Terry: thank you for a fantastic post. Your post is the first thing I read this morning. I missed my AA meeting last night because I was dead tired and my feet were aching. I stayed home and put my feet up and felt kind of bad for missing my meeting. But reading your post makes me feel like I made up for that meeting.
You really hit the nail on the head about step one. For me, step one has been learning what the truth is about myself and learning the extent of how I've deluded myself about who I really am. It is also about learning how selfish I've been. I never thought I was a me-me-me person but I really have been, all my life. So many of my acts of kindness were just a show to impress others, just image building. Now I have to learn what a real selfless act of kindness is.
Step one was tough for me because I wanted to hold on to the myth that I can drink.
Before I started AA and started learning about alcoholism, I spent 3 decades holding on to the idea that I could find a method to control my drinking. I tried everything. Working evenings so I could stay out of the bars. Drinking only beer. Drinking only wine. Counting drinks. Rationing drinks. Locked liquor cabinet. Nothing worked. Whatever I tried, I would still find myself passed out in bed seeing double after week long binges. It ALWAYS ended up that way, sooner or later.
Step one is probably one reason why lots of alcoholics turn and walk away from AA because of it's finality: you can never drink again. That scared the hell out of me. The finality was hard to accept, I hate any kind of finality. I am a wishy-washy person by nature anyway, so accepting something so completely final, unreviseable, non-modifyable was a challenge.
Even after starting AA, I allowed the little thought to remain in my head that "maybe someday I can drink again". But that thought had to go, too. Me and alcohol don't work together.
But, in a way it was liberation. The finality of it freed me. Just saying "I don't want to drink anymore" wasn't enough. I had to realize that I simply can't drink.