“Fixing Our Lives”

When addicts in Recovery take on the momentous challenge of choosing a sponsor and beginning to work steps, we are hit by some powerful knowledge from the get-go. Almost immediately, we begin to see how pervasive the Disease really is. Ideally, part of working Step One includes multiple admissions to our innermost being. We admit that we have a problem and that we need help. Hopefully we realize as well that our problems don’t go away once we stop getting loaded. Our lives don’t magically improve the instant we stop picking up. It’s one of the things I point to as a prime example of how addiction isn’t really about substances at all.

Even if we do the work to complete all 12 steps—and it’s hard, arduous work—we still aren’t finished. Working the 12 steps gives us a foundation for how to live our lives differently. Working the steps does not solve all our problems. It helps, of course. Working the steps helps a lot and goes a long way towards a new beginning on life. But just as ceasing our use doesn’t make life magically better, working the steps doesn’t make everything better either.

The steps are a guide, a way of dealing with our lives. They give us a way to practice living a spiritual life, one of honesty, courage, and integrity. None of us live this life perfectly—we are all human, and addicts at that! But if we adhere to the program, do our best to work it, to practice the principles laid out in it in every aspect of our daily lives, then things do get better. Much better. Beyond our wildest dreams better.

Something newcomers find themselves particularly challenged by (and this was definitely the case for me) is that life is HARD. Living life according to the program is HARD. As those who suffer from the Disease, we don’t like for things to be hard. We want things to be easy, so a part of us is always looking for the shortcut, the easy way out. There isn’t one. The only way out is through. The only way to get something done is to do it. I had a sponsee ask recently if I had any advice for how to get started on the eighth step. I told him, “sure: just fuckin’ do it.” It wasn’t a joke.

Even if we make it through all twelve steps, even if we do our best to live by the principles of the program, life is still going to be life. Being clean and sober doesn’t make everything all perfect. Working the program doesn’t automatically ‘fix’ our lives. We have to keep on keepin’ on. We have to keep at it, keep working it. What the program gives us is the opportunity to do so and a set of tools to do it with. And they work.

Getting clean and sober doesn’t fix our lives; it gives us the chance to fix them. Whether or not we actually do the work to fix our lives is a choice we make. And it’s a choice we have to keep on making, day after day, one day at a time.