I think honesty is a tricky thing for everybody, not just us addicts but the normies too. And I’ll sidetrack just a little to soapbox about this culture I live in. It is indeed a bizarre world. As children we’re taught not to lie, yet we see adults do it all the time. We are told to tell the truth, and yet I remember all-too-well that it was the liars and the cheats who got ahead. The real lesson, (or so it seems to me now, having lived a few years) is not so much not to lie, but not to get caught.
That may work for some people, but it doesn’t for me. And it’s not what the program teaches us. The program is pretty damn clear on this point, in fact. A life of lying is where we come from; Recovery is about learning to live differently. There is a part of us that is always looking for the loophole that will allow us to do what we want, live life our way according to our own rules. The idea that we can, that is an illusion, my friends. Living according to our own designs? That’s how we ended up in Recovery to begin with! And yet, the Disease is always there, always in the back of our minds telling us to look for the shortcuts, find the quick and easy path.
The literature talks a lot about Honesty (the spiritual principle behind Step One). I think the best example is still the ‘how it works’ section from out of AA’s big book. It’s a full 7-course meal of truth wrapped up and crammed into just a few short pages. There is no easier, softer way. We do Recover—if we have the capacity to be honest. The results of all our efforts will be zilch until we entirely let go. I remember working the steps out of NA’s workbook and doing a long section on reservations; those can be a problem, too.
We’re so good at hiding things. From other people. From ourselves. Denial is an old leather jacket so familiar we don’t even realize we’re wearing it. But intentional deceit is a trickier thing for us. Our culture tells us little white lies are okay. It tells us too that it’s okay to hide the truth to avoid hurting someone. That, my friends, is some bullshit right there. It’s not okay to lie by omission. We are as sick as our secrets.
It is possible to be rigorously honest. That right there is the key. Not brutally honest, but rigorously honest. We do our best to live our lives in a ways that we don’t have to lie. And when we have a truth that needs told, we look for a way to speak it in love. A therapist of mine would talk, too, about emotional honesty. It’s about being real with people and giving them the full truth. We can’t let fear dictate our actions (or inactions). That is not the way.
Lying, whether by commission or omission, is anathema for people like us. We may think we’re doing the ‘right’ thing by being selectively honesty. We’re not. It feeds our Disease, takes us backwards on the path of Recovery, and leads us back to relapse. Step 6 in the NA workbook has a really good section on this and it spends considerable time talking about how shades of dishonesty is poison to our souls. We need to be fully honest with ourselves and with the other people in our lives. If we aren’t, our spiritual growth suffers.
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