by Sally Rosa | Sep 15, 2014 | Recovery
Written By: Fiona Stockard
Articles are the sole work of the individual author and do not express the opinion of Sobriety for Women.
Same Sh*t, Different Meeting
I wasn’t involved in twelve-step recovery twenty years ago. Hell, if we go back twenty years, I was still in diapers and raising hell! I’ve heard old-timers talk about what meetings were like back in the day, though. It sounds awesome as f**k!
Imagine a twelve-step meeting where addicts and alcoholic are sharing about the solution! Imagine a twelve-step meeting where there aren’t any treatment centers rolling in fifteen minutes late. Imagine a twelve-step meeting where Jane Doe, still spiritually sick and only a few days sober, is offered hope, instead of dope! Yeah, sounds better than most of today’s meetings.
So, who’s to blame for the watering down of AA and NA? That’s a complicated question with no easy answer. However, it’s my opinion that these stupid f**king sayings play a part.
Easy Does It? Come on! How can I get better, how can I recover from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body, if I take it easy? I need to get into the work, into the twelve-steps, if I want to recover.
But Easy Does It is in The Big Book
I hear this all the time. Someone doesn’t like me trash talking Easy Does It and points to AA’s Big Book. Well Ms. Big-Book, can you tell me where Easy Does It appears? I didn’t think so.
Easy Does It appears on page 135, at the end of the chapter “The Family Afterward.” It tells the recovering alcoholic’s family to be easy on him (or her!). So, Easy Does It DOESN’T mean take years to work the steps. It DOESN’T mean to only go to meeting. It DOESN’T mean anything other than to treat situations involving family with great consideration and care.
Easy Does It? How Am I Supposed To Get Better?
Up to now, I may have been ranting. Okay, I was ranting! But why? Why do these cheesy slogans get me so worked up? Because they’re killing alcoholics, that’s why.
The idea behind Easy Does It is the same idea behind grateful alcoholics don’t drink, meeting makers make it, don’t drink no matter what, and countless other sayings. The idea is a watered down version of recovery, which doesn’t give alcoholics the proper chance to get better.
To put it another way, if us alcoholics don’t take our medicine (the twelve-steps), we don’t get better. If we don’t get better, we drink and drug ourselves to death.
See, I have a three-part disease. It’s physical, mental, and spiritual. I have a physical allergy, which means once I start drinking, I can’t stop. I have a mental obsession, which means once I start thinking of booze, I can’t stop until I drink. I have a spiritual malady, which means I have a bunch of crap inside which makes me turn to alcohol in the first place.
Through working the twelve-steps, the mental obsession and spiritual malady are removed. God as I understand God removes the mental obsession. It can return, but doesn’t as long as I stay connected to God. God also removes my spiritual malady. Through working the steps, I’m put into contact with God, who then “fills the void” where my spiritual malady was.
I’m always going to be an alcoholic and an addict. The physical allergy never leaves.
My body will always process alcohol and drugs differently than normal peoples’ bodies. If I take a drink after twenty years of being sober, I won’t be able to stop.
What I have done is recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. I’ve recovered from active alcoholism. I’ve recovered from active addiction.
It’s important to note that I’m speaking in the past tense. I’m a recovered alcoholic. The problem of active alcoholism no longer exists for me. That’s straight from the Big Book. Look it up, pages 84 and 85.
What the twelve-step and God as I understand God offer is a way to get better. Upon coming into a twelve-step fellowship, alcoholics and addicts generally don’t have that much time to recover. The mental obsession is tricky, insidious, and powerful. Without God, it comes back fast.
Case in point – how many times have you seen someone pick up a white chip, do no work, and relapse a month later? I see it almost everyday. If us alcoholics and addicts want to get better, we can’t wait around. We can’t take it easy! We simply don’t have that luxury.
So, What Should I Do?
Don’t take it easy! Get a sponsor and call your sponsor. Get into the twelve-steps. You don’t have to do them in a week, but start them right away. Write a fourth-step and share it with your sponsor in a fifth-step. Start making amends (with direction from your sponsor and sober supports!).
If you’re new in recovery and take it easy, chance are you’re going to drink. This is true for women with some sober time, too. We can’t let up on our program of action. If we do, we drink. If we drink, we die a spiritual death. It’s as simple as that.
by Fiona Stockard | Jul 21, 2014 | Addiction Articles, 12 Steps
Written By: Katie Schipper
The Steps to Recovery Aren’t the Same for Everyone
Opinions on Taking Twelve-Steps to Recovery
Outside opinions on the inner-workings of twelve-step fellowships range from mild curiosity, to total disinterest, to insistence that they’re cults. At it’s very core, AA and other twelve-step recovery programs operate on the basis that if you want to recovery and remain anonymous, than you have a safe haven to do so. It’s on that foundation that you’re able to build a recovery program for yourself. You do this through sponsorship and the guidance of those that have come before you.
However, AA is in no way a one-size-fits-all program. Anyone who sees AA that way and represents it as such is operating from personal opinion. It’s hard for someone not in a recovery program to recognize the value of a support group. It’s probably even harder to understand the concept of anonymity. Hell, understanding those things is hard enough for people in recovery!
Twelve-step recovery is open to anyone with a desire to quit drinking or getting high (or a slew of other addictions). The truth is the actual journey of recovery looks different for each member.
Learn about the first step of twelve-step programs
The Twelve-Steps are a Process
The recovery process is exactly that, a process. It isn’t a thirty-day stay at an addiction treatment center for women. It isn’t a magic bullet that solves all of life’s problems.
Recovery, as a concept, goes way beyond the scope of the twelve-steps. It includes recovering from physical injuries, depression, emotional trauma, anxiety, and eating disorders. The list is endless – recovering from a break-up, from an ended friendship, from the death of someone you love. Recovering from these things doesn’t happen overnight. Some are easier to get through than others, but all pain demands attention. It doesn’t matter if that recovery is physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, or something else.
Why would an addict or alcoholic be any sort of exception to that rule? We don’t ask that someone “get over it” when they suffer an emotional loss (or at least we shouldn’t). Why would anyone expect that a lifestyle based on lies, fear, manipulation, denial, desperation, self-serving, and self-centeredness would heal without some intense and ongoing work?
In twelve-step recovery programs, the initial work of going through the steps with a sponsor is based on a set of suggestions. These suggestions clarify the nature of what we face (addiction and alcoholism). They advise we look at a lifetime of our thought and behavior patterns, which reveal how we’ve been running our lives (by fear and selfishness). Finally, they advise we try and make right some of the things we did. When this initial step-work process is complete, we show gratitude by taking new women through the same process. We keep our recovery alive by passing it onto others.
For those who believe AA and NA are cults, there are other options! Do your research, you’ll find plenty.
Learn about twelve-step meeting etiquette
No Requirement for “Membership”
None of the above are requirements for membership. Even within specific twelve-step programs, there are variants and adjustments each member can make. After getting through all twelve-steps of recovery, it becomes abundantly clear that recovery is exactly what you make it. You get to decide what it means to live differently, if living differently is what you want. Suggestions are made in the rooms of AA by sponsors and old timers, and anyone with a mouth really, but the reality is that you decide what rings true and speaks to your soul.
There’s No Right or Wrong Way
There isn’t a right or wrong way to start getting honest. There isn’t a right or wrong way to start learning who you really are. As time goes on, the spiritual principles you truly value will begin to develop and you decide how to nurture them. You choose how to pray. You choose how to meditate. You choose how to help another person – if you choose if you do those things at all! Recognizing that we’re all unique people, who happen to share a common bond, is meant to empower rather than subjugate. It’s up to you to own that power however you see fit.
by Sally Rosa | Jun 3, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Sobriety For Women
Written By: Katie Schipper
Clichés are those really annoying phrases we hear so often that they lose all meaning. We hear them often in twelve-step meetings. Clichés are repeated because they’re recognizable and often seem to be a go to for old-timers and sponsors.
AA has a lot of clichés! It’s easy to look at them as annoying, but in reality most of them have a lot of weight and meaning. Sometimes, we just have to hear them in the right context. When that happens, something clicks. What was once a played out cliché becomes something valuable. So, get over your resentment and start to learn why some clichés are important!
New to meetings? Read about some twelve-step meeting etiquette.
AA Clichés – Giving Them Back Their Meaning
Most of the go-to phrases in AA can be found posted on the wall of any clubhouse or meeting room. Let Go and Let God seems to be a good place to start. This cliché is an easy target because it’s an over-simplification of something that most alcoholics are miserably bad at doing – giving up control! So, the natural tendency is to hear this and sneer.
For us alcoholics, the fact is the truth is almost always simple. We don’t have a complicated solution. What we’ve found over and over again, and is shown in both our addiction stories and our sober transformations, is that we’re at our worst when we’re grabbing for control. So, this simple cliché, to let go of our desperate need to control not just what’s in front of us, but even our drive to control outcomes, turns out to be powerful. Let God take the wheel. That’s simple, but like everything else in AA, just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy.
So, next time you hear someone say Let Go and Let God in a meeting, think about what that really means. Think about how beautiful it is when that cliché works in our lives.
Need help picking a sponsor? Here’s a few pointers.
Another cliché that’s almost impossible for newcomers to make sense of is One Day at a Time. Like letting go, learning to make a home in the present moment is an endless gift.
One of the hurdles that frequently emerges in early-sobriety is the concept of not getting stuck in the future. To quote a wise Jedi Knight, one should always be mindful of the future, but never at the expense of the present moment. This idea is the crux of this cliché. One Day at a Time also goes beyond present moment awareness, to the ever-present and inescapable fact that every sober person has a daily reprieve. We’re only sober insofar as we put in the work to not pick up a drink or a drug, today. Tomorrow, we’ll get the chance to try all over again.
The list of clichés could go on and on (and on and on and on), but the bigger idea is to realize that even if a slogan’s annoying, or doesn’t have personal value to you, it comes from a meaningful place. As for those rare slogans that are just stupid? Well, we can ignore those!
by Sally Rosa | May 15, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Recovery
The Importance of a Home Group
Written By: Katie Schipper
What Is a Home Group?
Many in Florida Recovery Programs encourage individuals to seek a home group. A home group is the twelve-step meeting someone chooses to be a member of. Most groups have open membership and joining is usually as simple as telling another home group member. While addicts are welcome to attend all meetings, a home group serves as an important anchor for any woman’s addiction Florida recovery program.
Twelve-step meetings usually hold monthly business meetings. This is when members share their ideas for bettering the group. It’s also when meeting issues are discussed and solved, based on group conscience (the majority opinion of members).
Why Have a Home Group?
Home groups are often called the “heartbeat of AA.” It’s within a home group that newly sober women begin to learn how AA works and what it really means to be sober. Within the home group, newcomers are able to take service positions and meet those with long-term recovery. All the little things that make twelve-step programs so amazing are best observed within the home group setting. It’s there the wisdom and miracle of AA is shared freely among members. Service work starts by attending business meetings and taking an active role in AA life.
Choosing a home group is a foundation of long-recovery. Additionally, many individuals find it helpful to include self-help groups with professional therapy in their Florida Recovery Program. With a home group comes a sense of belonging and responsibility. These were pretty much absent from our life during active addiction! Choosing a home group is one of the first major steps we take towards breaking the deep sense of isolation which ruled our lives.
How Do You Choose a Home Group?
For women in early-recovery, the first step to finding a home group is to attend the same meetings regularly. Going to women’s meeting narrows the choice of potential home groups down. If all women’s meetings aren’t available, mixed meetings are definitely okay. Just remember, stay away from the boys! It’s okay to make any group a temporary home group, you don’t have to wait around for the “perfect” group
As time goes on, if the group you chose doesn’t work, find another one! Like most things in AA, finding a home group shouldn’t be an overly serious matter.
Having a home group isn’t a requirement of twelve-step recovery, it’s not even necessary to stay sober, but there’s nothing more powerful in early-recovery than finding a place among women – strong, sober women.
AA membership isn’t denied to anyone. It’s open to anyone who wants to stop drinking and start living a better life! Home group membership is just as relaxed and is a solid addiction to your addiction recovery program.
