One little trick I learned from my sponsor is to examine a step by reading it _backwards_, and see how each phrase applies in my life.
Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol ~ that our lives had become unmanageable
What does "unmanageable" mean to me? It means that I cannot control and direct my life to reach the goals I have chosen.
How was my life unmanageable? I never knew what I would come home to after work. Would my wife be immersed in conversations with secret people on the computer? Would she be scheming to find a way to go meet them? Would she be vivacious and full of energy or depressed and half passed out? Would she have been fired?
All my time was wrapped up in dealing with the consequences of her behavior, and there was not time left for my own personal growth, or needs. I had no goals at all, other than to make it thru whatever chaos was coming up next.
That little phrase "had become" is very important to me. Prior to my ex-wife developing addiction to pain pills my life _was_ manageable. This phrase gave me hope. There was a cause and effect connection to the chaos in my life.
"Our lives" makes it clear to me that the problem has infected the entirety of my life. It's not just my thoughts, or emotions that needed help. It was _everything_.
"alcohol". I already knew that it was the chemicals that were at the center of her problems. What I didn't realize until I read this step is that _I_ was focusing on the chemicals. I thought that if only I could somehow get her to do what I knew was best for her then our lives would be fine. The truth is that I wasn't really focusing on her best interests, I was focusing on her chemical consumption. While she had become addicted to _taking_ the pills, I had become addicted to keeping them _away_ from her.
"powerless" This word connects right back to "unmanageable". Once I've worked backwards to this phrase in the step it's easy to see that I was having absolutely no effect on the things I _want_ to have an effect on. I was having no effect on managing my life, or on managing my wife's consumption of chemicals.
"admitted" I've heard this word defined as "to concede begrudgingly". I certainly would not have "conceded" that I was powerless over anything before I got to recovery. I was hanging on by my last thread to the hope that somehow, someway, I would be able to save my marriage. Admiting powerlessnes meant to me that I was giving up on my marriage. Having "worked the step" backwards, and looked at each phrase and how it applied to my life helped me realize that admitting to anything was not going to make any difference at all.
I was _already_ powerless over my life and the chemicals my wife was addicted to. Whether I "conceded" to it or not.
This is where I "cheat" in my recovery. I read ahead in the steps, and I look at all the people that show up at my meets. I see that the remainder of the steps deal with finding solutions for my powerlesness, and that a lot of people seem to have a truly wonderful life as a result of their program of recovery. So I decided to go ahead and see if maybe there was something helpful in all this.
Mike
