Alcoholics and other addicts tend to be loners. I certainly was. In the end, it was just me and the bottle. And so when I was forced to go to AA, I was, on one level, relieved to learn that that there were 12 Steps involved. I figured I could print them up, take them back to the splendid isolation of my condo, and memorize them. Bingo: Problem solved.
I tried this in my first ninety days in AA, had a slip that involved a two-week blackout, and woke up more desperate than ever.
I had missed the point.
It’s about working the steps, not just memorizing them, and it’s about the people at the meetings and others seeking a higher level of maturity.
Beaten and broken, newcomers to a 12-Step meeting—like Celebrate Recovery, for example—are often heard to theorize that they have come to their disagreeable end simply because they made a lot of bad choices. And they see their recovery in terms of making better choices.
They have a point. Better choices will help. But it’s not the point.
Dr. John Townsend, clinical psychologist, divinity school graduate, and author, speaking at the Saddleback Celebrate Recovery Summit meeting, said, “You can’t ‘choose’ your way out of your problem—like having sixteen drinks instead of eighteen drinks.”
The fact is, Townsend says, recovery is not something you do by yourself. It’s all about relationships—both divine and human. While the 12 Steps are important, he says, you can get them anywhere.
Connecting
As time goes by, the newcomers give up trying to be stronger and more disciplined on their own, and they come to Celebrate Recovery because they “connect. They come because they find light, and they live in darkness.”
Addicts, of course, don’t usually do relationships well. Ask any recovering addict what it was like when he hit bottom and chances are he will say, among other things, that at the end he was alone.
The news that it is all about relationships is especially dispiriting for the guys, Townsend notes, who are more at home with tasks and projects. So it takes a little getting used to. It takes getting out of your “comfort zone” to open up with perfect strangers.
I found the most recent hands-on expression of this idea—forming relationships as a key to recovery Saddleback church’s annual Celebrate Recovery Summit Meeting.
An assignment
Prior to adjourning an early session, CR founder John Baker gave three thousand disciples a “relationship-building” assignment.
“Go out and find four or five people you don’t know,” he instructed, “guys with guys and women with women. Introduce yourself, and share with them what led you to the Summit, what you hope to learn, how you got into recovery and submit a specific prayer request.”
“Whoa! Comfort zone violation!” I said to myself as visions of kicking back with a cup of coffee and a newspaper evaporated. Nevertheless, I found four guys seated at a table on the flagstone patio, asked if I could join them, and they warmly welcomed me. Thirty minutes later, after sharing our fears, disappointments, weaknesses, and hopes, we were on a first-name basis and exchanging phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
Friendships
Four new friends in recovery. Not bad. And an interesting mix, as it turned out. Rick, who had kicked a nasty drug habit years ago, had built up his construction business and retired, but he wanted to improve the quality of his sobriety.
Kurt was a pastor who struggled with depression and was frustrated and angry in his dealings with his church leadership, whose members were slow to support his programs—including Celebrate Recovery.
Jeff was a psychotherapist who was similarly upset with his church leaders, and Adrien, a younger man and a carpenter, was seeking a growing faith in God.
In our thirty minutes together, these men and I had shared intimate details of our lives, and we had prayed together. It wasn’t exactly a high-wire act, but it was bracing, nevertheless, and it felt good. However, on the way home from the Summit, I had what might be called a “self-sufficiency” slip, which found me jumping back into my old “I can do it myself” and “to heck with relationships” thinking.
Bomb scare
I was with a group of eleven other people from Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock and Benton, Arkansas, and we arrived at the Orange County airport at about 8 a.m. to begin our trip home. There had been a bomb scare, and a huge crowd had gathered outside of the terminal. Nothing was moving, and long delays seemed a certainty.
After about an hour, there was some movement back into the terminal, and as a former frequent business traveler, I began to calculate how best to get myself to the gate. I spotted a faster-moving bunch of people and joined them, leaving my group for what appeared to be greener pastures.
Alert to every opportunity to advance, I made great progress. Now, as I look back on my heedless race to the interior of a terminal where explosives had been openly discussed only minutes before, I think about it as a “Yosemite Sam” moment. You know—the one where Sam, lit match in hand, finds himself in a shack filled with powder kegs.
I arrived at the ticket counter with time to spare, only to find that the flight had been cancelled. I was told to get in another line, well behind my group (whose relaxed members, working on their relationships, no doubt, were chatting amiably). Noting my plight, they came to my rescue, providing me with an 800 number to call and a cell phone.
Next, they rented a van, and we embarked for Newport Beach for brunch, shopping, and sightseeing. When we returned to the terminal in high spirits—tanned, fed, and rested—for our 3:30 flight, the crowds had dispersed, and we sailed through.
I came in for some richly deserved kidding for reverting to my inwardly focused, task-oriented mode, but I won’t forget the lesson. It is, indeed, all about relationships.
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