Tag: AA

#Gratitude

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I’ll be the first to admit, some of the phrases former alcoholics use can be pretty cringe-worthy. “Trudge the happy road”, “Sobriety is a gift”, “One day at a time”.  These platitudes got under my skin in early sobriety.  I found the distillation of such a difficult, important, and painful process undermining.  The one that bothered me most, though, had to be “gratitude”.

“Yes,” I thought, “I get it. I have a car, somewhere to live, that’s awesome. I have some good people around me, that’s awesome too. Why do I suddenly have to become someone that marvels at the freaking trees to be a good sober person?” Continue reading →

New Year’s Eve

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Last New Year’s Eve, I was just over three months into my sobriety.  Things had been difficult, but not excruciating.  I felt I was on my way, trudging the path with a fair amount of success- I hadn’t had a craving in weeks, and I felt sure that I was solid in my program and my sobriety.

I remember being both nervous and excited for NYE.  There has always been something special about New Year’s for me, such a promise held in that one second between this year and the next.  It was a new start, a clean slate- a new chapter of life awaiting, perfectly bookmarked by the beginning and end of a year.  It had always been a happy, celebratory time, and I thought that this year could still hold that same special place for me without drinking. Continue reading →

Possibilianism: Step Two

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Recovery is certainly a journey in personal growth and open-mindedness.  It asks us to be open, to be honest, and to evaluate our beliefs.  Step Two and the “power greater than ourselves” attempts a basis on a spiritual level.  This step is widely considered to be an important part of the foundation of the Twelve Steps.  It therefore became essential that I amend this step so that it could be built upon in a way that would work for my own program.  I do not believe in a higher power.  I tend to call myself an atheist, because it is usually the most effective way to answer the question I know the person is really asking: “Do you believe in God?”  I do not.  However, I do not consider myself an atheist at heart.  I am a Possibilian.

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The Worst Things

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I have this terrible habit when I sit in an AA meeting.  When someone is talking about when they used to drink, I instantaneously imagine them at their worst.  Did they drink in bars?  Drink at home straight from the bottle?  Did they try to hide it?  Did they throw things and get into fights?  Or did they sip white wine and cry while watching romantic comedies?  I’m not sure why I have this gut reaction.  Perhaps I’m a bad person- a carnivore for human suffering.  Or maybe I just wonder if they were worse than me.

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Changing: Step One

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As I mentioned in a previous post, rewriting the twelve steps of AA was an incredibly important part of my initial sobriety.  I found the general process of the steps potentially helpful, but saw some major flaws in its execution.  It seemed to me that taking the steps as-written could potentially take an already desperate, broken individual and take them down even further into self-pity and hopelessness than they had already gone.  The original steps included things like “admitting powerlessness” (Step 1), naming every single one of your “character defects” (Step 6), and eventually doing a nightly inventory of each time you were selfish, self-centered, or dishonest that day (Step 10).  For my own sobriety, these were not exercises I needed to be doing to begin to regain self-confidence and self-respect.  Luckily, there were resources available that would allow me to carefully examine each step and rework each one to better empower and enlighten. Continue reading →

AA Without a Higher Power

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As an atheist, my first foray into AA’s rooms was not one of interest, but one of desperation.  After exploring avenues of virtual support, I decided I needed some face-to-face accountability.  Politics about AA aside, I was interested in facing the difficult questions I would have to ask myself as a result of the steps.  I was hopeful, but also skeptical.  AA’s program is heavily built upon a “higher power”, and this was one aspect I was entirely uninterested in.

AA has, undoubtedly, become the most prominent source of help and support for alcoholics all over the world.  So what happens when your own beliefs don’t fit in with the “higher power” mantra?  Is it worth it?  Can the program work if you don’t believe in god? Continue reading →