Drug Awareness: Step 10: Building the spiritual basis for recovery each day
The Twelve Step program of recovery from alcoholism and
other addictions rests on a notion of spirituality that is not about having the
"right" beliefs. Instead, it is about adopting daily practices that
help people stay clean and sober.
These daily practices are the subject of Step 10 of
the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous: "Continued to
take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it."
Here the word "inventory" means taking stock of
our emotional disturbances, especially those that can return us to drinking or
other drug use. Step 10 suggests that we watch for these disturbances every day
and make an immediate response. Taking a daily inventory is important to all
people, but especially to those in recovery.
"After several years of recovery and doing vigorous
work in completing Steps One to Nine, I felt I had arrived, that my work was
done," says one long-time practitioner of the Twelve Steps. "I
stopped talking regularly to a sponsor. I stopped going to as many meetings. I
started going it alone in the fellowship. I was shocked when, after three years
of recovery, I used one day. That led to two decades of repeated
relapses."
This woman's desperation led her to reread "Alcoholics Anonymous" (often called the "Big
Book" of AA). While studying the suggestions for Step Ten, she recalls,
"I realized something that I had been missing: daily work."
The Big Book's suggestion for daily work on this Step is to
"watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop
up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately
and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our
thoughts to someone we can help"
Some people are put off by the word "God" in the
above passage. Remember that AA and other Twelve Step groups do not require
members to accept any particular definition of this word. In fact, the term
"Higher Power" is often used instead, referring to any source of help
that comes from outside ourselves. Your Higher Power might be a friend, a
family member, a therapist, or the members of your Twelve Step group.
What's most important is being willing to release
selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear in the very moment that they
occur. And this calls for a radical change in how we deal with negative
emotions.
A typical response is to blame our feelings on other people.
Alcoholics and other addicts are especially skilled at nursing resentments and
finding fault. Their logic is essentially this: "I am always right, and my
problems will end when everyone else changes their behavior."
Contrast that with the attitude suggested by Step 10.
"It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what
the cause, there is something wrong with us," notes the author of "Twelve Steps for Twelve Traditions" another core text
for people in recovery. "If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in
the wrong also."
We give other people control over our lives when we say that
they "make us" angry or afraid. The truth is that we usually say or
do something that helps to create the conflicts in our lives. Step Ten suggests
that we take responsibility for this fact, clean up our role in these matters,
and practice forgiveness.
"You might find things coming up on your inventory that
you have an emotional hangover about—when an anger starts turning into
resentment, or fear becomes my life," says Mark Sheets, executive director
at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation in charge of a wide range of continuing
care programs. "That's when you need to talk it through with someone who
understands."
"My problem was not just learning how to put down my
drug of choice," says the woman in Twelve Step recovery. "My problem
was dealing with life. Here in Step 10 I have a plan to cope with life, a plan
of daily action that will work each day that I work it."
Reprinted with permission from the Hazelden Betty Ford
Foundation, www.hazeldenbettyford.org.
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