Mike S. [late night posting, to be edited later]
"I just don't think I beleive in this 12-step stuff... I mean, I believe in some of it," Mike said outside of the Narcotics Anonymous meeting. I had just delivered he and 12 other patients to a small church a couple miles from the clinic.
"I was pretty damn skeptical too until I came here. Which steps do you believe in," I asked.
"Well, the first," he said. "I believe I am an addict and am powerless over drugs. I just don't believe in the God stuff. I'm not religious."
We talked about our own religious background, both near-pentacostal, and how that had soured our taste for religion permanently.
"Do you believe there is a power greater than yourself," I asked him.
"No, I don't believe in a spiritual higher power."
"That's not what I asked. Some people in here talk about God as meaning "Group of Drunks," which I think is pretty clever. A group is bigger than yourself. Is an army bigger than a single person?"
He agreed. He countered that that was merely power...
I told him that was the basis of the second step... that there was a power greater than oneself - the same self that was admitidly powerless over addiction. Using a power greater than oneself as a tool was the only salvation for an addict. Just as an army is more powerful than the single soldier who alone cannot win a war, a group of recovering addicts is more powerful than the single addict trying every morning to be clean.
Unconvinced, I walked him to the front door of the church. Afterwards, I walked back to the van. I like giving the patients some time alone without the staff watching. It's not my place to be in their anyway...
What's odd about that conversation was the sheer lunacy of me defending a program I feel robbed me a year ago this week. On my birthday, my girlfriend of nearly two years cheated on my at an Al Anon convention in Orlando that she was a speaker for. That I didn't "speak the language" of The Program was the primary reason sourced before she asked me if I could find her recovering addict of a new boyfriend a job. Like everything in this world, perhaps it's just that The Program needs to be taken in moderation such that the power greater than yourself doesn't dominate everything in your life...
"I just don't think I beleive in this 12-step stuff... I mean, I believe in some of it," Mike said outside of the Narcotics Anonymous meeting. I had just delivered he and 12 other patients to a small church a couple miles from the clinic.
"I was pretty damn skeptical too until I came here. Which steps do you believe in," I asked.
"Well, the first," he said. "I believe I am an addict and am powerless over drugs. I just don't believe in the God stuff. I'm not religious."
We talked about our own religious background, both near-pentacostal, and how that had soured our taste for religion permanently.
"Do you believe there is a power greater than yourself," I asked him.
"No, I don't believe in a spiritual higher power."
"That's not what I asked. Some people in here talk about God as meaning "Group of Drunks," which I think is pretty clever. A group is bigger than yourself. Is an army bigger than a single person?"
He agreed. He countered that that was merely power...
I told him that was the basis of the second step... that there was a power greater than oneself - the same self that was admitidly powerless over addiction. Using a power greater than oneself as a tool was the only salvation for an addict. Just as an army is more powerful than the single soldier who alone cannot win a war, a group of recovering addicts is more powerful than the single addict trying every morning to be clean.
Unconvinced, I walked him to the front door of the church. Afterwards, I walked back to the van. I like giving the patients some time alone without the staff watching. It's not my place to be in their anyway...
What's odd about that conversation was the sheer lunacy of me defending a program I feel robbed me a year ago this week. On my birthday, my girlfriend of nearly two years cheated on my at an Al Anon convention in Orlando that she was a speaker for. That I didn't "speak the language" of The Program was the primary reason sourced before she asked me if I could find her recovering addict of a new boyfriend a job. Like everything in this world, perhaps it's just that The Program needs to be taken in moderation such that the power greater than yourself doesn't dominate everything in your life...
posted by Trey at 6:07 AM
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