Daily Reprieve

Step Two: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

2nd Step Principle: My need for the ability to tell the true from the false with a whole and sane mind is the beginning of my connection with an untapped Power greater than myself. (Principles after the First Step are constructed from personal reflection and acceptance. Use my version or formulate your own.)

AA Extracted Value: Hope

ACA Extracted Values: Open-mindedness & Clarity

Other Extracted Values: Awareness

One way to understand the meaning of hope is to know what is not hope. Hope is not wishful thinking. Hope is the targeting of a solution to motivate follow-up action. Wishful thinking is that same targeting with an apathetic response. Without the follow-up action, hope will degrade into wishful thinking. The ineffectiveness of wishful thinking will actually produce the opposite of hope, which is despair. Despair will target the persistence of the problem while losing faith in a solution.

Hope is a lot like target practice for firearms or archery. The weapon is pointed at the target, the individual learns to relax and breath, then the specific point on the target is sighted. This sighting is similar to the skill of building hope. Then the trigger is pulled or the tension in the bow arm is released, and the striking of the target is analyzed to appraise one’s ability to focus the necessary actions. How effective is my aim? How effective is my hope? Am I being restored to sanity? Hope is an active skill and not a passive surrender.

Step One: “We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.”

1^st Step Principle: We will find enduring strength only when we first admit complete defeat over our isolated, obsessive thinking and compulsive behavior. (Adapted from 12 Steps & 12 Traditions, top of page 22)

AA Extracted Value: Honesty

ACA Extracted Values: Powerlessness & Surrender

Other Extracted Values: Acceptance

If you are as seriously alcoholic as we were, we believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution. We were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could; and the other, to accept spiritual help. This we did because we honestly wanted to, and were willing to make the effort.

~ Alcoholics Anonymous, There is a Solution, page 25

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Only an alcoholic at the end of the road would need to spend some serious time debating whether or not to choose life over death. Maybe there is some middle-of-the-road solution we haven’t thought of yet? Is there some other way we can get better without spiritual help? Perhaps we simply need to try harder to control our drinking. There must be some other solution out there that will work. How much longer can we deny we can’t control our drinking by ourselves? Have we really lost the power of choice in drink?

What more do I have to lose by giving a spiritual solution a try?

~ Practice These Principles by Alex M.

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It is quite astonishing to realize how difficult it is to be truthful with myself when the obsession is amplifying a pathological appetite in my body. Being honest with myself is an event repeated over and over to amplify the process of knowing myself and what I truly want. It seems like such awareness should be second nature. It has been my experience that human life embraces a multitude of necessary lies. Old age is in a galaxy far, far away. Sex equals love. Being good requires social martyrdom. Hurting other people will protect me. Getting my driver’s license provides escape from accountability. I suppose it should not be so surprising that being truthful is a learned skill and not the default response to living life on life’s terms. My alcoholism forces me to face this reality.

Step One: “We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.”

1^st Step Principle: We will find enduring strength only when we first admit complete defeat over our isolated, obsessive thinking and compulsive behavior. (Adapted from 12 Steps & 12 Traditions, top of page 22)

AA Extracted Value: Honesty

ACA Extracted Values: Powerlessness & Surrender

Other Extracted Values: Acceptance

Men have cried out to me in sincere and despairing appeal: “Doctor, I cannot go on like this! I have everything to live for! I must stop, but I cannot! You must help me!” Faced with this problem, if a doctor is honest with himself, he must sometimes feel his own inadequacy. Although he gives all that is in him, it often is not enough. One feels that something more than human power is needed to produce the essential psychic change. Though the aggregate of recoveries resulting from psychiatric effort is considerable, we physicians must admit we have made little impression upon the problem as a whole. Many types do not respond to the ordinary psychological approach.

~ Alcoholics Anonymous, The Doctor’s Opinion, page xxix

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Dr. William Silkworth was the neuro-psychiatrist who treated Bill Wilson the last three of the four times he was admitted to Towns Hospital for detoxification. Silkie, the “little doctor who loved drunks,” carried no illusion that medical science could do anything to help alcoholics recover. Based on the meager treatment options of the time, he estimated alcoholics had a two percent chance of recovery. Perhaps that was why he encouraged Bill to hang on to whatever had happened to him during his white light, hot flash religious conversion experience at the hospital in December of 1934. Silkworth knew from his own clinical experience that no human power could get alcoholics sober, and he was honest enough to share that observation with his patients.

Do I accept the fact that it is highly unlikely professional medical therapy alone will be able to get and keep me sober?

~ Practice These Principles by Alex M.

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I had strong suspicions during the heavy drinking I did in the military that I seemed to be responding to intoxication differently than other airmen and soldiers. Eventually I “white-knuckled” my way to abstinence and got married and had children. When my marriage blew apart because of deeper issues in my life, I gave up and returned to drinking. When I began to rack up consequences, I attempted to stop. I was shocked that no amount of will power was sufficient to put the brakes on. When the military sent me to rehab, I was still dumbfounded at my situation. The best thing that professionals could do was to point me to the rooms of AA. Now I am just as surprised that I am able to live a sober life. I was saved from suicidal despair and able to give my children an example of overcoming rather than the burden of a tragic end. Medical therapy has its place, but the Twelve Steps was what opened the door to a Power greater than my hell. I more than accept this reality, I rely on it.