Doing Recovery Slightly Out of Step

I am revisiting a "share" from April of 2007 today. It was written at at time when it became clear that I needed to be completely honest about my own haphazard recovery path from "emotional difficulties" some 16 years before. It came at a time when I was ready to "rock the boat" with old timers in my recovery community.

"Some fun tools sprang forth, or grew, out of the groundwork laid by the early Alcoholics Anonymous community.

It occurs to me that the word "God" was so important to the early founders, who were dealing with a desperate situation. There was little hope for the illness called Alcoholism, and they needed a path to recovery that was spiritual, but would withstand their OWN cultural conflicts. Early AA'ers knew the only path was unity, for it to be OK for practicing and lapsed Catholics and Protestants to sit at the same table and heal.

Over the years, I suspect folks got creative and even came up with acronyms for God, to make the word less charged, for those who would never again be Christians. One of us has mentioned "Good Orderly Direction".

Orderly. An interesting word.

Alas, for me, I was corrupted in my order, even as I started my work with program. I never was able to believe that even doing the 12-steps in exact order was a requirement to get well. Believe me I tried. But I cannot help my own family legacy, whose religious tradition was based on questioning. Questioning came first. Is a healing process in nature really orderly?

Today I want to speak up for others who may be struggling with program, its wording, its apparent order, even the language. "Defects of character". "Searching and fearless moral inventory." And more.

In my first 12-step group, AA members were closely consulted in that group's creation and involved in that group's early life. Many folks still in our group when I began, did rely on the AA book. I once had a copy of that AA Bible given to me, but the language, the culture didn' t speak to me. It was hard to feel OK about me when I read it, but I could feel the urgency of recovery prevent me from becoming distracted by arguing.

Even the EA book, the first generation when I began program, barely did it for me and this was 1991 I think. I am a big reader and our Big Book was like stepping into one of my early Soil Science textbooks, but without the science.
(Please forgive, I don't mean to insult.)

I now CAN accept that I am a Doubting Thomas. Even a Skeptic.

In the AA book, every page I looked at seemed to focus on the negative and I could not afford that at the time. No, I likely did not look at every page, but the language rankled too. And I could sense it had a disparaging, stereotypical view of women. Yikes!

So, naturally what would happen to a doubting thomas, who is wondering early on in the program, "Can I do this honestly if I do not agree with the structure we are operating in?" I was scared, because my psychiatric diagnosis could have been binding, if I couldn't find hope outside of anti-psychotic drugs. I knew I was in the "court of last resorts". When the answers were NOT in my meeting, I searched out things in my world to help me answer them.

I find a church and enter. The sermon is what I am here to understand. It was on the Dark Night of the Soul. What did the minister say, to this wounded broken person that I was... who was so afraid that she couldn't even do EA right, at a time when our group still stood in the shadow of the Giants of AA?

He said, that the recovery process weaves in and out, it takes the steps out of order. It is messy, but we get through because we are willing and we learn faith only by practicing to the best of our ability. His words were a bit as if he had given me a little
flashlight, and said, do the best you can, and use whatever tools you have. "You don't even need to use the pieces in order."

That is when I knew that EA's purpose for me was that I simply was not alone with my own flashlight. I could share my story, my discoveries, my questions. I could do the steps out of order. I could share in my meetings on any step, even if I was not officially working it yet. I had permission to do it my way.

Fortunately, in my early program work, I was also blessed with a sponsor that also thought outside the box.

An atheist, she was the only woman able and willing to sponsor when I joined my first group. We got so much larger in the years I belonged to that group, and I suspect it was because our group was inclusive, and allowed folks to be honest about where they REALLY were and allowed folks to feel welcome who were not being orderly.

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By the time I got my new edition of Emotions Anonymous' Big Book in 1995, I had become a founding member of an EA group in my new home town. With a full-time job, there was time for only had one meeting a week, and it was the one I started. That new generation of our own EA big book was a Godsend to me. You should see how marked up that first copy of my book is!

Some folks in program never want to see literature change from the version that "saved" them. Maybe they are just a little like people who swear by the King James version of the Bible and no other.

But when I compared the new and old EA books, I realized where I had been shut out. It was too much like AA's big book for me to really get much out of it. Likely, it may be that it was too charted for me, and sounded too much like "do this or be punished" messages I got as a child. I ditched the old edition, because the new one felt more inclusive and promised that the program would become accessible to more people like me. Today we have a book with even more open-hearted language, the book "It Works if You Work It".

As for me, I want to shout this from the rooftops to set my people free: I do the steps out of order. I suspect I must do them so, in order to reach some of the folks I find coming to me as a sponsor. Especially the young folks who have a low threshold for boredom and have problems with authority figures.

Tell me I am being politically correct (or incorrect). That is fine by me. Doesn't change the fact that those folks will have problems if I don't find an easy effective way to reach them. My suspicion, and I could be wrong... Young folks won't stick around if they don't see some creativity in the picture, a place for themselves to speak and not be condescended to. And for them to be allowed the peace to recognize their own vomit.

Some of you who feel successful in program don't realize how advantaged you are. Your spouses are in EA and AA. They have brought the work home for you, translated the parts that you found objectionable. For these kids it is not so. They have peers that will counter our programs, and these young ones come equipped with dogma-detectors.

The words in each step are a struggle for them. Some of them don't ask questions, but when they do, there can be a lot of anger in it. Anger that they may not feel comfortable sharing in face-to-face meetings. Anger that may keep them from coming back. Or that may fracture the unity in our meetings. I need to know how to deal with this anger, so I will occasionally practice being devil's advocate here.

I am not being stubborn, just earnest, and as open-hearted as I can possibly be. I welcome all helpful input, because I learn so much from each of you.

Blessings, Zena

PS: speaking of dance. I thought of a new acronym for my own
understanding of GOD:

Good, Old-Fashioned Dance