Category: Recovery From Addictions

“Came to believe a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity…”

I was brought up in a family that exposed me to church and religion from the day I was born. We were active members of the Community United Methodist Church in Poughkeepsie, NY where my mother was an ardent participant of the bell choir and my father was one of the layman. Going to church every Sunday morning for the 11am service meant putting on my most uncomfortable clothes, sitting in a very hard wooden pew, being ushered to the alter steps to hear the Pastor’s kids talk that never made much sense to me, spending at least 30 to 45 minutes after that listening to a lecture in a hot Sunday School classroom, and finally having to spend at least 10 to 15 minutes shaking all these strangers hands in Fellowship Hall while they ate donuts and drank coffee. The best part of my Sundays were when we drove out of the church parking lot and headed to brunch.

While I may have been exposed to God during all those Sundays in the first 18 years of my life, I didn’t absorb much of it. I thought God was a person that the pastor only communicated with and that I would one day be able to if I gave enough money to his church. I also thought God was the one that allowed all those bad things to happen to me in my life like being molested, having alcoholic parents, watching them die at their own hands, or seeing one of my best friends pass away from a terrible illness. Even worse, I had done many bad things when I had been active in my addictions and I was deathly afraid of what God thought of me. So when I finally decided to enter recovery for my alcoholism and drug addiction, I hesitated at Step 2. How was I going to believe that a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity when the idea of God brought out so many feelings of anger and fear? My first sponsor in AA helped me to get beyond this dilemma. She said something so profound and yet so simple that I became able to move beyond any hesitation with this step.

“Believe that I believe that a Power greater than myself will restore you to sanity…”

All she was asking for me to do was believe that she believed. For a God that seemed so distant all my life and one that I felt caused me great pain, believing that she believed differently, was much easier to grasp. So I did that. I believed that she believed in a Power that would restore me to sanity and I believed that it was a different Power than the one I had been exposed to my whole life.

There are tons of reasons why Step 2 can be challenging for people to grasp and get beyond. Some people may be atheists or agnostic and find it hard to do this step because of that. Some people may be lesbian or gay and find it hard to believe in a Power when they’ve been told so often that their lives are a sin and that this Power says so. Some people may have done so many terrible things in this world that their shame and fear of what that Power thinks of them prevents it from happening. And others may have been so overexposed to religion as children that they’ve gone in the complete opposite direction from ever seeking out that Power.

The 12 Steps, and Step 2 specifically, is not religious based. It’s not based upon any sect or denomination or specific walk of faith. It’s not based upon any type of church or cult. It’s simply just a belief that a Higher Power is there and can restore everyone to sanity.

If you are finding it still hard to believe that any Power exists higher than you to restore you to sanity, believe that I believe there is. I was once you, and today I believe.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

“We admitted we were powerless over our addiction and that our lives had become unmanageable.”

Facing the first step in any recovery program can be a daunting task. Many people who find their way into recovery rooms for whatever addiction they face usually arrive because of great losses that have already happened. Most have found there was no where else to turn. And almost everyone in the beginning of any recovery program feels downtrodden, depressed, and hopeless. This can be a good thing though for someone beginning their journey of recovery.

During the good times of any of the addictions I have battled in this life, I generally felt upbeat and on top of the world. In the beginnings of each of them, the low times were greatly outweighed by the highs. There were moments in the low times when I was approached by those who had found recovery and I was extremely close-minded to listening to what they had to say.

Take my alcoholism for example. In my senior year of college, things got out of hand twice with my drinking. During both of those times, I blacked out and created some problems for myself and for others. For the first incident, I was only given a warning and simply laughed it off. For the second, I was put on a level of academic probation where I had to speak to a person from AA once a week for three sessions. I still remember sitting in my apartment on the couch half listening to a guy tell me about how I might have a problem with drinking and that maybe I should go to a meeting with him. I wasn’t open to hearing what he had to say because I wasn’t broken yet from my addiction. I wasn’t regularly feeling depressed. I hadn’t landed in jail. My grades were excellent and I was quite the overachiever in my fraternity. There had not been enough consequences yet in my life to see that alcohol was making my life unmanageable. That period actually came much later.

When I finally went to my first twelve step recovery meeting with an open mind and open heart, it was in September of 2007. By then, I really was broken and had hit rock bottom. I had quit drinking and drugs twelve years before but had decided back then I could recover on my own. After twelve long years of believing that and getting addicted to many other things, I had lost pretty much everything and my life felt completely out of control. Suddenly the first step in AA made sense to me and I was ready to listen to what that man had once said to me all those years back in my college apartment. I finally knew at that point I was powerless over my alcoholism and my addictive personality. As for my life being unmanageable, at that point, my business was in financial failure, my health was deteriorating rapidly, my seven year relationship was over, and I was forced to live in my sister’s guest room as I had no where else to go. So was my life truly unmanageable? Absolutely.

I don’t believe that there is any way the first step can be understood unless one is truly in a place of brokenness. Throughout the five years of active drinking and drugging that I did and the twelve years that followed after that where I found other substitute addictions, I never quite got to that place of feeling shattered on every level. Thank God that it came before I actually relapsed or before something even worse then that happened.

Step 1 could be compared to climbing Mount Everest. For a mountain that has the highest peak in the world, many try to tackle it, but few ever reach its top. Through my journey of finding a deeper connection to God and seeing how much destruction all of my addictions did to my life, I have been able to ascend that mountain that Step 1 was for me. While Mount Everest’s pinnacle has only been reached by a small number throughout history, there are many in the rooms of recovery who have been able to reach the summit of Step 1 and are now able to look back at how far God has taken them in the healing from their addictions.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

“I’m sorry!”

My previous entry spoke about my learning to not say those words and not taking ownership of all the bad things that happen around me. Well, there’s another side of this coin too where the phrase was overused in my life. For years I suffered at the hands of several addictions. No matter which one I was at the mercy of, there were many, many incidents where I created mishaps, pain, hardships, and wounds in others and felt the words “I’m sorry!” were enough. Sadly, they didn’t hold much weight when I continued to remain an active addict and live in toxic patterns over and over again.

Being at the mercy of any addiction, a person’s only focus is on getting a fix and staying “high”. All too often though, life comes in between them and their seeking of that fix and that’s when the addict will lash out most and create suffering for others. There were so many times that I had plans that I cancelled because it was more important for me to go get my fix. My only response in each of those times was to say “I’m sorry” to the people I was canceling out on. In my past, I stole, cheated, and lied to get my fix and if I was caught, the only thing I knew how to say was those words. They don’t hold much weight though when they’re said all the time.

If a drug addict steals from a friend or family repeatedly to get their drugs, is saying “I’m sorry” really going to hold any weight?

If an alcoholic has a terrible binge and is verbally or physically abusive to someone close to them one night, is saying “I’m sorry” the next morning when they are a little more sober enough?

If a gambler goes out and spends all their wife’s and his money that was set aside for a mortgage payment, is saying “I’m sorry” going to make her feel any better?

If a sex addict goes out and cheats for one night on their partner, is saying “I’m sorry” going to take the sting away from the infidelity?

All of those answers can be said with a resounding “No!”

Making amends to all the people that an addict has harmed isn’t as easy as saying “I’m sorry” and moving on. It begins first with recovery and becoming clean from the addiction. Then it involves prayer and finding a Higher Power who can help the person become less selfish and more selfless in their life. And finally, it leads that person through their new God centered life to making a true amends to the people they have harmed. To make an amends is not just to go to those that were harmed and say “I’m sorry.” It involves a lot more. It means being honest to those people the addict has harmed telling them where they were selfish, self-centered, dishonest, and afraid. Even more importantly, it involves asking those people that were harmed how they felt and what they need to truly heal from what happened.

I always thought that saying “I’m sorry” for all my bad behaviors would be enough. It wasn’t. Until I began living a life that was centered with God, I didn’t know that. Today I do my best to live my life with a Higher Power guiding it. I don’t just say those words anymore for something where I did cause suffering to someone else. I work on changing the behaviors that caused it in the first place, and I do everything I can to offer restitution to those that I’ve harmed. And even better, I’ve found that the more that I seek out God’s will in my life, the less I even have situations arise anymore where I might have once just said the words “I’m sorry!” to deal with it.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson