Let's talk about addiction: Step two

Addiction is a mental illness. 
It has all the characteristics of a mental illness along with being a tabu subject, and therefore a hidden conversation between families and friends. These posts regarding addiction urge to raise awareness and understanding of the process of AA, common behaviors and personality traits of addicts. 

STEP TWO

"We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore our sanity."

As I said in the first step, AA literature has been misconstructed and misunderstood by those who enter with closed minds and hearts. That is the point of the very first step. To admit that you have failed, that you do not know everything and that not everything is under your control. Not even your life. And then, opening your mind, your perspective with humble eyes. Not to be fooled into anything but to listen and understand what accommodates you.
Ok so, on the first step: You must admit complete defeat and surrender. Compared to admitting bankruptcy, you have to look in the mirror and say "I don't have more power, more will. I've lost all self-sufficiency and strength. I have nothing left inside me. I am empty, I am defeated." You must acknowledge that you have crumbled into pieces. You must recognize your humanity.

But if you're defeated, bankrupt, weak, powerless, have no control, how can you make it through life without consuming? Surely, someone can help. Some Power greater than yourself. This second step, surprise, my friends: is super polemic because it involves religion but, does it, really?

The literature says newcomers will be reluctant to believe in a higher Power because they won't admit to its existence, can't acknowledge it or do, but don't believe in its power because they have lost faith after hitting rock bottom.

In the case of those who won't believe the literature clearly says "First, AA does not demand you to believe in anything. Second, you can't pressure yourself into belief if you simply don't believe. Third, all that is necessary is to keep an open mind." Surely you can acknowledge that the group of people sober in front of you are a miracle and they are a higher Power right there. You don't have to form a full religious belief nor subdue yourself to beliefs that simply aren't yours. You just need to be sincere and you need to open.

In the case of those who can't because God has disappointed them so they have grown bitter, resented or defiant. And life without God has been similar, so they have come to spiritual indifference, to a stance of "why bother with theological abstraction and religious duties or with the state of our souls here or hereafter"; however now that the here and now is not sustainable and a life without faith is sure to take us back to addiction, it is necessary to take a leap.

Another issue is when the first step isn't there. The intellectually self-sufficient human that would blow into prideful balloons floating above the rest of the people by using their brainpower, create an incongruency of being highly egotistical while being in utter loss due to addiction. How can you live a useful and functional life like this? So, let's say, yes, we want to believe but, what? The Bible, full of nonsense; church, discussing. It's morality impossibly good or bad, but impossible nonetheless. The self-righteousness of the hypocrisy and bigotry parading on Sunday, every single week. Then again, isn't that train of thinking still feeling superior to everyone else? Isn't this pride again? Isn't this being the same self-righteousness we accuse them of? Guess what? Defiance is one of the main characteristics of addicts so, of course, we have fought many belief systems, and we only seemed to acknowledge the existence of a higher Power in our times of need or want. We only asked for money, opportunities, gifts without ever intending any reliance, any submission. Doing whatever we pleased and hoping God would fix all our wrong-doings in the form of miracles. Just barely saving us from a horrible fate.

In the last case, the man trying to stop drinking and can't, and does believe in God. He believes he is devout. He prays, makes pledges and more pledges and swears to stop only to do it once more. The answer AA gives us is that the difference relies upon the quality of faith, not quantity; realizing the difference between the need for appraisal and honest prayer, the emotionalism or the true religious feeling. Asking always something in exchange for nothing.

Always asking for our wishes to be granted like a grumpy child who demands to be fed and changed. But being full grown adults living in the insanity of incongruency. Going mad in the irrationality of such a life, denying the fact that we are mentally ill, "abetted in this blindness by a world which does not understand the difference between sane drinking and alcoholism."

Therefore, the success of the second step doesn't depend on the religion, no matter what is your Higher Power; it can only depend on restoring your sanity if you are truly humble, with an open mind.

Go back to the first step                                                                                                     Keep reading about the second step