1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
Trying to “work the steps” while your life is in chaos can be damn-near impossible. I can admit without reservation or hesitation that the aforementioned First Step just plain pisses me off.
I tend to be regarded by some as the typical ‘alpha male,’ a ‘control freak,’ and have been dubbed ‘Bulldog’ by some of my contemporaries for my confrontational approach to disagreeable situations. To admit that I am “powerless over alcohol” – or powerless over anything, for that matter – does not sit well with me. To further that sentiment, I’m not happy with conceding that my life “had become unmanageable.” These statements are painful barbs to my truculent ego and I openly confess that I am my own worst enemy when it comes to recovery.
However, the First Step is inescapably true – to an extent. I did let my addiction to alcohol and prescription painkillers overtake my senses and better judgment. I did repeatedly buy alcohol that I could ill-afford to spend money on and drank past the point of the liquor providing me relief from the stresses of life to the point of it becoming a problem itself. My work performance did suffer, I was not the husband I could’ve and should’ve been, and I was borrowing money to get by because I was spending money I shouldn’t have been on something I shouldn’t have had.To that effect, I was “powerless over alcohol” and my life “had become unmanageable.”
Where it becomes more complicated is in recovery. Being ‘powerless’ in sobriety is a dangerous and presumptive state of mind to embrace. If all of the statements in the Twelve Steps are to be taken as indisputable truths then agnostics and atheists are literally fucked because they don’t believe in the God that they are counting-on to give them strength, remove their defects of character, and guide them to a sound moral living.
The naked truth is that none of us is actually “powerless over alcohol.” We alcoholics simply chose to embrace a path in which we sacrificed power and control over our lives because it was easier than facing our problems head-on. If you walk into recovery believing that your addiction to alcohol is beyond your control, you’re probably going to relapse. You have to commit to not drinking, maintain your resolve regardless of your circumstances, and keep making the choice to not drink. Your determination to remain sober is POWER.
As I mentioned previously, I kind of feel as though my Zoloft and Seroquel aren’t working as well as they had or should be. I’ve long been known for being ill-tempered, volatile, surly, and irritable, but the addition of those medicines to my daily regiment seemed to have been curbing that until recently. Lately I’ve been exhibiting a devil-may-care-but-I-don’t-so-fuck-you demeanor and recognize that it has to stop.
I can be happy, helpful, compassionate, and decent, but when I’m faced with something objectionable I immediately become belligerent and quarrelsome. When I really think on it, I believe that my sympathy for and protective nature of my wife is the real source, and that can be a bad thing. Really bad.
That’s what got me started drinking in the first place.
But I won’t drink. I have that power.
Hello, My Name Is Steve 