Author Archives: Bill

About Bill

Stumbling down the Middle Path, one day at a time.

An oldie, but a goody: Concerning a “higher power”

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I heard another newcomer at a meeting complaining about how she’d had God shoved down her throat by her parents, and she wasn’t having any part of this Higher Power stuff, blah, blah, blah.  I find this sort of thing tedious, to put it lightly, having listened to and read about it frequently over the years.  Even when I was claiming to be an atheist I thought it was shallow and ill-considered.  So, since it’s my blog, I thought I’d write about my take on the issue.

It seems to me that if there is a Higher Power, in the sense of someone or something unknowable that affects the physical world, then it must be right here, right now.  I have to admit that I have yet to develop that faith.  Frankly, I find the concept of some metaphysical being busy watching over the entire universe a bit difficult to fathom, while still entertaining the idea that I can appeal to that entity for help with my little problems.  

On the other hand, I find the idea of a god within me, you, and perhaps every other living thing or even the Earth itself not only (remotely) possible in a physical sense  — or at least not impossible — but rather pleasant.  The idea of something that permeates my world and provides a gentle push occasionally to keep things running smoothly for those who wish to have things run smoothly is comforting and engenders hope.  I hope that I may come to believe in that sense, someday.

That said, I most emphatically do believe in a higher power in recovery.  The fellowships, their members and my other supports are my higher power at present, and for now they seem to be enough.  Their collective wisdom provides guidance, and their attempts  and successes in sobriety and recovery give me hope.  They’re there when I call on them — not always individually, but invariably in the collective — to provide the sympathetic ear and moral support that I need to further my own recovery.  And I am here for them, which makes me part of someone else’s higher power, I suppose.

That being the case, I want to register my strong opinion that using the “God Issue” as an excuse for turning away from the 12-step fellowships is simply an excuse for not pursuing recovery.  In my 1/3-century-plus of hanging around AA, NA and some of the other A’s, I have never been told by anyone whose opinion I thought worthwhile that I was required to believe in someone’s God-with-a-capital-G in order to stay sober or work a program of recovery.  That is borne out in the basic texts of every fellowship that I have encountered, if a person cares to read beyond the “G-word.”

We don’t have to believe in God to work a good program of recovery.  Period.  But we DO have to believe in some power beyond ourselves, because the humility to accept new ideas is absolutely essential in order to drag ourselves out of the morass of our own twisted thinking and into a place where we can begin to change. As an old sponsor of mine used to say, “There may or may not be a God, but if there is, you ain’t it!”

So spare me the stories of the Gawd of your childhood and the atrocities committed in His name, then or now.  Spare me the sophomoric, angst-filled testimony of how you can’t “get into” AA or whatever because you have to believe in god.  One more time: You can work a perfectly good program without believing in God, regardless of what the Bible-thumpers in the rooms might say.  As is announced at meetings, the opinions there are those of the individual members, not the fellowship as a whole.

The only higher power you MUST have is the people who will help you drag your sorry butt out of the hole of addiction and into sobriety.  If you get careless and start believing in something else — well, I envy you.

Bitch, whine and debate, or Experience, Strength, and Hope?

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The other night I was at a meeting where the chair asked for a topic, and one of our more “intellectual” members raised a hand and commenced a five-minute dissertation on how they didn’t understand why we say in the rooms that it takes an addict to really understand an addict, why they shouldn’t just be able to speak openly about their addiction to any friend and get useful feedback, etc. They used the words obviously, clearly and in my opinion a lot. This sort of thing does nothing to promote discussion about recovery; it merely exercises the ego of the speaker.

Our fellowships are not debating societies. They are about getting a sponsor, developing a support system, working the steps and practicing the 12 principles* in our daily lives. If I want to bitch, whine or debate, I need to do it outside a meeting with my sponsor or a support, not hijack a meeting with subjects that have little or nothing to do with the process of recovery. Better yet, at whatever point in recovery I may be, I need to remember that I’m the problem, and projecting my complaints onto other people or ideas is not conducive to a genuine pursuit of sobriety.

Maybe that’s what I’m doing now: projecting my issues.

Or maybe not.

  • 12 Principles? What 12 principles?

Think About What You’re Posting

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I was just browsing Instagram and found the following:

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.”

I see this kind thing all too frequently. It’s indicative of the lack of attention we give to the things we post and the messages we send. I’m sure that the woman who posted it saw the aphorism someplace and thought “Oh, inspiring,” then posted it without further thought.

But what is the underlying message? If you get discouraged, quit; it isn’t going to happen. If we applied that philosophy to life most of us addicts would be dead now (or wish we were) and very little would get accomplished in general.

We – all of us – need to be mindful of the messages that we send to others by our posts, the things we say, and the ways we behave, even when we’re just fooling around. I don’t mean we shouldn’t share things we find inspirational, nor have bumper stickers that reflect our real feelings, nor goof on stuff and have a little fun, but merely that we should look deeply at why these things appeal to us and consider what impressions, perhaps even impact, they might have on others.

I don’t believe the example above is going to destroy anyone’s life, but it doesn’t say a whole lot about the deep thinking of whomever originated the phrase and it’s a perfect example of the stuff we see on the Web. We’re inundated with posts that the perpetrator failed to think about or check out before laying them on people who might not bother to either. Like sheep they repost, and thus pass on the deception or misunderstanding to others. Much of the damage done by this sort of thoughtless posting and reposting is directly reflected in the dissonance of our current national discourse. Facebook isn’t responsible for our unwillingness to think critically; we are.

We human beings believe what makes us comfortable and rarely bother to check out things that seem to agree with what we think we know. Unfortunately, that makes us easy to lead around by our feelings instead of our intellects. We need to be mindful of the difference between opinions and facts.

As John F. Kennedy said so memorably,

“Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

About Me

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I was born at an early age, drank alcoholically from the first beer, used recreational drugs (and some not so recreational), eventually reaching the point where none of that stuff was fun any more. It was just work: work to stay supplied, work to juggle my reality and everyone else’s, work to keep people from finding out (I thought), work to simply live — and life sucked. Somewhere along the line I married another addict, and for several years that sucked too. There was no question in my mind that I had a problem, I just didn’t know the problem had a solution.

Finally, I was unable to keep all the balls in the air, and the world came tumbling down in the form of foreclosures, evictions, pawn shops, beat up old cars with all sorts of garbage on the dashboard, and eventually professional disgrace and the threat of losing my job.

Like many men, the job thing was the last straw for me. I knew that my wife and I would be living behind the dumpster at the Golden Arches within days, and I agreed to go into a residential treatment program. Two weeks later, my wife entered treatment at the same facility. The rest is not history, it’s more of a miracle.

Now, thirty-odd years later, I’ve had the opportunity to make most of the mistakes that folks can make in recovery, apart from actually picking up a drink or a drug.* Among other things, I’ve learned that relapse occurs before we pick up — that actually using just makes it official. I’ve worked in the recovery field. I’ve had the good sense to realize that it wasn’t for me, and got out of it. I’ve hit a lot of meetings, talked to a lot of alcoholics and addicts, and learned some of what they had to teach me.

And my wife? She got her degree in Social Work, Magna Cum Laude, at age 50, and her C.A.P. (Certified Addiction Professional — with international endorsement) a few years later. She’s also a Certified Mental Health Professional. She has worked in the field for many thousands of contact hours, and specializes in addiction (of course) and grief therapy.

We should both be dead, but we made it out the other side.

Please hang around. If you feel like reading my stuff, fine, but whatever you do, keep coming back. Don’t die. Please!

Yours in recovery,
Bill

*I use alcoholism, addiction, alcoholic and addict interchangeably. They’re the same disease, and we’re all just bozos on the same bus. That’s the first thing you need to learn.