Step One

[Kire]

"We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanagable" (NA version).



I'm interested in starting a discussion thread for each of the Twelve Steps. I think it would be a good resource for DU'ers to actively support each other and to refer back to along their path to recovery.

I'm working out of the Basic Text of Narcotics Anonymous, along with "It Works How and Why" and the "Step Working Guide". I have the Big Book and the "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" of Alcoholics Anonymous, too, so I'm reading out of them. These are the big ones for me, but please tell us what other books and pamphlets are helpful for each step.

I have a lot of years clean, but I honestly haven't had a sponsor or actively worked the steps in seven years. So, about two weeks ago, the insanity got so great that I recommitted myself. I have started 90 meetings in 90 days (I'm on Day 13 right now). I got a sponsor. I am calling people from the rooms everyday asking about the first step. I am reading about the first step in the books mentioned above over and over. I am doing it all very fast. I'm not taking the advice of "Easy Does It" in this respect, so a lot of the actual conversations go in one ear and out the other. I'm not used to using the phone because I've spent so many years on message boards like DU, so I thought I would start a discussion here as a supplement and hope that I could get as much out of it as any of the other sources. Maybe we could consider this group a "room". There are online meetings out there. I've even seen them in chat rooms.

As far as the other 11 steps, I am not just going to start a thread, state the words in the step and say "Discuss". I recommend that someone who is actually working that step start a thread on it, especially if they have anything to say, and definitely if they have questions. I don't suppose, then, that the second step has to be the next one to be made into a thread. But I also don't want someone who hasn't worked the higher steps to consider themselves "working that step" if they start posting there. And definitely don't use these threads as a substitute for a sponsor or a real life meeting (unless you're disabled or something). I don't know how all this will work, I suppose a group conscience is what's needed in that regard. The self correcting blogosphere in action.

So, this is what I have to say:

My sponsor tells me that Surrender is the key to the first step. A long time ago, I remember someone talking about the word "admission" in the rooms. I believe that is the key to surrender. Admitting the powerlessness and unmanagability into our lives. Not admitting more drugs or alcohol into our lives, but letting go of control. By using, we were certain that we didn't have a problem, so we used (or drank) to control our feelings of pain, despair or shame. By admitting the idea of powerlessness, like you are an usher at a movie theater, into our lives and applying it to ourselves is the first step towards recovery.

So that is what I've got so far. I know there is tons more. Please don't respond to only this little paragraph (I hope somebody does), but please offer something new to the discussion of the First Step. My life depends on it.

Thank You

[Kire]

1. self delete

[NMDemDist2]

2. i wanted to give this a kick for now

i'm fighting the summer cold from hell and don't want to respond until my head is clearer

hard to share when your head feels like it's full of crumpled brown paper :cry:

but i didn't forget you Kire and I think it's a great idea to do a "step study" in here! :bounce:

[xzyra]

3. how I did step 1

Hey there

I'm pretty new to the boards, but I have more than 1.5 yrs clean and sober, have worked all the steps and have a sponsor and sponsees, and my life is GREAT (when it was a complete wreck - I am a new person!), so I thought I'd chime in.

Here is how my sponsor took me through the first step.

First, before he agreed to work with me, he asked me if I was really done living the way I had been living, had enough pain, willing to go to any length to get sober? I had to make the admission that (1) I could no longer go on living the way I was, and (2) I would do *anything* -- ANYthing - anyTHING, to get sober.

Then it was suggested to me that I do whatever my sponsor said to do, which included making 90 meetings in 90 days, and calling my sponsor every day. No problem there. I showed up at meetings and called the guy. OK.

Shortly after that, it was suggested to me that if any part of my life was unmanageable, then by definition my life was unmanageable. This made sense to me. I agreed. Next!

Next, my sponsor told me to go through the AA big book, from the doctors opinion to page 164, looking for the word "must." I was to write out the complete sentence where the word was found, numbering them so I knew how many "musts" I had found.

When I had found all the "musts" (and there are a lot of them!) I had completed step 1.

It worked for me :) Hope this helps someone.

[NMDemDist2]

4. welcome to DU xyzra!

:hi:

and thanks for that great story on the 1st step!

[Kire]

5. I think I just did an emergency step one

So I started going to AA meetings this weekend, after 7 years of going to NA without working the program. There is so much more recovery in AA than NA, where there was so few people with more clean time than me in my area, and none of them wanted to be my sponsor.

Last night, this guy I met the night before told me to raise my hand. I introduced myself and said that I have been clean and sober for eight years, but I have schizophrenia and my self destructive behaviors (i.e. addictions) have gotten me in a hard place. I said I had a hard time believing that the voices in my head were my fault.

Okay, that was last night. This morning I went to a topic meeting. I shared basically the same thing and said "that's what I'd like to hear about" (famous last words). The first guy to share pointed out that AA is about alcohol and nobody in the rooms is an expert on anything else, they're just drunks. I was stunned. Not what I wanted to hear. Two people shared after that, and I got upset and I told the group, "I didn't mean to change the subject away from alcohol". The leader of the group said, just sit back and listen. And so I did.

Somebody pointed out that in the literature it says "There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest." Hey hey! There's something I needed to hear.

A few people shared how they were bipolar, and one or two had panic attacks like me. Okay, probably turned off the people who were there to recover from Alcoholism, I thought.

Then, a woman shared that she was mentally ill when she was a child, but she wasn't anymore. I pretty much laughed in her face, but she was sincere. Her capacity to be honest has given her the intuition to know that she knew more about her condition than any therapist or psychiatrist she encountered.

And so I'm digressing. Basically, the rest of today, I couldn't focus on any of those things except for the fact that I probably annoyed some people by changing the subject from Alcoholism.

Also, I went into the hospital around the corner this afternoon, looking to volunteer, totally expecting them to say "Great! Can you start tomorrow?" But that didn't happen. People in a hospital are very serious, I discovered. I tucked in my shirt, and I gave them my address and they said they would send me something in the mail.

I get home and I start to think. And I start to get upset. My sponsor told me he was too busy for me to call him this week, so I called this guy Charlie who offered to be my temporary sponsor if this guy doesn't work out. I left a message about sharing in the meeting and the whole hospital experience.

Twenty minutes later I called to take it all back, and he picked up the phone.

I found myself telling him, without intentionally trying to, that I was going to the AA meetings for help with my Schizophrenia. He said there are professionals for that, and it "turns guys off" in the meetings when people try that (whatever their mental illness).

We started talking about what it means to be an alcoholic, and I told him I haven't picked up without a program because I was afraid to. Not because I had a God in my life that lifted the obsession. So, he says I have to question whether I really am an Alcoholic. Do I have an inability to pick up the drink (or drugs). I thought really hard about when I first came into the rooms (and was first diagnosed) eight and a half years ago. I remembered that I couldn't stop smoking pot. My parents had to put me in a group home because I was still smoking pot even though I knew I was having delusions about my ex-girlfriend's brother's ghost (the letters I wrote were cause for a restraining order) and that I was "married" to a girl during a bad acid trip (but I couldn't see her because it wasn't safe). I was still smoking pot through all that. So I admit it. I am an Alcoholic (Charlie said that Pot is just alcohol in a smokable form). I am powerless. My life is unmanageable.

So, I think that was a first step, in a way. An emergency one. I could be wrong (that's why I said "I think I just did an emergency step one"). I think it sure beats the intellectual mumbo jumbo about the definition of "admission" in the OP.

I wonder what you all have to say.

[NMDemDist2]

6. "The only requirement is a desire to quit drinking"

but unless you were in immediate danger of drinking, a topic meeting may not have been the best place to broach the mental illness subject.

I know in most big cities there are AA meetings devoted to those with special needs and other problems. Perhaps you could call your Central Office and see if there are any of those speciality meetings in your area.

admitting you are powerless is only half of the first step but (please take this with the love I am feeling as I type it) it sounds like you are still trying to manage stuff pretty darn hard.

get a sponser who has some passing knowledge of mental health issues and keep coming back!

[Kire]

7. yeah, I guess

The nearest MICA (Mentally Ill Chemically Addicted) meeting is about 40 miles away. Somebody recommended that I go at least two times a month. I'm going to do that.

I have also heard it said that a sponsor is not a therapist, so I am hesitant to talk about this stuff with my sponsor (there I go managing things). He's new to me, but I will talk to him. I promise.

[xzyra]

8. It says in the big book

that when we straighten out spiritually, we straighten out physically and mentally as well.

That doesn't necessarily mean that you get off your psych meds - rather, when you are working a good spiritual program, other things automatically fall into place, e.g., you see your doctor, take your meds, life gets better.

In order to straighten out spiritually, the only thing you have to do is work the 12 steps with a good sponsor.

I agree with the previous suggestion that you might be working hard on managing your mental health. Try letting your Higher Power handle it for you.

Glad you are here! Glad you are working steps -- they are the key to recovery and a useful and whole life.

[northamericancitizen]

9. Humility...

I need to bend my head and say: I feel powerless, defeated. My overdevelopped brain is no help right now.

lise

I am right in the middle of the first sentence about step 1

[NMDemDist2]

10. the guy who 12 stepped me told me

"It's almost impossible to be too stupid to "get" AA, but it's real easy to be too smart to get AA."

He was afraid I've never make it, because I am intelligent and would try to "think it to death"

Literally


:hug: A day at a time, Lise, a minute or even a second at a time. Just don't drink or use. Not forever, just for today.

:grouphug: and you don't have to do it alone.

[demosincebirth]

11. I twelve-stepped an MD years ago...a really bad drunk.

It took him five years to finally reach the point where he realized that he wasn't God. He told me years later that his education and profession was an impediment for not getting sober years before. He thought, for years, that AA was too simple to work for him.

[NMDemDist2]

12. exactly! but just cuz it's simple doesn't make it easy does it??

:rofl:

but my experience tells me simple is best and the truth is usually simple

:hug:

[demosincebirth]

13. My situation was different (like many) in that I could always stop

drinking, but I could never stay stopped. I never gave sobriety a chance. After a couple of weeks of not drinking the thought came in my mind that " oh hell, it wasn't that bad." So, my alcoholism tricked me again and there I go again... off and running (so to speak), I go again.

The "truth" is truly simple, but for people of our type its like a carrot at the end of a stick. Thats why some of us have to be beat down so far that we see no hope of ever stopping drinking. Thats when God ( I believe) steps in and gives us a little ray of hope, or what some of us have experienced, "A moment of clarity." And for a very compressed period of time, we see Hope.

[NMDemDist2]

14. see I was different. I drank every day for 25 years

I knew I'd end up that skinny old broad with the huge belly who worked the 6AM-10AM shift at the local dive. I knew I was a alky, I just didn't know there was any other way.

When I finally heard about AA it gave me hope. Hope from seeing a worse drunk than I was who hadn't had a drink in over 6 years. He was a walking miracle.

I was willing to do ANYTHING, give up EVERYTHING to change how I felt and the life I was living. I truly was willing to go to any length!

and by the Grace of God, the fellowship of AA and my own willingness to hang in there no matter what, to do whatever it took, to work the steps on every problem and emotional insanity that came down the pike, I recently celebrated 14 years clean and sober, one day at a time.

I am a miracle too and if it worked for me it will work for you! :bounce:

[demosincebirth]

15. Thanks for sharing AZ.

I also "by the grace of God." Sober now 27 years.

[NMDemDist2]

16. ...

:hug:

[yardwork]

17. people with schizophrenia can be alcoholics, just like anyone else

Everybody comes into AA or any recovery program with their own collection of issues. The only thing we all have in common is our addiction. The desire to stop is the only requirement.

I've never met anyone in AA who was in perfect health *except* for their drinking. Most of us have a lot of other issues as well, some more difficult to deal with than others. I've met several people with schizophrenia in AA. Also, many people with bi-polar, depression, anxiety, not to mention every kind of physical ailment. People lose jobs, get divorced, experience the death of loved ones. Life just keeps slinging things at us!

Please keep coming back to AA meetings, keep talking and listening and meeting new people, keep working the steps, and keep doing what you need to do to keep your whole life healthy.

Hugs to you, and congratulations on your many years in sobriety! I passed the six year mark last April.