The 9th Step Promises
1. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.
2. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
3. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
4. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
5. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
6. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
7. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
8. Self-seeking will slip away.
9. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
10. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
11. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
12. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.
Alcoholics Anonymous p83-84
The reason a recovering alcoholic isn’t ready to pursue a relationship - and shouldn’t place one’s self in a position where that ball is set rolling (flirting, dating, sexting, sex, etc) - is because it takes long, hard work to be restored to sanity. If you’re in a relationship already when entering recovery, your hope is that you can recover well enough to save it, or to be okay in it. But the relationship lasting after recovery is still not always the case, nor should it be. This is where having a good sponsor is important; we sick alcoholics and addicts don’t always know what’s best for us, and we can get ourselves into a whole lot of trouble when we do things our own way. The 12-steps-with-a-sponsor-approach isn’t the only way to recovery, but if we do go this route and work closely with a recovered human being with much more experience - who has been restored to sanity through working the steps - more is revealed to us. We are better equipped to make sane decisions, and less apt to hurt others and ourselves.
I finally have a sponsor whom I call and to whom I talk (and as importantly, to whom I listen) every single day - and I actually want to do this. I believe that the words that come out of her mouth are true, which is important. And I’m actually being honest with her about my thoughts, feelings and actions - more honest than I’ve ever been. It feels hard as hell. My ego kicks and screams as it tries to claw and fight its way back to the surface to drag me under - but I know that rigorous honesty with another human being IS the first step in recovery. I’m SO SICK of my own insanity and the suffering it brings myself and others that I’m shining the brightest light I can on this bitch, so we can both look at its ugliness and see it for what it really is. The ego can only survive in darkness.
Me? I’d rather dwell in the Sunlight of the Spirit, and enjoy the peace of those promises up there.
So, to get there - to recover, to be restored to sanity - I have to stop doing things my way. If there’s one thing I learned from re-reading my blog posts from 7 to 4 years ago, it’s that, yes, I am insane, and to say that I hurt people - some very deeply - is an understatement. And it’s my nasty little ego that not only prevents me from admitting my shortcomings to another human being, but also tries to stop me from following the direction of someone more sane than I. It can’t handle the idea that someone else might have the answer. It fights me being told what to do.
Thankfully, when my now-sponsor (I’ll call her Tasha) makes suggestions, she only suggests to follow what’s in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous, which has helped millions of alcoholics already. This program of awareness is more powerful than my ego. I don’t even have to call it the hand of God - but I choose to. Tasha couples that with her own experience, strength and hope - and I can take it or leave it - but I’m choosing to take it.
Without a good sponsor, recovery doesn’t work for me. Margaret wasn’t even the best of sponsors, in hindsight, though I thought so at the time, placing her on the highest pedestal. Boy, did she fall hard. After her suicide, I completely stopped trusting any one in the program at all. I stopped recovering, soon after I had started. I kept pursuing relationships when I wasn’t sane - until I found a guy who was also crazy enough to stay with me.
It lasted a little over four years. After fighting it in the beginning, I conceded and settled into it quite comfortably. Here was everything I ever wanted. He was a hard-working chef, we bought a house, he could help me raise my son, we had a daughter, his son (my son’s age) came to live with us, I continued my work with adults and children with disabilities until I started a photography business, we were engaged to be married, and I was photographing Love for a living. I felt like I had “made it”.
But I was still spiritually sick. I resorted to smoking weed, then vaping THC, addictively, to deal with the fact that on the outside, life looked amazing, but on the inside, I was suffering. Parenting was overwhelming. I had no clear view of my finances and didn’t know what I was doing in my business. I had too much work and too little money. I was asking - forcing - Bernard to watch the kids and clean and cook for me 60-70 hours a week so I could work any time he wasn’t working, on his days off, and late into every single night, at my computer, in addition to shooting weddings and sessions. I made no time for him, and also resented him for everything. He just wouldn’t do everything I wanted, and he did things I didn’t want. I had no peace, and I was neglecting everyone, drowning in a sewer of my own design. There was no God-consciousness, nor real consciousness of any kind.
When my then-sponsor (who never worked the steps with me, because I told her I had worked them already - plus I never followed her suggestions) - moved away, the search was on for real recovery. At this point, I was hoping to use the steps to save my relationship and my business, and to be the best mom I could be. I knew I was making a mess of things, but I was powerless on my own to stop it. I was even willing to quit smoking weed / THC and be sober again for real.
But, of course, I couldn’t do that on my own. I tried on my own, over and over, and failed every time. So, I went to Narcotics Anonymous, and a sponsor there helped me to quit smoking weed with a very thorough and intensive step 1. My sobriety date - clean and sober - is now April 6, 2019.
As I embarked on step 2, I decided that, since AA was the program that started it all for me - I still haven’t had a drink in over 8 years - I wanted to go back to basics. I knew AA could restore me to sanity, because, as I began the process there before, I could feel it. I picked the oldest old-timer in the room at my home group, with 37 years of continuous sobriety, and asked her to take me through the remaining steps.
But, she got sick with pneumonia a couple weeks later, and we never had the chance to do the work before she was in the hospital, and of course, unavailable. I prayed for her recovery and I wanted to wait for her - but I needed help, now. So, I got a new sponsor. But her husband had a severe stroke while he was out on the coast on a job. She went out to the hospital and then the recovery facility to be with him, where they still are to this day. She got me through steps 2 and 3 over the phone, but she wanted to do them with me “officially” in person before having me move on to step 4, and we just never got the chance.
Months went by, and I continued to be a terrorist at home. Stagnant in the steps, I was powerless to change. I decided to just start step 4 on my own. It almost saved my relationship when he found my notebook and my personal moral inventory, where I admitted my resentments, and my selfishness, my dishonesty, and my fears, followed by my prayers asking God to remove these defects, show me what He would have me be, and give me the strength to be it.
But the required change in me never occurred without taking steps 5-12. I was stuck repeating the same things over and over. The relationship did finally end; he had had enough. Never mind whatever his own character defects were - mine were glaring. I know the relationship wasn’t good for either of us from the beginning, in truth, but once we were in it...we were “in it to win it,” I had hoped. I had made the investment . . . but I lost it all.
Homeless with two kids two days before Christmas, with my sponsor still out of town, I started the search again. I found an old-timer who was willing to hear my inventory and do step 5 with me. I showed up at her house on the appointed day and time. I was desperate. But she didn’t answer the door, or the phone, after multiple attempts.
A few days later, she texted me and told me she had had the flu, with no offer to reschedule. Screw that, I thought. I went ahead and did my 5th step with a friend, and 6 and 7 on my own. I shared my shortcomings, I was willing to have God take them away, and I asked Him to. But as I looked at step 8, I knew I needed to do this with a sponsor. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. How can I trust myself to be thorough on my own? How do I know that I will take step 9 correctly, where the promises begin to come true? Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. How do I know I won’t still hurt people with my “amends”. I went to five AA meetings the next day, and I knew that, no - I can’t do this alone.
I decided to keep searching. On January 24, 2020, Tasha was the speaker at the local Friday night meeting. She seemed so familiar. Where did I know her from?
I related to nearly everything she shared. At the end of the meeting, I ran out to my car to get my big book. There it was, her name and number on the last blank page, along with the date and the name of the meeting where I’d met her. I rarely write people’s names and numbers in my big book. But I had met her a year prior at another meeting, down the mountain, where, after hearing her speak for only 3-5 minutes, I knew I wanted what she had: her awareness, sanity. She spoke recovery, truth.
I had called her one time, and we talked about Thich Naht Hanh, Eckhart Tolle, and recovery. I later found out from my then-sponsor Shasta that Tasha was sponsoring Shasta’s husband Josh, and Tasha’s partner Destiny was Shasta’s sponsor. Serendipity!
I went back into the meeting room after seeing her name and number in my big book and showed it to her, and I asked her, “Is this you?”
“No....wait...yes...but that’s not how you spell my name.” She helped me fix it. I told her what I had been dealing with, that Shasta moved away and we never went through the steps, and that I kept getting sponsors with whom I didn’t get to go through the steps, but that that’s all I want - to take the steps with a sponsor and recover - and I could see in her eyes that she knew what I was going to ask before I did, and she said yes after I had only started, “Would you...”.
Call it fate, God - Tasha’s sponsoring me now, and I’m so, so grateful to have this opportunity to finally be restored to sanity. I’m not gonna lie - there is a guy I’m obsessed with, as usual - but I know not to trust my own thoughts right now.
I started the steps over with Tasha because I want to be thorough. I’m back on a new step 4 inventory, looking more fearlessly and honestly than ever.
Because, as Tasha always says, truthfully...
“I’M the problem.”
But, there is a solution. I’m just not it!
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