Step Two

 

The lack of power we have over drinking, drugging, gambling, overeating, etc. is often referred to as a dilemma. According to the dictionary, a dilemma is a situation wherein a human being is faced with a choice between two equally unfavorable alternatives. The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous tells us time and time again what those alternatives are - "to be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live life on a spiritual basis." In other programs they say "jails, institutions, or death." One of my favorite sayings is "locked up, covered up, or sobered up". But no matter how you word it, the result is the same. If we continue to drink, or drug, or gamble, our lives will never get better, they will only get worse.

Since our problem at this point is a lack of Power, the obvious and inevitable solution will be Power. The 12-step philosophy states that we must find a Power by which we can live and it must be a Power greater than our own. But we're not bible salesman. As one of my favorite speakers used to say...you don't have to wear an orange bathrobe and start eating walnuts. You don't have to go door-to-door passing out pamphlets.

I was born Anglican, whatever that is. In my time, I have been Protestant, Jehovah Witness, Mormon, Seventh Day Adventist, Rosicrucian, Buddhist, Hindu, Wicca…you think it up, I have probably been it. I was so busy trying to understand other people’s understandings of God that by the time I got to AA, I was borderline atheist. I had lost interest in looking, had left the search for my maker in the bottom of a bottle. What I didn’t know was that alcohol had become my higher power.

When I was young, I went to Sunday school, I followed the ten commandments, I said my prayers at night. I did all the things we're supposed to do in order to gain passage into the kingdom of heaven or whatever word you choose to call the place we go to after we die. But when I was a teen, I joined a street gang. Sunday school became an uncool thing. The older I got, the further away I got. At the end, I did not believe in God and I did not want to believe in God and I didn't care if you believed in God as long as you did your believing someplace else.

And so I made a mistake that many others have made. I tried to do a 12-step program without doing all 12 steps. It didn't work very well and so I concluded that the 12 step program didn't work. I tried "other" programs, but none of them worked for me either and so I concluded that none of those programs worked. The point that I was lacking was that I was trying to do things my way even though I had proven it to myself time and time again that my way of doing things was the way that didn't work.

I had heard a slogan, Fake It Till You Make It, and I never really grasped what that meant until a kind gentleman explained it to me. He said, all you have to do is pretend that there is a God or supreme being or whatever concept you associate with the word God, and then your live your life the way you think your God would want you to. If the god of your understanding was the Christian god, then be a good Christian. If the god of your understanding is Buddha, then be a good Buddhist, and so on. When your life is at an end, if you find out that there was no such thing as God, the only mistake you will have made is in being a good person and living a good life. If on the other hand you choose to ignore God and you find out at the end of your life that there really was a God after all, well buddy you're going to be in deep kaka. So it just makes more sense to fake it until you make it.

As far as God and all that is concerned, I was never unaware of what that meant. I read the King James version of the new and old testament at least a dozen times. I read translations of the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita, I followed the teachings of Lama Suryas Das, and so on. I just didn't think it would work for me.

But one day, in the early days of December, 1997, I was standing on the shoulder of the Trans Canada highway just outside of Meductic, New Brunswick. I had been hitch-hiking in a snowstorm for 4 days. I didn't know it but I was suffering from frostbite and in a few days I would likely die from exposure. I had been without a drink for that 4 days. Anyone who has suffered delirium tremens during detoxification will tell you that a snowstorm is not the best place to do it.

I had an opportunity to have a drink in a roadside bar and I remembered that old wives tale about a shot of rum warming you up. I had ten dollars in my pocket so I knew I could get at least 2 shots. I started to wonder if Meductic was big enough to have a drunk tank because I would probably end up there. Down the road was a little country church. The doors were open and it looked warm and inviting. I deliberated for an hour or so. In my head I could hear the voice of an AA oldtimer, "If you don't bend your knees, you WILL bend your elbow." Meaning if you do not find something to believe in, you will drink again.

So I went to church that day. And I got down on my knees because that's what you're supposed to do, right? I can't recall all of what I said and no doubt it was the lamest prayer God had ever heard, but the gist of it was, "If you can get me back home to AA, I'll try this time. I'll try to believe." I'd like to say that there was a big bright light, that angels started singing and time stood still, but that's not what happened. But I can say this. It was like someone put their hand on my shoulder and said, Its going to be okay. I haven't had a drink since. And I haven't wanted to have a drink since that day. The voice in my head, the one that always talked to me (Where can I get a drink? How much money do I have? Who do I know that's got money? What can I sell?), that voice, the obsession of the mind that is part of alcoholism, that voice is gone. I still had a long road ahead of me. God didn't send a helicopter to airlift me home, but he did send a few good Samaritans.

In the book Alcoholics Anonymous, during the discussion on step two, it asks a simple question:

Do I now believe or am I willing to believe that there is a Power greater than me that can solve my problem?

I don't know if I believed at that point but I was willing to believe and at the end of the day all I require is willingness. f you are able to look back at the wreckage in your life, and to search within yourself and if you can answer yes to that question - Do I now believe or am I even willing to believe, then you have taken step two.

It's as simple as that.