Grungehead

How far have you gotten in the steps Brenda? It was step 3 that seemed to "buy" me time to complete the rest of the steps. Step 1 is simply identifying the problem and step 2 is identifying the solution. Step 3 is when I made the decision to apply the solution to the problem. When I made that decision to turn my will and life over to my Higher Power I became committed to the solution of trusting that my Higher Power could solve my problem with alcohol.

I would agree that if you are relapsing while working the steps the problem lies somewhere in the first 3 steps (problem, solution, decision), so I would also agree that one would need to go back and examine what part of that equation we are not fully buying into. But please remember that this is not like an exam we are failing and being punished by being told to go back to the beginning. We are building a foundation in the first 3 steps, so if we are struggling we simply need to go back and examine which part of the foundation needs to be shored up so our foundation is strong going forward.

Keep at it Brenda! At the end of the 9th step promises it hints that it will take some longer than others to "get it", but that the promises will come true if we work for them.

"Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them."
(Alcoholics Anonymous, pp. 83-84)

tomsteve

the 10th step promises rock,too

And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone - even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. Wereact sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality - safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.

tomsteve

i didnt appreciate it either when i got sober. the oldtimers were pretty friggin hard on my ass- told me what i needed to hear,not what i wanted to hear and did it quite brutally at times.
thats how the message got through to me.

i appreciate it now. they saved my life.

sugarbear1

We have to want sobriety more than we want to drink. That might mean really putting in the effort not to drink, then working those steps by attending meetings and finding a support network and a sponsor.

We might need medical detox or rehab to help us not drink, then we attend meetings, get a support network and a sponsor to guide us through those steps.

This is not easy to do. It took me 25 years to stay stopped.

With love and hugs,
~SB

WMJ1012

Brenda,

The Dr.'s Opinion (Step 1 Part 1) talks about how the alcohol should be removed if any progress is to be made.
So basically I had to do whatever I had to to put down the drink, then get going on the steps. The method of step work I did mattered a lot. There was only one method that worked for me.
I had so much hope and was so actively involved every day at home in that work that it was enough to keep me sober, then as I went along it got better and better until I loved my life so much that I wouldn't trade it for drinkuing for one minute.
I needed something to grasp onto; something I could do each day, some action to take about my situation.
I only attended 2-3 mtgs a week. It was about what I did with my sponsor and at home outside of meetings. I say this to show that it's not necessarily a thousand mtgs a week that finally got me better, it was the work I did with God.
I never wanted alcohol. I wanted God.

skg

My thoughts exactly. The answer to the first step is in the second... the seventh in the eight, all the way through. One builds from the previous.
Step One is about Honesty. Truth. If you are still drinking, you have not admitted to your innermost self that you are truly powerless and your life has become unmanageable. It's the only step that must be done 100% correctly. One Day At A Time.

fini

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/5727404-post1.html

you might get something out of this thread, BC.

since what you say re: if you had the power to quit you wouldn't need...yes.

KiwiBookworm

If you have the ability to stay sober, you would not need to do the twelve steps. If you had the power to stay sober, you wouldn't even need step one.

I'm supposed to admit I am powerless and then.. what.. the addiction is going to leave me? Then, why 11 more steps?

Brenda I could have written these words myself - I've felt myself getting so frustrated at the AA meetings I've been going to for 3 weeks, everyone seems to have been overcome by a miraculous cure and I wasn't sure "do I keep drinking while I wait for the miracle?" (as of course I'm powerless to stop by myself). It then seemed that I needed to be way more desperate than I was as I hadn't lost everything. So I had to go out and lose everything so that I could then come back desperate and the miracle would descend on me then instead. Which is not a great option - I was hoping to fix myself before I got to that point.

In the end what I've done is take matters into my own hands and make my own miracle - I've been to the doctor this week and he prescribed Antabuse, I'm now onto Day 5 (instead of being in an endless cycle of Day 1 or Day 1 starts tomorrow) and the decision to drink is now completely out of my hands. Even if I didn't take any more pills from today it will be 2 weeks before I can safely drink. I decided this way I have bought myself some time to start The Steps as I just couldn't get there on my own. Of course I still REALLY want to drink but now the decision whether or not to drink has been taken away and I can relax not having to use my non-existent willpower.

skg

The answer lies in the Twelfth Step: "Having had a spiritual experience as THE RESULT of these steps..." Not A result; THE result. THE intended outcome.
This is where God as you under Him demonstrates His love in you and through you as a Spiritual Being. A miracle of this Divinely inspired program. Proof of a design for living that works in all conditions.
Or one can quit and the misery of insanity will be fully refunded--with interest.

2muchpain

No offense to anyone. I'm sure you all mean well, but I wish sometimes people in AA would talk like real people, not programmed robots. Kinda reminds me when I was a kid going to Catholic school and attending church. I eventually got turned off by all that indoctrination stuff and eventually started falling asleep. John

SDSurfn

I hear ya. But after a relapse where I lost nearly all, I started listening to those "programmed robots".

2.5 years later and my life has been restored, beyond what I thought possible.

For me anyway, I needed to hear the message over and over again, in fact I still do. I have a hard-headed stubborn alcoholic mind.

I needed some "programming".

All the best,
Kevin

fini

no offense taken, John.

one thing i invite you to do if you hear me sound like i'm spouting doctrine is to please ask me what i mean by what i'm saying. this would help both of us.
it's easy sometimes to use the shorthand lingo without even thinking anymore about what it speaks to.
please just interrupt and ask. that way you can maybe hear something new instead of falling asleep and i can learn anew to be more aware of making a real response.

win-win.

2muchpain

fini, Your post made a lot of sense as did others and maybe I'll start asking more questions. Unfortunately, I have learned the hard way not to ask questions at meetings. People just get defensive, I guess because they think I'm questions their beliefs in the program which I'm not. Other people on SR have experienced the same thing so I know it's just not me. I have been told that AA is about action, not thinking. You just have to believe that others believe it. I just find it hard to believe what someone else believes when I can't even sit down and have a conversation with members. I have to know someone and see they connect with where I'm coming from before I have enough trust in them to believe what they say. It's really a shame, cause I probably would of picked up a sponser, did the steps and been fully committed to AA. I know some people would say I have to have it my way. Maybe there's some truth to that, but I have to be able to trust people before I can believe in what they say. Unfortunately I never got the chance to trust the people at AA. Anybody can quote passages out of the BB. AA isn't based on trust, just a willingness to believe what others believe. That just doesn't work for me. I know some people will now say well, he just hasn't suffered enough or lost enough. That's just another slogan to me. I've been on death's door because of drugs and alcohol several times. I need more than a slogan or quotes from the BB. Maybe I'm one of the hopeless kind. John

hellrzr

Like they say, it's your best thinking that got you to AA in the first place so what good will it do to keep following it? It's not easy but it is simply, just listen to what other have to say and do what they do. After awhile of being sober you can start to think some : ). You truly have to stop doing things your way for the program to work and until you accept that you will struggle. I struggled for a year and I was finally broken enough that I asked my sponsor what to do and finally stopped thinking for awhile and just did what he asked. That has lead to 4 year sober here in a couple of days, Lord willing!

Meetings are also not a place to ask questions. It's where you share so new people can hear and see that the program works and there is hope. Finding a sponsor and get into a sponsorship line and then you will have many people to ask questions too. Or go before meetings or go with others for fellowship after meetings and ask questions then. Plenty of opportunity to ask questions when you get a sponsor, or a temporary sponsor if you prefer.

mick3580

I am a member of aa. I had the same struggle early on getting questions answered. I'm not a programmed fellowshipper but I'm sure my answers to questions would be very similar to others and it may sound like I'm programmed. There's no doctrine or dogma associated with the twelve steps. I can answer questions from my personal experience. I learned that there are a lot of people who know intuitively the answers to questions but intellectually do not know how to explain it so they just tell you to take the action and the understanding will come later, which, in there experience, was true. If you ask me questions, I may reference the big book. The reason for this is that many people ask questions like "Why does the program say I can pick my own higher power and then refer to God all the time?" The answer is that nowhere in the directions for taking the twelve steps does it say you pick your own higher power. So, it's helpful to reference the text when I answer because I have to show the person asking the question that what their asking isn't even true. Usually, if someone says they are suffering but they admit to being confused and have questions, I share my experience of going through that and then offer to show them the solution. Or, if they have questions, I offer to walk them through the big book so they can get answers to questions that way as the information in the book is presented in a logical academic format that appeals to to the intellectual mind asking questions. It should be noted here that nobody, not one single person, has taken me up on my offer to show them the actual, true representation of what aa is. And that tells me right there that they don't want an answer to their questions; they just want to ask the questions. And at that point, I have nothing more to offer them other than friendship.

Gottalife

Brenda, I agree with you totally, and I hope you will stay with us.

You are in very good company with your problem. It is a complete nonsense to say that knowing what the problem is will fix it. We would all recover on step one and that certainly was not the case with me.

We take the steps to recover, not the other way around. Agreed some hospitalisation is desirable in the medical approach, but it wasn't/isn't always possible.

Dr Bob was not hospitalised, he took all the steps as they then were, except for what we call step 9, which he refused to do. He got drunk. He took step nine, he stayed sober. - Good company Brenda.

The book staes on sveral occasions that failure to fully work certain steps will lead to disaster. The warnings are strongest around steps five and nine. A secret kept, an amends we will not make.

We are aiming for a spiritual experience, a complete psychic change which will remove the drink problem for good. This does not come at step one. Just as you say there are a few other steps to take before this will happen.

Sometimes the problem can be we go too slow. That might be our choice or we might have a sponsor who managed to take the slow road and get away with it. You and I do not have that luxury. We need to find God now, we have no time to waste.

And that is the real point that one of the other posters referred to. When I forgot about not drinking and started looking for God, for some strange reason, drinking just stopped. I went for three months and the thought of a drink never seriously entered my head. How did that happen? I did not have the power to do that. I did not have the intellect to understand very much at all of what was going on. I just got busy with the steps, looking for this God that seemed so important, and a miracle happened. I have not needed to drink since.

I think it is quite dangerous to keep steering you back to step one. Sure, the motivation for doing the work comes from the realisation of complete defeat, but if you are never getting to step 9. always going back, how can you have the promised spiritual experience which provides the 24/7 defence against the first drink?

Carry on with the steps, go through as far as you can, at least to step eleven. Conduct the reviews thoroughly, talk with your sponsor to try and identify where you might be going wrong. It could be step one, but it could be in a number of other places too.

Like me you are in a spot from where there is no way out through human aid. The only way out I know of, is the steps, all of them.

fini

I need more than a slogan or quotes from the BB.

yes, i get that.
no use blaming what others say at meetings for not doing the step-stuff, though. ask yourself what that serves?

lots of places my questions are misunderstood. often, i don't ask them well, either

but somehow i've always managed to find people willing to help and give input when i'm open-minded and sincerely interested .

but let's not hijack the thread.

2muchpain

Wasn't to hijack anything. I thought I was just following the previous posts, but maybe I did get off-track. Sorry about that. Done. John

24hrsAday

Exactly what i said about being in AA back in the 90's..
Been "Back" since early 2007'

24hrsAday

Not Until (for me) i knew that i would die... if i did not stop drinking...
Did I (for me) surrender 100% (for me)
that was my Beginning in AA with the steps..