Families of Addictions

If we willingly surrender ourselves to the spiritual discipline of the Twelve Steps, our lives will be transformed. We will become mature, responsible individuals with a great capacity for joy, fulfillment, and wonder. Though we may never be perfect, continued spiritual progress will reveal to us our enormous potential. We will discover that we are both worthy of love and loving.

This was a big issue for me. I didn't feel worthy of recovery. I didn't even like myself. What a gift this was. It all came about after doing a Fourth Step. We will love others without losing ourselves, and will learn to accept love in return. All my life I lived my life through others. I was either an extention of them or I completely lost my identify and had no thought or reality of my own. What they wanted I did? I was a big role player and wore many masks.

Our sight, once clouded and confused, will clear and we will be able to perceive reality and recognize truth.

Getting truly honest with myself was difficult. I had rose-coloured glasses, tunnel vision, and selective hearing. I didn't know what my truth was. I had so many old tapes playing from my past and I didn't know that they weren't my truths and my inner knowingness. Even God was an old tape, He was what everyone had told me He was for many years. I had to erase the old and make new tapes. I had to remember that I was the one who pushed the play button. I came to three years in the program and shared with a fellow alcoholic, "Reality sucks!" He phoned me three months later and told me that he now knew what I meant.

Courage and fellowship will replace fear.

Face everything and recover. The people in the program loved me and supported me until I could do it for myself. I found the courage through them. At the beginning my Woman's Groups was my Higher Power. After my first year, I went on a spiritual quest and found the God of my understanding. I found Him to be all things. Wherever I looked He was there. It took courage to realize that I had also been along for the ride and that when I surrendered, I was empowered to do for myself.

We will be able to risk failure to develop new, hidden talents. If you first don't succeed, try, try again.

One of the greatest gifts was learning that the failures were not the problem, it was the not trying that suppressed and prevented me from growing and expanding my abilities. I never thought I would be able to play bridge again. I didn't think I would ever be able to get up in front of a room and speak to a 100 plus people, let alone 50. This was confirmed by friends in the program who were shocked when they went to a meeting and found out I was the speaker.

Our lives, no matter how battered and degraded, will yield hope to share with others.

My whole like was about abuse of one form or another. Just not abuse from parents, spouses, siblings, relationships, etc. but from myself. No one beat me up more than I did myself although my husband did try.

We will begin to feel and will come to know the vastness of our emotions, but we will not be slaves to them.

Awesome! When I was in treatment a girl kept saying, "But how do you feel?" She was a very aggressive person to begin with and seemed always to be in my face. I finally got the nerve to reply, "If I knew what the H*ll I was feeling, and know what to do with the feelings, I wouldn't be here. I went to treatment for six weeks. I went to Family Services and worked with issues with four different counsellors and two of them I saw twice. I was referred to a psychologist when I was six years sober who asked me why I hadn't forgiven myself. I stopped seeing her when she gave me medication that deleted all the electrolites in my body and I ended up in the hospital. The nurse said that if I had waited an hour, two at most, to call 911 for myself, I would have been dead. I went to a lot of discussion meetings and shared, but more importantly listened to what others had to say. Just because I have an emotion, I don't have to act on it. That was what I had been doing wrong all of my life.

Our secrets will no longer bind us in shame.

I am only as sick as my secrets. I had lots of them. A few times when I shared my story at an AA meeting I said, "I am not here to do a Step Four and Five, I am just here to qualify." There were many times I found myself sharing things that I didn't think I would do at an open meeting. I have had several people come up and thank me for sharing them because they had the same issues. As I have stated, when I say the Seventh Step Prayer, I get out of the way and my God is able to work through me." A few times people have come up to me after I have shared and said, "I really like what you shared." I reply, "You tell me what I said and then we will both know." I had to go through what I went through to be able to share and help others in recovery today.

As we gain the ability to forgive ourselves, our families, and the world, our choices will expand. The freedom of choice is a great gift. The nicest thing about it is that I can choose again if I didn't like the first choice. For so many years I was the victim, so hard done by, oh woe is me! As my sponsor use to say, "Get off the pot!" Forgiveness meant letting go of guilt. This was even harder for me. As a long-timer shared with me, "Most people think that resentments are the #1 offender which sends people back out. That may be so, but I think that guilt is a close second if it isn't #1."

With dignity we will stand for ourselves, but not against our fellows.

I had to learn to get along with others. I was a party person but discovered I was alone in a crowd. If you offended a friend of mine, I stood beside them. I had no concept of being a part of the whole. I took a self-esteem class that helped a little but it was the program that really allowed me to grow and become my own person. It was belonging to groups and applying the Traditions to my life that allowed me to get along with others. It was good to know that I could agree to disagree.

Serenity and peace will have meaning for us as we allow our lives and the lives of those we love to flow day by day with God's ease, balance, and grace.

Serenity and sobriety mean peace of mind for me. It helped to live in the moment. Balance was never a strong point for me and God and I are still working on that one. My name means "God's gracious gift." He showed me that when he brought me through the doors of recovery and has helped me to stay here and not have to go back out. I like the phrase, "His grace is sufficient for thee." I can't, we can.

No longer terrified, we will discover we are free to delight in life's paradox, mystery, and awe.

Fear was replaced by faith. I was able to be a participant in life and no longer just existed. I will never forget the moments when I started to notice the little things like a sun beam, a single rose, a twinkle in an eye, a change in attitude and behavior from the old way of living. It never ceases to amaze me. As the slogan goes, "I believe in miracles." I am one.

We will laugh more.

The longer I stayed sober the crazier I got. Not the insanity of when I was using, but just the all out honest laughter and the sense of when things were funny. My friend in the program told me that we had the same sense of humour. The only difference was that I asked for mine to be healed and he didn't. For many years, I realized I laughed because I was suppose to. When I sobered up I realized that I wasn't that much into slap stick although I did like Charlie Chaplin, I wasn't a big fan of I Love Lucy, Three's Company, and All In The Family. If I did watch them, once was enough. I did like Mash. My humour has always been kind of sarky!

Fear will be replaced by faith, and gratitude will come naturally as we realize that our Higher Power is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Face Everything and Run. That is what I did for many years. It was coming into the rooms and seeing other stay sober and finding peace living with an alcoholic, doing what I had tried to do my way for eight years before I got here. I don't think that I could have remained in my marriage even if I had found AA or Al-Anon. I know that God can do all things, but changing my 'ex' I am not too sure about. Apparently he is not drinking in today and has changed, and that is good. I know I couldn't and I lost the desire to. I had tried many ways to quit drinking and my pill intake increased and then I was doing both. I tried to control my addiction but as we know, it is an illusion.

Can we really grow to such proportions? Only if we accept life as a continuing process of maturation and evolution toward wholeness.

The person that is today is not the person who came into recovery, not even close. Some habits may make theirself glaringly apparent, but on the whole, she no longer exists. Then we suddenly begin to notice these gifts appearing. We see them in those who walk beside us. As they say, "We are the last to know." I remember the saying, "For every finger you have pointing at someone, you have three coming back at you." I always thought of this in a negative way. If I saw something wrong in a person and I recognized it, then I had that character defect within me and it was up to me to be responsible and change it. It took several years to realized that when I saw goodness, that it was also a reflection from within me.

Sometimes slowly or haltingly, occasionally in great bursts of brilliance, those who work the Steps change and grow toward light, toward health, and toward their Higher Power. Watching others, we realize this is also possible for us.

This I have covered in part previously. In truth I believe we are all works in progress. When I finish Step Twelve, I start again at Step One. I have had people ask me what Step I was on in the moment. My response is, "Some days, all twelve.