Tag Archives: Twelve-step program

Book Review: Undrunk

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UNDRUNK:  A Skeptic’s Guide to AA, by A. J. Adams, © 2009

Undrunk: A Skeptic's Guide To AA

As a long time member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I found this book to be a moderately entertaining peek inside the complex organization that is AA.  It’s a good basic primer for folks who are wondering if AA might work for them, with the author explaining his personal experience with the 12 Steps (one year when the book was written,) including his misgivings and misconceptions going in and lessons learned.

The book suffers, however, from overlong explanations which became tedious very quickly.  I was also disappointed that the author didn’t cite his sources in those sections dealing with AA history.

I have mixed feelings about this book.  Anyone wishing to know what AA attendance is like would do better to go to a dozen or so meetings and get the experience first hand.  For those who think that would be too time consuming, following a dozen or so AA recovery blogs or forums for a month would give a more complete picture.  Still, for those with more money than time, this book would be a worthwhile read.  I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

Step 8

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8.  Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

The List

I had a pretty good start on this list from the inventory back in Step 4.  That’s where we look at our resentments and find our own mistakes in each case.  So I already had a list of resentments along with the whos and the whys, including where I had acted selfishly, dishonestly, or for my benefit at the expense of the other person.  Without going into specifics, let’s just say I had a hefty list and a lot of work to do.  In nearly all of my resentments, and I’m sure it is (or will be) true of your inventory, I was at least partly at fault.  But it was far from complete.

My list wasn’t lacking from thoroughness; it was lacking all those times I’d caused someone to hurt that did not involve resentment on my part—a thoughtless word spoken in anger or frustration, a forgotten birthday, or a case of insensitivity to another’s situation.

Keeping in mind that in Steps 8 and 9 we are dealing with people we have harmed, there may be people on our resentment list who have harmed us in some way while we did nothing to cause harm to them.  A woman who has been raped or a person who suffered physical or sexual abuse as a child come to mind as obvious blameless victims.  No amends are necessary or appropriate where we have caused no harm.  Forgiveness, yes, but that is not what these two Steps are about.  I’ll talk about forgiveness in a later post.

The Willingness

By the time I’d gotten this far into the Steps, I was already willing to do whatever it was going to take, so the willingness wasn’t a huge problem for me.  I will admit, tho, that for several people on my list, I needed to keep reminding myself that they were human, too, and even if they weren’t alcoholic, they had problems, too.  When I could see them as like unto myself, it made the amends process easier.  As recommended in the Big Book, I could say to myself, “This is a sick person.  How can I be helpful?”

And in fact, the other person can benefit from our amends as much as we do.  If they have carried resentment against us, as we against them, it gives them the opportunity to also let go. That’s entirely their call, tho.  My job in the process is to offer to amend the damage I’ve caused.  It’s not up to me to even so much as suggest what they should or should not do from there.  From the Tao Te Ching:  “The wise one acts, then steps back.”  (And accepts whatever the result might be.)

Next up—Step 9, where the magic happens.

Any thoughts or questions about Step 8?  Please leave a comment!

From Cynic to Taoist in 12 Easy Steps

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First of all a shout out and a big thank you to all of you who are following The Spirit of DawnRecovery.  When we go on a journey, we might go faster alone, but it’s a sure thing we’ll go farther together.

Since the topic of that Webcast I was invited to take part in (but could not attend) was “Spirituality in Recovery,” I thought I’d go ahead and talk about it here.  I mean, the title of the blog is “The Spirit of Recovery,” after all.

First some quick background info, which should fill up this post just enough to make you drowsy but not put you to sleep.  Then future posts will concern specific topics within the broad range of spirituality in recovery.

Very well, then.

I was born into a long line of protestants of various shapes and raised in a moderately evangelical protestant church.  I left that church, and pretty much left organized religion entirely, when I was 14 years old.  Tried to make science my religion, but couldn’t find my answers there, either.  During my first tour of duty with the Navy, I found myself stationed in the middle of the Mojave desert (yes, the “Desert Navy”) with little to do after work.  I joined a yoga class at the community college there and was introduced to relaxation meditation, yoga and Buddhism.  I didn’t care much for the yoga, but kept up the meditation practice, and after about a year, swapped the Buddhist philosophy for Taoism.

But it wasn’t long after that when life’s responsibilities overwhelmed all else.  That, and my increasing use of alcohol to escape much of life and its responsibilities brought a complete halt to my search into the mysteries of existence.  This was back in the mid-1970′s.

Fast-forward to a more recent past when, at last, I took the 12 Steps.  I didn’t exactly take them in order.  I did try, but it wasn’t going to work that way for me.  As I mentioned before in “A Point of Order,” I skipped Step 3 and plunged ahead to Steps 4-9.  The work I did and the self-knowledge I gained in those steps brought me back into contact with my spirituality at precisely the point I had left it when the alcoholism took over back in the ’70s.

It Just Doesn’t Matter
Today, my spirituality (or my religion, if you’d prefer the term) is an eclectic blend of Taoism, the Abrahamic faiths, Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy, and a smattering of various other sources.  Not everyone’s cup of tea; but I rarely mention it much anyway, because it doesn’t matter.  In the context of the 12 Steps, it just doesn’t matter what anyone’s specific faith or beliefs are; what matters is how we live our faith and beliefs.

Based on millennia-old, nearly universal principles, the Steps can work for anyone.  They bring us back to our true values, and in doing so, either reunite us with beliefs and faith we’ve forgotten we had, deepen and enrich our faith and beliefs that we already have, or let us discover beliefs and faith where none may have existed before. And that’s a beautiful thing!

One last bit of personal history before I end this post, for no other reason than I love the irony of it.  In 1978, I married the woman I still live with today, and we had a son in 1984.  My wife is a Roman Catholic; my son grew up to join a charismatic Christian church; and I am, I don’t know, I yam what I yam.  And we’ve never argued over religion!  Well, unless you count the time I tried to wriggle out of going to a Christmas midnight Mass with my wife.  (I lost that one, and it was a wonderful Mass.)

How about you?  If you’ve been through the Steps, did you come away with a deeper faith, renewed faith, or find a faith from the experience?  If you’ve yet to take the Steps, do you believe they can do one of those three things for you?  Any questions or problems in the broad topic of spirituality and recovery that you’d like to see discussed here in the future?  As always, we appreciate and value your comments/questions at SoR.  Even when you (gasp!) disagree. 

Again, thanks for being here.  Let’s go far together in 2013!