It seems like every time I share my story now of addiction to recovery, I’m asked by some individual at their beginnings stage of finding sobriety or still deep in the throngs of addiction whether 12 Step recovery is the only solution to working through it. The only answer I have to that question which I know to be true is that it’s the only solution that has worked for me. Are there other solutions out there to becoming sober and living a healthy recovery life, free from toxic addictions? If there are, I never found them, but I sure did try many things to figure that out.
Therapy was my first, but it only got me so far and really was good so far as get my addiction out in the open with a safe individual to talk to. Then came joining a men’s organization, which helped me to become more accountable with my actions in life with others outside my therapist. But there too, it only took me so far on the path of sobriety and recovery. After that, I tried changing my lifestyle by living healthier with a variety of forms of holistic healing, including eating better, taking herbs, homeopathic remedies, and seeing plenty of natural practitioners. Yet that only took me so far too with my sobriety and recovery. As the years went on, I tried to live a more religious path, became a Deacon, immersed myself in religious studies, trying multiple spiritual paths, including Nichren Buddhism and chanting, only to keep falling into the throws of addiction in some form or another. When I discovered the power of meditation after going on a 10-day silent retreat, I thought I had finally found the answer to everything, to all my sickness that still lived deep within me that drove me constantly back into one type of addiction after another. While meditation worked for a while, it eventually didn’t like everything else. And working longer hours, volunteering greater, and even moving to places I thought would be more conducive to finding true sobriety and recovery didn’t work either. I truly tried so many ways to remain clean and sober and live a healthy recovery life, but none were ever successful in the long run.
One day, I finally realized why none of those paths ever worked. It was because I was always looking for the solution that could be implemented for a period of time to fix my addiction, where after implementing, I’d be done with it, and move on to other things. But that’s not how recovery from addiction works, especially 12 Step recovery. You see, 12 Step recovery works because it’s something one needs to implement every, single, day upon waking, where it’s then lived throughout the entire day into the next, one day a time, for the rest of one’s life. It’s not something one learns and graduates from, which is precisely the thing I kept looking for and never found.
The 12 Steps have taught me that I get a daily reprieve from my addictive behaviors by implementing them every day I wake up and carrying them through my entire day. They aren’t a temporary solution, and they aren’t a quick fix, something an addict is constantly looking for.
The 12 Steps ultimately led me to find a deeper relationship with not only myself, but also with my Higher Power. They truly helped me to see how I was always looking for one quick and easy fix after another to cure that addiction part of myself, when what was driving that search was always the addict in me. The 12 Steps removed what was driving that process and led me to be driven by something far Greater.
I thank God I found the 12 Steps of recovery and continue to live them out on a daily basis. Because the life I lived before them was one constant attempt after another to find some “instafix”. There is no “instafix” that ever worked for me, but the 12 Steps of recovery have, because what they led me to, was a solution far Deeper and far Higher than my addict-self ever found…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
