Topic Discussion: 1st Step study

[servicejunkie]

"We admitted we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanagable"

Please share your experience, strength, and hope regarding this step. :scratchch

[Moontime]

I thought I was just powerless over crack, coke, exctasy, herb. I had no idea I suffered from not a drug addiction but the disease of addiction. I blamed everything and everybody why I was an addict. "If your parents were divorced you'd be an addict too. If your father sold drugs, you'd be an addict too. If you were abused at a young age you'd be an addict too." I thought this for so long, not understanding that I wasn't ok with myself on any level, and that I had to take things from the outside and put them in me, so I could feel ok about myself. I suffer from a obsessive,compulsive, self-centered fear disorder.

[oxy-cleaned]

The whole concept of “manageability” helped to keep me in active use for over twenty years of my life. For twenty years I truly believed I was “managing” my use and my life – I graduated high school and college, traveled, gathered important life experiences, loved and was loved by my family, and had what I thought were healthy, productive relationships. I thought that if I could manage all of that, what harm was my drug use really doing? It was walking out of rehab into the bright light of day that I wondered with an intense and profound grief what my life would have been like if I had lived it some other way? What could I have accomplished if I hadn’t been a puppet to my addictions for so long? (I have given up my a$$-kicking machine since then).

It took my addiction finally bringing me to my knees and almost taking away from me everything I ever loved to accept the “unmanageability” of my life and my complete inability to maintain control over my addictions. The entire time I thought I was in control, my addiction was actually the one at the wheel. After treatment, and with some clean time behind me, I realized that my addiction was biding time and waiting in the shadows to kill me for years. My disease’s patience is scary. The whole time I thought I was managing my life and drug use, my disease was growing inside me and plotting my death. It uses the fiction of one managing one’s life while in active use to buy more time. This bought time allows it to progress and grow and gain unimaginable power and to chip away at the fabric of our lives. It will take us as low as we can imagine, but usually jails, institutions, and/or death are the inevitable conclusions. Some people hit bottom in weeks or months, and some people hit bottom after many years - just as cancer can kill some in a few weeks, and others live to fight for years. Whether we accept Step 1 sooner or later, our addictions are all the same. Our disease wants nothing but our total destruction and is willing to wait for as long as it takes, hiding and waiting behind the lie that we can manage our lives and our addictions.

Step 1 is brilliant in its placement. An addict must accept that they are not in control, even if outside appearances say otherwise. Even if our lives have the semblance of manageability, that addiction is always working, day and night, toward our impending destruction. Life management and addiction work at cross-purposes, they cannot live together. It is fantasy to think they can. And this fantasy has been the death-knoll for many addicts and what keeps others in the dark place.

[sherbear5104]

That's some pretty deep stuff, oxycleaned. How true that we don't always see the truth, even though we look it in the face. I was a "functioning addict" for many years. In deep denial that I had a problem, let alone a disease. I swore I would smoke pot until the day I died, then my friends introduced me to the harder drugs. I thank God for that, actually, because those drugs dropped me down the hole of despair, quick. It was only after entering the rooms of NA that I realized that pot would have killed me, too, only slower. Once I take a drug, all bets are off. I'm off to the races. I have no control over my using, of any drug. Therefore, I have decided that, just for today I choose not to use!

Sherry

[godsonmyside]

When I look at the first step and really looked at the first step, I opened my eyes to a whole new look one life. First, I believe that in the first step we identify our problem, not just that heroine messed me up, I had to admit complete defeat. I have to give up living like a dope fiend and surrender, and there is no substitution for surrender. We admitted we were powerless over our ADDICTION, that our lives had become unmanageable. Had and Were are not used as past tense either. I believe in the three fold disease, Physical, Mental and Spiritual. Once we clean up the physical is lifted, and the mental and spiritual we carry throughout our recovery. I do believe identifying the source of my probem to all areas of my disease. Destruction, denial, rationalization, dereliction, degridation only to name a few without copying from the text of course are all symptoms of our disease. Self-obsession is the core of our disease, and its also an easy trap to fall into.

[Shakur T.]

Peace,
My first step experience helped me to see what was wrong with me. I thought that I was bad or crazy. Step one helped me to see exactly what was wrong...I suffered from a disease that affected mind, body and spirit and the more I tried to control my using, the deeper I fell. I never realized that if I didn't pick it up, I wouldn't keep suffering. I learned that I could not do this alone. I learned about obsession and compulsion. The very two things that kept me out there!!
I did not stop using until I did a first step with my sponsor. I began to see that there was never a time when I was in control of my life. I felt powerless and anyone could see that my life was unmanagable. For the first time, I began to get honest with myself and admit complete defeat. The only way I could survive was to surrender...

[cj.]

Once I admit to something - I can't take it back! So.........

I couldn't do it right away. I had to save a reservation just in case I could find a way to use without it killing me. It was the only thing I knew how to do so I could cope with my life. I wasn't interested in giving it up altogether - only in finding a better way to handle it.

It paid off for me to be honest about my intentions though, when I did finally walk through the doors of NA, because the other members knew exactly what to do with me.

They spoke to me of their similar thoughts and they shared their experiences of what happened to them when they held on to their reservations. Some went back out and said that it was worse than ever for them and that I might want to consider listening to what they had to say.

And I did.

Little by little, I began to see that they were trying to help me save my life.

And they did.

The price I paid for admitting that I was powerless over my addiction, earned me life.

Just For Today, cj

[tobstah]

I really liked what you had to say, oxycleaned...

I love step one. It is the base of the steps, without it all the rest would crumble.
It is when I admitted defeat, admitted i was POWERLESS and that my life had become unmanageable that i was ready to manage it.

When I first heard that I had a disease, it make sense to me, 150%. It explained alot. all those insecurities, that sense of not belonging as a child. Accepting it was another story. Accepting that i have an uncurable disease, that i will have to treat for life, is a hard thing to accept.

But today I do. Today i have faith in God. and i thank the fellowship for that.

peace and love,

tobia