Essay

STEP TWO: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I do not translate, while reading the literature, to COE or Food addict, but please do so as you wish. I can make the translation in my mind and do often. However, as an alcoholic both terms are true for me and I go for the message rather than the verbiage.

This step has meant a tremendous amount to me in my recovery. It has been a life saver over and over. I have a lot to share on this step, which is commensurate to my experience and how important it has been to me.

I always thought there was some magic key that everyone had but me! I felt stupid and hopeless. I thought that if I could find that key I would be happy and find recovery. I thought the key was the right food plan, the right attitude, the right sponsor, the right meetings, THE right way of doing things, the right literature...etc. ad infinitum! I was of the general belief that there was one right way in the world and that if I could just find it I would be successful. So, it really stumped me when I could not get it! Made me mad as a hornet actually and I turned that mad inward. I thought I was open-minded, but deep down I was as egotistical, closed minded and convinced that I was right in all things as they come!

The program really threw me into a quandary and I did my very best to become open-minded and learn new things etc, but boy was it hard, simple but not easy. When I was first introduced to the 12 steps I did not believe in God, but I could swallow that AA as a whole was more powerful than me...and that there was some reason that I was a hopeless alcoholic one day and then stopped the next. That was proof enough for me to begin. It is my experience with OA also. When I was finally able to admit total powerlessness and accept the help of a Power Greater than myself, the obsession was removed and I was able to continue with the program of recovery.

One day in a world of emotional hurt a man asked me if I had taken step two and I told him I did not know. He asked me if I believed a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. I answered honesty, "No". Then he asked me if I was willing to believe and again I answered honesty, "No". Then he asked me if I was willing to be willing to believe. I answered "yes". He emphatically assured me that was all I needed to make a beginning on step two. I was hugely relieved for I knew deep down how sick I was and how incapable of working the steps I was. I felt a twinge of hope that maybe I could be well and that this program might work in my life. I remember it with gratitude to this day.

http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_tableofcnt.cfm

BB p. 25/26

"If you are as seriously alcoholic as we were, we believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution. We were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid, we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could; and the other, to accept spiritual help. This we did because we honestly wanted to, and were willing to make the effort."

p. 39

"But the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly any exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience."

Gee whiz, that was hard to take, but deep down it was my experience and it rang true. And then not only do they emphasize it, but re-emphasize it. They go even further and smash it home to us! And they italicized the part about self-knowledge. Oh that was a blow to someone who relied on their intellect like me. School and intellect were the places I excelled and that gave me good feelings, but here they were telling me it was not going to solve this problem. Oh what a quandary! Simple but not easy program they say. Oh how true! I thoroughly related to the "bitter experience" part of having tried to no avail.

p. 44/45

"If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago."

p. 45

"Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously. But where and how were we to find this Power?

Well, that’s exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem."

p.46

"We found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a Power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results, even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power, which is God."

p. 47

"Do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you. At the start, this was all we needed to commence spiritual growth, to effect our first conscious relation with God as we understood Him."

And then,

""Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself?" As soon as a man can say that he does believe, or is willing to believe, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built."

And then they really just put it out there in the most simple terms for us. When I get all bollixed up and confused and cannot make hide nor hair of what the correct course of action or thinking is, I often come back to this very simple passage on p.53

"Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself?" As soon as a man can say that he does believe, or is willing to believe, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built."

p. 55

"Actually we were fooling ourselves, for deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there............We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found. It was so with us."

I suggest that you read the entire first 164 pages of the Big Book so that these quotes are put into context.

When my son died in 1986 I turned to the 12 steps as never before and I found relief. When another son died in 1987 I turned to food and then again to the 12 steps. I read step 2 in the AA 12 and 12 over and over trying to find relief. I remember clearly the vice grip and consternation of faith I felt. On the one hand I believed whole heartedly in all that I have highlighted above. However, I also was immature in my faith and could not reconcile how God could let not one, but two, of my children die. This seemed to be horribly unkind and I found it difficult to trust a God who would let two children die and not save me from such pain. It seemed so unfair to me. And then I read the 12 and 12 and was once again blown away by the wisdom of those who have gone before us. To this day it amazes me and I choose to believe that this program is infused with wisdom that is divinely inspired.

In the AA 12 and 12 it tells me in step 2 http://www.io.com/aamen/steps.html#2

"The moment they read Step Two, most A.A. newcomers are confronted with a dilemma, sometimes a serious one. How often have we heard them cry out, "Look what you people have done to us! You have convinced us that we are alcoholics and that our lives are unmanageable. Having reduced us to a state of absolute helplessness, you now declare that none but a Higher Power can remove our obsession. Some of us won't believe in God, others can't, and still others who do believe that God exists have no faith whatever He will perform this miracle. Yes, you've got us over the barrel, all right--but where do we go from here?" Let's look first at the case of the one who says he won't believe--the belligerent one. He is in a state of mind which can be described only as savage. His whole philosophy of life, in which he so gloried, is threatened. It's bad enough, he thinks, to admit alcohol has him down for keeps. But now, still smarting from that admission, he is faced with something really impossible. How he does cherish the thought that man, risen so majestically from a single cell in the primordial ooze, is the spearhead of evolution and therefore the only god that his universe knows! Must he renounce all this to save himself? At this juncture, his A.A, sponsor usually laughs. This, the newcomer thinks, is just about the last straw. This is the beginning of the end. And so it is: the beginning of the end of his old life, and the beginning of his emergence into a new one. His sponsor probably says, "Take it easy. The hoop you have to jump through is a lot wider than you think. At least I've found it so.......

"First, Alcoholics Anonymous does not demand that you believe anything. All of its Twelve Steps are but suggestions. Second, to get sober and to stay sober, you don't have to swallow all of Step Two right now. Looking back, I find that I took it piecemeal myself. Third, all you really need is a truly open mind. Just resign from the debating society and quit bothering yourself with such deep questions as whether it was the hen or the egg that came first. Again I say, all you need is the open mind......"

""Then I woke up. I had to admit that A.A, showed results, prodigious results. I saw that my attitude regarding these had been anything but scientific. It wasn't A.A, that had the closed mind, it was me. The minute I stopped arguing, I could begin to see and feel. Right there, Step Two gently and very gradually began to infiltrate my life. I can't say upon what occasion or upon what day I came to believe in a Power greater than myself, but I certainly have that belief now. To acquire it, I had only to stop fighting and practice the rest of A.A.'s program as enthusiastically as I could......"

"You can, if you wish, make A.A., itself your `higher power.' Here's a very large group of people who have solved their alcohol problem. In this respect they are certainly a power greater than you, who have not even come close to a solution....."

My sponsor told me the following could be a problem sometimes as I might go to meetings where people might share something like this, "I am happy. I have been in program for 12 years and I have some serenity and it takes as long as it takes and I keep coming back. And, by the way, I didn’t do it good enough the other 42 times, but now I am going to do it right." She told me that does not encourage people to have faith in the program. And that most people do not want a program that is going to give them 42 failures. She was so right and I could really relate to what she was telling me. She reminded me that the title of the Big Book is "Alcoholics Anonymous The Story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism"

I heard a speaker say that he had heard another speaker say that "Every man is my teacher. Some teach me what to do and some teach me what not to do." I loved that!

Big Book p.25

"But we saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it. When therefore, we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at out feet."

I want the program that is in the literature; the one that produces what is described as a "permanent recovery". The 12 and 12 tells us on p.39/40

"More sobriety brought about by the admission of alcoholism and by attendance at a few meetings is very good indeed, but it is bound to be a far cry from permanent sobriety and a contented, useful life. That is just where the remaining Steps of the AA program come in. Nothing short of continuous action upon these as a way of life can bring the much desired result."

My sponsor told me the story of a guy who read step 2, went to a meeting and shared that he hoped he could one day have what the 2nd stepped promised – that God could restore him to sanity and would relieve his obsession. All of those who shared after him at the discussion meeting shared that they believed they were never going to be restored to sanity. They believed that some days would be better than others, easier, but that they were always going to have this disease, always going to be sick. They were never going to be free of the obsession; they were always going to be insane; they could never be recovered. She told me that he wondered if he had mis-read the step. He wondered, if he had mis-read I, then what was he doing there. He did not want to be part of a program that was telling him he was going to be as sick when he finished as when he started. He re-read the step and discovered that it told him that he would come to believe in a Power greater than himself that COULD restore him to sanity and would also REMOVE his obsession.

AA12 and 12 p. 31

"When we encountered A.A,, the fallacy of our defiance was revealed. At no time had we asked what God's will was for us; instead we had been telling Him what it ought to be. No man, we saw, could believe in God and defy Him, too. Belief meant reliance, not; defiance.

Many people talk about the steps being a linear process. I believe that the steps are an entire process. The 12 steps are like the ingredients in a cake in that it takes all of the ingredients to produce the results. I cannot expect a cake if I put in only 2 or 3 of the ingredients. I believed that I needed to have serenity, sobriety, abstinence, before I could take the steps. My sponsor told me that was like believing I had to be well before I went to the doctor. Believe it or not, that was exactly what I believed! For me, recovery has been a RESULT of the steps.

BB p. 50

"Here are thousands of men and women, worldly indeed. They flatly declare that since they have come to believe in a Power greater than themselves, to take a certain attitude toward that Power, and to do certain simple things. There has been a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking. In the face of collapse and despair, in the face of the total failure of their human resources, they found that a new power, peace, happiness, and sense of direction flowed into them. This happened soon after they wholeheartedly met a few simple requirements."

AA 12 and 12 p32

"The fact was we really hadn't cleaned house so that the grace of God could enter us and expel the obsession. In no deep or meaningful sense had we ever taken stock of ourselves, made amends to those we had harmed, or freely given to any other human being without any demand for reward. We had not even prayed rightly. We had always said, "Grant me my wishes" instead of "Thy will be done." The love of God and man we understood not at all. Therefore we remained self-deceived, and so incapable of receiving enough grace to restore us to sanity."

And this was me to a tee in the AA 12 and 12 on step 2,

"Now we come to another kind of problem: the intellectually self-sufficient man or woman. To these, many A.A.'s can say, "Yes, we were like you--far too smart for our own good. We loved to have people call us precocious. We used our education to blow ourselves up into prideful balloons, though we were careful to hide this from others. Secretly, we felt we could float above the rest of the folks on our brainpower alone. Scientific progress told us there was nothing man couldn't do. Knowledge was all-powerful. Intellect could conquer nature. Since we were brighter than most folks (so we thought), the spoils of victory would be ours for the thinking. The god of intellect displaced the God of our fathers. But again John Barleycorn had other ideas. We who had won so handsomely in a walk turned into all-time losers. We saw that we had to reconsider or die. We found many in A.A, who once thought as we did. They helped us to get down to our right size. By their example they showed us that humility and intellect could be compatible, provided we placed humility first. When we began to do that, we received the gift of faith, a faith which works. This faith is for you, too....."

And this is the part I read over and over as I tried to make sense of step two and my children dieing. I used food to cope with those deaths and was never able to let go of that weight until now. It is almost as though letting go of it, is letting go of something I have of Willie and Joey....a betrayal of sorts. I can only trust that HP will remove that from me as I continue my recovery.

"As psychiatrists have often observed, defiance is the outstanding characteristic of many an alcoholic. So it's not strange that lots of us have had our day at defying God Himself. Sometimes it's because God has not delivered us the good things of life which we specified, as a greedy child makes an impossible list for Santa Claus. More often, though, we had met up with some major calamity, and to our way of thinking lost out because God deserted us. The girl we wanted to marry had other notions; we prayed God that she'd change her mind, but she didn't. We prayed for healthy children, and were presented with sick ones, or none at all. We prayed for promotions at business, and none came. Loved ones, upon whom we heartily depended, were taken from us by so-called acts of God. Then we became drunkards, and asked God to stop that. But nothing happened. This was the unkindest cut of all. `Damn this faith business!' we said. "When we encountered A.A,, the fallacy of our defiance was revealed. At no time had we asked what God's will was for us; instead we had been telling Him what it ought to be. No man, we saw, could believe in God and defy Him, too. Belief meant reliance, not; defiance. In A.A, we saw the fruits of this belief: men and women spared from alcohol's final catastrophe. We saw them meet and transcend their other pains and trials. We saw them calmly accept impossible situations, seeking neither to run nor to recriminate. This was not only faith; it was faith that worked under all conditions. We soon concluded that whatever price in humility we must pay, we would pay."

And so I concluded that my job was to begin to trust things as they were instead of railing against them. This meant I had a lot of feelings to face rather than run from. Simple, but not easy.

I went to a Spiritual Director who understood that I needed a relationship with HP. A relationship includes two by definition. I learned that praying without meditating was like clapping with one hand as praying was asking and meditating was listening!

So that I could find out how God made God known to me I was to write about the times in my life when I actually experienced the presence of a Higher Power. I wrote everything I could...how old I was, where I was, who I was with, inside, outside, warm, cold, light or dark, what I was wearing, the weather, what I experienced, heard, felt...I just let it come...

A. I suggest that you do that also and write it here if you care to share it. This is not in the Big Book and is not part of the instructions, only my experience and pathway to finding my Higher Power and beginning a very real dialogue and relationship that works.
1. How does God communicate with you?

Here is a story my sponsor told me.....A woman is running blindly through the night. In the dark she pitches over the end of a cliff! On the way down she is able to grab onto a branch protruding from the side of the cliff. She hangs on and starts calling for help., getting no answer. She eventually starts calling to God for help. In time a voice rumbles down, DO YOU BELIEVE IN ME? Yes, yes, I believe. DO YOU HAVE COMPLETE FAITH IN ME? Yes, yes, I have complete faith. DO YOU HAVE TOTAL TRUST IN ME? Yes, yes, God, I have total trust. IF YOU BELIEVE IN ME, IF YOU HAVE COMPLETE FAITH IN ME, IF YOU HAVE TOTAL TRUST IN ME, THEN LET GO.

Looking down and seeing only pitch black beneath her feet....she yells..."Is there anyone else up there"?!! J No answer, but she continues to hang on and in complete agony...arms wrenched from the sockets, palms bloody manages to hold on. Morning comes and in the growing light of dawn she looks down and sees that the ground is just 6 inches below her feet! If she had the trust, faith, and belief she professed she would have let go and been safe.

That would have required blind faith and our program does NOT ask that of us. Imagine the same scenario, but with two women together running through the night, pitching over the cliff, finding the branch, praying to God and when God says "LET GO", one of them does....goes over to her friend and says, "it is okay, the ground is only 6 inches down". The person, who would not let go when alone, might just do so now. She has an example that it is safe. That is how this program works, faith by example, not blind faith. We have the example of those who wrote the Big Book. It is not theoretical in what one might do to sober up and get abstinent. It is a book of what they already had done to be recovered!

Taking the steps is a mental process, amongst other things. It requires a change in attitude demonstrated by being willing to go from saying "No Never" to ‘Yes" or "maybe".

On p. 108 of the AA 12 and 12 it tells us, "This I cannot do today, perhaps, but I can stop crying out, "No never".

BB p.47

"We needed to ask ourselves but one short question. "Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself?" As soon as a man can say that he does believe, or is willing to believe, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built.

That was great news to us, for we had assumed we could not make use of spiritual principles unless we accepted many things on faith which seemed difficult to believe. When people presented us with spiritual approaches, how frequently did we all say, "I wish I had what that man has. I am sure it would work if I could only believe as he believes. But I cannot accept as surely true the many articles of faith which are so plain to him." So it was comforting to learn that we could commence at a simpler level."

• Do you now believe, or are you willing to believe that there is a Power greater than yourself?
  
• Do you believe that a Higher Power can restore you to sanity?
  
• Do you believe that a Higher Power will restore you to sanity?

• Can you go from saying "No, God will not restore me to sanity, God will not relieve the obsession, God will never work that way in MY life; I am unique," to saying "yes" or "maybe" you will have taken this step.
  
• Have you found an unsuspected inner resource? If so and you would like to share, please do.
  

- Herbert Spencer