Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
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Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. From The Big Book From the Big Book – Step 9: “Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” After facing yourself, your past and the wrongs, identifying what needs to be fixed….then time to fix them, if possible. Unless fixing them would directly injure others further. I spent 8 months as a counselor intern in what I’ll call a ‘recovery center’ for lack of a better word. It was a place where people socialize, attend AA meditation meetings and attend groups oriented toward personal growth. This was a time when I practiced group facilitation and individual counseling but mostly it was to learn more about myself to see if I would make a good counselor. And to see if I even wanted to do it. I did enjoy it but it was a tough time: doing an internship in addition to normal work hours is hard enough but one designed to make you face your inner self….? Extremely hard and discouraging at times. Also very rewarding. The internship finished the beginning of May and I was invited back today to see everyone and to attend a special luncheon centered around 3 AA speakers. As usual the group setting, the speakers and the comradeship were inspirational; I realized what I had been missing the last 2 months – security in a group. Some notable thoughts from the meeting (paraphrased): “You’ll never have it all so once you learn to celebrate your life and be thankful for what you do have, you will be happy.” “You do not go through the 12 steps just once, you make them part of your life and use them every day.” “We, alone, are responsible for taking drugs and drinking. No one is forcing us to do it.” “Drinking is done to fill the ‘black hole’. The problem is it’s bottomless.” “Start drinking for self medication and watch everything of value in your life slowly vanish until you have nothing.” Make a list of all persons we had harmed, and prepare to make amends to them all. From the Big Book (paraphrased) Step 8 is done after facing oneself truthfully and really learning to like ourselves again. It’s an appreciation of who we are gained by handing over the burden to a higher power. Now is the time to make amends with others…to repair all those relationships damaged or destroyed by drugs or alcohol. The best way to approach this is to break the list up into distinct categories and hit them one by one. This way an entire history and past does not need to be tackled all at the same time – deal with it in small, manageable chunks. I look back on my posts and I find I’m even depressing myself at times…. Yes, there is tragedy here in the posts – ‘Jerry, The Addict’, Tom, Len, Derek…. and the list could go for miles. Yes, I’m just a link in the chain and as such I may never see much success. So here is a success story… Doug has managed to overcome his weakness for whiskey, which he drank constantly for years. Whiskey brought out the ‘bad’ in Doug which meant several fights, several arrests and a rather serious motorcycle accident which left him with TBI, traumatic brain injury. However this never slowed him down. The day he killed someone in a bar with a baseball bat was the day he stopped drinking – mainly because it landed him in jail which turned into a prison sentence. No access to alcohol meant a rapid detox, extensive counseling and rehabilitation and lifelong AA group attendance. When Doug left prison he was remanded to a residential setting which meant more counseling, antipsychotic drugs and drugs to reduce his craving for alcohol such as Campral. He virtually had to be taught how to live independently once again and after years of therapy, Doug now lives alone but is still supported through the residential setting. He holds down a part-time job, shops, pays bills on time including rent and has a cat. He still takes his mood stabilizing and craving reducing drugs but has now made new friends; friends that would never have been made had he still been drinking. On the days that I work, Doug calls me several times for everything from looking for another apartment to how to cook something. He is a pleasure to talk to and I like Doug a lot. Doug is on his way to a very fulfilling life complete with genuine relationships…all without alcohol. Humbly ask God to remove your shortcomings. (From the Big Book) Steps 6 and 7 are taken hand in hand and dealt with day by day…the process of ‘letting go’ takes a while.
“We’re entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” All character defects have been honestly faced so now it is time to accept these character defects for what they are… Admitted to God, to ourselves, and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.Whoever actually has the courage to complete this step has guts… “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” This might look like a simple task but it is not… It is extremely difficult to come to terms with what you have done in the past which leads to what kind of person you actually are. And most importantly it is a life transition where you forgive yourself and start on the road to true recovery feeling better about yourself than you ever have before. |
 
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