The 12 Steps for Everyone [Step 2]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Yeah, yeah, yeah... the weather here in the Land of the Snow at The Center of the Known Universe, is frightful. And Yeah (yeah, yeah)... it’s really nice where you live. But riddle me this: who the hell wants to live in that armpit you call a city? LOL!

* * *

-=[ Faith and our Deepest Experience ]=-

We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
-- The Second Step, Narcotics Anonymous

As most who read these pages know, I am an addict in recovery. I’ve been clean, one day at a time (sometimes one breath at a time), for 20 years. What follows is a narrative of my journey toward wholeness. I don’t know if this will work for you, but if you were to ask me, this is how I recovered my life. My story is extreme and you might find it hard to identify with some of its elements. All I ask is that you try to identify with and not compare my story. Listen to the message and not the mess.

I believe all people, regardless of whether they are addicts or not, can benefit from a rigorous application of the 12 Steps.

So take a thorough First Step and what happens? We’re stuck in a bad place! I mean, c’mon now, coming to the full and painful realization that my way of doing things was fundamentally fucked up isn’t a nice space. Furthermore, my bottom had me staring at some very harsh consequences.

Talk about despair.

The first time I read this step, I literally walked away from Narcotics Anonymous. My understanding of the core principle of this step, faith, at that time caused me a lot of discomfort. I am not a religious person, nor do I believe in a patriarchal, God-in-the-sky. To make matters worse, as I continued reading down the steps, I kept seeing the “God” word and the phrase “Higher Power” and I decided then that it was bullshit.

Consequently, I went through the five worst years of my life. The second issue I had with this step was the implication that I was insane -- restore us to sanity. When I came back to NA, I did so with a more open mind. But still…

My sponsor at the time suggested that I simply commit to keeping an open mind and to make this process a personal search. The beauty of Narcotics Anonymous is that the fellowship doesn’t demand you do anything. There are no “thou shalts,” no “shoulds.” As part of taking this step, my sponsor suggested I take a close reading and learn the terms. One of the first things I liked about the step the second time around was how it starts, “came… ” and then, “came to… ,” then, “came to believe… ” In a very real way I was finally coming to my senses -- I was awakening. The opposite of despair is hope and hope is what the Second Step offered me.

Faith was a hard score to settle, but there are enough agnostics and even atheists who are recovering addicts because the Twelve Steps allow for a kind of spiritual democracy. You do not have to believe in anything, or join any religion. You do not even have to apply the steps. They are simply suggestions and since whenever I followed my own suggestions, I usually experienced tremendous suffering, I figured it was time for me to listen to some alternative suggestions.

There are many different meanings of faith. At one extreme, there is the more common understanding of faith as blind faith, but that’s just one way of looking at faith. There are degrees of faith. In fact, we all have daily moments of faith and belief. We have faith, for example, that when we turn on the spigot, water will flow. We have faith that our car will start, or that a toaster will work. We also have many beliefs. We believe, for example, that we have a personality. Actually, many of us believe we are our personality, but there’s no brain center that organizes personality. Your personality is a set of beliefs and quirks that you constructed in order to operate in the everyday world. Scientists have faith in reason and logic to solve problems.

Shit, some of us believe that if we shove money inside of hole in the wall, a bag of dope will materialize. LOL! I’m not kidding. Back in the day, the way you copped drugs was that you’d stick your hand with your money in a hole and a hand with bag would come out. I had complete faith in that transaction! LOL

Early on, faith for me had to mean a temporary suspension of disbelief. What that means is that I made an agreement with myself to keep an open mind. Sometimes faith can mean trust. I came to believe that the spiritual principles of hope, freedom and willingness would restore me to sanity. And believe me, by the second time around, I knew I was insane. I have been studying human behavior for over a decade now, and the best definition of insanity I have come across is doing the same actions and expecting different results.

Even an infant knows better not to stick his hand in the socket after the first go-round. But yet we as adults oftentimes commit the same behaviors -- especially in the area of relationships -- expecting different results.

Sometimes faith can mean trust in a teaching, or self-confidence. As a Buddhist, my Higher Power is the Dharma (The Law), a clearly defined set of ethical and cognitive principles. In sports, a group can develop faith in their ability as a team to overcome everybody’s expectations. In that same way, I came to believe that the fellowship and principles of Narcotics Anonymous could restore me to sanity. Why? Because people all around me were taking back their lives. People were helping heal themselves and one another. I have been to NA meetings where a particular individual cried because she couldn’t pay her rent, then see her cry once again several months later because she was able to pay her rent.

Initially, my Higher Power was the group -- that what I couldn’t do alone we could do together. Eventually, my spirituality would evolve and I would come to embrace Buddhism as my path. The historical Buddha didn’t make any claims to divinity and his last words, as he lay dying (of all things, food poisoning) were, “… be a lamp unto yourself.” What that means to me is that ultimately, you must walk your path. It means that sayings, scriptures, or instructions alone will not save you. Ultimately, if you want to awaken, to come to your full realization as a human being, you must walk your path -- whatever that path entails.

And that’s what the second step helped me begin. It helped begin to walk the walk, trusting in my experience that I could be restored to sanity by a power greater than myself. the Second Step helped me come to a different understanding of faith, one that wasn’t associated with dogma or religion. I wanted a faith that encouraged and emphasized love and respect for ourselves as a foundation. A faith that uncovers our connection to others, rather than designating anyone as separate and apart. The faith I came to know as part of my recovery process and that I describe in this post does not require a belief system, is not necessarily connected to a God, though it doesn’t deny one. This faith I speak of is not a commodity we either have or don't have -- it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.

My name is Eddie and I’m recovery from civilization...

The 12 Steps for Everyone [Step 1]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Life is change/ Growth is optional/ Choose wisely -- Karen Kaiser Clark

* * *

-=[ Stopping the War ]=-

We admitted we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.
-- The First Step of Narcotics Anonymous

I was once told that my spiritual principles were as a bridge back to life. What I didn’t know then was that this bridge is built on the very bones of those who came before me. This series of posts is an attempt to honor that sacrifice.

I don’t know if this will work for you, but if you were to ask me, this is how I recovered my life. My story is a narrative of a life lived on the extreme edge and you might find it hard to identify with some of its elements. All I ask is that you try to identify with and not compare my story. Listen to the message and not the mess.

I believe all people, regardless of whether they are addicts or not, can benefit from an application of the 12 steps.

The First Step confronted me with two problematic words: powerless and unmanageable. I also didn’t notice at first that every step began with the word “We.” I was a loner; “we” wasn’t a word I used much. Everything was about me. They say an addict is an egomaniac with low self-esteem, and I believe that was how I felt.

Let me just say that 12-step recovery is about action. Every step involves growth, exploration, and action. I think people have huge misconceptions about 12-Step Fellowships. People in recovery like to say that the first step is the only step you have to get perfectly. I disagree, recovery is an ongoing process, and my understanding of the first step expands as I grow. However, there is a level of acceptance necessary for the integration of this step. But I get ahead of myself…

There are several powerful psycho-spiritual factors at work in the First Step. Primarily, there is an admission. Admitting to a problem has become a popular notion in our culture that first came to prominence in the recovery community. Admitting touches on the first spiritual principle of the first step: honesty. However, admitting means nothing without acceptance. For example, I had no problem admitting I was an addict; I could be honest about that. LOL! That and $2.50 got me on the train, which is another way of saying that admitting by itself it is worthless. It wasn’t until I embraced another core spiritual principle of the first step, acceptance, that I was then able to make changes in my life.

The more meetings I made, the more I heard my own story being told by others who were honest about themselves. I began to see that I had a lot in common with these people when it came to my to my addictive behaviors. It took me a long time to come to grips with powerlessness. I was raised to think of myself as powerful. I was taught that if I exerted my will on any issue, that I could overcome anything in the world. If I had enough cojones and worked hard enough, I could have power over anything.

Besides, it wasn’t my addiction that was the problem, it was everyone else. At least that was what I told myself. If only other people got their shit together and external situations in my life corrected themselves, I wouldn’t be in such a fix. The problem with my thinking was that it involved exerting willpower. The problem with my willpower was that it was warped. The more willpower I exerted, the more I fucked up. I tried everything: using only on the weekends, snorting instead of using needles, drinking instead of using other drugs, using only certain drugs in certain combinations, etc. No matter what I tried, I always ended up in the same place: all fucked up.

Imagine a machinery part that was made to perform only one action, or to move in only one direction. No matter how much you oil that part, no matter how much you try to fix it, it will still perform what is was meant to perform. Similarly, if the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything begins to look like a nail. simply put, if i wanted to change, I needed to develop new tools, to step out of confines of my comfort zone. For me to begin my journey, I first had to surrender. In fact, as I look back now, the whole process of recovery is one long, beautiful, liberating process of surrendering.

The First Step is like the beginning of a hero’s journey. In the archetype of the hero (or errant knight), most heroes begin reluctantly, clumsily, and then forces beyond their control propel them past their ordinary lives into a journey of personal change and renewal. Like most addicts, I was unaware of aspects of myself -- my feelings, for example, and the wreckage I was creating. The first step freed me to begin my quest for self-knowledge and transformation.

Admitting to powerlessness took me years; accepting that admission brought me to the gateway of healing and sanity. That was also about another core spiritual principle: willingness. instead of willfullness, what I needed was willingness. It’s part of what is often called the HOW (honesty, openness, and willingness) of recovery.

The first step is not about defeat. It says powerlessness, not hopelessness. We have no power over many things. Take the weather, for example. You can’t stop the rain, but if you take the time to stop, look, and listen, you may come to realize that using an umbrella is a lot better that railing against the elements. We have no power over how others act or think yet we spend enormous amounts of time and energy trying to exert control over other people. oftentimes, we don’t even have power over our own emotions, but we can learn to relate to them differently.

The first step is really about admitting powerlessness over living in the extremes. Try fighting the rain, or better yet, a hurricane, and you’ll get a sense of what it is to fight addiction. You have to surrender.

As part of taking the first step, you take an inventory of the consequences of your addiction. For me this meant documenting the jobs I lost, the people I hurt, and most of all, the harm I did to myself. In this way, I could no longer deny the unmanageability of life as an active addict. This was a hard nut to crack because I never wanted to admit my life was unmanageable. I had it together, I liked to think, I just went a little overboard sometimes.

I also discovered the insanity of the obsession that led to the compulsion and how my fight would be fruitless until I surrendered. If you’re fighting an inner war, then someone has to lose. If you’re fighting an inner war, it follows, you will always lose.

Taking the first step clearly showed me that my thinking had little connection to reality. There were countless times, for example, that I would experience a blackout. With a blackout, you can sit down one minute and the next thing you know you missed an entire episode of your life -- while conscious. It’s similar to what I imagine a time jumper would feel. One minute you’re in one place and the next, you’re somewhere else and you don’t know what the fuck is going on. One time coming out of a blackout, I had a whole party-full of people wanting to kick my ass, and I had no clue why. It seems I propositioned the bride-to-be (it was an engagement party) and that kinda pissed a few people off. I once came out of a blackout in a different state and different year. Still I couldn’t admit my powerlessness. It wasn’t that something was wrong with me, I rationalized, it was those damned stuck up muthafuckas, and besides, I know that bitch at the engagement party wanted me. Perhaps you may have never this extreme form of powerlessness, but have you ever had a situation spiral out of control to the point that you were at a loss?

Most of all, the first step is the beginning of the undoing of the karmic consequences of denial. I had to be brought my knees -- from hopelessly addicted to institutions and even close to death -- and still I wouldn’t admit my powerlessness. There was definitely a lot of evidence of unmanageability in my life. Shit, I attempted suicide at least once. What “normal” person can say that? More than anything, I was addicted to insanity.

Oh, and yes, I’ve kicked more habits than I can remember. I just could never stay stopped. It was never really hard kicking a habit. But addiction, I soon learned, was not merely about substance abuse. I would get “clean” and chill for six-seven months, but when I started again, it was as if I never stopped. My last day as an active addict, I had spent $300 after having been released from an institution for exactly fourteen days. I went from clean to a $300-a-day habit at the drop of a hat. I would say that’s unmanageable...

However, there are other ways our powerlessness and unmanageability manifests in our lives. Whether it’s food or cigarettes, or relationships, I think we can all look where we’re slowly killing ourselves, suffering needlessly, or causing ourselves and our loved ones harm. I believe we all can identify with the need to exert control and the denial of powerlessness. I use my life as an example because the extreme manner in which I lived it makes it easier to illustrate my points, but we all have the dark places, the places that scare us.

Today, I apply the first step to many things in my life, especially in relationships and to certain behaviors. Addictions like to migrate. One might be able to kick the heroin or the alcohol, but then you see people acting out sexually or financially. If you don’t do the inner work, applying these principles in all your affairs, then you’ll continue to be in the grips of addictive behavior. The first step stipulated that I was powerless over my addiction. Addiction is not about a substance, but a way of thinking.

Eventually, I began to think of the first step as something similar to the concepts of Aikido or Wing Chun, two martial arts that stress the importance of never meeting force with force. In a sense, the first step is about learning to flow with the forces of life instead of fighting all the time. It’s learning to transform difficult emotions into opportunities for healing. It’s knowing that you can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

Love,

Eddie

Resources

Alcoholics Anonymous: Official website

Narcotics Anonymous: Official website

Recovery USA, llc: Recovery USA, llc is an online resource for those seeking recovery information, community connections, and high-quality 12 Step Recovery Supplies for Alcoholism and Drug Addiction.

Sober Recovery: The Alcoholism and Addictions Resource Guide. "Our Sober Community is always open 24 hours a day with helpful moderators in our message boards and Sober Forums."

Alano: "The Online Alano Club is a nonprofit association intended as a resource for Alcoholics Anonymous® members and groups, as well as any individual who has a desire to stop drinking. Members from other 12-Step programs, especially the Al-Anon Family Groups, also are welcome."

12 Step Radio: A great site for Recovery Music, Artist Interviews, Online Communities, Links and Resources, and more...

Note: The featured artwork is from an artist who sells the prints online. I happen to like them. His website features prints of all the 12 steps.

The 12 Steps for Everyone [Step Five]

¡Hola! Everybody…
Every month, I dedicate a post to one of the steps of Narcotics Anonymous. These posts are by no means intended as extensive exploration of recovery. They are merely brief expression of my strengths, hopes, and experiences culled from my ongoing journey toward recovery.

* * *

-=[ The Heart of Kindness ]=-

Step Five: We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

* * *

Recap time!

First, we explored what I call the “Recovery Cha Cha Cha” -- the first three steps that serve as the foundation to recovery and freedom from addiction. Step 1 (click here) confronted me with the major contradiction in my life: how I managed to feel powerful when, in fact, I was powerless and needed help. Step 2 (click here) challenged my grandiosity. I have heard it said that addicts are egomaniacs with low self-esteem and I couldn’t put it any better than that. My low self-esteem pushed me to inflate my ego, but all I ever felt inside was emptiness and feelings of worthlessness. Step 3 (click here) helped me see that my efforts at control were in actuality ways of sabotaging myself. Ultimately, I can only take responsibility for myself leaving the rest to my Higher Power however I defined it. Lastly, the Fourth Step (click here) gave me the gift of self-knowledge. By reviewing in detail my fears, desires, thoughts, motives, and actions, seeing how they created wreckage, I was better able to uncover the secrets.

I raised a Roman Catholic and I can still remember the ritual Saturday confessionals. We would tease our friends and cousins if they took too long in the confessional because we all knew that meant there was a lot of sinning goin’ on. LOL Still, the feeling of catharsis that always accompanied a confession was always refreshing. Always, the priest listened quietly and no matter what you said or admitted to, it was taken in stride, with no judgment. The message, at least for me anyway, is that no one is ever truly beyond redemption.

As much as I dreaded the Fourth Step, the Fifth Step was the scariest for me. Shame was acting as an obstacle against my journey to freedom. In Step five, we are asked to bare our soul to our Higher Power (as we define it), ourselves, and another human being. Reveal all, put it all out there, and take the risk of coming face to face with our shadow and dragging it out into the open.

Secrets and shame are two of the hallmarks of the disease of addiction. Many of us come from families in which addiction was a way of life. Throughout our developmental years and beyond, many of us feared outsiders would see us and our “horrible” families truthfully, so we developed coping skills that developed into strategies of denial. Step Five, people, was my first taste of true freedom. And recovery isn’t about putting down a drug or a drink -- recovery is about freedom from active addiction.

Period.

Still, I couldn’t possibly share my most shameful secrets with another human being, I thought to myself. Surely, no one has ever done the despicable things I had done. I was stuck at Step Five for sure. Eventually I came to learn an important truth, and I feel this applies to anyone, not just addicts. When we try to carry the load alone, we suffer needlessly. And in an unconscious manner, in seeking relief from that load, sometimes we will accuse even our loved ones and friends of the very character defects we are desperately attempting to conceal. Psychological relief never comes from confessing the “sins” of other people. Everybody has to come to terms with their own.

The practice of confessing, admitting the exact nature of our wrongs to another person is not new; it’s an ancient spiritual practice, in fact. And religion is by no means the sole advocate for this principle, contemporary Western psychology has long ago acknowledged the value the profound need every human being has for practical insight and knowledge of their personality flaws.

After much thought, I decided to share my Fifth Step with a Jesuit priest who was a recovering addict himself. This priest, who I will call Eddie, was one of the kindest persons I have ever met. And he was far from the stereotypical clergyman. He sometimes cussed, for example, and he smoked cigarettes. Most of all, like many truly spiritual people I have met, he had a great, evolved sense of humor.

As I began sharing my Fifth Step with father Eddie, he just listened. He was present, listening to everything and I felt there was no judgment. In fact, he kept nodding as I read off my list and sometimes sharing that he had committed some of the same acts himself. At other times, we would laugh together at some of the things on my list. Eventually, I was able to share fully, without holding back, ad all the fear and shame seemed as if it were being washed away. I felt accepted and unburdened. Most of all, I felt relieved of the “burden of self.”

The first great insight during the sharing of my Fifth Step was that I wasn’t as unique or terrible or horrible as I thought. Yes, I had committed many wrongs, but I wasn’t the only human being to commit those acts, and being held in the cradle of kindness -- in the heart of the heart of kindness -- I came to know my first taste of true freedom. The 12 Steps aren’t about formulating ideas about freedom, they compel us to act on the pract5ice of freedom. The 12 Steps are experiential exercises, action steps, toward personal and communal liberation.

Taking Step freed me from the chains of my shame and secrecy. I realized that I was a good person at heart and being freed from a repressive morality, I was able to become a moral agent in my life. Most of all, you have to understand, the Steps are about compassion, not punishment. The Steps can be the start of cultivating loving compassion toward ourselves. Personally, it was liberating to discover that my very vulnerability, that uncomfortable sensation of being exposed, is actually the bridge to deeper connections to myself and others. It’s called emotional safety, and what that means is dropping the shame and the sham and committing to being as translucent as possible. And now, all these years after my first Fifth Step, emotional safety and genuine intimacy is the norm among the circle of my dearest friends.

Love,

Eddie

The 12 Steps for Everyone [Step 2]

¡Hola! Everybody...
As promised, here’s the second installment (the first can be found here) of my proposed series, “The 12 Steps For Everyone” series. This year, I’ve committed to doing step work with a new sponsor. It’s an ongoing process...

* * *

-=[ Hope ]=-

We came to believe that a power higher than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

-- Step Two

As anyone who’s acquainted with my writing knows, I am an addict in recovery. I’ve been clean, one day at a time (sometimes one breath at a time LOL), for almost 20 years. Herein you will find my strengths, hopes, and experiences on one of the 12 steps of Narcotics Anonymous. What follows is a narrative of my journey toward wholeness. I don’t know if this will work for you, but if you were to ask me, this is how I recovered my life. My story is extreme and you might find it hard to identify with some of its elements. All I ask is that you try to identify with and not compare my story. Listen to the message and not the mess.

I believe all people can benefit from a rigorous application of the 12 steps.

So we take a thorough First Step and what happens? We’re stuck in a bad place! I mean, c’mon now, coming to the full and painful realization that my way of doing things was fundamentally fucked up isn’t a nice space. Furthermore, my bottom had me staring at the very real possibility of a long prison sentence.

Talk about despair.

The first time I read this step, I literally walked away from Narcotics Anonymous. My understanding at that time of the core principle of this step, faith, caused me to filter this step through a bias. I am not a religious person, nor do I believe in a paternal God-in-the-sky dogma. And as I continued reading down the steps, I kept seeing the “God” word and Higher Power and I decided then that it was bullshit. Consequently, I went through the five worst years of my life. The second issue I had with this step was the implication that I was insane – restore us to sanity. When I came back to NA, I did so with a more open mind.

But still…

My sponsor at the time suggested that I simply commit to keeping an open mind and to make this process a personal search. The beauty of Narcotics Anonymous is that the fellowship doesn’t demand you do anything. There are no “thou shalts,” no “shoulds.” As part of taking this step, my sponsor suggested I take a close reading and learn the terms. One of the first things I liked about the step the second time around was how it starts, “came… ” and then, “came to… ,” then, “came to believe… ” In a very real way I was finally coming to my senses -- awakening. The opposite of despair is hope and hope is what the Second Step offered me.

Faith was a hard score to settle, but there are enough agnostics and even atheists who are recovering addicts because the Twelve Steps allow for a kind of spiritual democracy. You do not have to do anything, or join any religion. You do not even have to apply the steps. They are suggestions and since whenever I followed my own suggestions, I usually arrived at a destination that brought tremendous suffering, I figured it was time for me to listen to some alternative suggestions.

There are many different meanings of faith. At one extreme, there is the more common understanding of faith as blind faith, but that’s just one way of looking at faith. There are degrees of faith. In fact, we all have daily moments of faith and belief. We have faith, for example, that when we turn on the spigot, water will flow. We have faith that our car will start, or that a toaster will work. We also have many beliefs. We believe, for example, that we have a personality. Actually, many of us believe we are our personality, but there’s no brain center that organizes personality. Your personality is a set of beliefs and quirks that you constructed in order to operate in the everyday world. Scientists have faith in reason and logic to solve problems.

Shit, some of us believe that if we shove money inside of hole in the wall, a bag of dope will materialize. LOL! I’m not kidding. Back in the day, the way you copped drugs was that you’d stick your hand with your money in a hole and a hand with bag would come out. I had complete faith in that transaction! LOL

Early on, faith for me had to mean a temporary suspension of disbelief. What that means is that I made an agreement with myself to keep an open mind. Sometimes faith can mean trust. I came to believe that the spiritual principles of hope, freedom and willingness would restore me to sanity. And believe me, by the second time around, I knew I was insane. I have been studying human behavior for over a decade now, and the best definition of insanity I have come across is doing the same actions and expecting different results.

Even an infant knows better not to stick his hand in the socket after the first go-round. But yet we as adults oftentimes commit the same behaviors -- especially in the area of relationships -- expecting different results.

Sometimes faith can mean trust in a teaching, or self-confidence. As a Buddhist, my Higher Power is the Dharma (The Law), a clearly defined set of ethical and cognitive principles. In sports, a group can develop faith in their ability as a team to overcome everybody’s expectations. In that same way, I came to believe that the fellowship and principles of Narcotics Anonymous could restore me to sanity. Why? Because people all around me were taking back their lives. People were helping heal themselves and one another. I have been to NA meetings where a particular individual cried because she couldn’t pay her rent, then see her cry once again several months later because she was able to pay her rent.

Initially, my Higher Power was the group -- that what I couldn’t do alone we could do together. Eventually, my spirituality would evolve and I would come to embrace Buddhism as my path. The historical Buddha didn’t make any claims to divinity and his last words, as he lay dying (of all things, food poisoning) were, “… be a lamp unto yourself.” What that means to me is that ultimately, you must walk your path. It means that sayings, scriptures, or instructions alone will not save you. Ultimately, if you want to awaken, to come to your full realization as a human being, you must walk your path -- whatever that path entails.

And that’s what the second step helped me begin. It helped begin to walk the walk, trusting in my experience that I could be restored to sanity by a power greater than myself.

Love,

Eddie

The 12 Steps for Everyone [Step 1]

¡Hola! Everybody...
So, I began this series last year and I think I stopped at Step Four. I’m going to revive this and see if I can finish it out.

* * *

-=[ Surrender ]=-

“We admitted we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.”

-- The First Step of Narcotics Anonymous

This is for all those who still suffer needlessly, not knowing there is a way out. To you I offer my gratitude and love...

Every month, I will post my strengths, hopes, and experiences on one of the 12 steps of Narcotics Anonymous. What follows is a narrative of my journey toward healing. I don’t know if this will work for you, but if you were to ask me, this is how I recovered my life. My story is a narrative of a life lived on the edge -- extreme -- and you might find it hard to identify with some of its elements. All I ask is that you try to identify with and not compare my story. Listen to the message and not the mess.

I believe all people can benefit from a rigorous application of the 12 steps and I offer this in the spirit of hope.

The First Step confronted me with two problematic words: powerless and unmanageable. I also didn’t notice at first that every step began with the word “We.” I was a loner; “we” wasn’t a word I used much. Everything was about me. They say an addict is an egomaniac with low self-esteem, and I believe that was how I felt.

Let me just say that 12-step recovery is about action. Every step involves growth, exploration, and action. I think people have huge misconceptions about 12-Step Fellowships. People in recovery like to say that the first step is the only step you have to get perfectly. I disagree, recovery is an ongoing process, and my understanding of the first step expands as I grow. However, there is a level of acceptance necessary for the integration of this step. But I get ahead of myself…

There are several powerful psycho-spiritual factors at work in the first step. Primarily, there is an admission. Admitting to a problem has become a popular notion in our culture that first came to prominence in the recovery community. Admitting touches on the first spiritual principle of the first step: honesty. However, admitting means nothing without acceptance. For example, I had no problem admitting I was an addict; I could be honest about that. LOL! That and $2 got me on the train, which is another way of saying that admitting by itself it was worthless. It wasn’t until I embraced another core spiritual principle of the first step, acceptance, that I was then able to make changes in my life.

The more meetings I made, the more I heard my own story from the lips of others who were honest about themselves. I began to see that I had a lot in common with these people when it came to my relationship to addiction. It took me a long time to come to grips with powerlessness. I was raised to think of myself as powerful. I was taught that if I exerted my will on any issue, that I could overcome anything in the world. If I had enough cojones and worked hard enough, I could have power over anything.

Besides, it wasn’t my addiction that was the problem, it was everyone else. If only other people got their shit together and external situations in my life mended themselves, I wouldn’t be in such a fix. The problem with my thinking was that it involved exerting willpower. The problem with my willpower was that it was warped. The more willpower I exerted, the more I fucked up. I tried everything: using only on the weekends, snorting instead of using needles, drinking instead of using other drugs, using only certain drugs in certain combinations, etc. No matter what I tried, I always ended up in the same place: all fucked up.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything begins to look like a nail. For me to begin my journey, I first had to surrender. In fact, as I look back now, the whole process of recovery is one long, beautiful, liberating process of surrendering.

For me, the first step is like the beginning of a hero’s journey. In the archetype of the hero, most heroes begin reluctantly, and then forces beyond their control propel them past their everyday lives into a journey of personal change and renewal. Like most addicts, I was unaware of aspects of myself -- my feelings, for example, and the wreckage I was creating. The first step was a tool I could use in my quest for self-knowledge.

Admitting to powerlessness took me years; accepting that admission brought me to the gateway of healing and sanity. That was also about another core spiritual principle: willingness. It’s often called the HOW (honesty, openness, and willingness) of recovery.

The first step is not about defeat. It says powerlessness, not hopelessness. We have no power over many things. Take the weather, for example. You can’t stop the rain, but if you take the time to stop, look, and listen, you may come to realize that using an umbrella is a lot better that railing against the elements. We have no power over how others act or think yet we spend enormous amounts of time and energy trying to exert control over other people. We don’t even have power over our own emotions, but we can learn to relate to them differently.

The first step is really about admitting powerlessness over living in the extremes. Try fighting the rain, or better yet, a hurricane, and you’ll get a sense of what it is to fight addiction. You have to surrender.

As part of taking the first step, you take an inventory of the consequences of your addiction. For me this meant documenting the jobs I lost, the people I hurt, and most of all, the harm I did to myself. In this way, I could no longer deny the unmanageability of life as an active addict. This was a hard nut to crack because I never wanted to admit my life was unmanageable. I had it together, I liked to think, I just went a little overboard sometimes.

I also discovered the insanity of the obsession that led to the compulsion and how my fight would be fruitless until I surrendered. If you’re fighting an inner war, then someone has to lose. If you’re fighting an inner war, it follows, you will always lose.

Taking the first step clearly showed me that my thinking had little connection to reality. There were countless times, for example, that I would experience a blackout. With a blackout, you can sit down one minute and the next thing you know you missed an entire episode of your life -- while conscious. It’s like what a time jumper would feel. One minute you’re in one place and the next, you’re somewhere else and you don’t know what the fuck is going on. One time I came out of a blackout, I had a whole party-full of people wanting to kick my ass, and I had no clue why. It seems I propositioned the bride-to-be (it was an engagement party) and that kinda pissed a few people off. I once came out of a blackout in a different state and different year! LOL! Still I couldn’t admit my powerlessness. It wasn’t that something was wrong with me, it was those damned stuck up muthafuckas, and besides, I know that bitch wanted me.

Most of all, the first step is the beginning of the undoing of the karmic consequences of denial. I had to be brought my knees -- from hopelessly addicted to institutions and even close to death -- and still I wouldn’t admit my powerlessness. There was definitely a lot of evidence of unmanageability in my life. Shit, I attempted suicide at least once. What “normal” person can say that? More than anything, I was addicted to insanity.

Oh, and yes, I’ve kicked more habits than I can remember. I just could never stay stopped. Addiction, I soon learned, was not about using. I would get “clean” and chill for six-seven months, but when I started again, it was as if I never stopped. My last day as an active addict, I had spent $300 and I was on the street (released from an institution) exactly fourteen days. I went from clean to a $300-a-day habit at the drop of a hat. I would say that’s unmanageable...

However, there are other ways our powerlessness and unmanageability can manifest itself. Whether it’s food or cigarettes, or relationships, I think we can all look where we’re slowly killing ourselves, or causing ourselves and our loved ones harm. I believe we all can identify with the need to exert control and the denial of powerlessness. I use my life as an example because the extreme manner in which I lived makes it easier to illustrate my points, but we all have the dark places where we butt our heads.

Today, I apply the first step to many things in my life, especially in relationships and to certain behaviors. Addictions like to migrate. You might be able to kick the heroin or the alcohol, but then you see people acting out sexually or financially. If you don’t do the work, then you’ll continue to be in the grips of addictive behavior. The first step stipulated that I was powerless over my addiction. Addiction is not about a substance, but about a way of thinking.

Eventually, I began to think of the first step as something similar to the concepts of Aikido or Wing Chun, two martial arts that stress the importance of never meeting force with force. In a sense, the first step is about learning to flow with the forces of life instead of fighting all the time. It’s learning to transform difficult emotions into opportunities for healing. It’s knowing that you can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

Love,

Eddie

Resources

Alcoholics Anonymous: Official website

Narcotics Anonymous: Official website

Recovery USA, llc: Recovery USA, llc is an online resource for those seeking recovery information, community connections, and high-quality 12 Step Recovery Supplies for Alcoholism and Drug Addiction.

Sober Recovery: The Alcoholism and Addictions Resource Guide. "Our Sober Community is always open 24 hours a day with helpful moderators in our message boards and Sober Forums."

Alano: "The Online Alano Club is a nonprofit association intended as a resource for Alcoholics Anonymous® members and groups, as well as any individual who has a desire to stop drinking. Members from other 12-Step programs, especially the Al-Anon Family Groups, also are welcome."

12 Step Radio: A great site for Recovery Music, Artist Interviews, Online Communities, Links and Resources, and more...

Note: The featured artwork is from an artist who sells the prints online. I happen to like them. His website features prints of all the 12 steps.

Surrender (The First Step)

¡Hola! Everybody...
So, I began this series last year and I think I stopped at Step Four. I’m going to revive this and see if I can finish it out. I’ll be gone all day working with the women at Rikers Island... Y’all be good, now! LOL

* * *

This is for all those who still suffer needlessly, not knowing there is a way out. To you I offer my gratitude and love...

Every month, I will post my strengths, hopes, and experiences on one of the 12 steps of Narcotics Anonymous. What follows is a narrative of my journey toward healing. I don’t know if this will work for another, but if you were to ask me, this is how I recovered my life. My story is a narrative of a life lived on the edge -- extreme -- and you might find it hard to identify with some of its elements. All I ask is that you try to identify with and not compare my story. Listen to the message and not the mess.

I believe all people can benefit from a rigorous application of the 12 steps and I offer this in the spirit of hope.

-=[ Surrender ]=-

“We admitted we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.”

-- The First Step of Narcotics Anonymous

In the first step, I came across two words I had some issues with: powerless and unmanageable. I also didn’t notice at first that every step began with the word “We.” I was a loner; “we” wasn’t a word I used much. Everything was about me. They say an addict is an egomaniac with low self-esteem, and I believe that was how I felt.

Let me just say that 12-step recovery is about action. Every step involves growth, exploration, and action. I think people have huge misconceptions about 12-Step Fellowships. People in recovery like to say that the first step is the only step you have to get perfectly. I disagree, recovery is an ongoing process, and my understanding of the first step expands as I grow. However, there is a level of acceptance necessary for this step. But I get ahead of myself…

There are several powerful psycho-spiritual factors at work in the first step. First, there is an admission. Admitting to a problem has become a popular notion in our culture that first came to prominence in the recovery community. Admitting touches on the first spiritual principle of the first step: honesty. However, admitting means nothing without acceptance. For example, I had no problem admitting I was an addict; I could be honest about that! LOL That and $2 got me on the train, which is another way of saying that by itself it was worthless. It wasn’t until I embraced another core spiritual principle of the first step, acceptance, that I was then able to make changes in my life.

The more meetings I made, the more I heard my own story from the lips of others who were honest about themselves. I began to see that I had a lot in common with these people when it came to my relationship to addiction. It took me a long time to come to grips with powerlessness. I was raised to think of myself as powerful. I was taught that if I just exerted my will on any issue, that I could overcome anything in the world. If I had enough cojones and worked hard enough, I could have power over anything.

Besides, it wasn’t my addiction that was the problem, it was everyone else! If only other people got their shit together, and external situations in my life mended themselves, I wouldn’t be in such a fix. The problem with my thinking was that it involved exerting willpower. The problem with my willpower was that it was warped. The more willpower I exerted, the more fucked up my life became. I tried everything: using only on the weekends, snorting instead of using needles, drinking instead of using other drugs, using only certain drugs in certain combinations, etc. No matter what I tried, I always ended up in the same place: all fucked up.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything begins to look like a nail. For me to begin my journey, I first had to surrender. In fact, as I look back now, the whole process of recovery is one long, beautiful, liberating process of surrendering.

For me, the first step is like the beginning of a hero’s journey. In the archetype of the hero, most heroes begin reluctantly, and then forces beyond their control propel them past their everyday lives into a journey of personal change and renewal. Like most addicts, I was unaware of aspects of myself -- my feelings, for example, and the wreckage I was creating. The first step was a tool I could use in my quest for self-knowledge.

Admitting to powerlessness took me years.

Accepting that admission brought me to the gates of healing and sanity. That was also about another core spiritual principle: willingness. It’s often called the HOW (honesty, openness, and willingness) of recovery.

The first step is not about defeat. It says powerlessness, not hopelessness. We have no power over many things. Take the weather, for example. You can’t stop the rain, but if you take the time to stop, look, and listen, you may come to realize that using an umbrella is a lot better that railing against the elements. We have no power over how others act or think, but yet we spend enormous amounts of time and energy trying to exert control over other people. We don’t even have power over our own emotions, but we can learn to relate to them differently.

The first step is really about admitting powerlessness over living in the extremes. Try fighting the rain, or better yet, a hurricane, and you’ll get a sense of what it is to fight addiction. You have to surrender.

As part of taking the first step, you take an inventory of the consequences of your addiction. For me this meant documenting the jobs I lost, the people I hurt, and most of all, the harm I did to myself. In this way, I could no longer deny the unmanageability of life as an active addict. This was a hard nut to crack because I never wanted to admit my life was unmanageable. I had it together, I used to like to think, I just went a little overboard sometimes.

I also discovered the insanity of the obsession that led to the compulsion and how my fight would be fruitless until I surrendered. If you're fighting an inner war, then someone has to lose. If you're fighting an inner war, it follows, you will always lose.

Taking the first step clearly showed me that my thinking had nothing to do with reality. There were countless times, for example, that I would experience a blackout. With a blackout you can sit down one minute and the next thing you know you missed an entire episode of your life – while awake. It’s like what a time jumper would feel. One minute you’re in one place and the next, you’re somewhere else and you don’t know what the fuck is going on. One time I came out of a blackout and I had a whole party-full of people wanting to kick my ass and I had no clue why. It seems I propositioned the bride-to-be (it was an engagement party) and that kinda pissed a few people off. I once came out of a blackout in a different state and different year! LOL!

And still I couldn’t admit my powerlessness. It wasn’t that something was wrong with me, it was those damned stuck up ma’fuccas, and besides, I know that bitch wanted me! Most of all, the first step is the beginning of the doing away of denial. I had to be brought my knees -- a hopeless addict and then to institutions and even close to death -- and still I wouldn’t admit my powerlessness. There was definitely a lot of evidence of unmanageability in my life. Shit, I attempted suicide at least once. What “normal” person can say that? More than anything, I was addicted to insanity.

Oh, and yes, I’ve kicked more habits than I can remember. I just could never stay stopped. Addiction, I soon learned, was not about using. I would get “clean” and chill for six-seven months, but when I started again, it was as if I never stopped. My last day as an active addict, I had spent $300 and I was on the street (released from an institution) fourteen days. So I went from clean to a $300-a-day habit at the drop of a hat. I would say that’s unmanageable, don’t you? LOL

However, there are other ways our powerlessness and unmanageability can manifest itself. Whether it’s food or cigarettes, or relationships, I think we can all look where we’re slowly killing ourselves. I believe we all can identify with the need to exert control and the denial of powerlessness. I use my life as an example because the extreme manner in which I lived makes it easier to illustrate my points, but we all have the dark places where we butt our heads.

Today, I apply the first step to many things in my life, especially in relationships and with certain behaviors. Addictions like to migrate. You might be able to kick the heroin or the alcohol, but then you see people acting out sexually or financially. If you don’t do the work, then you’ll continue to be in the grips of addictive behavior. The first step stipulated that I was powerless over my addiction. Addiction is not about a substance, but about a way of thinking.

In the end, I began to think of the first step as something similar to the concepts of Aikido or Wing Chun, two martial arts that stress the importance of never meeting force with force. In a sense, the first step is about learning to flow with the forces of life instead of fighting all the time. It’s learning to transform difficult emotions into opportunities for healing. It’s knowing that you can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

Love,

Eddie

Resources:

Alcoholics Anonymous: Official website

Narcotics Anonymous: Official website

Recovery USA, llc: Recovery USA, llc is an online resource for those seeking recovery information, community connections, and high-quality 12 Step Recovery Supplies for Alcoholism and Drug Addiction.

Sober Recovery: The Alcoholism and Addictions Resource Guide. Our Sober Community is always open 24 hours a day with helpful moderators in our message boards and Sober Forums.

Alano: The Online Alano Club is a nonprofit association intended as a resource for Alcoholics Anonymous® members and groups, as well as any individual who has a desire to stop drinking. Members from other 12-Step programs, especially the Al-Anon Family Groups, also are welcome.

NA/AA Recovery Zone: NA AA Recovery Zone is dedicated Recovering Alcoholics and Addicts. Site features NA and AA Page, 12-Step meeting lists, Recovery Tools, Personal Stories, Recovery Links and Recovery Downloads.

12 Step Radio: A great site for Recovery Music, Artist Interviews, Online Communities, Links and Resources, and more...

The Twelve Steps for Everybody: Step Two

CONGRATS GIANTS!!

* * *

Every first Monday of the month, I will post my strengths, hopes, and experiences on one of the 12 steps of Narcotics Anonymous. What follows is a narrative of my journey toward healing. I don’t know if this will work for another, but if you were to ask me, this is how I recovered my life. My story is quite extreme and you might find it hard to identify with some of its elements. All I ask is that you try to identify with and not compare my story. Listen to the message and not the mess.

I believe all people can benefit from a rigorous application of the 12 steps and I offer this in the spirit of hope.

-=[ Faith ]=-

We came to believe that a power higher than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

The first time I read this step, I literally walked away from Narcotics Anonymous. My understanding at that time of the core principle of this step, faith, caused me to filter this step through a bias. I am not a religious person, nor do I believe in a paternal God-in-the-sky dogma. And as I continued reading down the steps, I kept seeing the “God” word and Higher Power and I decided then that it was bullshit. As a consequence, I went through the five worst years of my life. The second issue I had with this step was the implication that I was insane – restore us to sanity. When I came back to NA, I did so with a more open mind.

But still…

My sponsor at the time suggested that I commit to keeping an open mind and to make this a personal search. The beauty of Narcotics Anonymous is that the fellowship doesn’t demand you do anything. There are no “thou shalts,” no “shoulds.” As part of taking this step, my sponsor suggested I take a close reading and learn the terms. One of the first things I liked about the step the second time around was how it starts, “I came… ” and then, “came to… ,” then, “came to believe… ” In a very real way I was finally coming to my senses -- awakening.

Faith was a hard score to settle, but there are enough agnostics and even atheists who are recovering addicts because the Twelve Steps allow for a kind of spiritual democracy. You do not have to do anything, or join any religion. You do not even have to apply the steps.

There are many different meanings of faith. At one extreme, there is the more common understanding of faith as blind faith, but that’s just one way of looking at faith. There are degrees of faith. In fact, we all have daily moments of faith and belief. We have faith, for example, that when we turn on the spigot, water will flow. We have faith that our car will start, or that a toaster will work. We also have many beliefs. We believe, for example, that we have a personality. Actually, many of us believe we are our personality, but there’s no brain center that organizes personality. Your personality is a set of beliefs and quirks that you constructed in order to operate in the everyday world.Even scientists have faith in reason and logic to solve problems.

Shit, some of believe that if we shove money inside of hole in the wall a bag of dope will materialize! LOL! I’m not kidding. Back in the day, the way you copped drugs was that you’d stick your hand with your money in a hole and a hand with bag would come out. I had complete faith in that transaction! LOL!

Early on, faith for me had to mean a temporary suspension of disbelief. What that means is that I made an agreement with myself to keep an open mind. Sometimes faith can mean trust. I came to believe that the spiritual principles of hope, freedom and willingness would restore me to sanity. And believe me, by the second time around, I knew I was insane. I have been studying human behavior for over a decade now, and the best definition of insanity I have come across is doing the same actions and expecting different results.

Even an infant knows better not to stick his hand in the socket after the first go-round. But yet we as adults oftentimes commit the same behaviors -- especially in the area of relationships -- and expect different results.

Sometimes faith can mean trust in a teaching, or self-confidence. As a Buddhist, my Higher Power is the Dharma (The Law), a set of ethical and cognitive principles. Yesterday, the Giants had faith in their ability as a team to overcome everybody’s expectations. In that same way, I came to believe that the fellowship and principles of Narcotics Anonymous could restore me to sanity. Why? Because people all around me were taking back their lives. People were helping heal themselves and one another. I have been to NA Meetings where a particular individual cried because she couldn’t pay her rent, then see her cry once again several months later because she was able to pay her rent.

So, in the beginning, my Higher Power was the group -- that what I couldn’t do alone we could do together. Eventually, my spirituality would evolve and I would come to embrace Buddhism as my path. The historical Buddha didn’t make any claims to divinity and his last words, as he lay dying (of all things, food poisoning) were, “… be a lamp unto yourself.” And what that means is that ultimately, you must walk your path. It means that sayings, scriptures, or instructions will alone will not save you. Ultimately, if you want to awaken, to fully experience you human birthright, you must walk your path -- whatever that path entails.

And that’s what the second step helped me begin. It helped begin to walk the walk, trusting in my experience that I could be restored to sanity by a power greater than myself.

Love,

Eddie