More on Powerlessness as a Spiritual Tool in Recovery from Addiction

The First Step of the 12 Step Programs for alcoholics and addicts (Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous) involves admitting that "we were powerless" over alcohol or other drugs and that "our lives had become unmanageable." This admission of powerlessness and unmanageability lays the basis for abstinence and recovery from addiction via a journey through the 12 Steps. Steps Two ("Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity") and Three ("Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him") provide a spiritual foundation for recovery. These three Steps have been given this shorthand: "I can't handle it; God (or other source of spiritual strength) can; I think I'll let God (or other spiritual source) do so.

This post suggests that learning to be on the lookout for incidents of powerlessness and unmanageability during a recovering individual's life can, by use of the spiritual principles summarized in the first paragraph, become a vital tool in maintaining emotional and spiritual balance, and, of course, abstinence and sobriety. Thus, the goal here is to try to recognize life situations over which one has little power and then to apply spiritual principles to those situations.

As everyone soon discovers, recovery from addiction does not provide immunity from the sometimes trying and traumatic realities of life. We all face such realities just like those fortunate enough to have avoided addiction. However, the point here is that recognition of incidents of powerlessness and unmanageability can trigger the individual to apply spiritual tools that worked in recovery from addiction. When serious life difficulties, such as, job loss, loss of a relationship, or diagnosis of a serious medical condition, occur, as they will, the recovering alcoholic or addict can recognize the situation as one where application of the well-learned spiritual lesson of Step One's powerlessness is appropriate; can take whatever action is indicated (look for a job, couples counseling, consult a physician); and then apply the spiritual principles embodied in Steps One, Two and Three: "Having take appropriate action, I now recognize I am powerless over the result of the situation and turn it over to God, a Higher Power, or other source of spiritual strength."

Not to be forgotten as an important spiritual tool is the value of sharing one's trials and tribulations with another trustworthy person. A passage in the meditation reader of Al-Anon (Courage to Change: One Day at a Time in Al-Anon II, October 1) has some helpful language applicable to this post: "If problems arise today, I will try to acknowledge them--and then put a little spiritual space between my problems and myself. If I can share about them with another person, I will further diminish their power. Recognizing that my life is unmanageable is the first step toward managing it."

As always, comments are invited. Jan Edward Williams, www.alcoholdrugsos.com, 10/01/2015.

Another Look at the Issue of Drug Addicts Attending Meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous

Should drug addicts attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous? My answer is, "Yes." However, I am aware of the controversial nature of this subject and that there are some complicated issues involved in drug addicts attending AA, including whether a drug addict who has not diagnosed himself to be an alcoholic, qualifies for AA membership.

I think a key point is this: The AA Traditions (Number 3) state that the only requirement for membership in AA is a "desire to stop drinking."; so, just on that authority, in my opinion, a drug addict without any history of problematic alcohol use, can become a member of AA without doing any violence to the AA traditions. For the following reasons, a drug addict in, or desiring to have. a solid recovery should have a desire to stop drinking: 1) alcohol is a drug; 2) use of alcohol will impair the recovering addict's judgment thereby making him/her more vulnerable to thoughts or occasions to use drugs; 3) either you are abstinent from all drugs of abuse, or you are not; and 4) use of any psychoactive agent including alcohol will tend to interfere with any spiritual relationship the recovering addict may have with a source of spiritual strength (Higher Power).

Bill Wilson, a co-founder of AA, however, came down on the side of not including non-alcoholic drug addicts as AA members, stating in a pamphlet titled, Problems Other than Alcohol (The AA Grapevine, Inc., February 1958):

"Our first duty, as a society, is to insure our own survival. Therefore, we have to avoid distractions and multipurpose activity. An A.A. group, as such, cannot take on all the personal problems of its members, let alone the problems of the whole world. Sobriety — freedom from alcohol — through the teaching and practice of the Twelve Steps is the sole purpose of an A.A. group. Groups have repeatedly tried other activities, and they have always failed. It has also been learned that there is no possible way to make nonalcoholics into A.A. members."

For the declaration that there is no possible way to make nonalcoholics into AA members, Bill Wilson cited how family members and nonalcoholic friends of AA were unable to relate to AA members and would have difficulty doing Twelfth Step work, not an argumentseemingly relevant to the issue of non-alcoholic or alcoholic drug addicts as AA members.

Although not wishing to appear presumptuous in arguing against a position taken by the founder of AA, an organization that has saved many lives including my own, I will go ahead and briefly address Bill Wilson's justifications of his position and apologize in advance for the lack of scientific research to bring to bear on this matter (there is very little).

Although citing the AA Traditions to support his position on non-alcoholics not being AA members, Bill Wilson does not even mention Tradition Three: "The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking."

In the 57 years since Bill Wilson's monograph on this subject (the 12 Traditions were adopted in 1950), there has been, at least anecdotally, a significant increase in young AA members, an increase in young AA members with a history of both drug and alcohol addiction, and an increase in young members in AA who are non-alcoholic drug addicts. There is also some research (not altogether scientific) suggesting that the number of AA members under the age of 40 has grown to 26% (Alcoholics Anonymous Membership Survey 2014). AA does not have statistics on how many of the AA members under 40 have a diagnosis of both alcoholism and drug addiction or how many may be non-alcoholic drug addict members. There are data that document (available on request) that the vast majority of individuals 30-40 years of age or younger with a primary diagnosis of alcohol addiction have histories of problematic drug use (often marijuana) and that those in that age range with a primary diagnosis of drug addiction have histories of problematic alcohol use. So, one can postulate that a significant number of the 26% of AA members under the age of 40 (AAMembership Survey) probably have a history of problematic use of both alcohol and other drugs.

AA seems to have absorbed the increase in younger members with both alcohol and drug addiction without any of the threats to its survival that Bill Wilson feared over 57 years ago. There are over 115,000 AA groups worldwide, with an estimated 2,040,629 members (AA statistics). Anecdotally, in my experience, AA members with significant drug histories either place the emphasis on the alcohol portion of their stories when sharing at AA meetings or speak generally about their non-alcohol addiction. Some meetings make a statement at the beginning of the meeting that those present should confine their remarks to their experience with alcohol. This admonition seems, in my experience, to be effective.

I have not made an exhaustive study of AA literature and historical documentation and, of course, do not have data about the AA experience with alcoholic drug addict and non-alcoholic drug addict members across the U.S. I invite those with additional evidence, scientific or anecdotal, to add to this, now unduly long. post about the issue of drug addicts attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.

As always, comments are invited, Jan Edward Williams,www.alcoholdrugsos.com, 09/06/2015.

Another "Quick Fix" Treatment for Addiction: Erase Memories that Can Trigger Relapse

A major cause of relapse in individuals recovering from drug addiction, specifically in the situation under discussion here, methamphetamine addiction, involves triggers associated with memories of past drug use.

A recent animal study, summarized in ScienceDaily for August 04, 2015, reports on an experiment involving injection of a chemical called blebbistatin into animals with laboratory induced methamphetamine addiction. One injection resulted in erasure of memories pertaining to use of methamphetamine. Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida stated that "The results [of the study] showed that a single injection of blebbistatin successfully disrupted long-term storage of drug-related memories--and blocked relapse for at least a month in animal models of methamphetamine addiction."

The scientists were excited because "... the effect of this novel treatment approach was specific to drug-associated memories (not affecting other memories), and the animals were still able to form new recollections."

In my opinion, drug companies and allied medical organizations tend to seek development of drugs that will quickly fix the problem of addiction. The most objectionable examples, in my view, include methadone and suboxone maintenance that approach treatment of opiate addiction through use of legal opiate substances. Less objectionable are approaches that involve administration of opiate antagonists such as naltrexone that block the ability of opiates to produce their addictive effects and seem to also help reduce cravings in recovering alcoholics. The advantage of opiate antagonists is that they do not produce a "high", as do methadone and suboxone.

The approach reported on in this post seems like science fiction but is consistent with the attempts by science to offer a quick fix for addiction. My preference for long term recovery is, of course, to aim for abstinence through the hard work involved in therapy and use of spiritual principles in the 12 Step Programs.

As always, comments are invited. Jan Edward Williams,www.alcoholdrugsos.com, 08/08/2015.

The Serenity Prayer: A Powerful Recovery Tool

Addictive disease, be it cocaine, heroin, alcohol, gambling, or other addiction, has a powerful grip on those suffering from it. Therefore, recovery from addiction must harness powerful measures to combat the power of addiction. Recovery tools can be lifesaving measures for recovering individuals. The Serenity Prayer is one such powerful recovery tool:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can, and
The wisdom to know the difference.

In my view, the Serenity Prayer, properly interpreted and used, can not only be a tool for addiction recovery but also a tool for ongoing mental health. Here is the way I interpret the Serenity Prayer and try to use it on a daily basis:

God, 

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, OTHER PEOPLE AND MANY EVENTS IN MY LIFE,

Grant me the courage to change the things I can, ME AND HOW I REACT TO PEOPLE AND EVENTS IN MY LIFE,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

A recovering individual will face frustration and ultimately relapse by focusing on changing other people and many events in life and should focus on what he/she can change, namely, how he/she reacts to people and life. We always have the ability to address our own thinking (cognitions) and emotional and behavioral reactions to people and events. The folks in Al-Anon have a short phrase that encapsulates some of this: mind your own business. The wisdom comes from daily attempts, with success and failure, to apply the Serenity Prayer tool, from doing so without use of alcohol or other drugs, and from seeking the strength from God, or other source of spiritual strength, to persevere in the task.

As always, comments are invited. Jan Edward Williams, www.alcoholdrugsos.com, 07/27/2015.

In Order to Keep It You have to Give It Away!

Recovery from drug or alcohol addiction using the Twelve Step Programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous involves a lot of work on self, but a basic tenet of 12 Step recovery is summed up in this common guideline: In order to keep your recovery or sobriety, you must give it away. Or, put another way, using the words of the AA preamble: "Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholicss to achieve sobriety." Here is how NA states this concept in their publication, Who, What, How and Why (White Booklet): "The newcomer is the most important person at any meeting, because we can only keep what we have by giving it away."

Often, members of AA or NA, even those with long term recovery, may feel that they are not good speakers, don't seem to have made great progress in working the 12 Steps of recovery, or in some other ways think they may not have anything to offer the newcomer or have anything "to give away." I ran across this quote in one of the daily meditation books I read, which is encouraging in its message that any individual in recovery may help another, even with only a smile directed toward another at a meeting:

"They might not need me;
but they might.I'll let my head be just in sight;a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity."--Emily Dickinson

As always, comments are invited. Jan Edward Williams, 06/22/2015,www.alcoholdrugsos.com.

Does Every Drink with Alcohol Constitute a Relapse for the Recovering Individual?

Here are a couple of scenarios to put this question in some context. I am at a party where liquor is served and pick up the wrong drink by mistake, take a swallow, realize that there was alcohol in the drink, and drink no more. Or, I am at dinner in a restaurant and discover after eating a slice of cake that it had alcohol in it. Or, I am a devout Catholic, Episcopalian, or member of a religion where wine is an integral part of worship and I partake of a sip of wine, say, once a week at my place of worship. In any of these cases, would the individual need to consider him/herself to have relapsed and need to have a new sobriety date?

My conclusion is that none of these scenarios constitutes a relapse (as long as the individual in the first two scenarios does not have more than one such "mistake", and the religious individual is not attending worship services many times a day). I know of one individual with long term sobriety who is a Catholic and partakes of the host in the form of wine (blood of Christ). I myself do not take the wine at communion; I do not trust my central nervous system (CNS) to recognize the blood of Christ rather than the wine. In regard to the mistake such as picking up the wrong drink or consuming food with alcohol, my view is that such incidents should not happen if the individual maintains a high level of awareness of the dangers of such situations. For example, I always question whether sauces for foods contain alcohol and decline them even though some think the alcohol is removed by cooking. Again I do not trust the reaction of my CNS to the taste or absorption of even minute amounts of alcohol. Similarly, at parties where alcoholic beverages are served, I suggest asking for closed bottles of nonalcoholic drinks or observation of the pouring of the ordered drink, and holding onto the drink to avoid picking up the wrong one.

As always, comments are invited. Jan Williams,www.alcoholdrugsos.com, 05/26/2015.

Tips for Those New to Addictions Recovery

This brief note is for persons new to recovery, whether just starting participation in 12 Step Programs such as AA, NA, Al-Anon, Nar-Anon or Families Anonymous, or just completing a residential treatment program, or just completing an intensive outpatient treatment program. The single most important tip for such newly recovering persons is to engage in some recovery activity every day. I refer here to daily attendance of 12 Step meetings, daily prayer and meditation (if you are open to this), daily readings of recovery literature (books with a page for each day of the year such as Daily Reflections (AA), One Day at A Time (Al-Anon), Today a Better Way (Families Anonymous), Days of Healing, Days of Joy (ACOA)), including the AA Big Book or the NA Basic text, daily contacts with others in solid recovery, weekly therapy (if that is part of your recovery), to name a few.

There is a reason that most treatment programs suggest 90 meetings in 90 days--the power of addiction is such that the newly recovering person needs as much support as possible. The research is clear: the longer a person continues to invest in daily contact with supports for recovery (just mentioned), the better the outcome in terms of abstinence. There is much more to be said to aid the newly recovering person. I invite comments. Jan Williams,www,alcoholdrugsos.com, 04/15/2015.