The Bridge= Surrender and Willingness-recovery from alcoholism

The Bridge

Did you ever experience the frustration of trying to help someone get sober and watch helplessly as they continue to relapse? Ever convince yourself that a newcomer has “got it” based on the understanding they have about our disease and descriptions of how it’s ruined their lives?...and then be informed that even with all this knowledge they have relapsed. Again and again? 

Continual relapse represents a cycle of negativity and delay in recovery from a hopeless state of mind and body.   Goes something like this: We engage in drinking  and keep going until consequences stop us or we just feel so bad on the inside that we take a pause. This phrase, take a pause, is intended since it implies we are not really ready to stop, we just feel too badly to go on with our defeating behavior for the time being. There is a big gap between pausing and surrender. 

Recently while I was meditating a visual came to me that helped me clarify this idea.  It was a picture of two mountains and a gorge that separates us from the valley of peace and recovery.  

I’ll call the first mountain, denial.  This is the place where we can’t see the truth of our destructive patterns. In this darkened place it doesn’t matter if we get in trouble, cause severe pain and hardship to others, have friends and family sit us down and beg us to stop… it doesn’t matter. We defend our actions through the lies of justification and rationalization. 

We say to ourselves things like “they don’t understand, if they had my problems they would drink too, I can’t get through life without it, I’ll stop whenever I want.”  

Some alcoholics receive the gift of crossing over to the next mountain named, knowledge. No one is certain how one gets there, but many believe it’s through the intervention of their Higher Power.  On this mountain, we begin having thoughts like, “Wow, I get it now, I shouldn’t drink anymore. That is why I have so many problems. These people have been right all along; I’m addicted to alcohol, can’t stop even if I want to. This stuff is killing me. It’s getting worse. If I keep going like this,I will lose everything.”

An interesting observation comes to many people once they get to the mountain of knowledge. They think to themselves, “OK, now I get it. That’s all I needed to know. I understand the problem and I’m just going to change it, change me, stop drinking. I have taken care of many of my problems in the past and I will do it again with this problem.”  In a clear example of this type of thinking,  a person came in to a meeting I attended and announced this was his first AA meeting ever. He listened intently and when it was his turn he shared something like this, “I am so happy I came. Thanks so much for telling your stories. Now I understand what I’ve been doing wrong. I just won’t drink anymore. Good luck to all of you.”  With that insight, he got up and left. Never saw him again.

The piece he was missing, the thing that I’m now so painfully aware of,  is there is a big, big gap between knowing what we need to do and doing it. In my analogy this gap is represented as the gorge between the mountains. On the other side of the very wide and deep gorge  is the valley of peace and contentment;  a place where we are not only able to stop drinking but also begin to experience emotional sobriety, a place where our addictive obsessions are in a state of remission; a wonderful place where the Promises come to life. 

However, to get there, we must cross the gorge, moving from knowledge to action. A bridge is necessary to make it over. The bridge gets built with bricks of action. Action as in going to many AA meetings, finding a sponsor, working the steps, engaging in fellowship activities, helping others, volunteering for service work, calling others in the program when we need help.  There are thousands of people willing to teach us about these bricks and so many different tools to help us build a strong foundation that will strengthen us in our journey over to the valley of peace and contentment.

There is one ingredient, one essential brick however, that no human power or book can give to us. Without it even if some caring person spends day and night for the rest of their lives trying to give it to us, they can’t. Spouses, families, friends, doctors, bosses, can’t provide it. Reading every book ever written on recovery won’t do it either.

This mandatory element is willingness. Without it the bridge can’t and won’t be built. All the people and tools don’t work without it; with it, they all help get us over to the other side.

Ok, so how do we get willing?  I don’t know the answer. I do, however, have some thoughts and ideas. Maybe in most cases it comes from intense pain which drives us to surrender and a move to action. Or, maybe it comes from hating ourselves and the way we are living so much that we just can’t go on that way anymore. Maybe having the ones we love tell us that we are about to lose them if we keep it up, does it. Locked up in a jail cell with our heads buried in our hands? Getting fired from our job from drinking?  For me,  it was sitting in a treatment center, in the darkness of a hospital room, feeling the full effects of alcoholic loneliness and remorse… wishing I would just die…and with no alcohol to help numb the pain.

One thing about willingness I’m absolutely sure of: somehow God’s grace is involved. One day as I was meditating on this, I instantly understood why people close to me in the program have been telling me for some time, “Rick, stop trying so hard to get them over to the other side. Tell them how you did it, and then pray for them.”  

My hope today is that every alcoholic/addict finds the willingness so they can build their bridge and get over to other side. 

It’s so nice and peaceful over there.