One Step Forward

NOTE/TW: This story contains themes of substance abuse and physical violence.

I first realised I had a drinking problem five years ago. It was three in the morning, and I’d invited some stranger back to my apartment after a particularly messy night out. I just had this moment of clarity afterwards, lying next to him in bed, head spinning, barely lucid, licking the last of his blood from my fingers, and it all hit me at once. What was I doing with myself? Who had I let myself become? I can’t begin to tell you how much money I used to drop on new mattresses, even thinking about it now makes me sick. It had just become so normal. To think I wasted so much time being that person, wasted so many people. I spent another few years like that. The guilt nearly ate me alive. Angie has been helping with it, though.

Angie is my sponsor. She doesn’t know the exact nature of my problem, of course. I wouldn’t want her to think of me differently. It’s quite easy to keep it under wraps; the phrasing is all very much the same. It means I never have to lie, not really, which is good. I’m not a good liar. She’s been helping me work through the twelve steps, and, not to brag, but I think I’m killing it (No pun intended).

The most valuable thing I’ve learned from Alcoholics Anonymous is the value of making lists. They love a good list. There is something beautiful, I think, about taking the messiest, ugliest part of yourself and turning it into a list. And the best lists have sub-lists. And follow-up questions. It’s so wonderfully dense. For example, instead of saying:

“What I did to Amber was awful and makes me a terrible, disgusting excuse for a human being.”

You can say:

“What I did to Amber was:

1. Self-serving
2. An example of my addiction’s power over me
3. A form of self-harm

It made me feel:

1. Pathetic
2. Guilty
3. Out of control

To rectify this, I will:

1. Reach out, and make amends
2. Admit that I was wrong
3. Pray to God (as I understand him) to keep me sober

How exquisite is that? So simple.

Of course, this example doesn’t quite work because I can’t call Amber to make amends. But you get the premise.

Another kind of list would be the daily “gratitude lists”. These are exactly what they sound like. Each morning I have to wake up, make a list of things that I am grateful for in my life, and send them to Angie. Here’s one I made earlier:

GRATITUDE LIST

1. I woke up sober today
2. I feel clear-minded
3. I saw an amazing sunset last night
4. I have a roof over my head

I don’t like the gratitude list as much. There’s only so much to be grateful for after a while. I have about fifty stock responses in my notes app that I just shuffle around every now and again to make life easier. It’s probably the least exciting list. 

The most exciting, though? The twelve steps, no competition. It sums up everything I’ve learned to appreciate about a proper list. Clear-cut steps, each step sub-divisible. It’s both easy to understand, and difficult to follow. I came to AA practically debilitated by my shame, but between Angie, her lists, and my homegroup, I’ve found a strange kind of peace within myself. A serenity, if you will. It has led me to the decision I’m about to make. I’d like to show you how I got there. Perhaps then you’ll understand what I’m about to do.

STEP ONE: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable

Admitting I was powerless over my addiction was easy enough. It had begun to take up all of my time; picking targets, learning their patterns, how best to approach them, and don’t even talk to me about the clean up. Over the years I’d gradually lost contact with pretty much all of my friends and family, one way or another. Being a creature of the night is a full time job. Nobody tells you that.

STEPS TWO AND THREE (ANGIE SAID IT’S PRETTY COMMON TO GROUP THEM TOGETHER): Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity and made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Steps two and three were a little harder. Angie told me that I needed to turn my life over to a higher power. In the meetings they use the word “god”, but apparently that can be substituted to mean whatever you want it to. She said it didn’t matter what the higher power was, so long as it was something outside of myself. It took me a long time to find God, but I think I’ve figured him out.

To me, God’s name is Rich. Rich is the man who made me into what I am. Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that only a god could be capable of such a thing. I’ve only met him once, but that’s more than most people can say, right? I bet most people would kill to meet their god. Angie said I must pray to him every day. It felt a bit strange at first, praying to the man who left me to bleed out on the canal towpath. But you get used to it. Angie said it’s quite common to find it all overwhelming at first.

STEPS FOUR AND FIVE: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

My “searching and fearless moral inventory” was tough. Apparently, that’s normal too. My list of personal flaws and failings was thorough and extensive. The version I read aloud to Angie was heavily filtered, naturally, but the general premise was all the same. Lying to people. Manipulating people. Stealing from people (I’ve decided to consider the consumption of blood and internal organs as theft, in the fullest sense) to fuel my addiction. She listened, without judgement. She nodded along with what I had to say. She even thanked me afterwards for opening up to her. I only wish I could’ve told her everything. Perhaps I still can.

STEPS SIX AND SEVEN: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character and humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Steps six and seven were easy, once I’d become accustomed to my daily prayers. I was to humbly ask God to remove all of my shortcomings, and he has. I no longer steal. I no longer hurt people. I only lie when it is absolutely necessary for my own self-preservation. I know he’d understand. Angie said I’m free now to live a life without guilt; that guilt will only lead to eventual relapse. 

“Let go and let God”, she said. I have been contemplating what that might entail for someone like me. I think I’m coming to a conclusion I can make peace with.

STEP EIGHT: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Then came the tricky matter of making amends. If I’m being completely honest, I couldn’t give you most of the names of people I’ve wronged, but Angie said that was okay, and I didn’t have to give them names. She encouraged me to get in touch with the people I could name, and I did, in my own way.

STEP NINE: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

It took a lot of research to find each of the graveyards, but I did. Some of them were buried pretty close to each other, so I managed to get multiple names ticked off in a day. 

I enjoy visiting the graves more than I thought I would. Sometimes I bring flowers. Most of the time I just sit by the gravestone for a while. I remember their faces, contorted in agony, confusion, fear most of all. The last minute was always the same, no matter the person. Similar enough that I could write the timeline of events out as a list. For example:

1. They would stop fighting, having lost too much blood to keep going. 
2. Their arms would fall limp to their sides. A flash of panic about the eyes.
3. And then, something almost beautiful would happen. A switch would flip. 
4. They’d look at me, no longer confused, with a strange calmness as if to say “This is it. This is what got me, in the end.” 
5. We would stare at each other with a newfound understanding- dare I say respect- for a good few seconds. 
6. They would break away, their eyes now on something just behind me, perhaps further beyond than that. It is only in that moment that I have ever seen true acceptance, true bliss, wash over a person.
7. And then I would kneel, and drink.

(This is a great example of what I said I’d learned earlier-sometimes the best lists have tangential sub-lists.)

Actually, looking at it now, having allowed myself to no longer feel guilty, I’m glad it was me. Too many people die long, drawn out deaths; painful deaths lasting months or years, deaths that reduce people down and down until all their loved ones see, all that they remember is a contorted after-image of a life eeking it’s last moments as it slithers out and away from the body that once held it. I exist to ease that burden, I think. I carry it instead, without the pain of having known them.

Why then, do I deprive myself of such a privilege?

STEP TEN: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Step ten should be easy. I am to continue to take moral inventory when I’m wrong, and promptly rectify it. A question has been eating at me recently in regards to this, though. If God has already removed my defects of character, and I’m certain that he has, it stands to reason that I can no longer do any wrong. The only wrongdoing I can think of would be to turn my back on Him. I think I’m a bit too far along for that now.

STEP ELEVEN: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

I have been working on step eleven. I am to make contact with my God and pray for knowledge of his will for me. Angie says it's more about getting ready to take on new sponsors than anything, which for her, perhaps, is true. For me, though, it has come to mean something entirely different. Do you know what happens when you’re instructed to pray twice each day to the man that murdered you, for nine months straight? I’ll tell you. 

1. First, it stirs in you a resentment so palpable that you can almost hear it humming behind your ears, feel it spilling thick and slow from between your teeth. Not just a resentment towards him, but towards your sponsor, towards the entire fellowship and everyone that believes in it, and then towards yourself.
2. Then, you attempt to reason with yourself; having accepted the fact that you did this, you chose to find God in him, and acknowledge that should anyone know the truth, they would urge you to find it elsewhere.
3. You try to find it elsewhere. You try to believe it is a Group Of Drunks, or the Gift Of Desperation, but you can’t. You wonder if it is that moment of understanding between two people at the moment of death, or perhaps whatever it was that they saw just behind you, but you know that it isn’t. Not to you.
4. You begin to ask yourself: “Why him? What is it that makes a man a god?”
5. You are met with an answer: “Power.”
6. You study your new god, still spilling with resentment, in an attempt to understand him. You know you understand him better than most humans understand their own gods, because unlike them, you have looked yours in the eye. You know God, and you know that he left you to die, bleeding out onto the cobblestones in the blue hour of the morning.
7. You continue to pray, aware that it isn’t quite him that you pray to, but something that he represents.
8. You come to define God not by who he is, but by what he was capable of. God is not entirely a man named Rich, the man that bought you drinks and called you “stunning”, God is something greater, the spirit that moved through him, the thirst within him that yearned for your blood, and the ability granted to him with which to quench it. Yours is a god of hunger. It is a god of need.
9. What then, you wonder, do you need?

I know exactly what I need. I think I have come to understand my god and his will. I know now that I was put here for a reason. I must let my god move through me, in the only way that I know how to. When your god is hungry, there is only one thing any faithful disciple can do.

Feed it.

STEP TWELVE: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

I’m to carry the message of the twelve steps to other addicts and practice its principles in all my affairs. Then I’ll be all done. End of the line. I think it’s safe to say I feel renewed. I’m no longer a slave to my addiction. I know now that there was never an addiction to begin with, just a hunger.

A dog without a leash. It didn’t need to be put down, it just needed training. Patience. Discipline. 

A firm hand to yank the chain.

It is time for me to pass on what I have learned about my god’s gift. And I know exactly who I’m going to pass it onto. I can think of nobody better to break my fast. She has helped me so very much these past nine months. I am about to complete my twelfth step. 

It is time for me to let go and let God.