Category Archives: 12 step programs

Responsibility, Accountability, Amends, Healing

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When I took my first stumbling steps toward sobriety I still pointed my finger at everyone and anything but me when it came to the troubles in my life. That’s not how it works, not if you’re interested in living a healthy life, a life where you are free to be you one day at a time.

If you hear  a hint of the cliché here, so do I. And it’s okay. Once, when I was a boy, I moaned to my father about something being a cliché. He smiled knowingly and said, “Well, Pete, there’s a reason they become clichés.”  True that.

Today I read in the New York Times that the Catholic Church is going to work on ways of regaining the faith of its followers. Apparently Rev. Federico Lombardi “said that the church should cooperate with civil justice systems in the handling of priests who molest children, as well as following its own law.”  Not enough. The only way to truly regain the healthy faith of anyone is to accept accountability for your actions and hold others accountable for theirs.  Were this to happen in the Catholic Church, people like Benedict and others should be fired and, if the statute of limitations have not run out, arrested and charged. There is no shortcut around reality and their is certainly no shortcut, legally, intellectually and morally around child rapists, pedophiles and those that aid and abet those who have committed or are committing these crimes.

You can’t, as they say in the rooms of a 12-step program I go to, play the cracks, meaning play the angles. You accept responsibility in part by holding yourself accountable, you make amends, and then the healing begins. Anything short of that, the bleeding continues – and the children suffer.

___________________________

Honesty: Addiction’s Greatest Fear

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Addiction has one simple goal – murder life.

In the meantime, it will feast on your life, people in your life, and destroy anything and everything in its path. As discussed in the previous blog post, secrecy is its favorite fuel. The extent of your silence, the degree to which you are leaving things unsaid, the measure of your dishonesty is, in truth, an accurate measure of the distance you need to travel to get well, to be free. Free to be you, finally and gloriously, you.

Honesty is, if not the most powerful weapon, one of the most powerful weapons you can use in your war with addiction. Addiction cannot survive when faced with honesty, real, rigorous honesty which includes being open about what is going on.

Know this: whether you are the alcoholic-addict or you are a friend or family member, the extent to which you hide or don’t admit what is happening reflects the danger you are in. The sunlight of honesty slays the vampire of addiction. Let the light in. And if you think I don’t know what I’m talking about, consider two things. I am seven years sober because I have learned what an extraordinary and honorable friend honesty is. My younger brother could never get himself into the light and I missed the signs. What happened? When he was 23 he put a rifle to the side of his head and fired. I was 24. There are no happy endings without honesty. and openness. You drive away or hide from the honest people in your life, you drive away and hide from your allies.

A warning. If you do call attention to the presence of the addiction, you may get wounded. Some find it easier to shoot the messenger than deal with the message. But mark my words, however difficult the message may be for you to deal with ain’t shit compared to the wrenching pain and destruction addiction will inflict on your life and the lives of your loved ones.

Do you hear me?

Secrecy: Addiction’s Favorite Fuel

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Hoping to heal from the deadly grip of addiction without revealing what is going on in your life is like asking a doctor to make you better without revealing your symptoms, or asking firefighters to put out the fire without telling them where the flames are. It can’t be done.

Addiction – which includes alcoholism, folks – is a vicious, nasty, deadly, thing.

There is a well worn and accurate expression in 12-step programs that says, You’re only as sick as your secrets. It’s true. The extent to which you are keeping things hidden may be an accurate measure of how far you need to travel to get well. A simple fact to understand? Yes. Simple to reveal what is going on in your life? Anything but.

For the moment, think of secrecy as darkness, the absence of light. Addiction grows with a vengeance in the darkness that is secrecy. It sinks its poisonous tentacles deeper and deeper into the flesh of your being and workings of your mind until it is the conductor of your daily life. Conversely, if the movements and patterns of addiction are brought into the light, it will perish if it is kept there. Keep in mind though, when first brought into the light it will get angry and strike back, often attacking those who’ve revealed its presence in the hopes that they will be villainized and driven off so addiction can slink back into the darkness of secrecy and resume its role as the daily conductor (destroyer) of life.

One thing I have noticed, and I am quite sure I am not the first to notice it, is this. The use of secrecy is often driven by the wish to avoid the anger of others. I know this to be true because I’ve lived it. Anything, please, but having someone angry at me. Anger becomes the controlling presence and, in doing so, promotes the use of secrecy. You’ll hear, I drank today but please don’t tell my wife, she’ll get mad at me. And so you don’t tell his wife because, you tell yourself, you are keeping a confidence. I actuality, you have chosen not to tell his wife that her husband is continuing to take poison. And what is the underpinning for your secrecy? Your fear of enduring the anger you will no doubt absorb when you make the sober choice and let his wife know because if you don’t tell her you are enabling the disease that is trying to kill the very person who confided in you in the first place.

It is hard, deeply hard, not to take the anger personally. Anger hurts when it is aimed at you. Even when you know it comes from the addiction, it is deeply painful, especially when it is inflicted on you by people you love. But there is another expression common in 12-step programs: this too shall pass. And it will. In the meantime, use love and patience and honesty to the best of your ability. Stay in the moment you are in. As a close friend once told me, the moment you are in is the only place you have to be.

Look, none of this is easy. There are no pain free ways of freeing yourself from addiction. I wish there were, believe me. I recently celebrated seven years of sobriety and it has not always been a cakewalk. Helping others, while anything but a cakewalk at times, is well worth it, and helps me shore up my own sobriety, even when I make mistakes, albeit honest well-intentioned ones, along the way.