Category: Recovery From Addictions

Yesterday I spoke in general about the 12 Steps and how they can be very invaluable for someone trying to find healing from various addictions, compulsive behaviors, and mental health issues. But today I would like to talk about one of them specifically that I believe is the cornerstone to living a much happier life and that’s the 3rd Step. As originally laid out by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, the 3rd Step was written as:

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.

Earlier this year I wrote about this very step expressing something quite similar, but I wanted to revisit a point I had made within it. The level of success that one has when using the 12 Step method is directly proportional to the percentage of how much of their will and their lives are turned over to the care of God. Saying that statement right now makes complete sense to me, but years ago, it didn’t make much sense to me at all. That’s only because I was living back then with a tremendous about of self-will and thought I could run my life just fine without too much of God’s help.

Let me explain this in a much simpler way.

During the years I was actively drinking and drugging, I rarely turned over any percentage of my will and life to God. That meant that I lived almost 100 percent of the time by self-will.

In the first twelve years of my sobriety from alcohol and drugs when I was mostly a dry drunk, the best I ever gave God was probably no more than 20 percent. That meant that I lived almost 80 percent of the time by self-will.

When I finally began pursuing the 12 Step method of recovery, the most I initially offered God was maybe 60 percent. That meant that I lived almost 40 percent of the time by self-will.

Eventually, I got tired of being in pain and decided I’d give it a whirl to give God 100 percent of myself. That meant that I started trying to live 0 percent of the time by self-will.

What’s interesting to note is that until I gave God 100 percent, I kept creating a considerable amount of drama in my life. And I started noticing that all of my drama I was creating was generating all of that pain I was feeling. But since I starting giving God 100 percent, the only drama in my life has been coming from people around me still creating their own and my levels of pain have become much less.

While I know I’ve been talking about all of this in terms of percentages, let me explain what I mean by using my real-life situations. I knew when I was drinking and drugging excessively that it was unhealthy for me. But I kept on doing it anyway. I knew when I was driving under the influence of either, that it was probably not the best thing for me to be doing. But I kept on doing that anyway too. I knew when I got sober from both that I needed to follow the 12 Steps and attend meetings regularly but I didn’t do either and ended up falling into other addictions and unhealthy relationships. I knew when I began the 12 Steps that I needed to end connections with those who didn’t want recovery. But I kept hanging on to those toxic people doing toxic behaviors anyway and experienced a lot of depression and anxiety because of it. In each of these things, I made the decision to retain large portions of my will and life instead of letting God guide me through them. And I remained very sick because of it.

I don’t feel so sick anymore nor do I experience those crazy highs and lows like I once used to. I believe that’s only because I start each day now turning over my entire will and life to God. I continue that throughout the day and stop to pray if I find I am drifting away from that. And I end each day thanking God for guiding my entire life. It’s really that simple and so far, it appears to have changed my life completely for the better. I listen to that small voice inside my spirit now instead of following my ego’s desires and the results are a thousand times better than what I used to experience in every facet of my life.

Turning my entire will and life over to the care of God was not an easy thing to do especially when I had lived most it not doing that fully. At first I had to give up a lot of things that I thought I needed in my life and my ego complained incredibly when it lost each of them. But I have found the more I let those things go, the more it became easier to live this way and follow all of the 12 steps. I am now able to dedicate 100 percent of myself to each of them and am finding the quality of not only my recovery work but also my life are improving greatly day by day.

Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith never did say in that 3rd Step that a person had to make a decision to turn over 100 percent of their will and life to God, but I really wish they had. I have found that it is the key to living a much happier life. They instead left that it for each person to discover for themselves, but maybe that’s a good thing. Because I learned a very important lesson each time I gave varying percentages of my will and life to God and that 3rd step. And that was seeing how each percentage I kept for myself was directly related to the misery I manifested time and time again. Thankfully, I’ve learned this lesson and now give 100 percent of myself to both God and that 3rd Step. I know my life has greatly improved because of this and it’s my hope others following the 12 Steps will start doing the same…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

There are many people in this world who actively suffer from various addictions, compulsive behaviors, and mental health issues. Unfortunately, a large majority of them don’t ever find the healing for those things because they never give the 12 Step method of recovery a chance.

What originally began in 1939 as a tool to help those suffering from alcoholism, the 12 Steps have evolved beyond this by continuously being adapted through fellowships of people trying to recover from just about everything. For the longest time, I was one of those who never gave this tool a chance. I knew about it and I understood that it had helped many others, but I had decided it wasn’t for me. That was solely because I knew the 12 Steps were based around developing a closer relationship with God and upon hearing the word “God”, my first thoughts were of religion and cult-like behavior.

The word “God” has been used as a judgmental tool towards many people throughout history to oppress them. And being a gay male, I’ve been one of those. Many churches and religious people have used God’s name to tell me that it’s a sin to be homosexual. This became one of the primary reasons why I steered clear of all 12 Step recovery programs. What I never understood though was that this tool can help a person find a Higher Power of their understanding and not of someone else’s. It took me quite awhile to wrap my head around this fact and the idea that the 12 Steps could guide me to finding a Higher Power who not only loved and accepted me for my sexuality, but also who created me to be this way. But once I did, I began to see the benefits that 12 Step recovery gave me for my alcohol and drug addiction, sex and love addiction, codependency behaviors, and various other things I’ve been afflicted with throughout my life. Thankfully, I’ve come to see today how I can apply the 12 Steps to just about anything I ever feel powerless over.

Here are the 12 Steps as they are laid out in most recovery programs, where ______ represents the malady one is suffering from:

1. We admitted we were powerless over ______ and that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbling asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all person we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to ______, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

It is usually the goal of every person who follows a 12 Step recovery program to eventually reach the twelve step itself. There, a recovered person can begin to spread their message of experience, strength, and hope to those still suffering from the malady they once suffered from themselves. But even more importantly, if one follows the 12 Steps diligently, they will experience a spiritual awakening where their life becomes filled with a lot more love and light. That’s when they can the begin to practice what they’ve learned in those 12 Steps throughout their entire life. This means demonstrating that love and light in things such as at work, at home, or out and about in social gatherings. In fact, this is the main reason why I write what I do in this blog each and every day.

The 12 Steps have greatly changed my life. Without them, there’s a good chance I would have never grown closer to my Higher Power. My relationship with God today is much in part due to following this invaluable tool. I can assure you that if you are suffering from any type of malady that you are feeling powerless over, whether it be an addiction or something else, that the 12 Steps can help you. There’s a good chance as well, that a program already exists out there which uses them. There you will find others just like you who have found healing from your malady by working these 12 Steps. And in case you were wondering, a current list of all those available groups can be found at the following link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_twelve-step_groups.

The important thing to remember though in all of this is that there is always hope out there, and one avenue that I know that works is the 12 Steps.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

It’s unfortunate that it happens, but it does happen a lot…

People relapse all the time back into their addictions after varying lengths of sobriety from them.

Having attended various 12 Step Recovery meetings from AA to SLAA to Al-Anon, I have witnessed countless people sharing their stories about their relapses that came after lengths of sobriety that ranged from 1 day to 40+ years. And what I’ve come to learn is that relapses affect everyone, including those who I thought had extremely strong recovery programs.

I often find it quite heart-wrenching to listen to these relapse stories. In each of them, I frequently hear a person blaming their relapse on a job they were miserable at, their lack of money, having too much money, breakups with a partner or other relationship crises, unhealthy friendships, hanging around in the wrong places, and other miscellaneous reasons. The truth is, there is really only one cause behind every single person’s relapse and it took me a very long time to figure this out. While all of those reasons that people give for their relapse are contributory to it, the sad reality is that each placed their Higher Power and their recovery work on the back burner for those reasons.

Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, who founded the 12 Step Recovery programs through Alcoholics Anonymous, discovered that it was the combination of finding and maintaing a relationship with a Higher Power and continuously doing recovery work every single day, is necessary to preventing relapse and remaining sober from alcohol. The same principle holds true with any addiction, no matter what it is.

While I haven’t yet relapsed on alcohol, drugs, or cigarettes in over 18 years, I have with some of my other addictions. I could give similar reasons to why I relapsed with those addictions, like many of the other people have done when they have relapsed. If I did, my biggest one would probably have to be due to my hanging around with toxic people and engaging in sexual relationships with them. But I see clearly now that my getting involved with any of those toxic people was just the after effect of me avoiding doing the 12 Step recovery work and maintaining a daily connection to my Higher Power. In AA, I saw this happen first hand with a former sponsor of mine.

A few months ago, she relapsed back into her alcohol and drug addiction after many years of sobriety from them. She was someone you would never have guessed would relapse either. She did a tremendous amount of work in her recovery to helping others out and keeping a close relationship with her Higher Power. But just prior to her relapse, she met a man who she quickly fell for and began to put aside some of her daily spiritual and recovery routines to spend more time with him. When enough time got away from her doing those routines, she began to be tempted again with alcohol and drugs. (It’s important to note here that temptation for any addiction never really goes away completely, it only goes into remission because of one’s recovery work and spiritual maintenance.) As it might have been for anyone else, after enough temptation was placed in front of my former sponsor and when her defenses were lowered enough from not having done her daily recovery and spiritual routines, she fully relapsed back into her alcohol and drug addictions. To this day as of my writing this, she has yet to wholly return to her 12 Step Recovery work nor her Higher Power who could help lead her back there. And the sad truth, is that she may never make it back. Many never do.

I used to think I was invincible to relapse from all my addictions, especially alcohol and drugs, since so many years had passed from the last time I engaged in either of them. But after seeing this former sponsor and so many others who had many good years of sobriety and recovery from their addictions go backwards and relapse, I have realized it was only ever my ego that believed this. In fact, just a few years ago, I was sitting at the kitchen table of one of those toxic men I was sexually engaged with, and holding a beer in my hand deciding whether I should have a taste or not. Thankfully, and most gratefully to God, I did not. That was at 16 years of sobriety where my connection to my Higher Power and my recovery work was at its weakest because I had placed this toxic man in front of the both of them.

The simple truth is that any person who relapses back into their addictions after one day or after 40 years have one thing in common. They decided something else was more important than doing their recovery work and developing a greater closeness with their Higher Power. No one is invincible from a relapse. NO ONE. All it takes is to start believing that you can skip some of your daily spiritual and recovery routines until eventually, you’ve skipped too many of them. And that’s when most relapses will happen.

If you are someone that is recovering or feel you are recovered from any addiction, don’t ever let yourself believe that you are immune to relapsing back into it. But most importantly, definitely don’t ever allow yourself to put anything in front of your recovery work or your relationship with your Higher Power. Because as soon as you do that with either of them, you are taking one step closer to that relapse…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson