haven’t experienced since they were little kids. The solution is LOVE, for everything and everyone – and the unshakable conviction that love is everything. Mind you, when I heard that kind of stuff in early sobriety, I felt like, “What the fuck good is that?! I heard that crap in a Beatles song a long time ago and it doesn’t do anything! I need help NOW!”

Don Miguel Ruiz offers this gem of a prayer at the close of The Four Agreements:

Today, Creator of the Universe, …help us to be like you are, to love life, to be life, to be love. Help us to love the way you love, with no conditions…. Help us to love and accept ourselves without any judgement, because when we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty and we need to be punished.

That’s the destination: freedom to love ourselves and others. The steps are a means of getting there – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Everything we think we know from the past holds us back. When the fabric of our existence is shot through with fear, we can love only a select few and only on the condition that they be on “our side.” Ironically, the same guards we’ve built up to protect us from a threatening world constitute the source of our deepest pain, because they also cut us off from god’s love – love that can flow through us and invigorate our souls as we pass it on to others.

Do you know what hell is? Hell is being cut off from god, from love, from the energy that orchestrates our internal body and connects us to all that lives. A life of fear and resentment enshrouds us in a thick, impenetrable cell that will not admit the light of god. We can be busy knowing what’s right and who’s wrong, we can be fighting for ourselves and resenting everyone who gets in our way, we can chase whatever seems to grant us power – and all of it will lead to loneliness and despair! And if we die with those guards up, we’ll experience hell in the hereafter – unless love cuts through our shell and frees us to seek the light. (Or at least, so report my fellow Near-Death survivors who did go to hell.)

The 12 steps chip away at those countless false beliefs that made our shells seem necessary in the first place. We replace our old axioms with new, transparent ones – that whenever we’re upset, it’s because there is something wrong with us; that acceptance grants us the freedom to live and let live; that we need to know where we end and others begin; and that, when necessary, detaching with love is our responsibility.

I can’t choose not to drink. But I can choose to do what’s necessary to connect with a god who, one day at a time, graces me with sobriety. I can PRAY for strength and guidance. I can PRACTICE the self-care that nurtures me. I can PAUSE whenever I sense I’m headed down a wrong path – toward resentment, self-pity, or irresponsibility. I can ACT by walking out the door to a meeting I don’t think I need, where I do service I don’t admit is important, or pick up sponsees I don’t have time for. I can feel GRATITUDE for a beautiful life I threw away countless times in my drinking. I can OFFER kindness, encouragement, and help to those in need – i.e. everyone. And, most important, I can choose to LOVE whatever life brings me, moment by moment by moment.

It’s not about just not drinking anymore. These choices, I find, bring me heaven on earth.

.

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Tagged as Alcoholism, Life Choices, recovery, sobriety, spirituality, twelve steps

September 15, 2015 · 8:10 am

The Serenity Prayer

The word prayer repulsed me in early sobriety, and in some ways it’s still glitchy. It can call to mind a penitent worshiper hunched over clasped hands in some austere setting – and for the non-religious, that just ain’t us! So I’ve come up with ways to make prayer real to me – since fortunately, religion has no monopoly on access to god.

It’s amazing how many people assume it does – that spiritual seeking and religion are inseparable. That’s like claiming I-5 is the only way to get from Seattle into Canada. Not true. Recently, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, I jumped in and out of Canada about five times in few seconds, just for fun. You can always find your own pathway to god; the important thing is that you seek it with your deepest sincerity.

So instead of prayer, I just frickin’ talk to god. I may gab away and cuss and laugh, or I may get on my knees and weep, depending on how I feel. I may address my lost sister, or guardian angel, or the font of all that lives. Whatever works.

But what do I say?
Fear-based prayers are an extension of self – and a very natural one. All day, from the moment we wake, we’re responsible for meeting our own material needs. We engage our brains and bodies to make shit happen. I want a bagel so I open the fridge and get one. I want it toasted, so I get a knife to slice it and then pop that baby in the toaster. By applying skills, I get what I want.

Problems arise when we apply this approach to spiritual life: I feel restless, irritable, and discontent, so I gulp down some booze and get what I want – relief. Great! But fast-forward to the point where that survival tactic has quit working, so I’ve suffered agony at the level of emotional disembowelment, finally become willing, and – with god’s help – gotten sober.

Now I need new ways to fix those old pains, but I don’t know it. So it’s only natural that I try a skills approach: I identify the external problems I think are responsible – the people, places, and things I perceive as fucking up my happiness – and try to manage them to suit my needs.

It doesn’t work. Dammit! So I try harder. Still, no dice.

Now I’m freaking out. Will I ever get X? Oh my god, does this mean I’ll always be stuck with this crappy Y? What’s that I’m hearing in the rooms? Ask god for help?

Okay… I turn to prayer: “God, please put this damn life-bagel in the goal-toaster for me. It should be toasted. Surely you can see this. Thank you! Your child, Louisa.”

I may think of it as supplication rather than giving god orders. Still, however respectful I may be, I’m backseat-driving the universe. And it doesn’t work! Yes, god may make some related good of my prayers (especially if they’re for others), but it won’t involve my specific bagel. The great danger here is that I can feel ignored and get pissed… and turn my back on god.

True prayer, as Richard Rohr and others have written, is not about managing the world. It’s about changing ourselves. It’s about strengthening our relationship to god and accessing the power that god can channel into our lives.

Enter, Serenity Prayer

Thank you, Reinhold Niebuhr, for writing this gorgeous prayer for a Sunday service in Heath, MA, in 1943.* You could not have imagined the role it would play in so many lives today.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

The prayer asks god to change us, to help us grow beyond whatever we ourselves can muster. We can say it over and over, thinking about what it means, how it moves us. At different times it takes on different nuances.

Here, unpacked and named, is some of what this prayer can mean for me: God,

grant me	=	help me, because I can’t seem to do this myself; I need your love, your guidance, your gifts
the serenity	=	to fricking calm the fuck down about this stuff, to quit panicking, to quit judging, to let go this urgency
to accept	=	to allow into my reality, to acknowledge as what is, to give up shoulding on and just let it be true – because it already is
the things I cannot change,	=	the past, what’s happening, how this person is, what they won’t do, everything I don’t like and wish were different… that isn’t me
the courage	=	a conviction, faith stronger than my fears, a power drawn from my inmost heart, a little spark of you
to change	=	to take action, to re-see, to step out into empty space, to quit procrastinating, to dare, to just do it !
the things I can	=	attitudes & assumptions & habits that don’t bring goodness, cycles I’m stuck in, people I hang out with, my default defects. Reluctance to begin those baby steps of action I’ve been too afraid or proud to take
and the wisdom	=	god-inspired honesty, open-mindedness, faith, harvest from the experiences you’ve already given me
to know the difference	=	to intuit what’s my business and what’s yours

Good thing it’s a lot shorter, eh? But for me it still carries all that meaning.

Resistance
I don’t know that I’ve ever, in 20 years of saying this shit, had a problem instantly vanish. With bigger issues, sometimes the best I can hope for is for me to shed a layer of denial or feel a little less pain.

But the courage part has been literal and concrete. This prayer has emboldened me to act where I’ve been scared and reluctant: I’ve made phone calls, shown up at events, applied for jobs, thrown parties, forgiven people, entered dance studios, climbed volcanoes, started a business, and walked into the mountains alone – all deeds inspired by this little prayer. And those actions do transform my reality incrementally, with a cumulative effect beyond anything I could envision or orchestrate.

Ultimately, the Serenity Prayer condenses into twenty-seven words the essence of all 12 Steps: surrendering of self and the willingness to collaborate with god to cultivate meaning and integrity in our lives.

Never underestimate it, no matter how many cutesy places you see it embroidered! It’s a compact tool we can carry in our back pockets like a humble but priceless compass.

*http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/15/serenity-prayer-origin_n_5331924.html

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Tagged as 12 steps, AA, Alcoholism, recovery, Serenity Prayer, spirituality

June 30, 2015 · 7:32 am

Psychic Change

Toward Alcohol

When we hit bottom in our drinking careers, we’re pretty much forced to change. We’re truly sick and tired of being sick and tired; we recognize, however faultily, that our way is not working. We become teachable. That is, we’re desperate enough to try out AA’s approach even though it feels foreign, artificial, and disorienting.

For me this meant giving up the belief that I knew everything. I’d always felt sure I could perceive the lay of the land in a snap and choose the best course, which I then acted on with chutzpah and a dash of fukitol. Drinks made me feel better, so I frickin’ took ’em. Certain designated figures, also known as cool people, carried what I craved, so I chased ’em. Responsibility and integrity felt cumbersome, so I shrugged ’em off – free to follow my whims wherever they might lead!

And where was that? Loneliness so lethal I wanted to scream for eternity and futility so rampant I wanted to break and trash and burn every fucking thing that ever touched my life – that’s where my knowing everything took me.

AA – the supposed solution – seemed as silly as a cake walk. The 12 Steps, anyone could see, held no more wisdom than a hopscotch grid, and yet all these AA dolts claimed that if you sincerely played hopscotch, if you landed in each arbitrarily chalked off square, you’d bust through to frickin’ Narnia or something – whatever they meant by this “4th dimension of existence.”

But since a U-turn could lead me only back to the hell, I went ahead. I gave up control, followed directions, did the dance. And I commenced to change – to heal and grow and behold countless unexplored and rich possibilities hitherto invisible to me.

From somewhere inside me, I began to sense a direction besides my thoughts. They – my thoughts – were still as dumb and which-way as ever, but this new chord, this voice within – it began to lead me instead of them. Guidance I heard and talked about in AA aligned with this voice, but did not constitute it. Rather, I had “tapped an unsuspected inner resource” previously drown out by all the fears, demands, and clutter spewed by my ego.

I’d experienced a psychic change. I’d begun to develop a spiritual life that edged out my craving for booze.

Toward Life Itself

“Our liquor was but a symptom,” says the Big Book, of our messed up approach to life. If we merely take away the faulty solution of drinking, life hits us full force and feels unbearable. The lasting solution is to live on a spiritual basis which flows in tune with reality rather than fighting it.

Spiritual evolution is not a matter of content. That is, it’s never a matter of learning X, Y, and Z, passing the quiz, and graduating. Rather, it’s a habit of cultivating open-mindedness and reaching for growth. In other words, the conditions for continuous growth are the same as those that freed us from compulsive drinking: I elect not to buy into my thoughts, not to obey my ego, not to fall for the idea that my way is right. Only by turning away from these easy-to grab reflexes can I open myself to another voice – the more fundamental guidance of a higher power.

Day by day, growth happens at the juncture between what I’m exposed to and how I react to it. In that immediate crucible, I make more tiny choices than can possibly be noted, but collectively, they coalesce into a “gear” for my outlook. I plop into good-ole self-pity or reach for seemingly impossible gratitude – though I may end up somewhere between. What matters is whether I ask my higher power to guide those tiny choices, and whether I commit the incremental shards of my awareness to pursuing that guidance.

Growth can’t happen when ego takes over. The world becomes scary, because if what I’ve decided is supposed to happen doesn’t, I’m gonna be screwed. There’s never enough, so I lock into my plans. I get tunnel vision – which means I’m sealed off from potential good outside my will. I consign myself to stagnation.

The openness of faith reminds me life is always a collaborative effort – mine and god’s. Sure, I still plan and take action, but with built-in acceptance of whatever plays out. Even if things fuck up and fall apart, I’ll still be okay. My “enough” originates not from stuff or status, but from the power of god’s love flowing through me, the strength to generate and nurture and delight.

Jesse & Chip (by permission) 1 month post-flood: “The joy of living [they] really have, even under pressure and difficulty.”

Consider some dear friends of mine who moved to Wimberley, TX, last year only to lose everything they owned in a recent river flood. One day things were dandy, and next their home was was missing two walls and contained only mud and somebody else’s overturned couch. They had no renters’ insurance. Can you imagine that? I mean, can you really imagine losing everything? Yet these are two happy and thriving, not only because they’re sober, but because they live on a spiritual basis. They don’t lament. They have their precious lives, their energy, their love – a flow that’s providing all they need to rebuild what was lost, even as they pitch in to help neighbors… or support a faraway friend (me) processing a painful break-up.

The psychic change to living on a spiritual basis means we accept life’s uncertainty, taking our best shot and leaving the results to god. Failure’s fine. It happens. Floods happen. Betrayals happen. We can only keep listening for the voice within and trying to follow it toward good actions and good people, but with no guarantees. Because, while it’s true we each reap what we sow, it’s also true we’re scattering seeds from an unmarked, mixed bag. What will take root and flourish depends, we know, as much on the rain and sun as our work. Yet we do it anyway – and cheerfully.

The Sower, J. F. Millet, 1850

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Tagged as 12 steps, AA, Alcoholism, drinking, god, recovery, spirituality, twelve steps

March 23, 2015 · 8:12 am

Trashing AA as “Irrational”

Maybe you’ve seen Gabrielle Glaser’s Atlantic Monthly article entitled, “The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous.” Glaser, a self-proclaimed normie (i.e. non-alcoholic), attempts to illuminate the scam of Alcoholics Anonymous, which passes itself off as the sole antidote to alcoholism, and advocates instead for newly developed drug treatments as a solution more “scientific” than AA’s program of abstinence and spiritual growth.

Maybe you’re indifferent to both this article and AA. But if you love AA for having saved your life and yet this article doesn’t anger you, you work a WAY better program than I do! I am angered and for many reasons – the foremost being that I am fond of truth, and the article is rife with inaccuracies. A second is that I don’t believe in increasing people’s suffering for the sake of a snappy article (or book sales). Nothing can be gained by slamming AA, but so much can be lost!

The most glaring error, to me, is Glaser’s lumping together AA, which makes no money for anyone, with the treatment center industry that rakes in tremendous profits from addicts and their stricken families by “selling” what one can find freely in AA. Yes, without question, some treatment centers place under-qualified counselors in positions of power and exploit the crisis of addiction to charge exorbitant fees in exchange for a Big Book and an introduction to the steps – but they are not AA! Quite the converse, they embody every disaster that Bill, Bob, and other pioneers of AA tried to avert with the 12 Traditions.

Wrong also is holding AA responsible for the judicial practice of “sentencing” people to AA. I can’t imagine anything further from the 11th Tradition of “attraction rather than promotion.” As we often hear in the rooms, “AA is not for people who need it; it’s for people who want it.” But thanks to the courts’ total disregard of this policy, many people are forced to attend AA meetings. Like the treatment industry, the U.S. punitive system exploits AA, funneling unwilling people into the program simply because it lacks the means to otherwise deal with them. (That thousands of lives have been saved this way, however, can’t be denied.)

Glaser’s allegation that AA touts itself as the sole solution to alcoholism contradicts a clear statement in the Big Book’s forward to the second edition: “Upon therapy for the alcoholic himself, we surely have no monopoly. Yet it is our hope that all those who have as yet found no answer may begin to find one in the pages of this book…” [italics mine]. In other words, if you CAN’T find any other way out, we have something to offer you here.

Glaser implies that Marty Mann and her 1940s fellows in the National Committee for Education on Alcoholism were scheming to promote AA: “But AA supporters worked to make sure their approach remained central. Marty Mann joined prominent Americans…” Gosh, Gabrielle, that’s right! They were trying to hog the spotlight so they could get…uh… money? fame? Does it ever enter your mind that their sole intention was to help dying alcoholics who had not yet heard of any solution? Do you ever consider that such is what AA is all about?

Perhaps most irritating to me, but indicative of a larger societal misconception, Glaser confounds AA’s higher power with religiosity: “‘Alcohol- and substance-use disorders are the realm of medicine,’ McLellan says. ‘This is not the realm of priests.’” Excuse me, but what the hell do priests have to do with AA? Absolutely nothing! AA is a spiritual program, not a religious one. Why is this distinction so difficult for so many to appreciate? Religion tells people what to believe; spirituality calls for an inward search for meaning and truth. The only goal dictated by spirituality is growth toward loving kindness.

Science, Glaser claims, does not support this charlatan program of abstinence and spiritual growth. In this oversight, she ignores a wealth of scientific research supporting the success of AA (see Substance Abuse: Alcoholics Anonymous Science Update), simply because no study can figure out why it works. Spiritual growth does not show up under a microscope – so it must amount to nothing!

If Glaser were to succeed in leading alcoholics away from AA, what great gains would be made? If alcoholics took opioid antagonists like naltrexone or the muscle relaxant baclofen sensibly as Glaser propounds, if everyone would stop this silly business of abstinence and spirituality, from what would Glaser be rescuing people? “The prospect of never taking another sip is daunting, to say the least. It comes with social costs and may even be worse for one’s health than moderate drinking: research has found that having a drink or two a day could reduce the risk of heart disease, dementia, and diabetes.” Oh – I see! Abstinence is scary, so we shouldn’t attempt it. And not drinking, based on a handful of studies in the past 2 decades, suggests there might be potential benefits for some people from drinking moderately.

For alcoholics, these potential benefits from 1-2 drinks per day do not put much on the scale against death or the misery of living with full blown alcoholism. Sadly, I am willing to bet that Glaser’s article will, for scores of people in the difficult, early stages of sobriety, serve as excuse for relapse. Of those, how many will die? Will Glaser ever know? Does she care?

There is so much more to AA than not drinking! People in the program evolve into their best selves. In a matter of a months, they realize a potential that could not have been brought about by years of opioid antagonist pills and therapy. In AA I learned to seek a guiding voice other than my ego’s, to love imperfect people as I am imperfect, and to be of service – the most rewarding pursuit life has to offer. For the first time in my life, I discovered what it is to be happy from the inside out. I am a different person today because of AA: quitting drinking is only a small part of that. How tragic to think that Glaser’s finger pointing may rob others of what I have found!

if you agree!

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Tagged as 12 steps, AA, Alcoholism, Gabrielle Glaser, Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous, recovery, sobriety, twelve steps

March 16, 2015 · 7:43 am

What the Heck is a Spiritual Path?

A number of people dear to me in AA just can’t seem to stay sober. Their recovery looks hopeful at times: they’ll string together a few months or even a year, but then they go out again. At some point they drag themselves back looking haggard and beat up and often shockingly aged. They share about being totally defeated, about knowing they can’t drink, and about their rock solid determination to stay sober this time. Sadly, though, a few months or a year later, they’re gone again.

The Big Book tells us why: they “failed to enlarge [their] spiritual life” (35). During my drinking, I very much wanted to be a good person so I could be happy – to be true to my partners (at least in everything they knew about), to be honest (enough), and to contribute to the world (so I’d be respected). If I had brought that same approach to getting or staying sober – reliance on self – I’d be drunk today.

Here’s the deal: There are two ways to live in this world – by the guidance of ego, or by the guidance of something greater than ego. Practicing alcoholics, when they look inward, consult with the authority of ego, which has one sole criterion for direction: me. “What will make me feel good/get me what I (think I) want?” I may desire amazing personal experiences, or to feel attractive or valued. I may want money and a sense of importance – the recognition of achieving great things.

The active alcoholic may sincerely wish to live by higher principles because doing so might help them grab the things they link to happiness – like a career, a relationship, or esteem among peers. But in all their navigation, the joystick always remains firmly in the grip of ego, whose sole objective is to get what it wants. That’s why most practicing alcoholics harbor secrets. That’s why their love is striated with selfishness. And it’s why they’re never immune from the seduction of alcohol, because ego assures them a drink will feel awesome – or at least bring relief – and they take the bait.

What’s the alternative? To be holier than thou? To renounce earthly life and pursue some lofty enlightenment?

No. It’s to admit we’re irreparably flawed, and to commit to trying every day to be a slightly better person than we were yesterday – not by the criterion of what feels good, but by the light of what, in our deepest heart, we know to BE good. Pursuit of goodness – however we define it, however faultily we seek it, and whatever that progress may look like – is the essence of a spiritual path.

Let’s look at this idea in pieces. First, admission. The ego howls against broken vase the idea that we are irreparably flawed. “I can fix myself!” it insists. “Really! I know best!” To admit we’re permanently confused and lacking integrity requires the two greatest forms of ego Kryptonite on the planet: honesty and humility. This first step is the foundation on which every alcoholic bases a new experience of living.

Next, commitment. A spiritual path requires that we accept the futility of living by self-propulsion. Though society at large touts “taking control,” a spiritual path requires relinquishing the claim that we’re qualified to call the shots. In AA this means we commit to the steps, the fellowship, and service work. For non-alcoholics, too, some form of spiritual community is often involved, whether a sangha, a church, a yoga or meditation group, or some other family of like-minded people also trying to grow spiritually. We begin to test our own thinking – which we have admitted to be flawed – against the wisdom of this sounding board.

What we know to BE good is the thing we commit to. The Big Book tells us, “deep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God.” Unfortunately, many people assume this idea should equate to the God of religion, which may or may not be found anywhere in them – let alone deep down! My own god has nothing to do the God of any religion – that’s why I forgo the capital ‘G.’

My god is the tremendous power of unconditional love in which all life is swimming. Not everyone needs to go to AA to find and tap this source, but we all need it to get and stay sober. This power is available to anyone by any name or in any form – as innate goodness or a religious deity or the frickin’ Force from Star Wars: how you conceive of it does not matter. What changes your life is that you trust its goodness and ask it for guidance in all actions, at each juncture.

Of course ego still elbows its way in countless times, because we’re still flawed. But our intention remains to shift our point of reference away from ME! to a deeper sense of what is right and good. We try to pause before we act – especially when we don’t want to – in an effort to discern the two courses. That is the path – intention and effort. We hang onto a faith that if we keep earnestly seeking one day at a time, we will be guided.

Ironically, this course usually brings us a richer life than we could ever have imagined. At my home group last night, the chair took issue with the saying, “My worst day sober is better than my best day drunk.” He pointed out that he’d had some “fuckin’ awesome times” in his early drinking. But when I was called on, I cross-talked a tad: I recalled that all my “awesome” drunken times boiled down to feeling awesome about ME! Even if I said, “I fuckin’ love you, man!” I really meant, “Wow! – I don’t feel alienated and alone!” The spiritual path opened by AA has nurtured in me the gift of genuinely loving others – of living for something larger than myself. That’s what we’re here to do. And really, it’s a high no glory days can touch.