The Twelve Steps

Powerlessness to Empowered

I have been in twelve step recovery for over thirty-three years. I have dissected them, turned them upside down and sideways to get everything that I possibly can out of them. In the beginning, the first step was all that mattered. I was powerless and to me, that was all there was to it.

I dug into the spiritual aspect of those same twelve steps. What I found was indeed empowering. I connected the dots of what I was learning from the twelve step rooms to what I was learning in A Course in Miracles as well as in all the therapy I was doing.

It was easy for me to see and to accept that I was powerless over both drugs and alcohol. As I grew in my step work and I learned to watch myself in life I began to see that those were not the only things I was powerless over.

Over the years I questioned everything. As I worked on my own recovery and the vast array of seemingly different addictions I carried, I had to ask, “What is at the root of all of this?” I thought there must be a link to them all?

I came to believe that the root of all my addictions was an addiction to self-sabotage. After all, isn’t self-destruction, in fact, the end result of all addictions? Still, underneath even that is another answer which was my own thinking!

The Turn-Around

I learned to take inventory of my thinking. I had learned through A Course in Miracles about the power of the mind. It says, “You are much to tolerant of mind wandering and are passively condoning your mind’s miscreations.” Another quote demonstrating the importance of thought, “The truth is that you are responsible for what you think because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think.” And… “This is a course in mind training.”

Once I heard that “We come into the rooms of the Twelve Steps powerless only to use the steps to regain our power.” I do believe that we only recover the ability to control our thoughts and therefore manage our ‘unmanageable lives’.