Spotlight on the 12 Steps, 1-3 IV
By Bob Speer
Drug Addiction Treatment:
The first Three Steps of the 12 Step program are the
spiritual foundation for drug addiction treatment. They are based on the
three spiritual principles found on page 60 of the (Big
Book of A. A.) Essentially they are understood: I can’t,
God can, I’ll let Him. The First Step states: “We admitted
we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had
become unmanageable.”
Most readers of the Coffee Cup are aware that Bill W.
was one of the co-founders of (Alcoholics Anonymous.)
Most of us know that he had a spiritual awakening and
that he described this awakening as a “great white light
experience”. We may also be aware that after his spiritual
awakening he was given a copy of The Varieties of Religious
Experience by William James. In his reading of this book
Bill discovered there are a great variety of spiritual
experiences. He also found that there is one element
which is common to all of them. That element is pain.
All of the people whom William James studied
experienced significant pain prior to their experience of
a spiritual awakening. This would suggest that those who
take Step 1, those who accept their drug addiction and
surrender to their powerlessness over their addiction have
suffered pain as a consequence of it.
Some would look at the pain and say that it is unfair
or that it is a bad thing. Many of you know that I am a
cancer survivor. It is unlikely that I would have survived
the cancer if it were not for the 12 Step program and the
members of 12 Step programs who supported me in my
treatment journey. Early I learned that if I was to survive I must
“take the value out”. That meant that I did not have the
privilege of seeing cancer as “bad”. For me, cancer was
neither good nor bad. It simply was. One of the ways in
which we make it more difficult to admit that we are
powerless is by seeing drug addiction or alcoholism as a “bad
thing”. If we are able to simply see drug addiction and
alcoholism as a disease that is neither good nor bad, if
we can see that we are not cheated but that addiction
and alcoholism are simply part of life, then the acceptance
part of Step 1 is easier.
The Second Step states: “We came to believe that a
Power Greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
Bill W. understood that many who would work these Steps
would have difficulty with a traditional understanding of
God. The “God of religion” simply would not work for
many alcoholics. He therefore borrowed another idea from
William James and wrote about “God as we understood
Him.” Still there are people in the program who will
question how we know that God exists. The answer to
that question is that we do not know. What we do know is
that the treatment Steps work. The 12 Step program works best for
most. That is what we know and that is all we need to
know. In meetings we hear “It works if you work it.” The
only reason for working the treatment program is that it works. The
only reason for believing in God is because it works.
The Third Step states: “We made a decision to turn our
will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood
Him.” For many of us the understanding of God that we
received in church or as children in our families simply does
not work. There is a real freedom in being able to use an
understanding of God which works for us. Again we turn to
William James. He taught us that we have a right to believe
in God in a way that works for us.
This Step calls us to surrender to a Higher Power. This
means that we have a willingness to submit to the authority
of God as we understand Him. Again we are confronted
with our need to be in control. When we attempt to give
up control, we confront a very basic force within us, a
need to be in control. The inner spiritual struggle for
control is, it would appear, the most fundamental struggle
of drug addiction treatment. The capacity to let go of control, to surrender,
is the most basic and most difficult issue of recovery. It
seems those who are able to surrender are generally those
who recover and those who do not surrender are those
who do not recover.
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