Willing to listen to someone other than myself. Without the surrender, there wouldn’t have been space in my mind, heart or soul to be willing. I kicked my ego out the driver’s seat of my life and opened up space for something new. When I hit rock bottom, I pushed the self-help books to the side, I surrendered. The most powerful thing in my life was the bottle. My life was a shit show and while I thought I had power over my life, I didn’t. Simply put, I couldn’t control my drinking. The ‘over’ tends to either be omitted or overlooked a lot. It meant that I was powerless ‘over’ alcohol. The only thing willpower did, when I tried to stop drinking, was land my ass right into a relapse.ĭon’t get it twisted, admitting I was powerless over alcohol did not mean that I was a powerless person. However, I was a master at being a hot mess. I couldn’t self-help or empower myself out of a paper bag let alone try to navigate recovery.
While some recovery modalities are rooted in the foundation of self-help and self-empowerment, those didn’t work for me. I also know that AA isn’t the only recovery modality that exists or the only way to get and stay sober. Now by this point, you probably think that I’m a Big Book Thumper, but nothing could be further from the truth. It has to.įor those that become defensive and extremely bent by the word powerless, there are even more who are alive because they admitted they were powerless. I believe the word powerless was chosen because of the punch the word packs. That being said – back to the word powerless and why it may not mean what you think it means. When I first got sober, I wasn’t clear-headed or mentally/physically/emotionally/spiritually stable enough to dive into the social and psychological factors that contributed to my alcoholism. While there is truth in the above objections for admitting that one is powerless over alcohol, it took me a few years to get to the point where I was able to dive into understanding that my drinking was an external manifestation of something deeper. I need to become more connected to myself.’ ‘Powerlessness is a myth and alcoholism has nothing to do with alcohol.‘If I focus on chemical dependence, I will never deal with the real reasons I’m drinking too much.’.Our ego drives us to say ‘I’m not powerless!’ We hear statements like: While I have no doubt that Bill Wilson knew the word powerless would be a tough pill to swallow (pun intended). That one word has sparked debates and criticism and scorn, in the recovery community, since Step 1 was written in Alcoholics Anonymous. I want to stress that yes, I am a recovery coach and yes, AA worked for me and no, my coaching isn’t the same thing as having a sponsor and no, I don’t preach AA to my clients.
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