It takes a long time

It takes a long time to become young. - Picasso
That is a good summary of my experience in AA.  As I mentioned in my reply to Maggie Lamond Simone, while it is possible to use AA as a sort of post-detox, a way to learn how to 'just don't drink', if a person limits their AA practice to that they are cheating themselves.  Basically, that makes being a dry drunk the goal and, while that's better than being a wet drunk, it still sucks.

Anonymity and shame

Maggie Lamond Simone recently published a column on the Huffington Post suggesting that AA drop the 12th Tradition, anonymity, and rename ourselves something like Alcoholics In Recovery.

Surrender and the Glad Gesthemane

We all know that the first three Steps are about surrender, culminating in our decisions to turn our wills and our lives over to our Higher Powers.  I, for one, frequently forget the progression in surrender represented by those first three Steps.  Initially we let go of our faith in alcohol.  For a long time we've known that our dear friend alcohol was turning our lives into pain filled shells but we saw no other way of living so we stuck by the booze.  In the First Step we jump off into the unknown.  In a terrifying leap we abandon alcohol and see what else, if anything, there is out there.  In the Second Step we go further.  We acknowledge that there is something greater than ourselves that can save us.  We give up our self reliance and in our culture that is one huge surrender.  Then, in the Third Step we go beyond just asking for help in restoring us to sanity; we actually resolve to surrender our wills and our lives to a Higher Power (in other words, acknowledge that we aren't in control of our entire lives, not just alcohol).  Now we are the ones helping in the effort.  The heavy lifting is being done by the Higher Power we are surrendering to.

Stop runnin', varmint!

For years I have said that as active alcoholics we anesthetized ourselves, cutting ourselves off from the joy and pain of life.  I'm beginning to think that it might be better to say that as active alcoholics we were running and hiding from ourselves, and that the deep meaning of surrender is a willingness to stop, turn around, and face ourselves.  I say "a willingness to..." because we don't surrender once and have done with it; surrender is an attitude that has to be acted upon every day, all day.

Wishing and Willing

In Step 3 we decide to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him.  Most of us devote a lot of attention to the precise meanings of the word "God" in that sentence, point out the importance of the word "decide" and pretty much assume the words "will" and "lives" are understood.  This might be a serious oversight.

Meetings and meditation reinforce each other

The entire AA program is about personal transformation.  Soon after we enter the fellowship we realize that stopping drinking will never be enough; we have to become new people.  Going through the Steps gives us the solid framework for the transformation, but the transformation, the rewiring of our persons, only comes when it is hammered in through the repetition of meetings and the 10th, 11th, and 12th Steps.  Our trips through the Steps with our sponsors, at retreats, or in AWOLs tell us how we should view the world and behave, but that only becomes an ingrained part of us through repetition.  Spirituality has to become a habit and then grow into just how we are.

The Dark Night of the 12 Year Itch

I have written before about the '12 Year Itch', that dry spot people tend to hit when they reach double digit sobriety, often leading to a relapse.  I firmly believe that this is a sign that we are reaching a new stage in our spiritual growth, in facing ourselves and seeing what and who we are.  


My observation (admittedly of the limited sample of AAs I know)  is that this itch can take two forms, depending on the AA's program. (I'm generalizing here.  There are, of course, exceptions to this pattern.)  For those who have spent 10 or so years 'just going to meetings and not drinking' it is a spiritual depression that almost always leads to a relapse, usually lasting years.  For those who have been seriously working the steps it leads to a deeply felt spiritual crisis that often includes a short but nonetheless extremely painful relapse, sometimes lasting as little as a few days.  This crisis is characterized by a feeling of confusion and loss and the experience that the program just isn't working. The AA is resolved to renew their spiritual journey but is usually at a loss as to how.  (Hint: You're REALLY ready for very hard, temporarily unsatisfying Step 11 work and a Step 12 that organically grows out of 11.)


As I have said before, this type of crisis is a known stage in the spiritual path, one that has been written about in popular literature (for example, Willam Styron's Darkness Visible) as well as in all of the great spiritual traditions.  In the Christian mystical traditions is often referred to as the Dark Night of the Sense and of the Soul.

I am not my ego but my ego thinks it's me

One of the gifts of the 11th Step is a gradual (at least for me) realization that I am not my thoughts, emotions, character defects, character assets, in short, all those things that constitutes what I normally refer to as my self.

This bundle of naughty and nice makes up what Thomas Keating calls the 'false self', constructed through our confusing happiness with the gratification of the instincts of the child: security, power/control, affection/esteem, and approval.  The false self promises happiness but leads us to a necessarily unfulfilled life, in my case one where I was constantly slightly pissed off at the world and every bit as fun to be around as that implies.  But meditation shows me, in a very real, direct way, that while I have these characteristics they are not what I am.

Meetings are good; the 11th Step is essential

Last night an AA I recently met told me that he tried to stop drinking for 23 years.  All that time he came to AA meetings and followed the advice he kept getting: "Just don't drink and come to meetings."  He kept pointing out to people that this wasn't exactly working for him and the reply was pretty much always "keep coming back."  Finally someone suggested that he try working the Steps.  For 23 years the only tool he was offered was meetings.  Using the Steps he has now been sober for 5 years.

The dangers of sponsorship

Over the last 6 months or so a friend and I have grown into a 'co-sponsorship' relationship.  He had decided to go through the Steps again and wanted a fresh perspective on them and I need someone to slap me around a little when I let unemployment get me depressed.  It's funny, because we both have sponsors, but this sort of arrangement on these particular issues just seems to work.
This morning I sent my friend some comments on his working of the 3rd Step and it got me thinking about just how careful we have to be when sponsoring.

11th Step thoughts

Dave's posting on the Third Step and the Noble Eight Fold path has gotten me to thinking about the role of the 11th Step in the spiritual path of AA.  The connection is simple: when I think of Buddhism I think of meditation.
My home group meets at 6 AM and about 5 or 6 months ago we started holding a short meditation session in a separate room 20 minutes before the main meeting.  Now, admittedly 5:40 is a bit early, but it is striking that of the 50 - 70 people we get at the 6 AM meeting only 3 - 5 usually show up for the meditation.  I don't think we've ever had more than 7.  That strikes me as a pretty low figure.

Some 10th Step Questions on Gratitude

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have some problems with gratitude. Simply put, I take most of the world and my life for granted and I don't spontaneously see the enormous gifts I receive.  Now, recognizing the problem and finding a way to address it are two very different things. I looked around for a while and finally found a suggestion that I ask myself three questions at the end of the day as part of my 10th Step daily review:

What have I received today?

What have I given today?

What difficulties have I caused?

The Steps in Later Sobriety

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I am troubled by my lack of Gratitude.  The simple fact is that all life is a gift and I just have trouble seeing it that way.  Having a spiritual problem, I turned to the 12 Steps for help and looking at them with a problem like this in mind got me to thinking.  It strikes me that the Steps as outlined in the Big Book are fantastic tools identifying the presence of defects of character but they are less helpful in identifying the lack of character assets.  So I can assemble a pretty good list of my resentments, but not of my gratitudes.

This blog was started with a posting by Dave about how sponsorship changes in later sobriety.  I'm wondering if a discussion of how the steps might change in later sobriety would be useful.

Our lives become prayer

I have mentioned in some of my comments on the Second and Third Steps that I think that it is useful to view people as 'practical polytheists', that is to say, in our practical, daily lives we in fact worship many Higher Powers, what I refer to as Gods and Idols, but many might prefer to call Higher and Lower Powers. In other words, we value, follow, even worship and pray to many things that we are powerless over, both positive and negative. Some examples would be the economy, others' opinions of us, our jobs, money, justice, peace, love, security....the list goes on and on and differs from person to person.

Check Your Motivations

When I was in early sobriety I went through times, like most people, where I was full of confusion and indecision. I was unsure of about how to act in certain situations, where I could safely go, and which of my old friends I could spend time with without being in danger. I was given a pretty standard prescription from some old timers: "Dave, just check your motivations. You'll know pretty quickly whether or not you should go there." It seemed simple enough to do, except I couldn't quite get the hang of it. After years of Step work I now know why.

Bill's Boomerang

Every Thursday my home group discusses a reading from As Bill Sees It. This week we read "Boomerang" on page 185, where Bill describes how after his grandfather told him no-one but Australian Bushmen knew how to make and throw boomerangs he resolved to be the first American to do it. He worked at it for 6 months and finally succeeded.
What strikes me about the story is that Bill had no real interest in boomerangs, only in the attention and glory that would result from making and throwing one.

Love and the Fourth Step

There is a fascinating article, The Rigor of Love, by Simon Critchley in the August 9 New York Times. The essay is about the question of whether non-believers in a transcendent God can have faith. I will probably deal with his central concern in a later post but for today I'd like to think about one of the stepping stones he uses to get to his conclusion: Soren Kierkegaard's (Danish philosopher, 1813 - 1855) concept of Christian Love.

Being restored to sanity

When I was in early sobriety and trying to worrk the Steps for the first time in my life, I came face to face with Step 2. It took me months to navigate this mine field. In my mind there was no way I go on until I was willing to believe there even was a God.

Now mind you, everyone in AA was telling me I was trying to take off a much bigger bite than this Step requires. But nothing doing, I was going to "do it right dammit!". My problems were obviously bigger than my God at that time.

The 'innate violence' of modern life and the Third Step

A friend was telling me yesterday about how she felt overwhelmed by various forces in her life pulling her in a hundred different directions. She had so many things she had to do that she couldn't do anything. The resulting feeling of what I guess you could call besieged impotence had her parking in front of a liquor store, trying to decide whether to go in or to call another alkie. Luckily, she made the right decision. (Anyone wondering what the right decision was really needs to go to a meeting.)
One of the methods of execution used in medieval England was to tie the limbs of the victim to four horses and have them tear him apart. Our lives, or at least my life, can feel that way and it certainly seems like a good metaphor for what my friend was going through. I think I'm safe in saying that it's one of the worst feelings we regularly experience in today's world.

Two Spiritualities

In Finding God in All Things William Barry quotes John MacMurray as follows:

All religion...is concerned to overcome fear. We can distinguish real religion from unreal by contrasting their formulae for dealing with negative motivation. The maxim of illusory religion runs: "Fear not; trust in God and he will see that none of the things you fear will happen to you"; that of real religion, on the contrary, is "Fear not; the things that you are afraid of are quite likely to happen to you, but they are nothing to be afraid of."

I think this is a brilliant distinction and one that applies to some of the types of spiritualities we hear people express in meetings.