Didn’t We Hurt Anybody?

“Some of us, though, tripped over a very different snag. We clung to the claim that when drinking we never hurt anybody but ourselves.”

Wow, were we ever self-centered??? Yet, that was what I believed and it was the point! Though I wasn’t up to task. When the time came (and it did often) I couldn’t pull the final “plug.” Thank God…

“My parents, who had been deeply hurt by my isolation from them, my employer, who worried about my absences, my memory lapses, my temper; and the friends I had shunned, without explanation. As I faced the reality of the harm I had done, Step Eight took on new meaning. I am no longer uncomfortable and I feel clean and light.”

[The book doesn't mention (in this reading) the harm I did my wife and children, those I loved the most and caused the most harm. I'll mention it to satisfy my critics.]

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Wasn’t That The Idea?

Daily Reflections

Remember, from the Seventh Step;

“In every case, pain had been the price of admission into a new life.”

I’d asked God for dozens of do-overs, never believing there was any hope. In addition, I sure didn’t exactly perceive that were I to be graced with a new life that, by necessity, it would have to be born through pain!

“But this admission price had purchased more than we expected. It brought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain.”

In our Eighth Step we discover more about pain: “I learned that the pain of my defects is the very substance God uses to cleanse my character and to set me free.”

We might want to consider embracing our pain as we grow…

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The Pain Of My Defects

And it will eliminate the “easier, softer way” the Internet offers.

“When listing the people we have harmed, most of us hit another solid obstacle. We got a pretty severe shock when we realized that we were preparing to make a face-to-face admission of our wretched conduct to those we had hurt.”

I love the way Bill calls things – “wretched conduct.” He pulls no punches with his words.

“It had been embarrassing enough when in confidence we had admitted these things to God, to ourselves, and to another human being.”

I’d wonder about that. Was it truly embarrassing to you admitting your wretched conduct to your God?

“But the prospect of actually visiting or even writing the people concerned now overwhelmed us, especially when we remembered in what poor favor we stood with most of them.”

Get the picture? Oh he**! I have to go face them??? There’s a fear I’d have drank over/at! Anything to avoid the certain anger and condemnation my actions had earned. A “small” indication of more value to a thorough Third Step.

“There were cases, too, where we had damaged others who were still happily unaware of being hurt. Why, we cried, shouldn’t bygones be bygones? Why do we have to think of these people at all?”

To be thorough and complete with our God. Because I said I was willing to go to any length to gain victory over alcohol. Because “These were some of the ways in which fear conspired with pride to hinder our making a list of all the people we had harmed.”

I can’t be sure how you feel about it but I know I don’t want to meet my Creator having left someone out because of my pride and ego. He’s given me the most incredible gift I could have imagined. The least I can do to stay sober and say thank you is to be complete.

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Preparing For A Face-To-Face

“Every A.A. has found that he can make little headway in this new adventure of living until he first backtracks and really makes an accurate and unsparing survey of the human wreckage he has left in his wake.”

Accurate and unsparing! Do you now know why the Fourth Step said “Searching and Fearless?” Oh, BTW – note it says the human wreckage we left behind. There are no mistakes. It is time to stand up and accept responsibility.

“To a degree, he has already done this when taking a moral inventory, but now the time has come when he ought to redouble his efforts to see how many people he has hurt, and in what ways.”

I believe if you get real about this you already know that you hurt others. I knew it yet hadn’t really been able to focus on exactly how. I was about to become able to do just that. For ex. – the times I came home in the early hours of the morning and she had been sitting alone listening to the police sirens wondering if I had wrapped myself or others around a tree. I caused her emotional pain and I was wrong. Selfishly, I hadn’t given it any consideration. I was wrapped up in me.

“This reopening of emotional wounds, some old, some perhaps forgotten, and some still painfully festering, will at first look like a purposeless and pointless piece of surgery. But if a willing start is made, then the great advantage of doing this will so quickly reveal themselves that the pain will be lessened as one obstacle after another melts away.”

I can’t say that was exactly what happened for me as anyone who has been reading would know but I can say that the advantages that have eventually revealed themselves are worth it – specifically that the obsession is gone.

Forgiveness. A tough subject in the beginning. Forgiveness is about to be brought into the light for us. Yet we’ll sometimes still be urged by old, inbred behavior, to revert back. That also lessens.

“These obstacles, however, are very real. The first, and one of the most difficult, has to do with forgiveness. The moment we ponder a twisted or broken relationship with another person, our emotions go on the defensive. To escape looking at the wrongs we have done another, we resentfully focus on the wrong he/she has done us. This is especially true if he/she has, in fact, behaved badly at all. Triumphantly we seize upon his/her misbehavior as the perfect excuse for minimizing or forgetting our own.”

And, if you insist on this focus, you’ll continue to have a deep challenge with sobriety! This is not humble!

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They Did “It” To Me! Oh – You Think So?

Thought – if you’re new and having troubles with your personal relationships and thinking of drinking, don’t keep it to yourself and think perhaps you can solve it on your own! Meetings, sponsor, oldtimers.

Make note – From the 12&12, page 77;

“First, we take a look backward and try to discover where we have been at fault; next we make a vigorous attempt to repair the damage we have done; and third, having thus cleaned away the debris of the past, we consider how, with our newfound knowledge of ourselves, we may develop the best possible relations with every human being we know.”

And then it says “This is a very large order” to which I thought, in the beginning, oh screw this one! Amazing I would think that because the lack of good relationships was/is the primary emotional pain of my very being.

I can attest today that this is true;

“Learning how to live in the greatest peace, partnership, and brotherhood with all men and women, of whatever description, is a moving and fascinating adventure.”

An adventure that I often want to not live through because of its disturbances, but I make it with your help. Relationships, even after time sober, can still be major challenges, especially with those you love.

But I said I was willing to do whatever it took and I still am!

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Oh No! Personal Relationships!!!

Naturally, I consider that, in “those days,” I was drinking so how honest could I have been? I suppose only my customers could say…

When working an Eighth and Ninth Step there is a lengthy discussion in the Big Book about just exactly how honest we ought to be. The answer, for me, is on page 80. Referring to a wrong a man felt he could not possibly make right, here is what follows;

“After consulting with his wife and partner he came to the conclusion that it was better to take those risks than to stand before his Creator quilty of such ruinous slander. He saw that he had to place the outcome in God’s hands or he would soon start drinking again, and all would be lost anyhow.”

Please let me remind you, this works for me – I don’t want to face the prospect of standing before St. Peter at the pearly gates and have him ask me questions that I won’t have an honest answer for… I’ll do whatever it takes to be as close to 100% honest as I can be. Besides, the God I understand today will forgive me for anything as long as I’m willing to be forgiven. Oh, and I don’t go running around using that as an excuse for poor behavior because I know that same God can see right through that crappola.

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Honesty – But To What Extent?

From page 96 in the 12&12;

“We well remember how something deep inside us kept rebelling against the idea of bowing before any God.”

Of course there is something else that continues to remind me of the nature of my dilemma – page 39 in the Big Book;

“But the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience.”

The potential alkie in me went past that imaginary line decades ago and became real, despite the fact I am more comfortable saying I’m recovering rather than recovered. Once a pickle…

Back to the 12&12. Following on page 97, “We liked AA all right, and were quick to say that it had done miracles. But we recoiled from meditation and prayer as obstinately as the scientist who refused to perform a certain experiment lest it prove his pet theory wrong. Of course we finally did experiment, and when unexpected results followed, we felt different; in fact we knew different; and so we were sold on meditation and prayer.”

The real challenge, for me? That strange twist of mind. I am still my worst critic. I redefine, almost daily, what I am doing wrong when it comes to prayer – in spite of this – that, for me, prayer is simply the lifting of one’s heart to the God I understand!

And seemingly, our founders and those who followed them, knew folks like me would venture this way. So they put these “things” called daily reflections in a book. Yesterdays simply says;

“Conscious contact with God can be as simple, and as profound, as conscious contact with another human being. I can smile. I can listen. I can forgive. Every encounter with another is an opportunity for prayer, for acknowledging God’s presence within me.”

Thankful.

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My HP Loves Me Anyway!

I Am An Exception! I Am Different!

Taking today’s “Daily Reflections” and breaking it down a bit;

“During my drinking life I was convinced I was an exception. I thought I was beyond petty requirements and had the right to be excused.”

Separate myself from you. All of you! I’m special. I’m different. I deserve special treatment. Blah, blah, blah.

How many of you would like to say “EGO!” I would… The right to be excused? From what? The consequences of my actions, my lack of consideration, my lack of respect, my hard heart, the monetary results of my actions, my inaction and its results, your hurt feelings, my disgusting attitude. And about a bunch of other harms.

Aaah, but, God has a sense of humor, or a sense of balance, or a sense of retribution, something in God’s plan will work against me. He gave me a conscience. Although I drink my conscience into oblivion, I can’t drink my subconscious into oblivion. And it “shows” itself as a dark counterbalance to my insanity.

I develop and can no longer shake this constant feeling of – “I don’t belong.” I shouldn’t be a part of anything because I’m not worth it. Nobody wants me, and on and on…

A very dark “world” to live in, very dark.

“What a wonderful awakening for me it has been to realize that, if human beings were doing the best they could, then so was I! All of the pains, confusions and joys they feel are not exceptional, but part of my life, just as much as anybody’s.”

Shucks, I’m not unique anymore. But my world is bright and full of hope!

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The Dark Counterbalance

Yet the most foolish continue to go about their self-centered, selfish ways and engage in this conduct.

Beginning on page 80;

“The chances are that we have domestic troubles. Perhaps we are mixed up with women in a fashion (works both ways folks) we wouldn’t care to have advertised.”

True for me. And for her. I was the cause. She was the recipient of the emotional harm.

“After a few years with an alcoholic, a wife gets worn out, resentful and uncommunicative. How could she be anything else?”

Again, very true in my case. How could she have been anything but worn out? I put her through an emotional wringer. Imagine if I hadn’t loved her…

“Perhaps he is having a secret and exciting affair with ‘the girl who understands.’ In fairness we must say that she may understand, but what are we going to do about a thing like that?

Drawing on the experience that we attract what we are, the likelihood that she understands is because she isn’t new to this “game.”

“A man so involved often feels very remorseful at times, especially if he is married to a loyal and courageous girl who has literally gone through hell for him.”

Yes, I did and drank the feelings of remorse away. Yes, she did. And the further into hell she went the quieter she became until the opportunity to explode presented itself.

“Whatever the situation, we usually have to do something about it. If we are sure our wife does not know, should we tell her? Not always, we think. If she knows in a general way that we have been wild, should we tell her in detail? Undoubtedly we should admit our fault.”

NO! Do NOT tell her details! At least, that is my experience. Tell your God or your Higher Power. If you spew open details you are hurting her and that may be your “hidden” agenda even if you don’t believe it is a hidden agenda. Don’t do it. Speak with your sponsor, your priest, your mental health professional. Don’t lay that emotional lightning on an already beaten up spouse.

“She may insist on knowing all the particulars. She will want to know who the woman is and where she is. We feel we ought to say to her that we have no right to involve another person.”

Let me tell you… if you’re like me you have gone a long way towards instilling in your spouse a “self-fulfilling” action – that of self-inflicting emotional harm. The more information she had, the worse she felt. It only added to the original harm. And, if she had found the other woman? Same deal – communication with her added to what was already a bad situation. Plus, now the other person feels pain. We’ve dealt out enough pain!

“We are sorry for what we have done and, God willing, it shall not be repeated.”

That’s the solution!!! Don’t repeat these insane actions. They are not based in soundness of mind which means you’re missing something in the Second Step too!

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Secret And Exciting Affairs Equal Very Remorseful

We are then reminded “that we have decided to go to any lengths to find a spiritual experience.”

“No matter what the personal consequences may be.” We are also reminded to think first…

“Usually, however, other people are involved. Therefore, we are not to be the hasty and foolish martyr who would needlessly sacrifice others to save himself from the alcoholic pit.”

Furthermore;

“Before taking drastic action which might implicate other people we secure their consent. If we have obtained permission, have consulted with others, asked God to help and the drastic step is indicated we must not shrink.“

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General Principles Which We Find Guiding