Why should addicts get all the healing?
I went to an AA meeting once to see what the fuss was about. A friend was going and invited me along. (It turns out the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. I drank for a few years in college, then realized I didn’t like alcohol, so I came along as a member.) The meeting piqued my curiosity but didn’t resonate with me.
A few years later, I attended another Anonymous meeting of a different type. (A different friend was going.) Then a third type, another few years later.
It’s shocking to me that the most impactful solution we have to a whole family of physical addictions is psycho-socio-communal-spiritual. That is to say: Alcohol is physically addictive. Why does making amends with other people help heal that addiction?
The best doctors don’t treat symptoms. They treat causes. Addiction is self-medication. Anonymous meetings and the 12 steps work on that level.
I don’t buy that you have to do every step of the 12 steps in order. If order were mandatory, I wouldn’t do them at all. I think each step has a key trait (or traits) that, when satisfied, does the healing. Ben Franklin did a moral inventory before AA was ever invented.
Today I started my step 4 personal inventory. I spent 45 minutes jotting up areas in my life in which I feel angry and unable to let that anger go. I’m “hung up on it”, as the kids in 1972 might say.
This is to say I’ve admitted I have a problem (just not in that way). A set of problems. A set of regrets that pop into my mind and which cause me to psychologically spasm with deep and profound regrets.
So, without any obvious addiction that’s sent me to rock bottom, I’d like to do the steps. Specifically step 4 and step 8.
Step 4: “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”
Step 8: “Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.”
I think that, to do step 8, I may also need to do part of step 5 (“Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” [I’m not sure the God part is important. The self and other human may be.])
16 months ago, I noticed something I felt a profound regret about. I jotted up a letter to that person in an attempt to mimic these steps (well, technically sending the letter is step 9). I shot it their way. They responded positively. I feel much better now.
Today, I took step 1. Er, step 4. I skipped step 1. I’ll be the first to admit that’s not a problem.
Julian Wise 