Episode 205 -- March 31, 2022

When we were using, alcohol or another substance controlled us. It directed our thinking and acting, formed our goals and ran our lives. And that didn't go so well for us and for the people who care about us. We'll never be able to make peace with our addiction when it's active; we have to be fully committed to recovery. Half measures are not enough.

A Program for You: A Guide to the Big Book's Design for Living is written as a companion to the Big Book. It directly applies to those who are working the Twelve Steps. Understanding that some of us don't frame our recovery according to the Twelve Steps, we can still take lessons from this tried-and-true tradition and apply them to our own journey.

For those of us who are using the Big Book, this excerpt is a reminder about the limits of self-will and the need to give one's life over to the direction of a Higher Power. Whether it happens in a miraculous moment or over a long process, the authors assure us that once a power greater than ourselves is directing our will and our life, our whole life is going to improve.

This excerpt has been edited for brevity.

You Can't Hedge Your Bets
We said in the previous chapter that turning your will and life over to a Higher Power probably won't be easy or quick. What we didn't explain was why this is so. It is because the self-will rarely gives up without a fight.

By the time we've reached Step Three (Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him), most of us are quite ready to turn over our drinking or other addictions to our Higher Power. But at the same time, most of us want to stay in control of the rest of our lives. We're not ready to give everything over to a Higher Power yet.

When the two of us first made it to Step Three, we basically said to the God of our understanding, "We'd like you to take our drinking, but don't mess with the rest of our lives. Stay out of things like money and sex; we'll take care of those ourselves. You just handle the drinking part."

A Higher Power doesn't work that way, though. Your will and life are more than just your drinking problem; you're asked to turn everything over. Your Higher Power wants the whole ball of wax. If you say to your Higher Power, "I want you to direct my thinking when it comes to using drugs, but otherwise leave me alone," you're going to be just as miserable as ever. You have got to give up everything. It's all or nothing. Like it or not, that's the way things work.

It took us a long time to really know and understand this—but now it seems like the most normal, natural, reasonable thing in the world, and we see why that's the way it has to be. You can't hedge your bets with your Higher Power.

Think about it for a little bit. The Big Book told us in chapter 5 that our problem stems from selfishness and self-will—not just in relation to alcohol and other drugs, but in everything in our lives. This means that we need a Higher Power to redirect all our thinking, not just our thoughts about drugs and alcohol. And if that Power is going to be redirecting our thinking, we're certainly going to be turning over a lot more than just drugs and alcohol.

The Disease versus the Symptom
Suppose you've got some kind of infection throughout your body. It's making you feel miserable all over, but mostly you have this big, painful lump in your neck. You could go to your doctor and say, "Doc, I've got this lump in my neck. Grab your knife and cut it out, would you?" That would get rid of the lump, but it wouldn't be very sensible. You would be a lot smarter if you said, "Doc, prescribe some antibiotic for me so that I can lick this infection and be well again." You're much better off getting rid of the whole disease rather than just the worst symptom.

Of course, no decent doctor is going to hack out the lump and put you back out on the street; the doctor will look for a way to help you regain your health. You need a Higher Power in the same way—not to cure one of your symptoms, but to work on the whole disease.

So, in the end, you've got to turn over everything—your will and your life—to your Higher Power.

Now, you don't have to start out this way—in fact, getting to this point normally takes some time and some faith—but it's eventually where you'll end up. We believe that your success with the rest of the Twelve Steps, especially Steps Four through Nine, depends a lot on just how much of your will and life you're willing to turn over to your Higher Power. The more you're able to turn over to your Higher Power, the better the Steps will work for you, and the more success you'll have.

Back when both of us were still drinking, we gave our entire wills and lives over to alcohol. Alcohol determined where we would go, what we would do, who we associated with, who we slept with, and how we spent our money. It directed practically every waking thought the both of us had for years. We gave up everything we had to alcohol. This seemed to come naturally to us.

Yet when we were asked to give our wills and lives over to a Power truly greater than ourselves, we were frightened. We were afraid of relinquishing our wills and lives—yet by having this disease we had already relinquished them to alcohol! If we had made half the effort in turning everything over to the care and direction of our Higher Power that we made in turning it all over to our addiction a few years earlier, we'd have saved ourselves a lot of pain and suffering.

We are very grateful that we were finally able to give everything over to this Power and be restored to sanity.

The Choice Is Yours
Like it or not, you're in the same position now. Your choice is between alcohol or some other addiction and a Power greater than you are. There are no compromises, no half measures, and no in-betweens. In order to be completely relieved of the mental obsession to drink or use other drugs, which is part of your disease, you've got to decide sooner or later to let your Higher Power have the whole ball of wax.

The Big Book is quite explicit about this. Look at the final paragraph on page 25. It says that for real alcoholics and addicts, there are no middle-of-the-road solutions. There are only two choices: surrendering to your addiction or accepting spiritual help.

This surrender doesn't have to come suddenly or immediately. In fact, in most people it takes a while. But once a Power greater than yourself is directing your will and your life, your whole life is going to improve. And this, more than anything else, is what the Big Book is about.

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