Any length

[angussdundee]

We often hear newcomers say - "I'm sober at the moment so why should I have to go to all the trouble of doing the steps"?
We've also heard members with long periods of sobriety advising our newcomers that "there's no need to worry yourself about doing the steps yet, there's plenty of time for that, just get to meetings".
There are as many different ideas going around as there is indeed methods used to do the steps.
I believe, the only requirement for doing the steps is that we 'want' to do them. That we are willing to go to any length and that we are willing to follow 'simple' instructions. We do not have to have been sober for a long time; neither do we have to be sincere, spiritual, honest or anything else. The only requirement is that we 'want' to do the steps.
The Big Book tells us - "with all the earnestness at our command, we beg you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely ....
So what were our old ideas? They were our ways of behaving. Our negative thinking. Our belief that we could be self-sufficient and cope with life with the aid of alcohol. Our insistence that one day we would be able to drink and not suffer like we did the last time we drank. Our denial of our alcoholism. Our belief that we could succeed on our own. Our rejection of help. Our idea that we were different from other alcoholics and therefor did not need to do what they did in order to recover.
The conviction we had that, somehow, it was everybody elses fault.
One of the first things we are told when we come to the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous is that we are powerless. Now we are told where the power lies. How do we get that power? We ask for it in the twelve steps. We pray for the power we need.

" Remember that we deal with alcohol - cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is one who has all power - that one is God. May you find him now".

anguss.

[Carol87]

Good topic ... for me, it was a huge mistake to NOT do the steps until I thought I wanted to do them ... it certainly made my life far more miserable than necessary .... I avoided taking any action out of sheer fear of what I would find, especially steps 4 and 5. AND no one, but no one, was going to tell this alcoholic what to do ... I have lots of thoughts running around and I may be back later but what comes to mind is to JUST DO THEM! and for me, it was a matter of being WILLING!

JMHO

[samf]

I had a friend who used to say, "Ya gotta wanna." In my own life, when I've felt miserable enough, when I've been sick and tired of being sick and tired enough, when I finally got really desperate and nothing else worked, THEN I was willing.

It seems like part of the cunning and baffling nature of things is my mind or ego or whatever you will that insists on doing things it's own way.

Also I forget that I don't HAVE to behave or think the way I do, that things can change and that life can be so much different and better...but it isn't easy to do things differently. All my instincts and ways of acting/reacting balk.

My thinking was whacked out...everyone was out to get me. It was everybody else's fault, and drinking and using were the ONLY ways to cope that I knew.

If someone had told me directly that my thinking and emotionalism was infantile, I would have been pissed. If you had lived MY life, you'd understand!!

So I could stay miserable and die that way, or be willing to do things differently.

It frustrates the h___ out of me sometimes that I can't make anyone want to...that it has to come from somewhere else...and sometimes I think the greatest gift I ever got was the gift of desperation.

I pray for that gift for me, and for all of us, sometimes.

Love,

Sam

[WolfM]

Dear Friends,
One of the most profound things I ever heard in a meeting was that "half measures availed us nothing. That means if we do half the work, we do not get half the results. We get nothing." We have to be ready to go to any length to get and stay sober.

Wolf M

[OAElina]

Yes. I have to work the steps or my disease is gonna win and kill me, slowly. I can save myself and my family from so much pain when I work the steps so good and honestly I can. And this is enought, this is my part.

[angussdundee]

In the begining.....(I've heard that somewhere before?) ;) it goes against the grain to try to hand the driving wheel over to someone or something that we dont know or quite understand, to confess all to another human being and approach others and try to make ammends for wrongs long since done. as for helping others, the only thing we ever helped was our selfish selves.
But what is the alternative, surely the answeres are in the twelve steps?


Anguss.

[David Loughran]

I was told to stay away from the big book that it would just confuse me i later learned the book does not confuse real alkys but it does confuse heavy drinkers to the few this book will apeal it was wrote by real alkys for real alkys