So in step one I personally admitted, finally, that I could not handle alcohol. Alcohol was the substance that I found I could use to escape life and basically, escape myself. That is what I really hated so much I hated me. I did not want to be close to anyone nor did I want anyone to know who I really was. I’m not even sure that I knew who I really was back then.
The second part of this step, when I first took it in earnest, with the admission that my life had become unmanageable. As I have mentioned before I use this program in the past many times and quite often in order to find a place of respite. I had no intention of improving my life or changing any part of it. I would admit, while I was in a 12 step program, but I couldn’t handle alcohol and that I certainly wasn’t going to drink any more of that again. Who was I kidding? Sometimes when I said that I mentioned it or at least I really wanted to mean it. I never really did. I was never at the point where I was going to be honest with myself. I was never at the point where I knew I could not manage my own affairs, no less turning that management over to a higher power or God.
Finally, I hit bottom. I was at the point that I said I would never get to, that of committing suicide. I was at my with tend. I was that person that I often portray in the cartoon in my books that is hanging onto a branch sticking out of the side of the cliff. There is an angel or spirit or something that represented God, saying to me that they would save me or help me. All I had to do was trust them and let go of that branch. It never happened until this last final, desperate, time in my life.
I heard this story from a woman speaker at a 12 step meeting and I like to share it whenever I can. At the time I was in the halfway house and my marriage was on the line. I didn’t really know what direction I was going in from one day to the next. I heard her say that if five years ago I decided that in five years I was going to be completely messed up as the result of my drinking. I said that I wanted to be in a halfway house with no job no money and no real friends. I might have said that my commitment to my wife and my marriage would be coming to an end. If this is the way your life is going today and you had planned for it to be this way five years ago, then you have no problems. Everything is going the way you planned. However if you did not plan for your life to be going this way…!
