June 2024

What a crazy world we humans live in. Early on, our parents tell us to be nice, but don’t let anyone take advantage of you. Don’t start fights, but it’s okay to finish them. As kids, we are always getting mixed and confusing messages. Next, we learn through our coaches to be assertive, look for the other team’s weaknesses and use it to your advantage. Then as adults, we learn that the boss is the one wielding the power. That he or she makes a lot more money and consequently doesn’t get their hands dirty as much as me.

Okay, so I ran my life, did what I thought was correct and all was going pretty well until my ego and my need to control and always be right took total control. It’s amazing that when you get a superiority complex how many people just can’t get with your program. You can’t understand why there is an issue and for me, you drink to not look at the truth of who you have become. You create a world that you feel right in even if that world is a lie. Some continue to live that lie until it kills them. For me, I was lucky enough to be directed to AA.

I didn’t want to be here and didn’t think I needed to be here and the first thing you tell me is I’m powerless over alcohol and pretty much everything.

That for me to be a successful player in this game of life, I must allow my Higher Power to make all my decisions. I cannot run my own life.

I believe that the reason they say “Keep Coming Back” is because we learn about ourselves by hearing others in the program share their experience with them learning that they were self-centered and ego maniacs. We can finally see ourselves by honestly looking at another AA’ers sharing their story.

Today, I see that allowing a Higher Power to be part of my life and my decisions gives me a chance to let that Higher Power (God for me) take control of situations that I can’t control. Yes, I keep taking back control and messing things up and then smile at my stupidity. But remember, this journey is about progress, not perfection. Thank God. Keep up the good work.

-Mick S

A dear AA friend used to say, “I’m powerless over alcohol and a lot of other problems in life – but I’m never helpless.”

The images of my drinking powerlessness are burned into my memory. The passing out on the bathroom floor; peeing in random places during a blackout; getting into road rage insanity while driving; yelling at my kids and my wife just because I was coming out of my skin and emotionally deranged. Ruining friendships and wreaking havoc at work because of that “Jekyll/Hyde” split personality. “Who will show up today – the smart and kind guy or the raging lunatic?”

I must be reminded that I am still recovering, still facing troubles I can’t control. Organizational changes at work and management decisions I disagree with. Coworkers whose personality or style affect me like fingers on a chalkboard. Two siblings with cancer, one with dementia, an adult child with a progressive neurological condition, a grandchild struggling with depression and gender identity issues.

This is “just life.” Friends of mine have far heavier burdens to carry. One wise friend says, “We rarely get a chance to prevent bad things from happening; but we get a chance to keep it from going totally down the toilet.” I can obsess about these difficulties or try to “be the Director” and attempt to micromanage others. I can brood and slip into depression. And I can always drink over the pain.

I’m sober, but life is difficult. By working the Steps, doing a daily inventory, and staying close to the Fellowship and my Higher Power, can I seek the strength and grace to “match calamity with serenity?” Will I look for small ways to be useful and of service? Yes, I’m still powerless, but I’m never helpless.

-Kevin P.
Northside Tuesday Night Group

I was introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous in January of 1995 and it was very easy for me to admit that I was as an alcoholic. In fact I wore that moniker like a badge of honor that gave me impunity to drink at will for years. So far as working any steps, step one was as far as I was able to get, by admitting that I was an alcoholic. So I thought.

It was 25 years later when desperation finally met willingness and I was beaten into a state of reasonableness. Thus when the student was ready, the teacher did indeed appear. My sponsor made quick work to correct my impairment in compression of what step one actually says.

“Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.” That’s what step one says. What it does not say anywhere is that we admitted we were alcoholic. There it was in plain English and despite being a fairly intelligent man I was unable to comprehend that I never even read step one correctly, let alone possessed the capacity to take it. My perception was so twisted and diluted from a head full of alcoholic wiring and a lifetime of trauma that I wasn’t even aware that I had spent most of my life crippled.

The dilution of power and control over people places and things had warped my ability see reality as it was and accept it that if not for someone whom having had a spiritual awakening as THE result of working the steps of AA, sat down with me and broke down word for word what step one really says. Then I could make a beginning of untwisting the loose wires in my head to see and accept that in reality my power was non existent.

It was explained to me like this:

WE - the first word of the first step tells us that we are no longer alone that WE do this together hand in hand.

WERE - past tense, WE had no power over alcohol but now WE do because we are in this together with God.

UNMANAGEABLE - if you WE were able to manage our lives WE wouldn’t need each other or God but WE can’t manage our lives therefore WE are under new management. WE are to fire ourselves as general manager of or lives and God is now running the show.

This was the first teaching by my sponsor and has become the first step taken towards a new freedom and a new happiness that has only gotten exponentially better with each step taken on the road of happy destiny.

I hope to find some of you trudging along this road and may God bless you and keep you until then.

-Andrew M.

As a reminder, Step 1 states the following:

"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable." *

The first order of business should be to explain the meaning of powerless within this context, because that's the term that confuses and upsets the most people, and it may turn some people away from Twelve Step recovery for good.

What Does It Mean to Be Powerless Over Alcohol and Other Drugs?

People often scoff at the idea that they're powerless. The person who is first getting sober could be a single mother to four amazing kids. They could be a tenured professor with a doctorate in a highly specialized field of study.

They could be absolutely anyone, because addiction doesn't discriminate. And more than that, each and every person on Earth has power: the power to change, to love and grow, to try new things and to become new people.

No one is powerless in the general sense of the word, but a person can be powerless to the effects of alcohol or other drugs. And that's what the First Step is saying—once an addict or alcoholic drinks that first drink or takes a hit of their favorite drug, they will only want more, and the compulsion to use will override and overtake anything else in their lives regardless of consequence.**

Here's what author and interventionist Jeff Jay has to say about Step One and being powerless:

"In AA and Al-Anon, the first half of the [First] Step says: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol." It does not say we were powerless over our choices, over our life, or over our relationships with other people. It says we were powerless over alcohol, and that limiting phrase, that tight focus on the drug, is critical.

"In order to break our addiction, we have to admit that we can't change what it does to us. It affects our brain, our body, and our spirit, and there's no sense in denying it. We're powerless over the effect the chemical or behavior has on us. We're not going to get good at drinking or drugging, we're not going to get more rational about it. We're not going to get better at controlling. We've tried it a hundred times already."

"What about Unmanageable? My Life Is Going Pretty Smoothly."

Unmanageability should also be defined more tightly, because the person who has a great job or a loving spouse or a nice home might say, "My life feels pretty manageable, actually." They might look at everything that's going well and completely resist the idea that life is no longer manageable. And that's only fair and natural. But the terminal stages of addiction will strip everything away, and an addicted person who refuses to recover will often be left with nothing.

There's a simpler way to think of unmanageability: drinking or using drugs is causing problems in a person's life.

Maybe life hasn't become fully unmanageable yet, but a person has lost friends or romantic partners because of their addiction, or they face criminal punishment or work-related consequences and they continue to use.

The warning signs are there, and it might not be unmanageable now, but it will be.

So What Is the First Step Asking For?

The main criterion for a successful First Step is a person's acceptance that they do, indeed, have the disease of addiction. A person shouldn't consider themselves weak-willed or incapable when they admit to their powerlessness, and they don't have to do anything about their addiction yet. Step One is just asking a person to acknowledge that they have the disease of addiction, and life is harder because of it.

If you can acknowledge and accept those two things—that you have an addiction and it's causing problems—then you have completed the First Step of Alcoholics Anonymous, and you have officially begun your recovery.

-Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation