Comment: 

My daughter has made amends to some, but not all. This concerns me. 

Response:
 
Yes, that should concern you. Rarely, if ever, have I seen anyone be successful without making all of their amends. This step in particular is what separates the men from the boys [and the women from the girls]. It is where we find courage and begin to give back. For me, completing all of my amends was absolutely essential and paramount to building a solid foundation. I wouldn’t be who or where I am today if I left some of them out. I will pray she finds the willingness to complete them and continue her spiritual growth. 

    “But this f’ing bitch was way more of an f’ing bitch than I was.”

      First of all, wanh, wanh, wanh… do you want a pity-pot to cry in? I didn’t say that, although it would have been a good idea. I told her to first pray for this person until she no longer cares about what she did. She said, 

     “I will never pray for her other than to pray she rots in hell.”

     Oh, okay. So then why the hell are you asking me for advice when you aren’t really serious about getting better? Why bother doing any amends at all if you’re going to leave out the ones where someone else wronged you too? I told her that she is not willing to go to any lengths to get better and that ultimately she will relapse. And she did. Two weeks later.

     99.9% = 0%.

     If we plan on recovering from alcoholism and addiction, we must give 100% and we must never leave anything out. Sure others are flawed, but it’s not about them. If someone has wronged us but we owe them an amends as well, we better make it and not expect a single thing in return.

     So why do we have to make ALL of our amends, other than because we have wronged others and it’s the right thing to do? We make them because if we don’t, we will drink again. If we cannot swallow our pride and make an amends to someone who has also wronged us, we have no business in the Steps. Once we take that 3rd Step and make a pact with God, we are entering mystical territory. At that point, if we walk away, bad things will happen. Trust me. I see it all the time.

God, please give me the power, strength and willingness to make all my amends, and to continue making amends if and when I hurt others going forward…

     To avoid confusion, we must distinguish between mental and physical powerlessness…

     To put it simply, we are physically powerless once we start drinking or using drugs and they enter our system. Addicts and alcoholics are physically powerless for LIFE and will experience the phenomenon of craving (a physical event) every time we drink or use. There is no getting around our physical powerlessness. You can turn a non-addict into an addict, but there is no turning an addict back into a non-addict, physically speaking. Recovery groups who preach the idea of future moderate use for true addicts and alcoholics are completely insane.

     Active addicts and alcoholics, as well as sober yet untreated addicts and alcoholics, are mentally powerless until they have regained the power of choice, i.e. their willpower. When we get sober, we continue to suffer from what’s known as the “mental obsession”, which refers to thoughts or ideas (about drinking or using) that do not respond to ration or reason. In other words, the addicted mind is insane, and remains that way until it is restored through consistent right action and enough spiritual growth to induce a fundamental psychic change whereby guiding principles, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that have haunted and driven us for all of these years are suddenly cast aside and an entirely new set of principles and motivation is adopted.

     The point is that we die physically powerless. Our bodies are forever broken once we break them. We call this the “allergy” to drugs and alcohol, and by the way, it crosses all lines. There is no, I’m just an alcoholic but I’m not addicted to my wife’s benzos or I just love dope but I’m def not a cocaine addict yo… I could do cocaine all day long, son. Oh, okay.

     So we can never safely use again, and guess what? That’s a GOOD thing. Knowing we are physically powerless keeps us sober. Also, why would we need to drink or use moderately? Are you missing out on something? If we enlarge our spiritual lives and begin to experience the magic of this new way of life, who gives a shit about missing out on recreational drinking at some dinner party? Personally, I’d much rather have the life I have now and the incredible journey I’m on now more than sailing through the world as some mundane zombie.

    So while physical powerlessness is a permanent condition, mental powerlessness is (potentially) but a temporary condition. That is, one can go from being mentally powerless to regaining mental power (or willpower) over drugs and alcohol. And once that is achieved and maintained, the body of an addict is irrelevant. This is why addressing the physical aspect of addiction is such a useless and ridiculous endeavor, but hey, do whatever you want, I guess.

     This old post got tons of hits yesterday for some reason… and since I also managed to receive an $850 home cheepo bill in the mail, here you go. By the way, sorry about the slight delay in the release of “The Privileged Addict Quotes“. I do all of the interior and cover design myself, so I’ve been waiting for a hard copy to come in and then I can approve it. Should be out this week, for sure. As well, I’ve had considerably more time lately to work on “Anybody Can Take Steps“, so that one should be done by early to mid-fall and it looks good. It will not only universalize and break down the Step process for non-addicts, but it will also help addicts and alcoholics better understand this process in simple, straightforward language.

     “A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke… We did the exact same thing with our lives. We took stock honestly. First, we searched out the flaws in our make-up which caused our failure. Being convinced of self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations.” –Alcoholics Anonymous, p.64.

     Gee, I’m glad I didn’t listen to the guy who ran the Beverly Farms meeting years ago when he stood up from his seat in a fit of rage after I mentioned inventory and the above passage and constructed the following bit of eloquence, give or take. “Listen, I run a friggin’ business and lemme tell you, no friggin’ God and no friggin’ spiritual Big Book step bullshit keeps me sobah! It’s this friggin’ meetin’ and you friggin’ guys that keeps me sobah!”

     Um, I know AA is self-governing but I have a hunch that’s not the best advice.

     “Resentment is the ‘number one’ offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have not only been mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.” – Ibid., also p.64.

     And the above is why I don’t go to meetings. Why add to the already steady accumulation of resentments? Plus, it was Alcoholics Anonymous that saved my life, a program which bears little to no resemblance to what takes place in some of these meetings.

Home Depot Inventory

1st Column (Who): Moron at Home Depot

2nd Column (Cause): a) Never cut my carpet after I ordered it, then forgot and sold the last of it to someone else.

3rd Column (Affects my…): Pride/Ambition, Self-Esteem, Wallet

4th Column (False Thinking, Truth):
Self-Seeking: I am the man. No one messes with me.
Selfish: I want my carpet when I want my carpet.
Dishonest: I make, and want to be forgiven for, my own human errors yet judge everybody else for theirs. (i.e. I know it wasn’t intentional.)
Fear: I fear looking bad to our new tenants. Afraid to let go, forgive.

God, forgive me for my sins, for being unloving and verbally abusive, for being intolerant and judgmental, for not forgiving and giving others the benefit of the doubt. Help me to see my character flaws, that I may rid myself of them and replace them instead with Your principles…

      When we say that we are to rid ourselves of spiritual poisons such as selfishness, dishonesty, fear and so forth, that doesn’t mean we advocate making war with who we are. To let go and move on we must accept. We don’t fight against ourselves and what we find within, however disturbing it may be. Sure we need to understand the effect this stuff has on self and others, but we must also treat it with some respect as it is inside of us and therefore has become part of us.

     So we seek to rid ourselves of various forms of emotional and behavioral garbage, but to do this we don’t engage in self-loathing, self-hatred or self-pity. Sit down next to it and befriend it all… and then let it go. Take some time everyday to be quiet, breathe, and let what needs to come up, come up. Pray for God to teach you how to let the darkness go and replace it with love, strength, honesty, courage, patience, tolerance, willingness, humility and service.

      Trust me, I have to pray and remind myself everyday to better love and accept who I am and what’s inside of me so that I may better love and accept others. It seems like a contradiction when I say we must be tough on ourselves, but it’s really not. We must both be tough and not tough. Do you see? By tough, we mean that we have to be brutally honest with ourselves and work hard to change and grow. By not tough, we mean that resisting and fighting against what is happening and what lies within often just fuels and prolongs it.

     There is balance to everything. Yes we nourish ourselves, but we don’t over-nourish. For addicts and alcoholics, you should have a feeling in your gut which tells you what is right and what is wrong, or rather, what you need to do or need to stop doing. So just listen to that because it is God trying to help you. And if you don’t have that feeling, that sense of what is healthy and what is not, then there is something wrong with your program. Go back to the beginning, find someone who is truly okay and has what you want, and then give everything you have to the Steps as they are laid out in the Big Book.

     If you make changing the single most important thing in your life, you will change. If you make your emotional and spiritual growth the most important thing in your life, you will heal emotionally and spiritually. Put this first, put God first, because if you don’t, you won’t make it. If you don’t, you will never give back all that you have taken. So go for it. Be completely and utterly fearless, thorough, honest and willing.