The First Step To A Life Of More Freedom

This is a talk on step one of the twelve steps pioneered by alcoholics anonymous. Step one says "We admitted we were powerless over some things and our lives were unmanageable". The twelve steps can be applied to any ailment and so is a tool that can be used by anyone. If you are interested in twelve steps this may be a great place to start. If you're an "old timer" this may be a fresh take.

Transcript

Hello.

Today I'm going to give a talk on step one of the 12 steps originally found in Alcoholics Anonymous.

You might be thinking right now,

Well this dude doesn't have any concern for traditions.

And you might notice that I never actually said I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I just mentioned that that's where these steps originally came from.

And I will talk about one of them.

Since then,

The 12 steps have been used in many different capacities.

Going beyond substance addictions,

To process addictions,

Compulsive working,

Eating disorders,

All sorts of things.

They're a very useful set of tools for changing one's life.

So the first step,

For anyone not unfamiliar,

For those of you who are,

Is we admitted we were powerless over whatever.

And our lives have become unmanageable.

Often the principle that's associated with this step is acceptance.

Although if you look,

You'll find many principles associated with each of the steps.

So it's really hard to pin down just one.

Although some people will be adamant that there is one.

But acceptance makes sense to me.

There's a marked distinction between admitting and accepting,

Which I find really key.

You know,

A lot of people can admit,

Oh sure,

I have a problem.

But when one accepts a problem,

That suggests a deeper understanding and then some immense interactions.

You know,

If I accept that this is killing me,

I truly accept it,

Then I'm a lot more likely to take some action to the contrary.

So a question often associated with step one,

Or maybe not often,

Is what are my limits?

And that'll bring me to my first encounter with the steps.

When I first encountered step one,

I began to take a look at it seriously.

It was due to pretty heavy drug use.

I really liked crystal meth.

I really liked to drink booze,

Vodka and gin and things like this.

But I wasn't very choosy.

I would do any kind of drugs that were in front of me.

If I couldn't find meth,

I would have done whatever was available and did.

But that's the thing that brought me in touch with the steps.

And you know,

I was kind of at that place when I first encountered them that I could admit this,

But I couldn't quite accept it.

And as a consequence,

It took me a lot more suffering to really start to change my life.

I first encountered the steps when I was 20 years old.

It took me until I was about 25 until I made an honest effort at using them to change my life.

And you know,

By then even,

I'd started to realize that I had some other limits besides just drugs in my life.

You know,

I realized that I had some troubles with relationships with people,

Romantic partners especially.

I would obsess and you know,

Even like some,

What could be described as some stalker behaviors in some cases when I was very obsessed.

And you know,

My relationship with pornography was out of control.

My relationship with food had been pretty out of control since I was a young kid.

When I was a young child,

I was 220 pounds by the time I was 11 years old and not an athletic kid at all by any means.

You know,

Just sugar on top of sugar and no exercise.

So I had a few,

I had to sort out a few of these limits and I wasn't able to articulate them or know what they were at first.

But they started to reveal themselves through the process of the steps.

So anyways,

The step itself,

Powerless and unmanageable.

You know,

These are the two ideas here.

And there is a lot of discourse as to whether people really are powerless over addictions or not in various circles,

You know,

Like,

And that can cause a lot of pushback from people.

You know,

Like,

No,

I'm not powerless.

I have the power.

And that might be so.

I'm not here to tell you one way or the other that you are in fact powerless if you have an addiction.

I know for myself it has seemed as such in cases where once I engaged,

Once I surrendered to the addiction,

To choosing to go down that path,

I truly felt and I might even say believe that I lost the power of choice.

There was power of choice to that point is what it seems like to me.

But once I decided,

Once I was on the way to my dealer's house to pick up meth,

My body was in control now.

And that addiction had taken over.

Like it was now in charge.

The person who is what I would say,

Like my deeper self,

I couldn't find that person anymore.

It's buried.

So that's my experience with it.

And you know,

Aside from that,

You know,

Kind of semantics is powerless or powerless not.

I think what's often more helpful,

You know,

If that is a problem is the unmanageability piece.

Because,

You know,

If I considered how my life looked when I was using dope and I haven't for some time now,

It's been 10 years at this recording.

You know,

When I do,

When I did use dope,

You know,

Like I was,

You know,

By the end,

I couldn't work a job.

I was overdosing regularly.

And like every time I went on a run,

It would be either,

I would end up in the hospital either on day one,

Day three,

Day eight.

It would,

It just,

It was inevitable.

It just,

The timeline differed.

Couldn't work a job.

People didn't really like being around me because I was so sketchy.

And I would just,

I would just go shoot,

You know,

Inject drugs in their bathrooms and they didn't like it.

Or in their kitchen,

They didn't like that either.

Even amongst drug users,

I was kind of starting to become ostracized.

I was,

Most of the,

You know,

A lot of the conversations I had were with chat,

Like people that weren't there,

You know,

The infamous shadow people,

If you know,

You know,

You know,

But beings that were just not existent.

And,

You know,

On a level I knew they weren't there,

But I was out of my mind enough that I was comfortable talking to them anyways.

So,

You know,

These things are pretty good indicators of unmanageability.

And,

You know,

So if you,

If you take that as a guideline and say like,

Well,

How is my life unmanageable because of X?

And you start to see some of these things arise,

Right?

Like,

And of course,

Drug use is a really extreme example.

Things like,

You know,

Things like codependency might be less intense and codependency I would say is,

Is the core of my addiction.

And,

You know,

The process of addiction,

Which still affects me the most today,

You know,

15 years into recovery.

And,

You know,

It can be a little more subtle,

Right?

Like my relationships are unmanageable.

How is my life unmanageable because of them?

You know,

I take things personally.

I get disproportionately upset when things don't go my way,

When people don't act the way I think they should.

You know,

I can take things personally when people don't take my advice.

You know,

Some like,

And when it was even more extreme,

Like my esteem depended entirely on,

Well not entirely,

But largely on other people.

And,

You know,

Of course it's very healthy to get esteem boosts from others.

But when I don't have the source of esteem coming from my own self,

And some might say a higher power,

Although that's a whole nother topic of cat and worms that we won't get into now.

But even just my,

The connection to myself,

If that's lacking then,

Then it'll be unstable.

Because truly the only person that can give me unconditional love or anything close to it is my own self.

Because other people are busy trying to live within their own self.

So,

You know,

My relationships,

Not as dramatic,

But can be pretty dramatic.

You know,

My relationship with pornography,

Like unmanageable.

You know,

Like some of the things,

Like when I use it,

I start to see people as objects.

You know,

Like when I'm in the street,

I have like a hard time not looking at women's bodies.

And I don't feel,

I don't like that.

I don't,

I don't want that for myself.

You know,

I'm this person on a path,

And I want to be free of all suffering.

And I know that looking at women's bodies isn't satisfying in that way.

You know,

Like it's,

There's something beautiful about being with a romantic partner and everything else,

You know,

Like making a real connection with someone physically.

That's wonderful.

But just to be constantly pulled by that thirst to need to take it in through the eyes,

That's unsettling and not satisfying,

As far as I found.

So my life gets unmanageable in subtler ways,

But still very noticeable.

Again,

My relationship with food,

You know,

That was a little more subtle as well.

But,

You know,

Slowly over time,

My health will deteriorate if I'm eating cookies a lot,

You know.

And there was a period,

You know,

Not,

Not long ago where I was ordering from Skip to Dishes,

Just like two desserts at a time to get free delivery.

And,

And some,

There's days I did that twice in a day,

You know,

I'd order like two chocolate brownies twice.

And,

You know,

Like,

Overall,

Not like dramatic.

I mean,

Like it,

You know,

I didn't really have the money for it,

But it wasn't like sinking my,

I wasn't missing the rent.

Put on some weight,

You know,

At a time when I couldn't really afford to,

But it didn't,

I didn't become unhealthily big again.

But nonetheless,

It's my unmanageability.

And what it really comes down to,

You know,

The thing with this is like,

This is all my stuff and it doesn't matter.

Or at least it ought not matter.

Because what matters is,

Have you suffered enough?

Because that's what this is,

Is,

Is these things,

Like looking at these things for me helped me to decide that I had had enough.

And,

You know,

Truth be told,

I've vacillated on that with most of these things,

You know,

I've decided I've had enough and then thought,

Well,

Maybe I could have a little more.

And hence the relapse process can come,

Come into play.

But the point is,

Is that's what the purpose of this is,

Is to decide I've had enough.

And then to,

You know,

In the next steps,

We decide to take some action because it will leave a void.

You know,

Like the truth is that,

You know,

One of the wisest things I heard was that like addiction,

The addiction to the thing isn't the problem.

It was,

In fact,

The solution.

There's all that stuff underneath,

All that pain,

All that trauma of various sorts.

And,

You know,

The word trauma might seem a little,

Might be a little loaded these days,

But nonetheless,

There's a lot of forms of trauma that are often missed.

You know,

Things like neglect,

You know,

Like that just are often overlooked,

You know.

I came from a family with a lot of material wealth,

But there's other things missing.

And that's not to say,

That's not to throw any blame around.

People were doing the best they could,

But there were things missing and it hurt.

It had an effect.

I felt empty because that emptiness,

I found the solution in drugs,

The solution in dating,

The solution in romance and porn,

Food,

Controlling other people.

So once that solution,

You know,

Once I decided to get rid of,

Let go of that solution,

I needed a new solution.

But this is really the foundation,

You know,

The 12 steps of starting to make a change according to this system.

You know,

It's the bedrock of it,

Right?

And it's often said that step one is the one you kind of need to do perfectly.

Although I'd still say that's a reach,

You know,

You don't need to do it perfectly.

But I would say,

Like,

I know I needed to do it pretty well.

You know,

I needed to be pretty on top of it.

Because the fewer opportunities that I,

You know,

Was in a headspace that was like,

Oh,

Maybe I'll try some of this again.

You know,

If I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,

When it was still related to drugs,

I would have been picking up and probably overdosing again,

Maybe dying this time.

And,

You know,

Some of the other things to consider about step one is like,

How did I try to control my behavior?

And,

You know,

Because it might seem like I'm not out of control,

It might seem like I'm not powerless,

It might seem like you're not.

And just ask yourself,

If you're able to control this,

Can I control my drinking,

Using,

Drugging,

Porn use relationships?

And I know for me,

It was important to note that sometimes it felt like I could,

You know,

There was times when I went out and had two beers and came home,

And I was like,

Yeah,

See,

No problem.

But that would often set me up for the next time,

When I'd go out with that false confidence and end up in a jail cell or doing some things I really regretted,

Treating people poorly,

You know,

Just behavior I wasn't proud of.

And that's one of the tricks of the mind,

You know,

It's like,

Oh,

No,

No,

Look,

It was fine because of this.

It's like the gambler that only tells you about how much they win,

But you never hear about how much they lost,

Right?

So to wrap up here,

Just to reiterate that,

You know,

The question is,

What are my limits?

And step one,

You know,

What are my limits?

Is there unmanageability in my life because of this behavior?

Do I have any control over it?

And maybe just even considering,

You know,

If there is still some,

You know,

If you are still getting the payoff,

Because there is a payoff,

There wouldn't have been this addiction if there was no payoff.

Consider,

Like,

Is the payoff worth the consequences?

And you know,

If it is,

Then you might just be all right.

If there's no problem,

There's no problem.

But for those that are wondering here and feeling some feelings in your tummy,

Perhaps,

About like,

Oh,

Shit,

I might have some stuff to look at,

You know,

It's worth looking at,

Is the juice worth the squeeze?

It's a strange saying that I quite enjoy.

Anyways,

Until next time,

May you be well.

Reviews

Thank you for sharing this, teacher!
Helps to engage the change in life 🙏🍀