“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.” – Step One of the 12 Steps

The concept of powerlessness can be hard to grasp. Powerlessness is often mistaken for weakness, but this is actually a step of strength. In a highly individualistic culture, we often believe that we should be able to take control of our lives, fix our problems, and overcome our struggles alone, but admitting powerlessness involves leaning into others, trusting a community, and surrendering the things we can’t control.

Waking up to what is

When we admit that we are powerless over alcohol or drugs, we admit that we are living with a disease that alters the chemical makeup of the brain. It is not because of weakness or lack of willpower. Someone suffering from this disease did not make a choice to go too far and lose control, and they are not inherently lacking in values or good character.

Admitting powerlessness means admitting that no amount of trying or practicing or self-control is going to change the way that drugs or alcohol affect your brain, thus this is the first step in a lifelong journey of recovery. When you are 2 or 10 or 20 years sober, you are still going to be powerless over alcohol.

Step One is about accepting what is and what is not. It is a gateway to freedom and a proclamation of progress. As we go through the process of Step One, we are moving from a lack of awareness into an awareness of the reality of this disease and the possibility of change. We are beginning to believe that we are capable of living in a different way.

Most addicts and alcoholics do not walk into their first day of treatment believing that they are truly powerless and that their lives are unmanageable. Sometimes they deny that they even have a problem, to begin with. “It’s only a few drinks. I could stop if I wanted to.” Others may minimize or justify their addiction. “It could be worse. You don’t understand. If you had my life, you would use too.”

This is a journey in itself. We have to wrestle with the idea of powerlessness, which includes acknowledging the many reasons why this is hard to admit, doing the work to see how powerlessness seeps into every crevice and corner, taking the time to figure out what this really means for the future, and continually returning to this step throughout our recovery journey.

Listen to “Moments of Surrender”, a podcast episode featuring a MARR alumni:

“Oddly, counterintuitively, in our culture of individualism and self-centered valor, it is by surrendering that we can begin to succeed. It is by ‘admitting that we have no power’ that we can begin the process of accessing all the power we will ever need.” – Russell Brand

The paradox of powerlessness

Powerless does not mean helpless. The First Step does not say that you are powerless over your actions, your decisions, or your relationships; it says that you are powerless over alcohol/drugs. That is a massively important distinction. This is not an excuse for continuing down the same destructive path. It is not about laying down and giving up. It is about complete and wholehearted surrender.

Powerlessness defines the problem: if you put drugs/alcohol in your body, you are powerless over them. The second part of the step, “our lives had become unmanageable,” describes the effect that the problem has had on your life. This can look like affecting family, work, finances, or health. We realize that we are unable to manage the many details of our lives, and we become more accepting of the world around us.

As a part of treatment at MARR, our clients complete a First Step Inventory, which includes examples of powerlessness and unmanageability from various areas of life. This assignment starts to create awareness of how this disease damages one’s life. When you lay it all out, you will see that you did not have control in those moments.

We integrate the community into this exercise as well. Clients get feedback from their community members, which allows them to be both challenged and supported.

“The first step towards change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.”

– Nathaniel Branden

The Serenity Prayer is a central mantra of many recovery communities. It demonstrates the paradox of powerlessness and the role of surrender.

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

The list of things I cannot change is long: other people’s actions, other people’s emotions, the reality of the disease of addiction, the past, and the list goes on. The list of things I can change is pretty short: my attitudes, my actions. Meditate on these words today. Regardless of what your journey looks like, serenity creates positive change. This is what powerlessness is really about, accepting what is and believing in what could be.

By Jim Seckman, MAC, CACII, CCS

Spirituality is an aspect of our humanity that is innate. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are spiritual creatures. In the book Addiction and Grace,author Gerald G. May, MD discusses spirituality in terms of a “longing” that we have as humans. A longing for something more, something deeper, something greater than who we are. So spirituality could be viewed as the process of growth into a deeper connection with God, others, ourselves and the world around us. While the “longing” may not be comfortable at times, it is healthy and dynamic.

Addiction tries to make a spiritual experience static. When we are in an addictive process, we want to hold on to the moment, not feeling the discomfort of the longing but attempting to maintain what we feel in an instant. Our spirituality becomes stagnate and the addiction leads us into a deep bondage with a substance or process.

While we know that addiction is a disease that is primary, chronic, progressive and fatal, with a describable and predictable course and common symptoms, addiction affects all aspects of the person. When we think about the disease of addiction from the perspective of our spirituality, we can see that addiction is a disease that is born out of the human condition. There is deep hopelessness, meaninglessness and longing that the addict is trying to suppress with some substance or process, rather than finding healing through the grace of God. The addict is seeking a greater depth of peace and fulfillment but only finds greater emptiness and pain. The separation from God and from healthy spirituality is intensified by an increasing pattern of actions that could be considered evil or sinful.

While ancient writers didn’t understand addiction in the same way we do, they certainly understood the nature of addiction. The Biblical writers saw the patterns of addiction and discussed it more as bondage, temptation and sin. Indeed, addiction is a disease that will drive/lead us into wrongful acts. However, if we look at sin from a perspective of separation from God and God’s grace, then we come closer to understanding the spiritual dilemma of addiction. In the book of Genesis, we see that humans are caught up in an addictive process from the beginning. The “original” temptation in the Garden of Eden posed as the following:

• Good for food – it addressed a need
• Pleasing to the eye – it was attractive in some way
• Bestowed wisdom – a promise of something beyond ourselves, something we think would make us complete

Addiction sets up a trap for us: while appearing to address a deep need, we are drawn to its attractiveness and the promise of feeling complete in some way — an alternate “god” is introduced to rob us of true spirituality. We become spiritually malnourished, believing we have found peace, abundance and fulfillment in the very thing that will rob us of it. In addiction, we mistake:

• Numbness for Peace
• Indulgence for Abundance
• Gratification for Fulfillment
• Intensity for Intimacy
• Control for Safety
• Perfection for Competency

But, fortunately, that is not the whole story. While we humans are experts at finding ways to place ourselves into spiritual bondage, it is this very spiritual “woundedness” that becomes the path to our healing and recovery. While addiction is slavery to a cruel god, it can also be the pathway to a deeper spirituality than is experienced without it. What religion labels “sin,” what therapy calls “sickness,” are precisely what bring us closer to God. Addiction reveals this bondage and brokenness so starkly to the addict. When we are wounded, we understand our weakness, our need for a “savior” (those who are well don’t need a doctor, right?), and become willing to let God in. It is through our wounds that we can allow God and others to enter our lives and help make us whole.

In 12-Step programs, addiction treatment and recovery, the person confronts his or her own brokenness and bondage, shares in others’ brokenness and comes to accept it both in others and themselves. This honesty, once reached, forms the basis for the development of a healthy spirituality. As the person works through the 12 Steps, he or she discovers the process of growth in understanding God, others, themselves and the world around them.

One of the most beautiful aspects of the 12 Steps is that they very carefully walk us through exactly what we need and when we need it, and support a long-lasting recovery and a healthy and dynamic spiritual life. Finally, when we reach Step 12, we find that the “spiritual awakening” that is promised is supported by actively working with others. It is in the action of reaching out to each other and helping others that the spirituality of recovery is truly found. Dr. Bob S., one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), who attended the Oxford Group to quit drinking (and couldn’t), stated, “The spiritual approach was as useless as any other if you soaked it up like a sponge and kept it to yourself.”

In essence, spirituality is not something we can capture. According to AA co-founder Bill W., “We have to live it.”

References
Addiction and Grace (Gerald G. May, MD)
The Spirituality of Imperfection (Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham)

Parenthood can often prove to be a barrier to getting necessary treatment for addiction. Many mothers in particular believe that it is out of the question for them to leave their families for months at a time in order to enter recovery. They feel an immovable responsibility to stay home and take care of their children, but at what cost?

MARR alumna Sharon M. learned at a young age to keep her feelings bottled up inside. Sexual trauma in her childhood began to create pain and wounds that only got deeper over many years, and she had no outlet for healing.

She got married, had two children, and became an extremely involved typical “soccer mom,” always there for her kids and doing everything she could to help her family thrive. In 2009, due to a medical complication, Sharon wasn’t allowed to drive for six months. All of a sudden, this supermom was spending most of her time alone at home, and wine became a crutch for a lack of purpose.

Then, in 2011, Sharon lost her sister, her grandmother, and her best friend all within a matter of months. As emotions continued to bottle up, she reached a tipping point, and she continued turning to alcohol to numb the pain and push the feelings deeper and deeper away.

When Sharon got a DUI, she was convinced that she could quit drinking. But as her buried emotions continued rising to the surface, the drinking quickly resumed. While her husband was on business trips, Sharon would binge drink and stay in bed for days at a time. As she became increasingly apathetic, her 17-year old daughter, Meghan, began to care for her younger brother, Mitchell.

Finally, her family arranged an intervention. Her daughter threatened to cut her out of her life. Her son told her how scared he was. Her husband threatened to file for divorce. Sharon was convinced that her family could not function without her, and she felt like treatment meant abandoning her family.

Eventually, she reluctantly agreed to come to MARR for the 90-day program. Although she completed the program, she refused to dig into the secrets and the wounds that had caused so much pain throughout her life. She graduated and returned home, and her husband thought that she had been “fixed.” But her refusal to face her true emotions was a hindrance to healing, and she soon relapsed and began another two-year struggle.

After a lot of hopelessness and hurt, Sharon felt an internal push and a will to enter treatment again with a new mindset. She got really honest, and, with the help of her counselors, finally confronted all of the painful emotions that had been buried for so long. But it came at a cost. She would miss half her son’s senior year, and she would be away from her family during the holidays. It was a sacrifice to be absent during such an important time, but ultimately, recovery has allowed her to be ever more present as a wife and mother.

This time, her family made efforts to support her treatment by going to family support groups and getting educated about the disease of addiction, and that changed everything. Addiction is a family disease, and the best way to approach it is together.

Countless women are faced with the same question as Sharon: What about my children? How can I go away to treatment and leave my family for 90 days? Will they survive without me? Will they be able to forgive me?

Sharon made the decision to face these fears and enter treatment at MARR a second time. Her family kept functioning, her husband found his own way of managing the household, and her relationship with her children is now better than ever because she was willing to do this for herself. What once felt selfish turned out to be the least selfish thing that Sharon could do for her family.

The distance that existed during active addiction was replaced with a healthier, more authentic family connection. This year, her children looked on with pride as she celebrated one year of sobriety, and she is now living a free and joyful life in recovery.

Beginning the process of recovery and being away from your children is not an easy choice to make, but it is a brave one. It may seem counterintuitive to motherly instincts, and it may produce a lot of fear. But the only way to become a truly healthy and thriving mother is to get the help and healing that you need and face addiction head on.

By Travis Ramsey

It was a standard first call with parents until I began fielding their questions.  “How will Brad* get his clothes cleaned?  Who fixes his meals for him?  How will he wake up on time in the morning?”  As I began to understand these questions better, I soon realized that mom and dad had basically taken care of all Brad’s responsibilities his entire life.  A young adult, Brad was now at MARR, the furthest he had ever lived from his parents, addicted to alcohol and drugs, and having never learned to wash his clothes, wake up on his own, or make a meal.

Another term often used to describe addiction is chemical dependency.  It’s literally true, as addiction is more than a liking or craving, but actually registers in the brain as a need along the same pathway as oxygen and food. Addiction requires not only a substance but another person.  While an addict is forsaking all else to take in a substance, he/she will die (or hit their “bottom”) unless someone else is taking care of the things needed to actually survive, i.e. food, shelter, finances, and relationship.  Initially, this was the definition of codependency: being in a relationship with an alcoholic or addict.  This is someone who needs the addict’s life to be okay as much as the addict needs their drug.  And the only way they can continue their addiction is if someone else is cleaning up the wreckage of it.  While this remains the natural and normal state for families in active addiction, the characteristics of codependency can arise in a variety of relationships and carry over into all areas of one’s life.

Codependency always develops out of an adaptive change to correct a problem.  In families, this problem might be a parent who has just lost his job, a child who is failing in school, a mother suffering from depression, a lonely or bullied child, or a father who becomes abusive when he drinks too much.  Because this is too painful for other family members to experience, they lovingly step in to “help” with the problem.  Parents might do their child’s homework for them or lobby with school teachers and administrators to make changes in their child’s education.  Spouses might cancel their own activities to focus on being sensitive to their partner’s needs.  Brainstorming, problem-solving, and long conversations about the problem begin to dominate the family’s time and energy.  While these behaviors might actually alleviate the problem temporarily, it may also create the breeding ground for addiction.  For addicts, their drug of choice is the solution to their problems.  So while the person with the problem is feeling better by using drugs, others in the family, not knowing about the drug use, are trying to fix these problems (which just seem to be getting worse).  It’s a vicious and exhausting cycle.

Maintaining his sobriety in his MARR community, Brad felt less need to depend on his parents and his calls home tapered off. His parents were beside themselves. Dad was livid. How was he going to know what to do with Brad’s bills, what to tell Brad’s friends, and how to take care of Brad’s legal troubles? He was adamant that no one else would do these things for his son. Mom took the avoidance personal; she wondered if he felt abandoned by her. Her son’s treatment at MARR meant that she had failed her son, that her love and support weren’t enough to help him, and now he was shunning her.

Though it’s quite healthy to feel concern for someone we love, codependency uses this concern to justify boundary violations as attempts to help the person we love. Their bad feelings make us feel bad, so their problems are our problems. The only way to feel better ourselves is to make them feel better by trying to fix their problems. Brad’s parents knew they were doing too much for their son, but couldn’t stop. Not only did Brad’s addiction grow under their caregiving, but their own sense of purpose depended on Brad’s needs. It’s difficult to know which comes first: many times someone else’s problem brings up our own codependent tendencies, but other times, our own need to be liked and feel important lead us into behaviors that handicap others from addressing their own issues successfully. Why is it so important to us that others around us be happy, comfortable, and pleased with us all the time? Often, codependency is learned at a young age within our own families.

Brad’s father and mother each had their own reasons to be codependent with their son. Like many families, alcohol use was an important part of their leisure activities. His father had also used drugs recreationally as a young adult. How could he possibly tell his son that using drugs and alcohol were not okay when he himself wasn’t sure if his own use was a problem? When Brad’s addiction landed him in treatment, the father felt guilty for his silence. Taking responsibility for his son’s illness, he was compelled to handle all of Brad’s consequences. Brad’s mother grew up with an alcoholic parent. Feeling lost and neglected, children like Brad’s mom may believe there is something wrong with them that caused their family problems. They often attempt to “keep the peace” and make their parents happy so that their own needs are met. Doing everything for her son gave her the feeling of being needed and important, feelings she was deprived of as a child.

In our society, codependency is as deceptive as addiction. It often hides behind “doing the right thing,” obeying God, taking one for the team, and coming to the rescue of others. Though it looks benevolent, codependency serves the giver more than the receiver. Those who suffer from it use other’s dependence and approval as a means to feel loved without risking the disclosure of their own needs and doing that which is truly best for them. Like addiction, codependency is a way of coping with our true feelings by avoiding them and managing our external world. Drugs make the world a safe place for addicts and alcoholics; the neediness and approval of others make it safe for codependents. And it is a terrifying endeavor to reach out for help.

Unfortunately, Brad’s parents found it much easier to clean up their son’s messes than to attend a support group for themselves. Though they all agreed that returning home was not the best for Brad’s sobriety, neither Brad, his father, nor his mother were able to make the necessary changes to support Brad’s recovery. If you are in a relationship with an addict or alcoholic, it is natural to experience codependency. It is tempting to believe that your efforts to help your loved one will influence them to stop using. This is simply not true. Finding peace and healing for yourself is the greatest thing you can give an alcoholic or addict in your life. Please reach out for help. You’re worth it.

Two of MARR’s counselors, Patrice Alexander and Travis Ramsey, talk about their experience working with families of MARR clients over the years.

Click here for our full podcast episode directory.

“We’re just waiting for her to hit rock bottom.”

“I thought this would have been rock bottom for him, but I guess it’s not.” 

Many families wait, hope and pray for their addicted loved one to hit the elusive “rock bottom”; they are convinced that an all-time low will mark the beginning of lasting recovery. For many others, however, rock bottom is a myth that comes with a trap door. Often, families unknowingly “lower the bottom” by bargaining or making accommodations in an effort to keep the peace.

Short-term solutions to the problem lead to more frustration, more hurt, and more disconnection. Addiction is a family disease, and it is easy for the lives of the other family members to become absorbed in the details of damage control and crisis management.

Creating leverage

Families often feel helpless as they wait for their loved one to ask for help or appear “ready” for treatment, but there is a healthier option available. Even if a loved one is not ready to enter treatment or take the next step, family members can still have an active role in the process by creating leverage. Creating leverage to encourage a loved one to seek treatment is often the most effective means in getting him or her into treatment. Leverage does not have to be manipulative or cruel; in fact, it can be healthy. Leverage is established through setting boundaries and communicating concern.

Some families easily identify their leverage based upon the addict’s circumstances, while others have a more difficult time recognizing their influence. Setting appropriate boundaries can include statements like, “I love you, but you can no longer live in my home and use substances. I am more than willing to offer support as you seek treatment.” By not allowing the loved one to live in their home, while also showing support during the process of finding treatment, families effectively “raise the bottom” instead of waiting for him or her to hit rock bottom. A lack of boundaries can feed codependency, which actually gives the power to the disease of addiction, but maintaining boundaries gives you control over you.

Setting healthy boundaries

For some families, raising the bottom can be challenging or seemingly impossible. Depending on a loved one’s life circumstance, such as financial independence, or if family members disagree on appropriate boundaries, creating leverage can prove to be difficult. Boundaries look different for everyone, and there is no “right” answer. There are resources like family counseling that can help navigate tough questions. This often makes the stress and confusion of how to proceed more manageable for family members, particularly when there is a difference of opinion about boundaries.

Once families decide to take a proactive approach in seeking help for their addicted loved one, it is important not to sabotage the urgency of this process. When families embark on their own recovery journey, they become more willing to take direction from professionals who are trained in addiction, join a support group, and/or seek individual and family counseling. Then, waiting for the elusive “rock bottom” diminishes and the real discussion about “raising the bottom” takes place.

When rock bottom seems like the only way forward for your loved one, you are not alone. You do not have to be a victim to this disease, and you are not helpless. You have the power to raise the bottom.