We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable
What does the first step mean to me and how a real understanding of this step was so important to my recovery.
I remember my first AA meeting and more importantly I remember why I was there! I had gotten arrested the week before for DUI in New Orleans and was really disgusted at NOPD for wasting their time pulling me over when there were thousands of real criminals they could be focusing on instead of agitating me with arrest and thrown in the drunk tank at OPP. I had been living in the “Big Easy” for 12 years at that time , had run bars and clubs in the French Quarter and the Marigny, partied with doctors, lawyers and cops, and here was this young punk of a cop arresting me, who obviously was unaware of how things worked and more importantly had no clue of my importance amongst degenerate Quarter Rats. Back in the 90’s in the French Quarter if you were a bartender, you had status and respect. It was just that simple and I understood more than anyone the importance of my celebrity, I was golden!!!! My Ex-wife bought me a joker’s hat and proclaimed me Hero of the Stupid, and her irony was lost on my egotistical self-image.
I ran a bar in the Marigny and hired New Orleans cops to do security outside the bar because we had a lot of muggings in the neighborhood and saw the necessity of a police presence. For 60 dollars I had a uniform cop in a cruiser sit outside the bar from 10pm till 4am when we closed and when my partying was in full swing. One night I went out to pay the particular cop who had a moustache, and as I reached the cruiser his head came up with Cocaine all over his Stache!!! Hey, he said to me “are you hanging out with me tonight?” “No,” was my reply, “you’re trouble!” That was my relationship with NOPD and so to get arrested by one years later was unbelievable to me. After my arrest a good friend said I should go to AA meetings and show the Judge I had changed my ways, so attended my first AA meeting in 2004 in New Orleans and then a second and a third and learned from my attorney that my case was taken care of because he knew the cop and another 500 dollars would insure, he didn’t show up in court.
So basically, I went to AA meetings and paid no attention because I wasn’t like anyone else, but sure did run into a lot of people I had known and not seen in years. I went willingly to my first AA meeting in Brandon Florida on March 19th2008 and haven’t had a drink or a drug since then. The real miracle wasn’t that I didn’t pick up a drink or a drug, but that I didn’t want to do so, I am repeating the wise words of an old timer from Our Place AA Club in Brandon. So, what was the difference and what miracle had occurred in me?
Well, it began with what is said to be the most important step of admission to a problem and I took a long and hard look at step one with my first sponsor. Put simply, I had the “Gift of desperation” I truly had become “Sick and tired of being Sick and tired” It’s easy to lie when you are in the depths of Alcoholism, we do it all the time without even thinking what we are doing and so If you are wrought with ego based fear you have probably convinced yourself it a necessary defense mechanism, because you don’t like yourself so you present the version of yourself you think necessary for acceptance by other people.” Arrogance is the camouflage of insecurity” and I wore that mask for many years.
“We had to concede to our innermost selves we were Alcoholic” this is the first step in recovery. I read in the Doctors Opinion in AA’s Big Book that William D Silkworth MD (a renowned Doctor working at Townes Hospital for Alcoholics in the 1930’s) was asked by Bill Wilson (one of the founders of AA) to write what he knew about Alcoholism and did so in the “Doctors Opinion” where he recognized the two factors Prevalent in alcoholics, The Physical Craving and the Mental obsession. My own understanding of the first step lay in this important writing by Silkworth and upon reading the first full paragraph on xxvi the penny dropped for me; The Physician who, at our request, gave us this letter, has been kind enough to enlarge upon his views in another statement which follows. In this statement he confirms what we who have suffered alcoholic torture must believe—that the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as his mind. It did not satisfy us to be told that we could not control our drinking just because we were maladjusted to life, that we were in full flight from reality, or were outright mental defectives. These things were true to some extent, in fact, to a considerable extent with some of us. But we are sure our bodies were sickened as well. In our belief, any picture of the alcoholic which leaves out this physical factor is incomplete
The doctor’s theory that we have an allergy to alcohol interests us. As laymen, our opinion as to its soundness may, of course mean little. But as ex-problem drinkers we can say that this explanation makes good sense. It explains many things for which we otherwise cannot account.
Wow! Reading this was my aha moment it truly was. I was so excited to hear my problem was classified as an allergy, a disease, a spiritual malady to which there was a solution. I was able to relate firstly to the physical craving thing on reflecting upon my drinking over the years. This guy wrote something that made so much sense to how I felt but never diagnosed for years!! This explained to me the powerlessness part of step one. The mental obsession was something I carried with me for years, alcohol was my coping method for a life made unmanageable by my very own coping method. Doctor Silkworth wasn’t even an alcoholic!!!! My understanding of step one was only further enhanced when I read the behaviors of Bill Wilson in Chapter 1 “Bills Story” I wasn’t the only person to be intoxicated by self-importance and grandiosity daily, my boy Bill Wilson was one also. I could really look inside my own head for the first time by reading Bills self-truth. There it was! My journey into recovery began with what was so much more than a mere admission, it was a total surrender of old ideas that were rooted in fear.
My own journey began when I realized I had a problem and became willing to seek solution. Fear was the evil and corroding thread that made up the very fabric of my existence. I continue to learn and grow if I maintain an attitude of gratitude, and its okay not to know everything, help is all around me if I seek it.
Slainte