Step One
WE ADMITTED WE WERE POWERLESS OVER ALCOHOL- THAT OUR LIVES HAD BECOME UNMANAGEABLE
When is a newcomer ready to start working the first step?
Fast, focused, and fired up
Immediately, if not sooner, you have received Clancy’s 7 questions back. (See sponsorship tab) They have been given their initial assignments, so now, let’s get started.
LET’S CRACK THE BOOKS
1) The Big Book of alcoholics anonymous.
Chapter 2 (there is a solution) and chapter 3 (more about Alcoholism) pages (17-43)
2) Step one in the A.A. twelve and twelve (Pages 21-24)
THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT THERE IS A SOULUTION, THE BAD NEWS IS, WE’RE IT
SO MANY QUESTIONS, JUST ONE ANSWER
1) What does it mean to “admit” something
2) Why do you think the Step says ,”We admitted” rather than ”I admitted”
3) what does the term ”powerless over alcohol mean?”
4) Write down a list of recent situations where you found your self powerless
5) What does the term “our lives have become unmanageable” mean?
Activities for the Step
1) Make a list of specific examples of your powerlessness over alcohol (or whatever your favorite flavor of addiction or compulsive behavior) where you tried to manage well, and could not despite your best efforts.
2) Make a specific list of specific examples how your life has become unmanageable (a list of other people managing your life does not count IE jailers , judges, asylum inmate consular etc)
Step one is the only step that has to be practiced with absolute perfection. Step one is the only step that identifies the problem, the addiction to Alcohol or whatever your particular flavor of addiction you’re dealing with.
It should be noted that step one is the only step that deals with the problem. The other 11 steps deal with the solution. I suggest to my sponcees that when they share in a meeting, to keep those percentages in mind,1/12th is the problem 11/12th is the solution , we live in the solution, not in the problem.
Step one has to be taken on an emotional level. In my experience there is a tendency of most sponcees to intellectualize the process of surrendering to a more powerful foe; it is both painful and fearful to admit defeat.
All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling. Pascal
In the early days of A.A. your recovery started with what was called “the surrender”
The surrender was more than important ; it was a must . Bob E.,who came into A.A. in February 1937,recalled that after five or six days in the hospital .”when you indicated that you were serious ,they told you to get down on your knees by the bed and say a prayer to God admitting you powerless over alcohol and your life was unmanageable. Furthermore ,you had to state that you believed in a Higher Power who could return you to sanity. Their you can see the beginnings of the Twelve Steps,” he said. “We called that the surrender. They (Dr. Bob and the original A.A. members) demanded it. You couldn’t go to a meeting until you did it if by accident you didn’t make it in the hospital, you had to make it in the upstairs bedroom over [at the Oxford Group A.A./meeting] at the William’s house.”
After the surrender ,many of the Steps -involving inventory, admission of character defects, and making restitution were taken within a matter of days
As the AA Big Book refers to it as, utter defeat ,bankruptcy ,hopelessness and hitting bottom
“That’s the secret to life… replace one worry with another….”
Charlie Brown
Hitting a bottom is relative to the individual. Two alcoholics were under a bridge. The one was lamenting his past life, a professional man with all the trappings, a beautiful wife, home, car, and position in the community now reduced to living in a lady Kenmore cardboard refrigerator box. The other alcoholic quips, “WOW, you got a box!”
We have learned what ever the bottom is that it takes what it takes’s.
We had to fully concede (take ownership, to admit) to our innermost selves that we were alcoholic. This was the first step in recovery.
Why must it be overwhelming, raw, and exhaustive?
In the Twelve and Twelve it states:
Few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom. Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess their faults to another and make restitution for harm done? Who cares about a higher power, let alone meditation and prayer? Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to carry A.A.’s message to the next sufferer? No, the average alcoholic, self centered in the extreme, doesn’t care for this prospect —unless he has do these things in order to stay alive Himself.
The pain of hitting bottom, that’s what gets us into action. Pain was the unwanted guest that came to dinner, moved into the guest house, and in the end became our best friend.
The Big Book tells us All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals usually brief were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.
As Alcoholics we tried various schemes and plans to limit our drinking: only wine; only beer; different flavors of all kinds. We would drink only after the sun was over the yard arm, only on the weekends. We would swear off by everything holy and everything unholy. We were alcoholics and would enviably get gloriously, mind numbing, and falling down drunk.
Until we can acknowledge our powerlessness our lives remain unmanageable.
Denial is not just a river in Egypt. Denial is a symptom of the disease. It is a trick of the mind, that contrary to all conceivable and indisputable facts, we continue to maintain the illusion of control.
There is always someone who is willing to manage our lives, when we are not able. A well meaning wife, the police, the judge, the jailer, the doctor, the asylum… the list goes on, everyone but us.
When we admit we are powerless and that our lives had become unmanageable, we put a name on it; we put our name on it. We take ownership of the problem. To quote Pogo the alligator…“We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
At the close of a particular meeting of A.A we circled up and someone stated, Let this circle represent what we can do together, that we can not do alone.
Recovery programs are WE programs. I get drunk… We stay sober The We includes God, a sponsor and the fellowship.
The Big Book Explains…
The idea that somehow some day he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing , many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death. (Hell you say!)The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be has to be smashed.
The romance of the drink, I suggest to new sponsees that they have to break it off that it stopped working for them a long ,long time ago. To get them selves a Ron-co idea smasher and a how to break off the romance of the drink for dummies guide
What Step One Accomplishes
It gets over our denial and brings us into reality. This is the only step that has to be done perfectly.
All we have to be willing to change is one thing, everything. We have to be willing to change our playmates and our play grounds, and our most basic behaviors. We have to be willing to be honest. Our attitude towards the way we live life must change, if we are to get and remain sober.
Our pain humbles us, we are teachable. We can be directed by a sponsor. We can learn from the fellowship and be guided by God in overcoming our addiction; this becomes clearly apparent in the second and third steps.
Our pride needs to be dismantled, self-centeredness and extreme selfishness, we had to come to know that we were not in charge.
We are not bad people trying to get good, we are not weak people trying to get strong, we are sick people trying to get well. To some that idea has made all the difference.
THE FIRST WE MEET, WE CAN AVOID THE STREET
Step one is designed to.
- Admit powerlessness
- An emotionally painful admission of powerlessness hopelessness, bankruptcy and a sense of utter defeat
- The realization of how truly unmanageable their lives had become because of alcohol
- Overcoming denial
- That all their best efforts to staying sober had failed
If your sponsee is resisting this step:
- Have them write more examples of powerlessness and unmanageability
- Speakers meeting will help him identify with his addiction.
- Explain to them, that prayer is a powerful tool and to ask them to pray for the willingness to be willing. Willingness is like a muster seed, if it is a good seed, it will grow.
Keep it simple A, B, AND C.
A. Don’t Drink
B. Go to meeting
C. Work the Steps
D. Repeat until dry
You got a very great website rumradio.org , Glad I noticed it through yahoo.
The Twelve Steps and Alcoholics Anonymous – Step One Study
Dick B.
Copyright 2012 Anonymous. All rights reserved
Here’s what AA Cofounder Bill Wilson said about Step One
“Our recovery Step One reads thus: ‘We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.’ This simply means that all of us have to hit bottom and hit hard and lastingly. But we can seldom make this sweeping admission of personal hopelessness until we fully realize that alcoholism is a grievous and often fatal malady of the mind and body—an obsession that condemns us to drink joined to a physical allergy that condemns us to madness or death.
“So, then, how did we first learn that alcoholism is such a fearful sickness as this? Who gave us this priceless piece of information on which the effectiveness of Step One of our program so much depends? Well, it came from my own doctor, ‘the little doctor who loved drunks,’ William Duncan Silkworth. More than twenty-five years ago at Towns Hospital, New York, he told Lois [Bill Wilson’s wife] and me what the disease of alcoholism actually is.” The Language of the Heart: Bill W.’s Grapevine Writings, page 297.
Here’s what Rev. Sam Shoemaker, the man Bill Wilson called a “cofounder of A.A.” said
“The reason so many people in A.A. give thanks that they are alcoholics is that the problem of living, and the failure to meet life successfully, is singled down for them to the problem of alcohol. It is definite and specific. This is exactly what Christianity has taught from the beginning, not only about a problem like alcoholism, but about the whole range of human defeat: that the old clichés like ‘exerting more will power’ are utterly impractical. We are just as powerless by ourselves over temper, or a bad tongue, or a moody disposition, or a habit of lust, or a hard and critical spirit. It is only pride and lack of insight into ourselves that would keep anyone from saying, ‘our lives have become unmanageable.’ This is the first step, not only towards sobriety, but towards self-understanding and the knowledge of life.” Bill Pittman and Dick B., Courage to Change: The Christian Roots of the Twelve-Step Movement, pages 208-09.
In his usual short and pithy language, A.A. cofounder Dr. Bob said
“’The first one will get you.’ According to John R., he kept repeating that.” DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, page 227.
“. . . Dr. Bob advocated that members stay in dry places whenever possible. ‘You don’t ask the Lord not to lead you into temptation, then turn around and walk right into it,’ he said.” DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, page 281.
“Nobody pushed you into that bar. You walked in there, and you ordered that drink, and naturally, you drank it. So don’t tell me you don’t know how you got there.” DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, page 274.
Bill Wilson called Dr. Bob’s Wife “The Mother of A.A.,” and she said
“Surrender is a simple act of will. What do we surrender? Our life. When? At a certain definite moment. How? ‘Oh God, manage me because I cannot manage myself.’” Dick B., Anne Smith’s Journal 1933-1939, page 21.
“Paul speaks of a wish toward good, but power to carry it out is lacking. A stronger power than his was needed. God provided that power through Christ, so that we could find a new kind of relationship with God. Christ gives the power, we appropriate it. It is not anything that we do ourselves, but it is the appropriation of a power that comes from God that saves us from sin and sets us free.” Dick B., Anne Smith’s Journal, page 22
Early AAs often said
“We admitted that we were licked, that we were powerless over alcohol.” Dick B., Twelve Steps For You: Take the Twelve Steps with the Big Book, A.A. History, and the Good Book at Your Side, page 33; Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, page 160.
One Personal Story in the First Edition of the Big Book quoted the Bible and said:
“One morning, after a sleepless night worrying over what I could do to straighten myself out, I went to my room alone—took my Bible in hand and asked Him, the One Power, that I might open to a good place to read—and I read ‘For I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death.’
That was enough for me—I started to understand. Here were the words of Paul, a great teacher. When then if I had slipped? Now, I could understand.
From that day I gave and still give and always will, time every day to read the word of God and let Him do all the caring. Who am I to try to run myself or anyone else?” Alcoholics Anonymous, 1st ed. 1939, page 347. [See Romans 7:22-25].
dickb@dickb.com; http://www.dickb.com
Gloria Deo
Regards for sharing the information with us on rumradio.org.
I am always investigating online for tips that can benefit me. Thanks rumradio.org