Opening Up to What Is...

Some time ago, I began reading several books by David Richo (Shadow Dance, The Power of Coincidence and How to Be an Adult in Relationships).  I've been reading each of them somewhat concurrently, bouncing back and forth between them as felt right to me.  With each book, I've been making conscious decisions to open myself up to that dark side of who I am (the shadow self that I don't like acknowledging and certainly don't like accepting or, God forbid, embracing) and to the various "assisting forces" (dreams, coincidences, events, spirits and what I thought to be dead people like Earle) who are helping me be more truly who I already am.

What I'm starting to realize now is that once I made those commitments, things really begin to happen fast and that there's probably no way to put the Genie back in the bottle, even if I wanted to! There seems to be nothing that happens to me, 24x7, that isn't part of the process.  A few nights ago, I was meeting with a sponsee for coffee and while we talked, I started to understand with much greater clarity the answer to a key question in my life that's been plaguing me for several years now. 

What that question has to deal with is not something that I want to go into here, at least not now, but my point is that while I was talking and listening to this really great guy (who has 3x more sobriety than I do and who is a tad older than I am and who is very successful in his business life) talk about his (and coincidentally my!) problems/struggles with his wife of many years -- it became clear to me that everything that's been going on in my life in the last 8 years is part of a process that began many many years ago when I was first growing up.  And that what I knew to be true for me then (that I had a special purpose in life and that that purpose involved helping others), is something that I have been moving toward step by step all these years.  Most especially now.

More importantly, I started to realize that everything that has happened over the last 56 years of my life is just what needed to happen in order for me to be where I am right now.  Everything.  There was nothing in that path of events and people that should have been any different than it actually was.  It was and is perfect.  (Thank you, Earle!)

Several weeks ago, sometime after I began doing this "shadow work" I woke up one Saturday morning and realized that my wife was already up having tea and reading the paper.  I gave myself permission to do what I wanted to do: go back to sleep.  I was very tired.  I slept.  I dreamt.  I awoke.  I repeated that process a couple of times, slept, dreamt and awoke.  The last time I did that, I awoke and as soon as I was conscious, the idea came to me that "Everything's true!".  As that simple thought entered my mind, everything went White.  A bright light is the only thing I can think of to describe this experience.  I had this thought lingering in my consciousness "Everything's true" and in the background I'd see various things (events and people) from my past and present and as I would gaze at them I would remember that "Everything's true!" -- everything and everyone is true, complete, perfect.  And everything was surrounded and immersed in this incredibly bright light.

After a few moments, the idea about Everything's True would drift and the White light would fade.  And I would be aware that it was fading.  I had mixed feelings about this fading away of the light: the light had actually scared or frightened me...something seemed almost "foreign" about it.  Yet it also filled me with energy and peace.  As it faded almost completely away, I would then remember some other event or person from my past and then the idea would come to me again that "Everything's true" and the White light would return, full force.  And then it would fade.  And then it would return.  I don't know how long this cycle went on, maybe 15 minutes, but I eventually tired of it and decided that I should get up, go hug my wife and begin knocking off her list of Honey Dos for the weekend ahead.  And so I did.

This has been an amazing couple of weeks.  All because I gave myself permission to be open to what is.

Take care!

Mike L.

The Last Roadblock to AA

I've been watching several people hovering around their bottom recently and it's given me an opportunity to remember back to the time just before I was struck sober and what was going through my mind when I was becoming truly convinced that I was totally incapable of stopping drinking. I remember the time well.

I was totally isolated and alone. Take that back: I was isolated, but I was rarely alone. There were people all about me during most of my days: at work, at home, my wife, my kids. No friends though. There were people all around me though: but I didn't connect with a single one of them at any point in my day. I was totally isolated in my "self" --- I was constantly thinking of when the next opportunity to drink would present itself and what I could do to make that opportunity happen sooner rather than later.

This state of affairs was most painful in two areas: my relationship with my wife and my relationship with my son Pat. My wife and I had been married for about 20 years at that time and there was a part of me that needed and wanted to confide in her what was going on with me. But I simply couldn't. If I told her anything even close to the truth about what was going on with me, it would eventually lead to her coming to the door which led to my drinking. I couldn't tell her how depressed and unhappy I was because she'd want to help me get help. But I was already getting the help I thought I needed and had to have: alcohol. Her kind of help would probably be a therapist any therapist would eventually ask me why I didn't stop drinking and when I answered (should I actually tell the truth---which would be unlikely) with "I can't" he'd naturally conclude that I was an alcoholic and that I needed to do something about that. Like Stop Drinking!

The hell of my existence though was that I couldn't tell people that I couldn't stop drinking because as soon as I did that they'd naturally expect me to....stop drinking! Fuck!!!

So I didn't really talk to my wife for those ten months before I got sober. I mean to talked to her, but I never said anything of significance or truth in terms of what was going on in my head or heart.

In terms of my relationship with my son, who was just beginning his own recovery from his addiction to drugs, it was almost as painful, if not more, as my (non-)relationship with my wife. I'd take him to and from his meetings almost every day between January 2008 and the time of my getting struck sober. While he was in the meetings, I was supposed (so my wife thought) to stay parked outside to wait for him and to make sure that he stayed in the meeting. The trust level between us and Pat was at an all time low.

But it was clear to me that Pat was really trying to get and stay clean and sober. Although there were many relapses in those first 4 months of 2008, something clicked on May 10, 2008 and he's been clean and sober since. But back then, I rationalized with myself that sitting outside of the meetings waiting for Pat and checking to make sure he stayed in the meetings was somehow "disloyal" and "un-trusting" of Pat. So I used that rationalization to make it OK to drive off and find a bar where I could drink while he was in the meetings. Perfect solution to all my problems.

That system worked until it didn't work. Toward the end, I was feeling more and more isolated and in pain. In the short time periods that I was able to drink without getting caught, I wasn't able to get enough alcohol in me to take away the pain. In those first ten months of 2008, I think I only really got dizzying drunk maybe three or four times (typically when I was away from home, but not always).

Toward the end, I would be sitting outside my son's meetings "wishing" that I could go in there and get better like he was getting better. What kept me from doing that? Well, that's the major roadblock that I found blocking my entry into the rooms of AA. The roadblock was that I got it in my head that the people in "those rooms" were people who could stop drinking and that I couldn't go into those rooms until I could stop drinking. That thought kept me out of AA for some days and weeks.

Ultimately what happened was that I woke up one morning after Pat had almost caught me drinking and as soon as I woke up I realized once again that I simply couldn't stop drinking. But for some reason, I then realized that "not being able to stop drinking" IS ALCOHOLISM! And that alcoholism is a disease. It's not my fault. It's just the way things turned out to be. What happened that morning is I truly and completely accepted the truth of my alcoholism and instead of continuing to "try to stop drinking" I began a new strategy: I began trying to stay sober, one day at a time.

That's when the roadblock disappeared for me. I didn't go to AA for another few days because I had some business to take care of first: (1) I needed to tell my wife what had been going on and what I was going to do about it and (2) I needed to tell my son the same thing. Both accepted me without condition and I then went to my first meeting of AA.

I didn't realize for some months what my last roadblock was and I still remember the day and the meeting that this realization came about. I was sitting in a meeting and that morning a young woman came in and raised her hand as being in her first 30 days....again. She'd been a part of that meeting for some time apparently and I could see the shame written all over her face when I said that she'd drank again and was back. I watched her during the whole meeting and I was searching for something I could say that might help her. Toward the end of the meeting I discovered what it was: she was ashamed because she couldn't stop drinking and because she was thinking that the rest of us in that room were able to stop drinking! So I raised my hand and welcomed her back and told her that she wasn't alone in this room, that she wasn't the only person in the room who couldn't stop drinking: because I couldn't, no, I can't stop drinking either! I can't stop drinking either.

Even though I was some months sober, I still perceive myself to be someone who can't stop drinking. What keeps me sober is (1) remembering that I can't stop drinking and (2) that I can try to stay sober today. That strategy had worked then for several months and it's still working today.

Take care!

Mike L.

The Step's Hidden Principles

We've all heard many times the last seven words of the 12th step, "practice these principles on all our affairs" --- but has anyone seriously asked, "What principles?" I suspect most if not all but me members of AA assume (which is to conclude without having asked the question) that the "principles" are equal to the preceding 11 or 12 "steps."

Well, I don't think so. And anyone who knows me will not be shocked. I haven't had a conforming thought for my entire life! I think that the principles are something more than the steps. I think that they are something different for each of us and we discover what these principles are by working or, better yet, being worked by these steps. The principles are hidden deep within and are meant to be discovered.

I remember once being at a meeting at the California state capital building one Friday noontime and the speaker shared with us a little wallet-sized card that listed the 12 Principles of AA's Steps. Someone had given it to him years before and he passed it around for each of us to look. I remember that I was so overjoyed that someone had discovered specifically what the damned principles were that were alluded to in the ending of the 12th step. Until that time, I had always held a resentment that Bill did not explicitly state what these principles were. In my mind, I thought that he should have included a parenthetical comment at the end of each step and summarized the principle for each step. The card listed 12 principles corresponding to each Step: Step 1 was Acceptance. Step 2 was Faith. Step 3 was Surrender/Trust.

I wrote them all down on the back of a checking account deposit slip and I've kept it in my wallet ever since. I'm not going to list them here because I eventually came to believe that this list has absolutely no "authority". It wasn't, as far as I know, something that Bill Wilson later wrote down or that has been adopted by the AA Fellowship. More importantly, I realized that what I was searching for, the authoritative list of AA principles, did not, could not and should not exist.

The unnamed principles referred to in the 12th step are known only to those who have worked these steps. Remember, this list on page 59 of "How It Works" -- which summarizes the 12 Steps of AA --- begins with the statement, "Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery." As it says in the pamphlet, "A Member's Eye View of AA" these are not "commandments to be followed but reports of action taken."

The summarized list cannot list static statements of principles because these principles are different for each person working each step. The principles should not be definitively listed because that would only mislead those who've yet to take these steps. If you want to learn the principle underneath the 1st step, then you must work that step. You don't have to work that step or any other step: remember, it's only suggested that you work the steps. But if you want to know the principle underneath or within any of these steps, you must work them. It will do you no good to be told what the principles are: you must work these steps before you will know these principles. And you must know these principles, before you can practice them in all your affairs.

I think I came to understand this whole philosophy of the steps very early in my recovery. I somehow discovered that the steps were something I needed to do honestly and without compromise. I needed to work them without pretending. Without faking it. Ok, there's really no mystery for me as to how I came to understand this rather unique view of how to work the steps. It was all a direct result of having encountered a man named Dr. Earle. He gave me that freedom. He taught me, with his actions, the "no bullshit program of AA."

Today, I heard some one's story and I was profoundly struck at how much emphasis she has come to place on the 1st Step in her own program of recovery. She's been in (and out) of AA for 15 to 20 years and is now celebrating 6 months of continuous sobriety. In the room, her younger brother sat and listened to his sister --- he'd never been to that meeting before and he was truly surprised when his sister went up to sit at the table in order to share her story with us. He too has been in (and out) of AA for almost as long as his sister and I suspect from the carefully chosen words he used during his comments this afternoon, that he has something less than 6 months of continuous sobriety.

Anyway, as she shared her story today, she talked about the importance of the 1st step in her program today. A half-measured 1st step has apparently been something that has repeatedly tripped her up in her attempts to get and stay sober. While there were periods of time, months and sometimes years, where she would seem to "get it" --- there had always come a moment when she'd forget...and then she'd drink and/or use...or use and/or drink. But, she had always come back to AA. She has been a persistent one and it was a pure joy to listen to her today.

At some point in her share, she mentioned something I'd never heard before and that was the "Three 'A's of AA: Awareness, Acceptance and Action". For her, all three were important in her working of the 1st step: becoming aware of who she is as an alcoholic, accepting who she is as an alcoholic and acting on or in conformity with that awareness.

Although I doubt she understands this, I'm looking back at her share this afternoon realizing that she's coming to understand the principles hidden in her 1st step: awareness, acceptance and action. And I can certainly identify these same principles in my 1st step: waking up one morning and becoming aware, once again, that "I can't stop drinking!" And then, for some reason, carrying that Step Zero thought one step further, I became aware that "Not being able to stop drinking is called 'alcoholism' --- that alcoholism is a disease and I just happen to have it!" That awareness was then followed, in a nanosecond, by the utter and penetrating acceptance that having this dis-ease was perfectly OK! Ahhhh!

The action for me is sort of odd in that I did it without moving my body. The action occurred that morning when imagined myself sitting in a big circle of people at my son's recovery program. It was at one of the Thursday night "Multi-Family Group" sessions. I'd been going to these Multi-Family Groups for about 10 months as my son was beginning his recovery and as I was falling farther and farther into my disease.

The parents of the kids who were in the Adolescent Chemical Dependency Program would sit in a circle, along with their recovering ones, as well as any other siblings who wished to join us for these sessions. The sessions were designed for us to talk about whatever was going on in our families as we were attempting to support the member of our family who was trying to get/stay clean and sober. At the beginning of these sessions, we'd start off by going around the room and we'd check in. Checking in for the parents meant saying along these lines: "I'm Mike, I'm here for my son Pat and we have had (or have not had...as the case may have been) a clean and sober house this past week. And I do (don't) have something to talk about tonight." If we did have something to talk about, the leader would make note of that and then the next person would check in.

Checking in for the recovering addicts meant saying, "I'm Pat and I'm an addict. I've been clean for X days/months. I haven't smoked cigarettes for 15 minutes (this program wanted the addicts to also stay nicotine free for 90 days in order to "graduate" from the program--my son, with his sponsors and parent's support, decided early on that staying free of alcohol and other drugs was big enough of a challenge at this point in his life without having to worry about dying of cancer later on... He'd deal with that later.). And I do (or don't) have something to talk about tonight.

For the past ten months, I'd lied every time I checked in to that Thursday night meeting. I lied when I said that we had a clean and sober household. It was a lie, not because of my son; it was my lie because there were only a handful of days/nights during those ten months when I walked into our house without alcohol in my body. But the morning of October 20, 2001 --- something different happened if only in my mind.

After waking up to the awareness of my incapacity to stop drinking and the acceptance of this physiological disease of mine --- I took the action of checking in to this imaginary group of people and raised my hand and said, "My name is Mike and I'm an alcoholic." When I took that action, albeit in my mind while laid there next to my sleeping wife of 20 years, something miraculous happened. I experienced a freedom from the obsessions (1) to drink and (2) to not be an alcoholic like my dad, that had plagued me for 30 years. I was free. While I couldn't stop drinking, I could try to stay sober one day at a time.

I floated in that freedom for three days before I attended my first meeting of AA. The first two days were just simple bliss, but I began to realize that this gift of sobriety was something very fragile. It wasn't the result of my thinking or figuring something out. It was a gift and I needed to nurture it. I quickly understood that I needed to do what my son had been doing. I shared my truth with my wife on the following Monday night---had I shared that with anyone before her would have hurt her even more deeply than the real daily betrayals I had been making with her in terms of my drinking for the last ten months.

After sharing this truth with my wife, I then shared this truth with my son who was then 5 months and 10 days ahead of me in this journey of recovery. His reaction my confession of absolute failure as a father and human being was astounding: "Gee, Dad, this is Great! We're both addicts!" I shook my head in disbelief and told him that although I wasn't all that thrilled about being an addict, I was overwhelmed with joy over the fact that we were going to be able to share our recovery with one another. Sharing that recovery wasn't something that I was able to do with my own father (he'd died of alcoholism some years before) but that I could share it with him was the best thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life. Then I took my son to his NA meeting and I went on to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The principles of my 1st step now include Awareness, Acceptance and Action. What an amazing program!

Take care!

Mike L.

Serenity: Highly Overrated

I often hear people in meetings and elsewhere talking as though they crave Serenity as some sort of drug. I certainly hear this craving when others are praying the Serenity Prayer in meetings (as you know, I don't participate in this practice of communal prayer in AA meetings....but don't me get me started!): Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change... And I hear it when some people begin advocating rigorous efforts at prayer and meditation: do it and you will find serenity!

I personally believe Serenity to be highly overrated. Looking back over what I remember of the last 55 years, I can't remember one important or substantial thing that I have learned from a moment of serenity, no matter how long that moment. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero.

Instead, I see that I've learned most important insights into life by means of pain, sorrow, grief, anxiety, depression, anger, shame, fear, jealousy, discomfort and so-called character defects. That's an abbreviated list to be sure. But in this list of mine, you will not find the blessed experience of Serenity.

I think we are confused when we think that we need serenity in order to do anything, including the ability to accept the things we cannot change. Personally, I've never found the ability to accept something that I cannot change as a result or consequence of first experiencing a sense of serenity and/or peace. Rather, I tried as best I could to change something that I thought needed to be changed...and tried and tried and tried to change it...all to no avail. And if you know me, you'll know that I didn't give up then. I tried and tried and tried again and again and again.

The clearest and most obvious example of this doomed attempt to change something that I could not change was my long term attempt to "not be an alcoholic like my father." Every single time when my alcoholism would pop out like a jack-in-the-box into my life, I would reel back in shame and humiliation and then devote Herculean amounts of energy to push that fact back down and cover the lid on it. By God, I was not going to become an alcoholic!

Did God or anyone else grant me serenity before I finally accepted what I could not change (the fact that I was indeedy an alcoholic!)? No. No way. What happened is that I ran out of energy and willpower. I finally gave up the fight. I fully accepted who I was: alcoholic. When I did that, everything in my life, past and present, all came together into a comprehensible whole. Everything made sense. Every drink, every drunk, every shame-filled aspect of my diseased life.

I think that's what people call an experience of serenity.

And it happened to me that morning of October 20, 2001. And it's happened many times since. Not for long periods. Just brief moments when things all seem to be what they are without any desire or longing on my part for them to be anything other than what they are.

I said that serenity was overrated. I didn't say that serenity didn't exist or that it wasn't an amazing experience. It does and it is. But if I begin the day "seeking it" I never find it. It's not the prerequisite to my being able to accept what I cannot change: it's the consequence of my full and unreserved acceptance of that which I cannot change: Me. The mysterious ever changing Me.

Take care!

Mike L.

Alcoholics: 4 Options for Living

Alcoholism is a disease that's hard to diagnose. Seems the alcoholic is the one who ultimately has to decide if he or she's one or not. I've oftentimes wished that there was a simple blood test that could tell us if we were or weren't alcoholics. But there isn't. I remember reading somewhere there is a test that can be done on the human brain to determine if a person is an alcoholic or not, but the test can't be given until after death. While there doesn't seem to be an objective test to determine this issue once and for all (before death), we're left with more subjective tests that involve us asking various questions about our drinking and our drinking history.

All that said, the point I want to talk about today though is that objectively speaking, once a person's body does cross the line between non-alcoholic to alcoholic, the person only has four options. These four options are possible answers to the question once asked by Dr. Paul O., author of the story "Acceptance was the Answer", when he finally accepted the fact that he was an alcoholic of sorts: "OK, now what am I going to do about it?"

1. Strange as it may sound, the alcoholic can choose to be a non-alcoholic: Or rather, they can consider themselves non-alcoholics...despite all the evidence and suspicions to the contrary. They can make valiant attempts to conform their drinking to those supposed and sometimes mythical standards which apply to non-alcoholics: e.g., can stop whenever they want to, don't have any DUIs, don't drink after 5pm, don't throw up, don't have people suggesting that you drink to much, don't have problems at work, etc. This was my option of choice for much of the first 38 years of my drinking: I wasn't an alcoholic because I wasn't like my father. I could stop. And as long as I could stop, I couldn't be an alcoholic. Right.

2. They can be a practicing alcoholic: That is, they can give in to their disease and drink and drink and drink....until they arrive at the inevitable: jails, institutions or death. For me, this option was what I opted for in January 2001 when my son began his recovery and I was asked to stop all drinking/using while he was in that outpatient program. That was the moment I had been dreading: the moment where I knew without any question that I couldn't stop. Stopping, for me, was simply impossible. I couldn't imagine going any length of time, days or weeks, without access to alcohol. I practiced in private though and for ten months, no one was able to catch me in the act of drinking. It was hell.

3. They can stop drinking and be a dry alcoholic: For whatever reason and for whatever motivation, the alcoholic does have the option to simply stop drinking. Nothing else really, just stop. I had actually opted for this option many times over the last ten or so years of my drinking. Once I even stopped for 18 months. The problem I had with stopping though is that there always came a time when I realized or convinced myself that I had stopped. And once I was convinced that I had stopped, well then, it wasn't much of a step to move on to the conclusion that I must not be an alcoholic! I had stopped. Any time though that I was in the state of "having stopped" -- I tended to have more and more difficulties with everyday issues and problems. With emotions. With people. With memories. With fears. The longer I was "dry" the more thirsty I got. If I stopped, I always started up again at some point.

4. And finally, they can choose to be an alcoholic practicing recovery. That's what happened to me the morning of October 20, 2001: I woke up to the same thought I'd had for most mornings over the last ten months: I can't stop drinking! But that morning, for some reason, I had another thought, "Well, not being able to stop drinking is called, 'alcoholism'" And alcoholism is a disease, a disease that I happen to have. Now what am I going to do about it? Well, I guess I can do what Pat's been doing: I can try to stay sober, one day at a time. And I can begin going to these meetings that he's been going to. Those people can help me. Two days later, after having disclosed my discovery to both my wife and my son, I attended my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I began practicing recovery. I didn't stop drinking. Instead, I started trying to stay sober one day at a time. And I began learning a new way of living by listening to what others had done and were doing. Eventually, I began going through the process of the Steps with the help of a sponsor and other recovering alcoholics.

This is the far softer and easier way to deal with the disease of alcoholism.

Take care!

Mike L.

Step 1 Honesty with Self and Others....About What?

Tonight I went to a literature meeting where we read and share on topical selections from As Bill Sees It. Someone volunteers a topic and then people are free to select readings from the Table of Contents listed for that topic. Tonight's topic was Honesty. While people we reading various readings and sharing their experience, I began browsing through all of the readings for Honesty, looking for a selection which talked about what I consider one of the most important paragraphs in the Big Book related to the topic of Honesty: the first paragraph of How It Works. It wasn't included anywhere in the readings on the topic of Honesty!

I was surprised to find that the editors of As Bill Sees It didn't seem to pull any of the three great Honesty lines from that paragraph. I did find one reading that did talk about the importance of honesty with ourselves, as well as honesty with others. So I voluteered to read that passage and then shared with the group "As Mike Sees It" -- and how the first paragraph of How It Works gives me great insight into how honesty played a critical role in my own moment of clarity, the morning when I woke up sober for the first time.

The first reference to honesty in that paragraph talks about how rarely we've seen folks fail in this process who have thoroughly followed these steps.... Those that do fail seem to be "constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves." Not honest with others. Honest with themselves. The second reference follows: "They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty." Here the scope of honest seems to extend to more than just ourselves, but also to our whole manner of living. This new manner of living seems to require some sort of high level honesty, to be sure. The third reference to honesty comes in the last sentence of the paragraph where it refers to those who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders: they too can recover "if they have the capacity to be honest."

All of the other readings tonight seemed to talk about honesty in the context of the 4th/5th steps and in the context of our relationships with others, both before and after we got sober. I don't have any particular issue with any of that, but given that I'm focusing on the 1st Step this month of January, I'm more attentive to how honesty played a key role in my getting sober and continues to play a key role in my staying sober.

For me, especially in the context of the first step, honesty is important almost entirely in terms of how I am willing and able to be honest about who I am as a human being who happens to be an alcoholic. My own moment of clarity involved my "waking up" to who and what I was: an alcoholic. A man who couldn't and can't "stop" drinking. On that particular morning, I thought the same thought I'd woken up to for almost a year: "I just can't stop drinking!". What was unique about that morning was that, unlike in prior experiences, the fact that I couldn't stop drinking was not a problem or something to be ashamed of.... It was just a biological fact. My body was different in terms of how it processed alcohol (and whatever form that might take...).

But I didn't lose the obsession to drink with this awareness of who I was. That didn't come until seconds later, I saw myself sitting in a circle of folks at the Kaiser "multi-family group" which met on Thursday nights and included about six kids who were trying to get clean and sober, as well as their parents and siblings. The morning I woke up sober, I saw myself sitting in that circle of people and when it came time to "check-in" (we parents would check in by saying, "Mike name is Mike. I'm here for my son, Pat. We did (or didn't, if Pat had a relapse that week...) have a sober household. And I do or don't have something to talk about." That's how I had been dishonestly checking in with those folks for the last ten months or so. Never did I tell the real, rigorous truth to them in that group, or anywhere else for that matter.

But that morning of October 20, 2001, I saw myself raising my hand in front of those imaginary people and say, "My name is Mike and I am an alcoholic." When I made that disclosure, even though it was to imaginary people to be sure, I had a clear and dramatic removal of the obsession to drink. An obsession that had been with me since my first drink almost 30 years prior.

I was free. And this freedom from the obsession to drink came about, I believe with all my heart, because I was finally honest with myself and with others about who I am as an alcoholic. I am convinced that this freedom has remained constant, in large part, because I've developed a new way of living which includes the critical component of being honest about that reality on a daily basis.

I was on my way....

Take care!

Mike L.

Once Again: It's an Inside Job

Last night, I'd made a commitment to meet with a sponsee after work and before heading over there, I realized I'd really not let my wife know about this commitment I'd made. This issue of being considerate and communicative was more important this week: the last week or so has been rather difficult --- she's been in a particularly bad spot emotionally right now for a lot of reasons. That never bodes well for me. Anyway, a few nights ago she informed me that large part of the proposed solution to her problem was that I needed to change. I needed to change to solve her problem. God Love Her. ;-}

And part of the way I needed to change was to be more present and connected to her, spend more time with her, etc.

Anyway, I called her last night with the intention to be up front about wanting to go meet with a sponsee for a little while at the end of the day. Or course, I didn't realize until too late that this wasn't that honest because I'd already made my plan to meet with the sponsee before running it by her.... But that gets me ahead of my story. Her response was surprising in that it seemed quite positive: "Sure, I'm on my way home and I'll email you with a list of things we need from the store and you can pick those up for me after your meeting..." Sounded great to me! Maybe this "honesty" thing is something I should try more often.

Unfortunately, later that evening when I got home, there was a chill in the air and it didn't take long to discover that she really wasn't all that "fine" about my decision to meet with a sponsee earlier in the evening. Now I learned that when she was on the phone earlier, she'd felt hurt by my decision to meet with this stranger (her term for sponsees or anyone else in recovery...) but that she didn't feel she really had a choice to do or say anything other than pretend to be supportive of what I had already decided to do. That is, she pretended (quite well!) to be supportive even though she actually felt abandoned....once again by me. She'd been hurt.

I felt like the jackass that I am all too often and I tried as best I could to make amends. And we worked through that by the end of the night. Mostly.

The next morning, I got up early and for the first time in awhile, I got back to my normal morning routine of stretching exercises (face it: I'm old) and then 15 minutes or so of quiet meditation. Sitting and being attentive to my breathing in and breathing out. Then I went to an early 6:30 meeting at the Concord Fellowship. I walked in feeling quite content and proud of myself for getting back into my spiritual routine that morning, successful at compartmentalizing my wife issues, and went over to the counter to grab a cup of decaf and try to resist getting a donut before sitting down with friends before the meeting.

I poured a cup of coffee and then went to grab a packet of Equal from the basket of artificial sweeteners on the counter. I sorted through all the crappy Sweet 'n Lows which I hate, looking for the cherished but rare Equal packets that always seem always to be hiding in the bottom of the basket. The first packet I found turned out to already be opened and 1/4th full. Shit! How inconsiderate of someone to do that! The second packet I found turned out to be fully empty. Shit x 2! plus a Fuck!....I whispered to myself and this was overheard by two friends nearby. They took great glee in the fact that St. Mike was finding life on life's terms not quite so easy and even more glee in sharing that insight with me. While I laughed off their biting judgment, I left them to their new past time (making fun of Mike) and sat down at the "my" table.

Once there, a friend of mine with maybe two or three years asked me what was wrong...I seemed troubled. Rather than admit that I was troubled by two defective Equal packets (or more honestly, my difficulties with my wife), I pushed down my real feelings and upset and said that I'd been struggling with some work issues related to the worsening economy and the possibility that I was going to be asked to lay off one or more of my employees before year's end. He then shared with me 3 to 5 suggestions of how I should handle that unbeknownst to him "unreal" problem of mine. I tried to project 7 years worth of humility and openness to someone with less time than me (arrogant asshole that I was!), all the while wanting him to shut up and allow me to share with him the real problem facing the Concord Fellowship and all of AA: the audacity of some fucking alcoholic to open up a packet of Equal, take only 3/4s of the substance and then leave the remainder in the basket....only to be outdone by some other (or the same) fucking alcoholic leaving a completely empty packet of Equal in the basket instead of throwing it away in the trash can. Luckily for him and for me (and the Equal offending asshole who might be somewhere nearby...), the meeting started.

After the chair, the topic was Acceptance. The topic pleased me only because it wasn't Gratitude, topic du jour of many November AA meetings. I thought about sharing some bullshit story that I always share about when Acceptance is the topic, but I was too humble to raise my hand... What I really wanted to talk about, no "to instruct" about, was the unwritten but important ethics of AA and the proper disposal of trash which includes partially consumed and germ infested Equal packets. But, I refrained. Restraint of pen and tongue and all that. Made all the more difficult by my two supposed friends who kept asking me if "Love and Tolerance" was my code! Arrrgh!

I left the meeting when it was over without an explosion and began my 65 minute drive to work. Before getting too far, I knew that something was bothering me and I decided that it was time for me to do what I call my Acceptance Inventory (I've blogged about it previously...it involves asking a series of 50+ questions that I memorized from a book called The Tao of Sobriety...) and wouldn't you know it, I only had to recite the first inventory question to have my whole life turned upside down:

"1. Do you accept that ordinary people are often cruel, INCONSIDERATE, and heartless?"

99% of the time, my answer to this question would be "Sure!" and I'd then move on to the really more challenging questions like "Do you accept dying?" or the following question, "Do you REALLY accept dying?". But this morning, my honest and immediate answer to question #1 was: "Apparently not!"

I realized in short fashion that my early morning visceral reaction to the discovery of the two defective Equal packets gave clear and convincing evidence to the fact that I do not in fact accept that people are not what I want/expect them to be. Even though, in reality, ordinary people are often cruel, inconsiderate and heartless. My failure to accept that reality led to my emotional outburst before the meeting.

This morning, I never really got past that first question in the Acceptance Inventory. Instead, I accepted a guilty verdict and I laughed at my self.

Then I began to recollect all sorts of examples from my "his-story" where I displayed the same or equal level of inconsiderateness (e.g., using the last bit of toilet paper and not restocking the bathroom with a new roll, taking almost the last drop of milk out of the carton and leaving a meaningless drop for my wife, if I left any at all, etc.). And I laughed at my self again....

And then when those reminences down memory lane peetered out, I hooked on to the most meaningful truth of my own inconsiderateness when the day before I'd not honored my love and commitment to my wife of 27+ years and her needs and wants before I made plans to meet with my sponsee. THAT was inconsiderate, selfish and self-centered. THAT was ordinary old me.

I didn't laugh so hard that time. I needed to begin planning on demonstrating my love and my commitment toward my wife in such a way that respects my own needs to foster my recovery, but also puts into action my love for my wife. In addition to honesty, I needed to work on some basic acts of consideration and kindness.

Oh well. Progress....not perfection. I've got work to do. No better time than now.

Take care!

Mike L.

Entirely Ready: Seems I Know It Only in Retrospect

It doesn't seem that I ever know how to become entirely ready. It always seems that I notice that I've become entirely ready only after the fact, only in retrospect.

In terms of my getting sober, I never saw sobriety coming. Sobriety was a seeming impossibility. I just couldn't stop drinking and I'd really stopped trying. All I was really trying to do was drink without getting caught or in trouble. But "stopping" wasn't something that seemed at all possible for me and I'd given up hope that I could ever do it.

Then one morning, something happened. I woke up thinking the exact same thought that I'd woken up thinking for some months, ten to be exact: "I just can't stop drinking!" Nothing really substantially "bad" had happened the night before. I'd had "only" two drinks while I was waiting to go back and pick my son up after his Friday night NA meeting... Two drinks was just perfect for that hour and a half waiting period. True, my son almost caught me that night...almost discovered that I was drinking and that I couldn't stop. But he didn't. I'd lied and he seemed to have believed me. And I'd gone to bed totally demoralized with myself and who I'd become. I just couldn't get myself out of the hellish life I found myself confined to living.

And then, I simply woke up the next morning and after thinking the same "I just can't..." thought again, for some reason, that morning, that hopeless thought led to another thought or awareness: "This inability to stop drinking is what they call 'alcoholism'." Wow, where did that come from? Actually, I know where it came from (I'd heard them talking about it many many times over the last ten months of my son's treatment program...) what I don't understand is why was it that morning, it all of a sudden "made perfect sense." Ah, a disease! That's it! I have a disease! Everything I'd been doing for years and years all of a sudden made perfect sense! I wasn't crazy or immoral or selfish, I was sick!

With the realization that I was sick, came the next thought that, well, that's not my fault. It's just the way things turned out to be. It's no one's fault. It's just the way it is. But now, I understood that "I could do something about this.... I could do what my son was doing, one day at a time. I could do that. While I couldn't "stop" drinking, I could begin trying to "stay" sober. All of a sudden, I had a glimmer of hope.

All this leads me to believe that "entire readiness" is something that I know only in retrospect. I didn't will it to happen. I didn't choose it in the way I normally think of "choosing" or of free will. It just seemed to happen as the result of a convergence of a wide array of seemingly disconnected but connected things and events. My son's recovery. My alcoholic father's death. Seeing several young kids, including my son, get and sometimes stay sober. Seeing people fail miserably at their attempt to get and stay sober: but seeing many of them get back up after falling down and starting over. Seeing these struggling sober alcoholics/addicts disclose their inner most truths and fears....and walking through them with a level of courage and integrity that seemed totally out of my reach or capability.

Today, almost 7 years later, I'm discovering this "entirely ready" state of being is also outside my willpower in terms of more than my recovery: it's ever present in my efforts to let go of habits and behaviors that clearly cause pain and suffering for me and for those I love. I want soooooo much to be ready to let these things go and have them drop away like lead weights. But they don't. It seems, rather, that they fall away like leaves from a tree: they fall when their time to fall away comes. When they've served their purpose. When I've embraced them for what they are: neither good nor bad. Simply what they are. To the extent I love and accept them like I did with my dis-ease of alcoholism, to that extent will they blossom into something beautiful and to that extent will they eventually die a grace-filled death.

Take care!

Mike L.

Annotated Version of the First Step

A sponsee's beginning his 1st Step and that means I'm working it too. In fact, this is really the only time I ever plan on reworking the steps: as I help others work them. I have no real desire to formally go through the steps again. At least, that's my thinking now.

Many people believe that the 1st step is formally and singly stated on the second page of Chapter 5 (How It Works) of the Big Book ("We came to believe we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanagable.") and then explained in more detail in the book "The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" (12x12). I've actually come to believe that the first and, in fact, all 12 of the steps are contained several other places in addition to what I call the Reader's Digest version of the Steps contained in Chapter 5 on pages 59-60. Those other places are not limited to the following: (1) in the first chapter of the Big Book, "Bill's Story" contains a summary of how Bill went through the process of the steps (it's sort of hidden, but if you read the story carefully, you'll find his working rendition of the steps...), (2) in Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism" (which covers the first step) through Chapter 7 "Working with Others" (where it talks about the 12th "suggestion" and, lastly, (3) in most all of the stories later in the Big Book.

Below, I'd like to focus on the first page of Chapter 3, More About Alcoholism. I consider that page to be the "long version" of the first step. The short version is the last paragraph of Chapter 3 (I'll talk more about that in another blog) and the shortest version, the one everyone recites when they are called on to talk about the first step, is the one found on page 59 in How It Works.

While I agree with the value of going to the 12x12 for more information about the 1st Step, I first suggest that my sponsee's or others dealing with this step focus first on Chapter 3 of the Big Book, "More About Alcoholism" before going to the 12x12. This third chapter of the Big Book, specifically, the first three full paragraphs on the first page, represent what I consider to be the most complete expression of what it means for an alcoholic to take the first step along the path of recovery.

When I heard this section of Chapter 3 read at the beginning of an AA meeting in Southern California (they read this page rather than How It Works...) the words seemed to scream out to me as being very very important and as a result I began memorizing this page. As I've mentioned before, the process of memorization has helped me get to the core of some written words/passages in the Book and elsewhere.

The repetition allows me to savor and meditate on every single word of the passage. I end up almost having a conversation with the writer as I'm doing that: I sometimes ask myself (standing in for the writer..) "Why did the writer choose this word?" "Why didn't they use another word?" and even, heretical as it may sound, "Wouldn't this statement or sentiment be more accurate (at least for me) if it was reworded to say...." Anyway, I did this process with the long version of the 1st step and have recited it to myself quite regularly on my way to work each day... Here, I thought that it might be helpful to others, especially my 1st step working sponsee, to share this long version of the 1st step, along with all my questions / thoughts / meanderings inserted into the text. The result, I suppose could be called an annotated version of the 1st Step.

Most of us were unwilling to admit that we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think they are bodily or mentally different from their fellows.

Most, but certainly not all, of us have spent considerable time resisting, denying, fighting, and fearing the idea that we might be alcoholics. We knew that if that were true, then we'd have to stop drinking. For me, I handled this challenge by routinely proving to myself over about a 29 year period of time that I wasn't an alcoholic because I could stop. In fact, I successfully stopped thousands of times!! I would stop for various periods of time, the time wasn't really that important to me, it just to had to be long enough to convince myself (or my wife) that I had "really" quit. The problem with this strategy from the very beginning was that the first thing I would do once I'd become convinced that I had indeed stopped....would be to drink!

I also had a problem when I looked at other people's drinking routines and practices and compared my drinking routines and practices with theirs. Especially other people who were clearly not alcoholics. For example, we have a friend of ours who's about my age and who's an attorney. He and his wife have been friends with us for probably our entire marriage. As far as I know, he's not an alcoholic (although his brother is). He drinks, but he doesn't appear to drink like an alcoholic. I've seen him drunk one time in the entire time I've known him (his 40th birthday party...). Oftentimes, when we arrived at their house for a visit, he'd say if you're thirsty, grab yourself something to drink in the refrigerator. I'd open the refrigerator and look inside to see all sorts of sodas, waters and juices. And there in the back corner of the refrigerator was one beer. All by itself. Lonely. I don't remember ever opting to take his one beer. I didn't like having one beer, so I would choose a soda or a water. But know that it bothered me a great deal that this guy kept one beer in his refrigerator.

There was a part of me that wanted to be like John. To be able to have one beer in my refrigerator. Because I suspected that only a non-alcoholic could do something like that. Me? I always like to keep a twelve pack on the bottom shelf with a hole just big enough to pull one bottle out of the case....I didn't like opening it all up because the beers could be counted that way and others would know how many I drank. I didn't like people counting my drinks. That's why I started hiding my drinks from a very early part of my drinking career. Anyway, what's curious about my envy of non-alcoholics like John is that wanted to be able to take on certain behaviors of theirs so that I could prove that I wasn't an alcoholic, but what always prevented me from taking on those "normal" behaviors was that it would keep me from drinking like I needed to drink!

Therefore is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by constant vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people.

This is one of the lines in the book which I believe is factually incorrect. I was able to drink like other people! The only problem was the "other people" that I could drink like were those of you who join me regularly in AA meetings! Oh well.

But the important truth is, I really spent a lot of energy and time trying to think and to drink like non-alcoholics like John and others. Ultimately, there came a time for me when that simply wasn't possible and then the games and the lying and the deceit began to characterize more and more of my daily behavior and actions.

The insanity of this became utterly clear to me a couple of years ago when I read one of those research articles which seem to come out annually reporting that someone has discovered a "cure" for alcoholism. As I was pondering whether I'd take such a so-called cure, I realized that while a part of me would love not to be an alcoholic, the truth is that if I were able to start drinking again, I certainly would not want to drink like a non-alcoholic! While I want to be a non-alcoholic, I would only want to drink like an alcoholic! Non-alcoholic drinking seems very very painful to me---truly, if there was ever alcohol abuse, it's what non-alcoholics do to alcohol when they drink it!! I mean "sipping"!! Or leaving an unfinished drink! Or getting half way through a drink, saying "Wow! That hits the spot!" and then leaving the rest of the drink untouched. No, I think I'll remain content at being an alcoholic who tries to remain sober one day at a time. Much easier and certainly less painful.

The idea that some how, some day, he could control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.

Never was the word "and" so important: Alcoholics are people who can either control or enjoy their drinking. They can't control and enjoy their drinking. Non-alcoholics can do both...although I don't really think they exert enough energy or effort to really qualify their actions as "controlled". The alcoholic insane obsession seems to be essentially one of wanting to be a non-alcoholic but, at the same time, to drink like an alcoholic.

We learned that we had to fully concede to our inner most selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.

Here's the crux of the first step spoken by those who had experienced their first step: We learned.... This isn't a statement made by a medical doctor or a scientific researcher or a priest. It's a statement made by a recovering alcoholic who learned, most likely the hard and painful way, that they were, in fact, an alcoholic. Recovery from this disease means recognizing and letting go of the delusional thought that we, as alcoholics, could be non-alcoholics. Such a thought, even if lingering or fleeting, is oftentimes a prelude to a first drink: Maybe I could have "just one" --- I mean, a non-alcoholic can have just one, why can't I?

Well, the answer follows...

We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control. But such intervals, usually brief, were inevitably followed by still less control which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.

I suspect that I was an alcoholic well before I lost the ability to control my drinking. I think the fact that I began drinking with the clear intent to drink "without becoming an alcoholic like my father" was an indication that drinking was more important to me than "not being an alcoholic like my dad." I mean, if it was really important not to be an alcoholic like my dad, the easiest and sure fire way to do that was to not drink!! Case closed. But that's not what happened. I drank in spite of the knowledge that this disease was a part of my family history and as my drinking progressed, I noticed each time I experienced something very similar to something that happened to my alcoholic dad. Usually, I'd react to those events by deciding to quit drinking. And I would quit. But then there always came a day when I would realize that "I'd quit!" --- therefore, I'm not really an alcoholic and I was off to the races again.

We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period of time, we get worse, never better.

Here's the closing argument: These folks were convinced not only that they were alcoholics, but that alcoholism was a "progressive" illness or disease. And just in case the deluded newcomer wanted to run with the idea that this disease got progressively better in a "good" way, they nailed the last nail in the coffin of denial with, "over any considerable period of time, we got worse, never better."

I've come to believe that this last line brings "good news" to the recovering alcoholic who's completed their first step, but for those who are still harboring doubts about whether or not they've "crossed the line", these words are the worst possible news! However bad their life has gotten to this point in time, it's the collective opinion of these AAs that things are only going to get worse if I keep or resume drinking. No doubt about it.

I suspect this is the jumping off point for the fence sitting reader of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous: am I going to welcome this reprieve from the hellish prison I've been experiencing or am I going to continue to fight a battle against the idea that I'm an alcoholic? Surrender or Fight?

For me, it was to give up the fight and welcome the truth that I was indeed an alcoholic. I suspect that came easier for me because I'd seen my own 15 year old son come to his own sense of peace with this issue and begin a process of recovery that began ever so slowly to change his life for the better. I saw hope in him... I saw hope where only 5 months before, there there was no hope at all. And I'm eternally grateful that someone else was able to model that same hope for him when his father wasn't able to do that for him.

Take care!

Mike L.

Sobriety is More than Not Drinking

I was reminded today of one of my most favorite resentments in recovery which has to do with an oft quoted page of the Big Book, 3rd Edition: Page 449. When I first got sober, the 3rd edition of the Big Book was on it's way out and the 4th edition was on the way in. For some reason, I suppose because I'm basically cheap, when I got sober I bought a used 3rd edition Big Book at Half Priced Books and it was this book that I began reading in earnest as soon as I got sober.

At a meeting at St. Bonaventure's Church in Concord, CA one night, the topic was Page 449 and Acceptance. They read a bit from that page, "And acceptance has been the answer to all my problems today...." and I heard a woman at the meeting say that she absolutely loved that page, so much so that she memorized it. Well, although I was only a few months sober, I'd already developed my weird habit of memorizing bits and pieces of AA literature, stuff that I found particularly wise or helpful or poignant. Well, when I heard all the talk about P. 449 and then this woman saying that she memorized it, I decided that it was going to be next on my list of things to memorize.

The first thing I noticed about this page was that page 449 did not start at the beginning of someone's story, in fact, the stuff they were talking about on page 449 didn't even start at the beginning of the page. What was odd about the quote being quoted was that it started with "And" which seemed to me like it was part of something bigger and that I needed to see what came before the "And". I also thought it odd that in this first sentence, it was talking about "all my problems today" as though the author had talked about some particular problem before this and that I might want to consider reading backwards to find out what that was....

Eventually, I looked backwards to the previous paragraph which began on the bottom of page 448: "At last, acceptance proved to be the key to my drinking problem..." Well, that was certainly the "particular problem" that preceeded the "all my problems" on page 449! And that problem, alcoholism, seemed to me to be of far more interest and importance than "all my [other] problems"! So I memorized that paragraph too.

After awhile though, in the process of memorizing this paragraph, I began to wonder why this paragraph started off with "At last!" -- that seemed to indicate that the author had been struggling with this problem of alcohol and that other solutions just didn't seem to work for him. And then, eventually, or "At last!" he discovered a solution that did work: Acceptance.

So then, I decided to read backwards one more time and there in the preceeding paragraph was the seed of my longest held and most cherished resentment. There was the line that made more sense to me as a new recovering alcoholic than all the other words in the book up to that point in my recovery. But before I get to what that line was, I need to get back to this bringing me to my favorite resentment. The resentment?

Well, until that time, I'd heard many many great lines and sayings within the meeting rooms of AA, but that line led me to my first original thought/line since getting sober. That line was "The best line on page 449 is to be found on page 448! "It helped me a great deal to become convinced that alcoholism was a disease, not a moral issue, that my drinking was the result of a compulsion even though I hadn't been aware of the compulsion at the time and that sobriety had nothing to do with willpower." That "line" about 448 was my line!! But by the time it came time to "wow!" the crowds of AA meetings with my line, no one was talking about p.449 any more. Because in the 4th edition of the Big Book some A-hole in the AA editorial office decided to move this story by Dr. Paul O. to another location in the Big Book and what used to be on p.449 was now on p.417. And now that that was a fact of life, my line was totally worthless and without any punch! I mean, it just doesn't sound as powerful to say that the best line of p.417 is on p.416! Who cares??

Well, I made one more last ditch effort today to revive the resentment and share this story with the group today. It got lots of laughs. Which brings me (finally!) to the point of today's post: the importance of happiness and joy in the process of recovery. Not drinking is truly a critical and essential part of the recovery process, but if one just stops at "not drinking" as their one step of recovery: I think they're missing the full benefit of this new way of life. Even if they do continue "not drinking" for many years, even until death, I think they've cheated themselves out of the full benefit of the program of AA. What does that have to do with p.449 and Dr. Paul?

Well, I remember listening to a tape of a talk given my Dr. Paul (he died sometime in the 1990's I believe) at a Yosemite AA/Alanon Conference and somewhere toward the end of this talk (which if you've never heard Dr. Paul talk, you've got to do this: he was hilarious and you don't really capture the full level of humor intertwined in his story if you don't listen to him talk...) he mentioned that his all time favorite line in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous was to be found on the middle of page 132, in fact it was right smack dab in the middle of page 132, "sixteen lines down from the top, sixteen lines up from the bottom, two extraneous words to the left and two extraneous words to the right. And the line is, "We absolutely insist on enjoying life!"

That's a great line--even if it is someone else's!--and it got across to me what I'm trying to get across here: sobriety is more than not drinking, it's about finding a new way of living which can, sometimes quickly, sometimes (more often!) slowly bring about a change of perception which results in an inner sense of contentment, joy and peace with one's self and one's life. Just as it is, today.

Somepeople find me odd because I memorize stuff. And they're right. But Dr. Paul was odder than me. Sure, I memorized his telling the story of his favorite line, but he's the one who was so sick that he discovered that the line was 16 lines down from the top and 16 lines up bottom and that there were two extraneous words on both sides of his favorite line. Thank god there are some sicker than me.

Mike L.

An Acceptance Inventory

Here's an acceptance inventory that I use.... Don't know if it's a First Step sort of thing or a Tenth Step sort of thing, or both. Regardless, I've memorized this inventory so that I can use it while I'm driving to/from work. Given my 65 mile commute to and from work, the wise use of this time has been one of the mainstays of my recovery over the last six years.

This list of 50+ questions on acceptance was something I found in a great book called, The Tao of Sobriety by Gregson/Efran.

What I've found is that when I'm in a "good" place, where I feel basically content with life, I tend to answer most of these questions with "Yes" (sometimes begruding, but Yes, nonetheless). But when I'm out of balance, "HALT" (hungry, angry, lonely and/or tired), then the answers are more likely to be "No", "Hell No!" and/or "Fuck No!" or "No Fucking Way!".

When that happens, this acceptance inventory helps me identify where in my life I'm not accepting the reality of something or someone and then once I've done that, I can chose to change my attitude toward that reality....i.e., accept it. Then peace usually returns....for awhile.

An Acceptance Inventory (The Tao of Sobriety by Gregson/Efran):
"1. Do you accept that people are often cruel, inconsiderate and heartless?
2. Do you accept that children all over the world are dying of malnutrition?
3. Do you accept that the notion of God may be a fable?
4. Do you accept that people are frequently devious and self-serving?….
5. Do you accept that you have the right and obligation to help change the world even though you haven’t the foggiest notion about how to do so?
6. Do you accept that you could lose your job or financial security…at any time?
7. Do you accept that someone you trust will betray you?
8. Do you accept the seeming inevitability of wars and bloodshed?
9. Do you accept that people are sometimes genuinely altruistic?
10. Do you accept that people are evil?
11. Do you accept your own evil motives?
12. Do you accept the possibility of time travel?
13. Do you accept that innocent children are being abused…daily?
14. Do you accept that someone is spreading false rumors about you?
15. Do you accept dying?
16. Do you really accept dying?
17. Do you accept the possibility that you could contract or develop a life-threatening illness?
18. Do you accept that millions of people in the world are better off than you are?
19. Do you accept that you have made some really serious mistakes?
20. Do you accept that you will continue making serious mistakes?
21. Do you accept generosity from others?
22. Do you truly accept the forgiveness of others?
23. Do you accept having harmed others?
24. Do you accept having intentionally harmed others?
25. Do you accept that you will eventually lose everything?
26. Do you accept the possibility of sudden and serious illness?
27. Do you accept that friends and confidants will lie to you?
28. Do you accept that your choices will be criticized?
29. Do you accept that some people will want to give you valuable gifts?
30. Do you accept being considered worthy by those you admire or respect?
31. Can you accept being or becoming a parent?
32. Do you accept that you are still an adolescent, despite your chronological age?
33. Do you accept that you are highly susceptible to being conned?
34. Do you accept that people are violent?
35. Do you accept that you have purposely avoided telling others what they needed to hear?
36. Do you accept your own basic goodness?
37. Do you accept that you are whole, sufficient and complete?
38. Do you accept that you have not lived up to your full potential?
39. Do you accept that homicide and suicide are part of the human condition?
40. Do you accept the fact that newborns are regularly abandoned or killed?
41. Do you accept that people are laughing at you behind their back?
42. Do you accept that people do not take you seriously?
43. Do you accept the possibility of being in a fire or drowning?
44. Do you accept the possibility of being in a serious auto accident?
45. Do you accept that someone close to you may stop speaking to you?
46. Do you accept that life is finite and futile?
47. Do you accept that some of your best efforts have been totally in vain?
48. Do you accept that innocent people are being tortured in many countries around the world [some of them at the hands of our agents]?
49. Do you accept sexual inadequacy? [Do you accept physical inadequacy? Do you accept social inadequacy? Do you accept spiritual inadequacy?]
50. Do you accept that many criminals prosper?
51. Do you accept being a role model for others?
52. Do you accept being the source of love and compassion?
53. Finally, [finally!!!] do you accept the current incomplete status of your acceptance?" The Tao of Sobriety