Addiction Solutions
Third Step Prayer short version
God, I offer myself to Thee—to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and The way of life. May I do Thy will always!
We want to choose a god deserving of our faith not an inanimate object that has less power than the man who installed it into the door. Why not seek God with our heart in prayer? Seek and we will find. Could it be our resentment, pain, and hurt is much too deep to even consider seeking a god whom we feel is the reason we have suffered? Or is our desire to control all things too strong in us to risk relinquishing control? Our pain and consequences of active addiction must be more intense than our fear of the unknown and giving up control.
In Narcotics Anonymous it has been said many times and is a popular belief that we may conjure up and name our own Higher Power. Also members have said, if we want to use a door knob as a HP we can. They say a door knob will work just as good as if we had one of the well-documented HP’s. Perhaps the “Doorknob” is the official-unofficial HP of N.A. But again, a doorknob is not a power greater than any human.
STEP TWO
Heavenly Father, I know in my heart that only You can restore me to sanity. I humbly ask that You remove all twisted thought and addictive behavior from me this day. Heal my spirit and restore in me a clear mind.
“Let no man condemn himself; for it is by self-condemnation that we set ourselves above God who is our only True & Righteous Judge. For it is He & He alone who possesses a capacity for the unconditional Grace and Love which mankind’s collective soul so desperately needs to survive the deceptive throngs that encompass death and the grave?”
It is written that the fear of death is the mother of all fears and from it springs all manner of worry, fear, and anxiety and so we engage the great struggle to defeat these feelings.
We can quickly destroy all our loving relationships due to natural knee-jerk reactions that fend off fear and the feelings that fear creates. Some deadly knee-jerk solutions are blame, criticisms, hate, playing the victim or the oppressor anything that relates to putting down and condemning others to make ourselves feel better if even just for a short while. There is no shortage of people to condemn including ourselves. In the meantime we lose what our hearts really need and crave…to Love and to be Loved, to comfort and to be comforted, to understand and to be understood, to follow our conscience and to live guilt-free.
John 14:27
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
They say that the most common phrase in the Bible is “fear not”. Some say it is written in the Bible 365 times once for each day of the year. Staying in faith and trusting in God is easier said than done. Things happen that strike fear in us, fear of loss, fear of losing control of a situation, fear of sickness and death, fear that people will not like us or will desert and abandon us. It is said in the rooms of AA that people most commonly have fears associated with these three things. Sex, Society, and Security.
Firstly we often fear losing our partners, boyfriends, and husbands. Second we fear losing our “status” in our society of peers. Thirdly we fear losing our homes, jobs, money, and car. The feelings that fear produces is at the core of addiction and codependency so we must find solutions to gnawing and torturous feelings.
When we are well grounded in our Higher Power by exercising regular prayer, meditation, meetings, and service work we not only receive fulfillment by that charity but we also have less reason to fear because our faith has been exercised and strengthened by regular communing with God. We must get our [daily bread], our spiritual feeding to continue trusting God and to repel fear.
When we pray and meditate yet find that our lives and minds are still full of discord, animosity, worrying, anxiety, and stress then there is more we can do.
“Out of the problem into the solution!” We write down our fears in a list, we look it over and realize we lack trust in our Higher Power. We then courageously ask God to help us to trust Him/Her/It and if our religion requires we repent. We remember our second step and the insanity that God has delivered us from. Sometimes the insanity of a second step returns if we are not active with living these steps. We remember that beating ourselves up is counterproductive and not a solution to anything. We revisit our Third step and remember that we have put our life and will into Gods caring hands so everything will be ok if we do our part. Have we done a formal and thorough fourth step if so; do we have any new active resentment? If so, we do a proper fourth step and ask ourselves what our fear is behind the resentment. Have we completed our amends by either apologizing or giving back what we have stolen? We do not gravel or expect any certain reaction from the persons with whom we make amends. We can’t make them feel better by amends but we will feel better by it no matter their response. If we still resent anyone we have worked a fourth step on we pray blessings upon them daily until we forget about it and the resentment is gone.
By these steps which include God we learn to Love ourselves and others. By these steps we replace our old survival skills of blame and all its cohorts with healthy and loving coping skills based in truth, honesty, righteousness, Love and compassion. We replace character defects with good character. In this text on a day by day basis I will explain the why’s and how’s of working the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous which can apply to any addiction including the addictions called drama, self-hate, and co-da.
During the first year of my recovery I had the opportunity to be in an addictions therapy group. During therapy I learned that there is no wrong feeling and that I must believe this in order to accept myself. For when I label my feelings “wrong” or “bad” I label myself and my own God given heart wrong and bad. Terms like; “I shouldn’t feel this way” or “but there’s nothing to be afraid of” are no longer in my vocabulary because there is always a valid reason for the way I/we feel. Even if that reason comes from years prior or is physiological there is always but always a valid reason for the way our hearts feel.
We are not bad or wrong ever by the way we feel. Usually if our emotions get “stuck” in us and we hurt and fear seemingly endlessly it is because no one has taught us how to process our feelings. They certainly didn’t teach it in school even though teaching a healthy emotional process should have been at the top of the curriculum. Actions and reactions are the only things that can ever be wrong or bad. I have found solutions to the feelings that I don’t like and have learned that some feelings just take time to walk through and that I need not let them paralyze me anymore. I have learned that feelings are “right” and appropriate yet sometimes unpleasant such as grieving a death or fear of a situation that’s new and different. In this book along with the 12 steps I will teach emotional processes to help let go of anger, rage, hurt, disgust, and the rest of the fear based emotions that we feel. I will share with you what has worked for me during my eight years of recovery from my two devastating bottoms which did include incomprehensible demoralization like the Big Book addresses.
Sure it’s easy for many to believe that there is a God out there and that He or She is powerful, good, and fully capable of restoring any human to sanity. However believing that God WILL restore us to sanity is another matter especially to a guilt-laced heart and mind. When we are full of the emotions drummed up from the wreckage of our past most will feel like they do not deserve to be restored to sanity. It is common for newly sober addicts to feel unworthy of such miraculous spiritual gifts as sobriety, healing, or white light experiences. Why would God Love me when I feel like I am undeserving of any good thing? How can I accept that I will be given relief from the obsession when I have regularly punished myself with drug and alcohol abuse for so long?
We need not worry about all these natural fears. If God had an addict mind we would all be in serious trouble but He/She/It does not.
The Grace of God is often defined as “undeserved merit”. Meaning, to be bestowed with a gift we do not deserve or earn. God’s Grace need only be accepted by doing the next right thing. We make our decision with strong Hope that it will come to pass and when it does and we are restored to sanity…our faith is strengthened tenfold.
We look around the rooms; we hear the testimonies of how multitudes of addicts and alcoholics have been delivered from addictions by a miraculous psychic change. Can we accept such a wonderful gift or must we go on punishing ourselves for our imperfections in hope that somehow our destructive self-chastisement will turn us good?
The addict mind is a complex one however we do not have to work out all the particulars regarding step Two. Step Two is a spiritual action not a carnal one to be reasoned out. Addictions are spiritual maladies that need spiritual solutions. We don’t need to ask why or how it works we just need to do the work!
The dark and spiritual, cunning, baffling, and powerful malady of addiction calls for a solution that our carnal minds do not understand yet will become so clear to us once we receive our psychic change.