Mark75

Part One

I could usually, almost always, stop drinking before the blackout. Before the DUI if out, before the shameful acting out at a party.

But I always drank. A force, obsession and compulsion, that would take me back to the refrigerator, to the bottle, just a nip, or gulp, or a quick can.

My experience is not with blackouts. My experience is with always drinking. Not at work, but a beer before lunch on the weekend, just to get started. Maybe a middle of the night search for that bottle of vodka stashed somewhere. A quiet, hidden, closeted... drunk... alone.

I read experiences that people have, at a party, out with friends, blacking out, shameful behavior. I can only relate on rare occasions in the past. I could in fact, go out, and have one or two or three, and did so, regularly. I was smug if I was out with those who did lose control... why can't they wait until they get home?

It was later, when I got home, or maybe, before I went out... but always later... maybe slurring, or unsteady, up the stairs... One more before bed... maybe passing out.

The allusion of power?

Part Two

I am off to Utah tomorrow with one of my sons... with friends and their sons... skiing... Alta/Snowbird for you skiers... Awesome... Have gone every year for 15 years. Didn't go last year, early sobriety, bills from rehab, didn't feel right. I am glad my son is going this year... it's his first time out west. Makes me feel less guilty (selfish) about going... I want to see it through his eyes...

They all drink beer, now even some of the sons who are in college are old enough, gee, I remember them when they were in kindergarten... the good micro beers... I always drank about as many of the others, but I doubt the others had a pint stashed under the bed.

I don't feel powerless over alcohol now, because I don't have to, or get to, choose... I surrendered that choice to God. I just try to align my will with His now... When I do that, I have His power...

So, am I powerless?

Mark

intention

I feel Power surging through me right now. Am I powerless?


Enjoy your skiing, Mark

Music

Have fun Mark. That's what AA's all about. Learning to enjoy life and have fun.

shaun00

1.
For some years i would look at your posted drinking history mark and think "well thats alot different to mine".
but is it?.......i stopped focusing on the progression and look at the end game.
loss of the ability to control my alcohol intake.....period.

i meet lots of people in AA that didn't drink like me....i read stories in the book of people that didn't drink like me......

we all take a different bus...........but end up at the same destination....
it doesn't matter if i live in a box........or a house........or only drunk wine.....or managed to keep a job........or ate from trash cans.....

id like to quote a favorite paragraph from bills story and i think this is "our" end destination .

*"No words can tell of the loneliness and despair i found in the morass of self pity. Quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I had met my match.
i had been overwhelmed . Alcohol was my master."*

Certainly describes the end of my drinking.........no matter "how" i drank.

2..god solved my problem.......i am no longer of hopeless mind and body.
contingent on a continued deeper relationship with god...and a life run on spiritual principles.
i had no power........the main purpose of the book /steps was to help me find that power.
its not that i dont feel powerless anymore.........the problem has gone.
Early in my recovery......i would sometimes have vague ideas of a drink.
not full on ideas.........just quiet whispers at the back of my head.
And a resentment...or two.....was always behind it....always.

thats why i continue to take inventory.........a rotting resentment will kill me.
i know it and feel it..
do i believe im powerless now.....no.......but the power doesnt come from me.
game of symantics really.....i have no power on my own....

* quoted from the BB 1st edition.

Mark75

Thanx trucker... yeah, that was what I was gettin' at...

There are images left of my drinking, and the pull to the bottle... holes opening in my soul, vague unease, blistering discontent... one more drink, or, I need one now...

As I have read yours, brother, and yes, our drunkalog is different, but even in your story, perhaps very different than mine, I have seen a similarity, a common powerlessness, a compulsion and obsession. Your willingness to tell your tale and to share your journey as helped me in mine. Thanx

Mark

RobbyRobot

"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable."

I love this step the most, because it was, and remains so, the easiest of all the steps in my recovery. The steps which i found the most difficult was two and three. Those two steps totally remade my entire personality and not just my life over all. I became a new person having done those two steps. All the steps later were less difficult after i accepted the first three steps as a unity and a working package of action and change.

Powerless over alcohol is just so obvious. I always took it to mean while i was actually drinking, and not after receiving sobriety. It was clear to me that abusing alcohol ran my life, I just didn't have a clue on how to possibly live any kind of a life without alcohol. But it was completely obvious I was not running the show. I was beat and on my knees years before I finally received sobriety.

Our lives unmanageable bit was easy too -- heh heh. My life being fubar i accepted as truth either drunk or sober, no problem It was around 11 months of being free from the drink that i started to understand my acceptance that I could even have a life at all --let alone manage one. LOL. At around 22 months i was finally convinced that i was living a life of sobriety, just as they promised me, it had all come true. The program and the fellowship worked, relationships, family, and friends worked, and the job worked. I was finally sober!!

I'm not sure what your asking here Mark, and i'm thinking i dunno what to answer you either. Are you powerless?

I wish you a great time with your son, and all that good stuff that goes with being sober. You have the gifts!

Robby

Sugah

I don't have any more control over alcohol than I ever did -- but I have been granted the power to keep from picking up the first one. If I, for some insane reason, decide to snub the source of that help, all bets are off. But I only really need to keep from picking up the first one, so I have all the power I need.

Sure, I'll agree that you're not powerless anymore, Mark. I've been thinking lately why these steps work so well for what are seemingly vastly different problems. I really think it's that most of the troubles we find ourselves and our hearts in is centered around our insistence that we can control the uncontrollable. Self attempting control. Self will run riot.

I don't know. I know I didn't have to drink today. I'm stuck at home alone and tend to ramble when that happens...

Peace & Love,
Sugah

Mark75

Funny, I am not sure what I was asking either... sometimes my posts start with an idea and then morph into something else.

But the morph was actually interesting for me. I started off with one of those fleeting thoughts, after reading a post in newcomers... hmm, maybe I'm not that bad, I could control it, have one or two... then I kind of spiraled around in that insanity for a while... then I did my first step and prayed...

Insanity gave way to true serenity... All I needed was conscious contact with my higher power... God.

I am not powerless.

Mark

Boleo

Before working the steps:

Yes.

After working the steps:

"We have recovered, and have been given the power to help others."
(page 132)

Lily

I dunno...my last bender perhaps did not exhibit the total powerlessness I had in days gone by, however I hated that after one, I couldn't stop and had to have more. Even if I could hide if from my family and still function for that month during my relapse, I just hated that I could not face life on lifes terms and needed that buzz... just for today I want to live substance free....

freya

OK Mark, I've been thinking about this for a couple of days. Your thread here, I mean. The whole "powerless" thing I've been pretty hung-up on, sensitive to ("obsessed with" might not be too strong of a phrase at the moment!) for the last few months. You might want to check out a FOTS talk by Mark Houston and Joe Hawk. The one I've listened to is from a BB study weekend in Prescott, AZ in either '02 or '03. You can download it on XASpeakers. For me, their ideas/emphasis/take on powerlessness and the importance of ever-deepening and refreshing one's Step 1 experience has just really been helpful for me in thinking about / dealing with / getting a perspective on this.

At the moment, I am feeling pretty strongly like I need to be very, very careful about saying anything that implies that I have power but that doesn't also at the same time clearly and strongly convey the fact that any "real," "true," "healthy," "legitimate" (not sure what the best word would be here) power I might "have" is actually a gift from and, in an important sense, on loan from God/HP.

I am thinking about the line in Bill's story, "Of myself I am nothing," and in the 12 & 12, "Of myself I am nothing; the Father does the work." And I'm reading that to mean that of myself, by myself, I am powerless. It is only in connection and right-relationship with God that I have access to any true power at all. Anything else is an Ego-created illusion, and reliance on it will take me down pretty quick.

...and the reason that this is all such a big deal for me right now and why I like those Mark and Joe talks so much is because it's become so very, very clear to me over the last few months that this is not just about alcohol -- or for me, alcoholism and the alcoholic -- but about E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. Alcohol, alcoholism, the alcoholic, whatever the presenting "problem" is is just what gets our attention.....and it's like "Oh yeah!" at some point it actually becomes a relief to be able to admit that and accept it and give it over to God by working through the Steps, but then, if we keep going and growing in our Step work and in our relationship with HP, there's a certain point (that point, for me, being somewhere in late December of '09) at which it becomes clear that the presenting problem is just the start, and the removal of the presenting problem just the hook...the further I go, the more clear it is that I, myself, am powerless, PERIOD! And, really, I am powerless (and beset with problems of whatever type) in direct proportion to how much I rely on Self -- both for direction and for (the illusion of) power -- and I am empowered only insofar as I turn to God for direction and accept my innate powerlessness.

So, yeah, I guess I personally would say it like this: I, of myself, am powerless, but I am (can be/will be) empowered insofar as I am connected to and rely on HP.

freya

CAPTAINZING2000

I'm powerless over a burned out light bulb. All I can do is change it!!

intention

That's a great post Freya. I feel the power so much at times it feels like I am being physically carried through life.....it's an amazing experience.

But for me it is not a case of going down pretty quick, it's more a case of it happening instantly as soon as "Self" steps in. Instantly, the power disappears and I am left completely powerless.


Step 1 is my first thought every single morning as soon as I wake and I have come to understand that it is, like you said, about everything. And because it is everything, that is why I have to turn it all over to God, not holding anything back for "me".

I think I shall look into those speakers you talk about. Thanks for the recommendation.