The Phoenix

Step 1: "We admitted we were powerless over (____________), that our lives had become unmanageable."

 

Many of us come to the 1^st Step like beaten warriors. Without our painkillers our nerves are raw and we feel like a pin prick might seriously wound us. If we are fortunate we have given in and are through fighting. It is a miraculous occurrence when we realize that the only way to save our selves is to admit defeat. Our "enemy" (alcohol, drugs, co-dependency, etc.) has dealt us the worst blow yet and we think we might die. Some of us want to die, and too often do. Many of us think we need to get very low and in much pain before we finally decide that life shouldn’t have to be so painful. Our tolerance level for pain can be very high due to our ego-driven Western society. "Keep a stiff upper lip!" "Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps!" These are only a couple examples of Western thinking. We are taught that suffering is a virtue and will guarantee you a choice seat in Heaven. Some of us have less of a tolerance level for pain and we get help sooner than others. We can get off the escalator to hell anytime.

But what about those who are stuck in limbo? People who are just putting one foot in front of the other, not knowing what they don’t know about hell or heaven? Perhaps these people need recovery too, but won’t find it because they never bottom out. In 12 Step recovery groups we talk about "hitting bottom." This is a situation or circumstance where an addictive person gets hit hard by their disease. (Car accidents, heavy depression, divorces, getting fired, thoughts of suicide or attempts at it.) Hitting bottom is a way of our Higher Power telling us to wake up, a road sign. We get them in increasingly dramatic ways until we are knocked off our feet and get very sick and tired of being sick and tired.

This is where the dragged out drug addict and/or alcoholic might have an advantage. These folks have a better chance of their drug of choice pulling them down into humility, the place where we must begin. This widely used technique we Americans use to humble ourselves is just a bit too extreme. It screams volumes about our media, government, good paying customers and fanatical religious folk. Some people would literally rather commit slow suicide over their lifetime than admit they were wrong. These people also pass on this "wisdom" to the next generation and so the story goes.

It seems that the "mass of (mainly) men" would rather torture themselves and others and pass it on to their children, than admit they are not in charge of their own lives, that they did not create the heavens and earth, not even themselves. "If you are wrong you are weak and better off dead!" Right? Dead wrong. Those who climb down willingly and safely into humility are very wise. What care does a simple blade of grass have? How difficult is the life of a grain of sand? A speck of dust? What are we other than gobs of dust clumped together with water? It is time we realize what we are and started acting more like the not-as-important-as-we thought-we-were beings. We have consciousness/awareness to realize our true powerlessness over the cosmos. A child is naturally powerless over its parents. Our Higher Power is, for us, the most loving parent we have ever had. It knows us best because It created us and loves us. Our Higher Power has always and will forevermore guide and protect us. The powerlessness we have in the face of our Higher Power is natural and right as is water-over-the-falls. It is the Natural Way—beautiful and flowing.

As addicted people we, seemingly, worship the powerful "demon" of alcohol and drugs. Every time we indulge in our "drug of choice" a piece of our spirit dies. It is only a matter of time before we approach spiritual or actual death. We will either finish the job or see the light; there is no in-between. Finally, we come to a life or death decision. Which will you make?

Surrender eventually becomes, for many of us recovering people, a wonderful way of life. It is, in fact, the only way out and in to true sober living. We discover that "God is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves," to use traditional 12 Step language Some of us also come to believe that that Higher Power was there in our lives all along, from the start.

The trial, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ symbolizes, for many recovering addicts who look to the Christian tradition, their own bottoming out and recovery process. The resurrection especially, is viewed as an Act of God. Others may resonate with the Greek myth of the phoenix rising from the ashes. But the concept of rebirth is scattered throughout the world religions. We must die to our old ways in order to experience rebirth and new life. Many refer to this as a "little death." This is where the idea of gaining victory from defeat comes. But how can victory come from defeat? How can success come from failure? How can a reasonably happy life come forth from the misery, loneliness and depression of a diseased life, including alcoholism and drug addiction? Such a possibility, at first, seems absurd.

The 1^st Step asserts the possibility that spiritual victory can come from physical surrender. It makes clear that without an admission of total failure from being able to manage our diseased thinking, healing is impossible. Some are too terrified to see whom they have been all those years. They have been hiding underneath the "influence" of diseased living.

Some say they feel like a new person or a different person when they begin to get sober. This is only because they never knew who they truly were in the first place! The fact that many of us are asleep to who we truly are and live in a denial-based mentally-diseased haze is a frightening thing. We truly need a spiritual awakening, but we know it not. What will we be like when we let go of our pacifiers our nightcaps our deserved rewards for a job well done, for suffering through a really bad day? We begin to ask questions like, "How will I survive without my blessed glass of wine before bed?" or, "What will I do without my fix before I get up?" and "How will I make it without my one true love?" When we begin asking these questions our time is coming soon to make the decision to save ourselves. Some of us do not make it, automatically choosing death. When we test ourselves to see how long we can go without a drink, drug, person or junk food, we can be assured that we are out of control. When we have to control anything in our life, for fear of it getting out of control (people, sex, and booze) we know that it is out of control and we need help. Whenever we say, "I can’t not do it," we are experiencing addictive behavior. We can thank our Higher Power we don’t have to go it alone anymore. We never really had to go it alone in the first place.

Many of us commute to our jobs and have the distinct pleasure of experiencing traffic jams. Most days the jams do not bother us. We have gotten used to honking horns, exhaust fumes and certain fingers flailing through the air for all to enjoy. Other days they do bother us. Out of the blue we are thrown into an angry rage, supply ample finger flailing and cause an accident.

Unmanageability begins in our feeling-level response to any given situation. The situation is not unmanageable; our feelings about the situation are unmanageable, influencing us to lose control, sometimes disastrously.

The 1^st Step has two parts. The first part is the admission of total powerlessness over our disease. The second part goes on to admit that our presumption of power led to unmanageability of our life situations. Unmanageability begins inside of us, in our emotions. It is projected out onto external situations. Depending on how we are feeling any particular day, our emotions determine the quality of our drive to and from work. We often experience the same situation on two different days in two radically different ways.

There is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the false presumption of power over our diseased emotions and the unmanageability of our lives. The situation is simply put by the old saying, "where there is smoke, there is fire." The 1st Step shows us that where there is unmanageability in our daily lives (smoke), there is a fantasy of power and control (fire). We try and make real an internal fantasy of being powerful when we indulge in our diseases and we feel we can take on the world when we are flying high. That feeling of power and control is an illusion, sometimes a very dangerous illusion. Some drunk drivers who have killed people never would have thought (admitted) they were anything but in perfect control of their vehicle. No such power exists, in fact we oftentimes cannot even tie our shoes let alone take on the world. We falsely believe that our disease-patterns are bettering us, and we live in such denial that we are convinced our "character defects" are actually virtues. "I drive better after a couple of drinks" we say as we grab our keys from our concerned friends and proceed to wreak havoc on the roadways. It is when we just know that we are in perfect control of ourselves and our every situation, and we will defend our superior capabilities to the death, that we need to watch out—disaster is lurking! Some Power is working to show us that superior ego does not work toward spiritual development and peace in the world.

We believe we are in control and gaining power when we are using drugs, alcohol, people etc. We actually are destroying our lives and other peoples’ lives. These contradictions of our addictions are at the foundation of our disease and are directly addressed by the 1st Step. The false illusion of control over our Higher Power’s will results in unmanageability. Our shadowy illusions are exposed by the light of the 1st Step. When our disease becomes exposed to our conscious minds the very heart of our disease becomes clear—we have, in various ways, believed that we were our own Higher Power.

Each of us coming into recovery believes in our cherished false illusions. We believe we can control our drinking, drugs, mates, friends, bosses, credit cards and our bills. We believe that our happiness is governed by people and situations outside of ourselves. Therefore we believe these situations and people need to be carefully and strategically controlled and manipulated. We feel we must "juice" them all for as much happiness or comfort as possible! Our efforts at control inevitably fail. Then we become the victims. The 1st Step, through exposure of the cause-and-effect relationship between our fantasy of control and our unmanageability, shows us that we are indeed victims. But we are not victims of any thing or person or situation. Not at all. We are victims of our own false illusions.

While in the process of working the 1st Step we begin to accept the fact that we have spent much of our lives believing in illusions. People we thought were friends were merely drinking buddies. Our lovers—we discover—cheated and stole from us, much as we did from them. And worse, we discover that we have done these things and more to them too. Needless to say, we are likely to experience anger in very pronounced ways. We feel uncomfortable being confronted with the unmanageable, diseased existence that results from the belief in a private fantasy of power. Our private fantasy of being our own Higher Power is directly addressed by the great American mystic, Thomas Merton, in the following passage from The Silent Life, Chapter One, page 26:

But although the God our Fathers made us free, He did not make us omnipotent. We are not gods in our own right, capable of achieving everything that we desire, of creating and uncreating worlds, or commanding the adoration and service of every other spirit! We are capable of becoming perfectly Godlike, in all truth, by freely receiving from God the gift of His light, and his Love, and his Freedom… But insofar as we are implicitly convinced that we ought to be omnipotent of ourselves, we usurp to ourselves a godlikeness that is not ours.

Acceptance

Admission is not enough to arrest this disease. We are often tempted to believe that admitting our disease constitutes acceptance of it. This is not true. Admission is an intellectual response. Acceptance is an emotional response where something lets go inside of us and we become humbled. Breaking through our denial and admitting our disease is the essential beginning step to recovery, but it is by no means true acceptance. For many of us admission of our disease becomes almost unavoidable. We go to some meetings, attend rehabilitation programs and talk with professional counselors. In time, the evidence of our addictions seems undeniably obvious. There are many self-admitted alcoholics and addicts who regularly appear on the streets drunk or stoned who admit they have a problem, but will not or cannot admit defeat from their problem."… Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program. Usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves." For instance, Chapter Five of Alcoholics Anonymous states, Acceptance implies giving up the battle. So long as we are fighting our disease or judging ourselves for having it, we cannot accept it. As the 1st Step shows us, our disease is founded upon the belief in false illusions, and the way to dispel an illusion is not by fighting it, but by withdrawing belief in it.

The things that we resist will persist over time, and we continuously make real. A fight cannot happen when the other person walks away—simple. Any attempt to conquer our disease by fighting it with force-of-will-power only gives more strength to the disease. Without the spirituality of the 12 Steps these egotistical attempts to cure ourselves alone will make us miserable and ultimately will fail. The concept of dispelling illusion is appropriately represented by the metaphor of the childhood nightmare. The way to help a child relax after a nightmare is to encourage him or her to believe that it is not real. The child withdraws belief in it, therefore withdrawing the illusion. The 12 Step process of recovery teaches us to withdraw belief in our false illusions which compel us to use. We are literally killing ourselves with addictive behavior in vain attempts to run from the bogeyman! Most of the problems and issues we use over do not truly exist, they only live in our emotions. We reach the stage of acceptance when, for instance, ones’ alcoholism elicits no more emotional response than does the color of our hair or eyes—it is simply part of who we are as individuals. Feelings are not facts. The 1^st Step is the beginning of this healing process. What begins as bitter admission grows into a peaceful acceptance. The seed is small.

It is important to understand that the 1st Step concerns itself with the admission of our powerlessness, not the admission of our addiction itself. It is presumed that we have already admitted that we are diseased before we ever approach the 1st Step. For instance, the object of the verb "admitted" in the 1st Step of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous is powerlessness, not alcoholism. This is why the words "over alcohol" are usually the only words in the text of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous that are modified by 12 Step fellowships other than Alcoholics Anonymous.

Ultimately the thing or issue over which we are powerless is only secondary. The fact that we accept that we are powerless over anything is crucial. It indicates that we have finally accepted that we are not our own Higher Power. Admitting that we are not the Higher Power is the end, powerlessness is the means. We have to admit that there is something—anything—over which we are not the absolute masters. It is quite possible and very common for individuals to admit that they are alcoholics without ever admitting that they are powerless over their alcoholism, or to admit that they are addicts without accepting their powerlessness over their addictions. That is the heart of the 1st Step. That is also the reason why walking into a meeting room and saying "Hi, my name is ______" does not constitute working the 1^st Step.

What we are truly admitting is that we have a disease. Acceptance can only come after that admission. Our addiction to alcohol, drugs, or anything else is a disease and is not a moral issue. So long as we continue to render moral judgment upon ourselves and upon others for expressing addictive symptoms, we create our own conflict. This conflict expresses itself as anger, resentment, jealously, and other similar symptoms. Acceptance can only be realized when we abdicate the judgment seat and deal with our problem for what it is—a disease. Just like any other disease, addiction needs to be recognized and diagnosed for what it is before it can be treated.

One very common false illusion that we recovering people share is the belief that we are unworthy. Seemingly so much as to be unworthy of breathing air. Acceptance that our condition is a disease begins the process of dispelling this illusion. Many of us believe that we are morally bad people. We have very low self-esteem. This is not just a characteristic symptom of addictive behavior, but it is a prerequisite for its development. Each of us comes into recovery believing, at some level, that we are intrinsically bad people and that our disease proves it. We, at first, believe that the unmanageability of our lives is an entirely just punishment of a vengeful God or a vengeful society. As we come to accept that we have a disease, labeled a "personality disorder" we are forced to break the foggy spell that convinces us we are unworthy. We come to believe that our disease, like cancer, is not a moral issue. The Promises of the 12 Steps of A.A. can be found in Chapter Six of Alcoholics Anonymous. It states,

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.

We can be grateful that, unlike cancer, or AIDS, addictive personalities are promised to experience healing if and when we do the footwork of the 12 Steps.

The healing process that is the 12 Steps can be applied to all forms of addiction. Admission of our disease begins the breaking down of our denial. A cancer patient might emotionally deny that she has anything wrong with her. Admission is crucial to achieving long-term remission and sobriety. It gets the acceptance ball rolling.

Like life, working the 12 Steps is a day-to-day journey, not a destination. It is a continually deepening process that never ends. We begin with the 1^st Step and climb to the 12th. Then we start over a bit wiser. Like a never ending adventure story, we go deeper into the plot and subplots of our lives. No one can do it perfectly. We will try and cling to the belief that we are perfect gods in and of ourselves. We will fall, get banged up and come face to face with some big, fire-breathing dragons. But as we learn our own secret passageways and remember the pitfalls we become very adept at living the adventure story of life. We cannot change our inherent passageways and structures (who we were created to be in the first place). Continued work in recovery on the 1^st Step reveals to us the many aspects of our lives over which we have no real power or control—the "things we cannot change" spoken of in the Serenity Prayer. We can change the "props" along our paths, things like friends, cars, jobs, dwellings etc. and receive our Higher Power’s strength to accomplish our wildest dreams.

An in-depth, written 1st Step will often bring to the surface uncomfortable feelings such as anger, guilt and shame. When we honestly look at our own unmanageability through the lens of the 1^st Step, we must accept responsibility for creating that unmanageability by falsely believing we were in control. We will feel angry and ashamed at all of the lost opportunities, broken relationships and wasted possibilities that are revealed to us. These feelings are perfectly normal and predictable. They will be resolved as the 2^nd Step, and, in particular, the 3^rd Step are put into place. For the time being it is strongly suggested that we stay close to a competent sponsor, talk about the feelings, and share them in group meetings. They will pass.

Admission of our powerlessness over something as dangerous and even life-threatening as alcoholism or drug addiction can be a terrifying experience if done in isolation. If we are powerless over our situation, then we feel hopeless. But the 1st Step does not stand alone, in isolation. It is followed by the 2^nd Step which assures us that there is One who does have the power. You are not alone.

Suggested Assignment: using the attached form found at the end of this chapter, construct a list of experiences in your life which you believe were/are unmanageable. Be sure that when you list each unmanageable situation you indicate how you felt about the situation. In the final analysis, it is not the situation that is unmanageable. It is the feeling-level response that you experience as a result of the situation. Then go back to each item on the list and answer this question: "How did my presumption of power or control create my unmanageability in this situation?" You may want to phrase the question instead like this: "What did I do to set myself up for this situation?" It is very possible that you may not have been aware of any responsibility on your part for setting the situation up to happen. If you cannot answer either of the two questions above, leave that entry blank. Later on, you may be able to clearly see how, logically, you must have set yourself up for the situation. At the time it was anything but obvious to you. As with the smoke and fire metaphor, if you see smoke on the horizon you may not be able to see the fire at all. But you can feel safely confident to assert that the fire must be present by simple logical deduction. For example, a person experiencing a jealous rage very likely feels threatened at the possible loss of someone they think they need for their happiness. The individual may not be consciously aware of this belief. The jealous rage is very likely a control mechanism to try to ensure that the loss does not happen. One technique that is often helpful in answering the questions we have posed regarding manipulation, control, or self-setup is to objectify the situation. Imagine that this unmanageable situation is someone else’s problem being presented to you, and not your own. Imagine that the other person involved is a therapy client, or a sponsee instead of yourself. This allows you to detach emotionally from your own experience and view it as an outside, objective observer. This removes your own tendency to rationalize and repress your own motivations.

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