Mini Series 13 - The Thinking Revolution

Busting Addiction and Its Myths

Let’s talk about some of the ways your thinking will change as you get exposed to ideas that may be foreign to you but start to make a lot more sense when you experience the miracle of recovery.

1. You thought you could do this alone and discover that your own puny willpower is of no use whatsoever in fighting this disease. In fact, alcoholics and addicts are some of the most wilful people who have ever walked the earth, but then they discover that addiction will simply not yield to willpower. No matter how hard or how many times they have tried.
2. Addiction will yield, however to a power greater than yourself – any power that’s not just you. You can call your group a higher power, or you can go with the Spirit of the Universe, or with any number of conceptions such as a Christian God, Buddha’s teachings or what is found in the Holy Koran. It says in the Big Book of AA :”The purpose of this book is to help you find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problem”. You get to define your own higher power. How brilliant is that?
3. It never occurred to me that I would find liberation in discipline. That feels like a contradiction in terms, but it really isn’t. Allow me to explain. When I was drinking and using, I followed every desire and whim chasing a high, chasing sex, or excitement or whatever my ego demanded I must have now. I was equally the victim of my own fears – fear of looking bad in your eyes, fear of financial disaster, afraid of losing my job or my lover. I had no rudder to guide my thinking or actions.
4. It wasn’t until I began to live by a set of principles as taught by AA that I was freed from my compulsions to drink, abuse drugs, or chase pleasures wantonly. I finally had some rules to live by: honesty, kindness, and altruism as opposed to selfishness all the way, all the time.
5. I also learned that there was victory in surrender, another apparent contradiction. It wasn’t until I admitted I was powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable that I regained the power of choice – the choice not to drink, one day at a time. I went on to embrace the idea that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. And it all started with surrender – the admission of powerlessness paved the way for real power, real victory over King Alcohol.