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I was at a meeting recently where the topic of self-knowledge came up, and I noticed something surprising from what people shared.
Let me define self-knowledge first. In recovery circles, it generally means that thinking you know more than you do can really trip up the path to sobriety. It’s often cited as something to be very careful of. And with self-knowledge, there tends to be an over-reliance on your own thinking with a lack of other input being a part of the process.
What I noticed at the meeting was how often people were saying that issues with self-knowledge happened with other topics related tangentially to sobriety but not sobriety itself. Basically, a bunch of people shared that addiction brought them to their knees and they were willing to do anything, to listen to anybody, in order to quit drinking. They tapped out on an existential level when it came to drinking or drugging.
But then a lot of people shared about how they drifted into a version of recovery where they used the program for not drinking, and that was it. All of the other baggage we come in with—the resentments, the character defects, the harms we caused? Well, they hadn’t hit rock bottom with that, so they didn’t need the program or other voices to help them with that.
Think about what so many of us go through in Year One of sobriety. Divorces, dating, job changes, legal situations, health problems, and on and on… it’s significant stuff, and I certainly fell victim to thinking that my marriage and my job and my sleep issues didn’t have anything to do with sobriety, and that cost me. It wasn’t for a few months till I realized that my sobriety and my emotional sobriety are two sides of the same coin. I made all sorts of freelance decisions without checking with my sponsor, and I really caused some damage. Even in difficult conversations with my family, I would often be chippy and freewheeling with pointing fingers at them, of bickering about details rather than hearing their overall feelings, and then getting furious and resentful.
I think when I did my first Fifth Step and sifted through all the emotional issues that were affecting my spirituality that I finally realized this was a full service program. And it also dawned on me that if drinking and drugging stunted my growth as a person as much as I thought it did, how did I expect to be able to navigate high-level adult conversations and situations? It’s insane. I was a man with a boy’s tools.
The real problem has dawned on me over the years that if a person trying to get sober only tackles not drinking, all of the other conditions surrounding that sobriety is in trouble. It’s a little like if 10 conditions add up to create a tornado, so if you’re only paying attention to one condition, you’re missing that the tornado is gathering and about to wreck the neighborhood. That’s how sobriety can be. If everything stays the same except for my drinking, then how do I end up not caving in and eventually drinking?
So I guess the lesson is, me try be dumber. Me follow directions. Me be happier and healthier. Me like that.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
HEARD AT MEETINGS: “In his infinite wisdom, my Higher Power gave me one mouth that closes and two ears that don’t.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2003, Larry L. from Fayetteville, Georgia)
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