Women, AA and Step 1

[needtobefree]

Power and Powerlessness from Chapter 12 of Happy Hours Alcohol In A Woman’s Life.

The language of powerlessness is at the heart of AA and of treatment programs based on the twelve steps. The first step reads, We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.

There is a paradox here that, when understood in its complexity, can be empowering. If we give up the struggle to control the things that are truly beyond us – for example, the effects of alcohol, and our ability to control our drinking once we start – we are freed to discover the power we do possess. A woman who knows that she loses and alcohol wins every time she takes a drink can stop spending her energy on that particular struggle. Admitting defeat on that front, she may find that the rest of the world opens up to her.

The first step of AA relates to the paradoxical dynamics of any kind of compulsive behavior, not just drinking. The harder one tries to control it, the more powerful the impulse becomes. Compulsion cannot be conquered in a head-on battle. It has to be give up, let go. You have to walk around it, not through it. When women and men have tried everything to control their behavior and found that no amount of willpower has done any good, and when they hear at AA that it is time to admit defeat, they sometimes experience overwhelming relief. They are asked to step outside the cycle of mastery and rebellion represented by their drinking and their efforts to control it. In doing so, they enter a new territory, where they can recover their freedom to make choices.

This kind of letting go is hard to do alone. You need support – someone to talk to, to hold your hand, to remind you that when you give this one thing up, a world rushes in to fill its place. For many women, AA meetings have provided that kind of support and encouragement. When AA works, women are empowered to take up their lives and make changes. They begin to feel their personal authority as they share their stories at meetings, coming to terms with their personal histories and recognizing the power they have to shape their individual future.

Devon Jersild. Happy Hours, Alcohol in a Woman’s Life. New York: Harpur Collins. 295.

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I have just started at AA and enjoy listening to the women's sharing, alcohol is a great leveller. It took me a while before I could see the sense in the above text. I've just started work on Step 1 and thought this might be interesting to others here. Male or female :0)

[timada]

Very true. I my self have spent time in an alcohol and drug rehab last year and only began to make results when I accepted I was weak. I been to feel stronger being more honest and somehow through that lost the feeling of addiction and no longer needed drink. Although my success may have been just a mere fluke and I got lucky I’m sure your points on how to tackle alcohol addiction should help others.

[ananda]

I had to redefine what strenght is. I am a strong woman, but many of my strenghts were considered weakness by me and others. and also emotions are a strenght, not a weakness. in its total absence we would all be sociopaths or something like that.