Oceans of venus, p.10
RECOVERY 2.0, page 10
By the time I went to Hazelden, my mom had already been making positive changes in an attempt to get healthy. She let go of drinking, a huge feat, given that she had no program of support, and amazingly, she quit smoking, too, after receiving a cancer diagnosis and undergoing a hysterectomy. She figured that since she wouldn’t be able to smoke for a couple of weeks surrounding her surgery, she might as well quit. Unfortunately, though, as someone who had been smoking three packs a day for more than 20 years, she had a lot of stuffed emotions to deal with. Plus she had faced immense challenges on the home front, not the least of which was that her son had become a drug addict and her daughters had issues of their own. So even with these enormous lifestyle changes, the years ahead would not be easy. She desperately needed recovery and support. Consequently, by the time Mom went through family week at Hazelden, she went for it like a drowning person reaching for a life preserver. She got it completely.
For the next two years up until her death in 1991, she never missed her weekly Families Anonymous meeting. I tell people that my mother was on a steep ascent out of the darkness of her life into the light of her own shining spirit. It crushes me that she did not have more years, but I am happy that she was solid and in recovery before she had to move on.
Shortly after Mom died way too young at 51, her friends at her Families Anonymous meeting erected a tree with a plaque bearing a dedication in her honor at the corner of 70th Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City. It is for me the most significant landmark in the city where I was born. My belief is that she has had a hand in the unfolding of my life since she left her body in 1991—a nod here, a wink there. I just feel a presence, a memory. It’s like a warm, fragrant wind that lifts me up and holds me.
Dad would never have the awakening that my mom experienced, and we had a rough time with each other in the last decade of his life. He was brilliant, funny, and warm, but his dis-ease later robbed him of these qualities. Even with his challenges, though, one of my father’s greatest hopes was for my happiness. He was a champion of my cause. Through the most complex difficulties—both his and mine—he never, ever gave up on me. And just like my mom, I believe that my dad, in some form, has had a big hand in the successes of my life since his death in 2003.
Looking back at my parents’ lives, I am struck by the realization that there was no way out for them. My life now is a continuation of their effort to heal. My healing counts for me, but in a strange way it also counts as part of their healing. It makes no difference that they have passed on from their physical form. My recovery is their recovery. My addiction and consequent healing were made possible in part by their suffering and through efforts of theirs that I am not able to express in words. I feel that they want me to succeed so badly that the energy of that prayer has affected the outcome of my life. In turn, I feel that the outcome of my recovery affects their lives retroactively, even though their lives are over. Such is the power of healing and recovery. A family can be healed in the present moment in ways that affect the unfolding of time forward as well as back into the past. This is not science; it’s a feeling. It makes sense to me the way Higher Power or God makes sense to me. I choose to believe this and it has served me. Use it if it feels right to you.
On the day of my departure from Hazelden, I was not sure what was going to happen. It was clear that I needed a one-day-at-a-time approach to living if I was going to get through in one piece. I had come a long way in 50 days, perhaps as far as a person could come in such a short amount of time. My thought upon leaving was that the experience I had just undergone was a gift that everyone should experience at the age of 22 before they go out into the world to live their life. The tools I learned there are with me to this day—it was an invaluable experience. I may not have attended Yale University as most of the men in my family have done. Yet not one of them has been so fortunate as to attend Hazelden as I have.
CHAPTER 7
WHAT YOU REALLY NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE 12 STEPS
I am an advocate of the 12 Steps because they worked for me in my life and I’ve seen them work for countless others. The 12 Steps work, but they require a few ingredients and understandings in order for them to work well. Let’s take a look at them and see if we can better understand what is useful, what can be let go of, and what can be added in order to make these powerful teachings even more effective for the addicts of the world who turn to them for help.
Everything that follows here comes from the opinions I’ve formed based on my direct experience with the Steps and various fellowships over the past 25 years. My hope is that what I share here will inspire you to reap the benefits the 12 Steps have to offer while helping you avoid some of the pitfalls. Many people have misunderstandings about this wonderful spiritual path that I would like to shed light on here. Whether you have experience with the 12-Step universe or not, this chapter will help you better understand both the program and the fellowship, give you practical advice that will help prepare you, and, hopefully, inspire you to give the 12 Steps a try (or a second, or a third … ).
THE 12 STEPS: YES, AND …
Usually, you hear from one of two camps about the 12 Steps. In one group you have the people who cannot entertain a conversation where the 12 Steps and the fellowships that surrounded them are brought under scrutiny. If you suggest that the 12 Steps can be improved upon, they see this as nothing short of blasphemy. These are the fundamentalist attendees of 12-Step programs. Their experience with the Steps and fellowship has been profoundly positive, yet they have latched onto the program with the hooks of dogma and it has caused them to shut their minds to any discourse that calls for an investigation into and evolution of the process that saved them. They take an extreme position. However, among the ranks of 12-Step fellowship you have every possible perspective about the 12 Steps. It would be incorrect to conclude that all the voices inside 12-Step programs are extreme. Unfortunately, extreme voices are often the ones that are heard the most.
In the other camp you have a different kind of extremism: folks who argue against the efficacy of the 12 Steps for a variety of reasons. Some of them feel that the 12 Steps “let them down” because they or their loved ones have not been able to heal from their dis-ease. Others may have had negative experiences with members of a 12-Step fellowship that severely colored their opinions. Still others may have had no interaction with the 12 Steps, but citing the relatively low success rates of 12-Step programs, they get upset and decide to pick apart something they do not fully understand.
There are also those people who strive to apply scientific metrics to the process of 12-Step recovery. They want peer-reviewed science. Unfortunately, we are talking about a process that proclaims itself to be spiritual in nature and has infinite variations from one person to the next. The process of getting sober through 12-Step recovery does not lend itself well to scientific metrics. Of course, we must try to understand what works and what doesn’t; we want to grasp and implement best practices. However, we have to accept that trying to apply scientific metrics to a spiritual process with endless variables is inherently problematic.
Thus, very few people seem to be providing a levelheaded perspective on the 12 Steps, a system that is obviously of great importance to us all. The 12 Steps are too effective to overlook, but not effective enough to place them beyond the possibility for improvement. Since addiction is a very painful and costly dis-ease, wouldn’t it make sense to try to understand and build upon a system of healing that is working to a considerable extent? One group refuses the possibility of improvement and the other group wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I’m interested in helping you understand what the 12 Steps are and what they aren’t. I am not extreme in my position; I have considered both sides of the coin. I credit the 12 Steps with saving my life, but I also see where the program can be made much more successful. Ironically, the people in both of the aforementioned groups will likely disapprove of what I have to say here. They will want me to take an extreme position—or take no position at all, especially publicly. I feel compelled to express what my actual experience has been and then share what I have learned by watching others fail and succeed, and by taking into consideration many viewpoints—extreme and otherwise.
THE CREATION OF THE 12 STEPS
In 1935, Bill Wilson, the man who established Alcoholics Anonymous, found himself in a hospital room for the third time, having somehow survived yet another day of alcoholic torture that most folks could not conjure in their worst nightmares. He was utterly beaten down, frightened of everything, and certain that there was no way out of his problem. When he was released from the hospital, despite what he knew he would drink again as he always had before. With each new episode he felt that much worse that God had decided to keep him around for another day. His wife, friends, business associates, and everybody else he knew felt the frustration of powerlessness, sadness, anger, and betrayal.
Unfortunately, there was no known solution to the problems of alcoholism and drug addiction at that time. Alcoholics and addicts usually ended up in jails, hospitals, and insane asylums after being utterly ostracized by friend and foe. With little or no success, doctors, religious leaders, psychologists, gurus, and shamans had tried for centuries to deal with these people who just could not stop destroying their lives. To be an active alcoholic at any point in history was a terrible fate, but to have been one before Bill Wilson had his spiritual awakening in 1935 meant you were basically without hope.
Though no one could have known it at the time, that day of awakening was a turning point for the human race. Just as happened with Buddha’s revelations under the Bodhi Tree, Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, Moses and the Ten Commandments, and Mohammed’s Revelations, humankind was about to have a massive Divine download, which would pass through the least likely of places, the heart of a lifelong raging alcoholic named Bill Wilson. (To all the religious folks out there who might take offense at the comparison of Bill Wilson to these iconic religious saints, please don’t. The comparison seeks only to relate the significance of the information transmitted through this person and the resulting effect it had on multitudes of people, in this case the world’s alcoholics and addicts.)
For on that day, Bill Wilson was struck “awake” and a magical idea flooded into his thoughts that would positively affect the lives of millions of people who had previously had little hope of recovery. The seed ideas, the core of his enlightenment, were these: if I connect with and put my faith in a power greater than myself, and if I can speak to another alcoholic and share my experience, strength, and hope with him, I will be able to recover from this hopelessness known as alcoholism.
Bill Wilson and a doctor friend of his known as “Dr. Bob” went on to develop the 12-Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous and out of this basic framework more than 200 other programs have sprung forth over the last 75 years, including Al-Anon and Narcotics, Codependents, Adult Children of Alcoholics, Gambling, Overeaters, Sex and Love, Debtors, Marijuana, and Cocaine Anonymous, to name but a few. To date, millions of people have overcome addiction and turned their lives around by embracing the 12 Steps.
THE 12 STEPS AS A SPIRITUAL TEACHING
You need to know that the 12 Steps contain very powerful and transformative teachings. When I use the word teachings to describe what lies within the 12 Steps, I mean that the process of going through the 12 Steps leads to the Truth, meaning spiritual Truth with a capital “T.” Any doctrine that leads you to the Truth is a teaching. For people who diligently and wholeheartedly do the work contained within the 12 Steps, transformation and healing are likely. But even doctrines with the power to take you to the Truth can be misinterpreted and lead you away from it. Any doctrine can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Just look at any major religion and the factions of followers with differing opinions. It is the same within the 12-Step universe. There is no “one way” to approach the 12 Steps, no “one way” to deepen spiritual understanding. There is no standardized approach. This, in and of itself, is an important teaching and one of the keys to penetrating the 12 Steps.
Looking at the 12 Steps as a teaching is important. Usually, we only attribute this high status to a doctrine that is quite ancient, and the 12 Steps are only 75 years old. In that short span of years, 12-Step programs have grown to be the most widely used method of overcoming addiction of all kinds—from alcoholism to narcotics to overeating and many others. Untold numbers of people have used the 12 Steps to recover from acute addiction. Its impact is immeasurable, and when it came into being, it was nothing short of revolutionary.
WHAT’S THE POINT OF THE 12 STEPS?
The actual purpose of the 12 Steps is to facilitate a spiritual awakening in the person who follows them, whereby one’s thinking and perspective on the world shift considerably. While it is not usually a sudden experience like it was for Bill Wilson, after a while a person who has worked the Steps can reflect that they have changed to such an extent that they no longer identify with the person they once were. It is as if they have been given a new vision of the world altogether, and in this new vision they have meaning and purpose and a workable approach to the challenges of being a human being. And, of course, they no longer desire to drink or use drugs or engage in their addiction of choice.
Establishing this spiritual connection, awakening to Truth, and being of service to others are the core tenets of the 12 Steps, which are accessible to anyone. Since alcoholism and addiction are nonpartisan, nondiscriminating dis-eases, everyone is susceptible to them. Therefore, by design, the 12 Steps have to be accessible and effective for all.
If there were no connection between the 12 Steps and addiction and they existed simply as a spiritual path for humanity, I believe many more millions of people would have found and embraced them. The fact that these Steps were originally intended to help alcoholics and, later, addicts has definitively limited their appeal. I know only two non-addict persons who have gone through the Steps simply to experience their benefits. I am sure there must be others, but probably very few. As stated, countless addicts and alcoholics the world over have gone through these Steps and recovered from what they previously felt was a hopeless state of mind and body.
THE POWER OF 12-STEP MEETINGS
A big part of the reason the 12 Steps are effective has to do with the amazing fellowships that have gathered around them. Meetings are free. Anyone is welcome as long as they have a desire to get better from their addiction. A sponsor will spend time with you and take you through the work of the 12 Steps for free. People in 12-Step fellowship really want you to recover from addiction. They have been through a lot and can speak from direct experience about things you will likely need help with.
The magical alchemy of 12-Step meetings has seriously upgraded my thinking and perspectives on the world. To connect with people in this way is one of the greatest blessings I have known. I have never encountered a group of people who were so willing to honestly communicate their feelings and regularly make themselves vulnerable than at meetings. Of course, I have found some meetings more helpful and enjoyable than others. I have been to plenty of meetings that I did not enjoy. There was even one time in the past 25 years that I left a meeting because it so completely put me off. However, there is almost always something that is shared in words or through someone’s presence that has made it important and valuable for me to attend. Just the simple process of holding space for one another so that we can speak our truth creates the possibility for change. It is an act of symbiotic, cooperative engagement aimed at supporting the move from a thought-based to an awareness-based way of life.
THERE ARE INFINITE APPROACHES
The beauty of the 12 Steps is that, if genuinely approached with an open mind and with the help of a caring sponsor, they will serve their purpose of lifting a person up out of addiction. There are an infinite number of approaches to the 12 Steps that will work. Some ingredients are required—honesty, willingness, open-mindedness, and a desire to learn and grow—but as long as these are in place, the Steps allow for a lot of interpretation, and these interpretations are played out every day as sponsor and sponsee sit opposite each other to go through the work involved in the Steps.
Think of the 12 Steps as one doctrine of a spiritual path of recovery from addiction. As happens with all religions and spiritual paths, a congregation gathers around the doctrine. In this case, the congregation is varied, both in terms of the backgrounds of its constituency and the individual approaches to it. In Judaism, there are the Orthodox who have their beliefs about life and what it means to be Jewish, there are Conservative Jews with different ideas, and there are Reform Jews with still other ideas: three groups, three different approaches to Judaism. Within each group are subgroups—sects, factions, families, and individuals—whose ideas vary one from the next. Yet they all consider themselves Jewish. They have access in most cases to the same doctrine and texts. All of them, from the most orthodox to the most reformed, have their own unique paths through their religion. How do they navigate? They navigate according to their teachers. The same is basically true for 12-Step programs.
WHAT IS A SPONSOR AND HOW DO YOU GET ONE?
In the 12 Steps our teachers take the form of sponsors, friends in recovery, and others whom we hear from at meetings. A sponsor is a person who has agreed to guide us through the 12 Steps; we navigate the Steps primarily the way we have been taught by our sponsors. Normally, we choose our own sponsor by approaching someone who “has what we want.” This basically means we see in another person a level of experience, intelligence, and success with the 12 Steps that we desire to have as well. In more spiritual terms we might say that they carry a certain vibration or consciousness that draws us to them.
