Sobriety, a step in the right direction

I have a superpower, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Not because my superpower is not valuable, but because the road for attaining it was so miserable.

My superpower

My superpower is my ability to sense when someone is grappling with an addiction. To be honest, it’s usually not that hard to spot. But it’s often surprising how much a person can deny.

Here’s how my superpower came about. Most notably, it did not arise from all the years of chaos growing up, related to my father’s alcoholism. Rather, it started to develop after my dad went to treatment for alcoholism for the first time, when I was in sixth grade.

More accurately, it came from all his relapses, each of which I saw—or sensed—were coming. And of course, massive chaos always ensued.

By the time I left for college, my superpower was imprinted.

A chance to be of service

One thing about this superpower is not knowing when it will surface. For example, I was living in Washington D.C. in 2015 when someone knocked on my door. It was a relative of my neighbor who had locked herself out of the apartment. And she was drunk. In the middle of the morning.

Like I said, it doesn’t take a genius…

While waiting for my neighbor to come home with a key, I shared with my new friend that I am a recovering alcoholic. She shared that her husband had died, and now she drank a lot. The next day, she knocked on my door again, this time asking if I’d go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with her.

I had been sober 26 years by then, after having religiously gone to weekly AA meetings for the first 15 of those years. But I hadn’t been to a meeting in over 10 years.

So I said, “Yes.”

Revisiting Alcoholics Anonymous

The AA meeting space was on the second floor above a busy street in Georgetown. If you knew what you were looking for, you could find the staircase that led up to it. As we walked in, I was struck by how familiar it all looked. It was like stepping back in time to 1989, the year I got sober. Nothing had changed.

There were large posters displaying the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions on the walls, printed using the exact same font I remembered. In the entryway was a spartan table of AA pamphlets and books.

My recollection of AA meetings is that they are very by-the-book. Meaning, in your sharing, you aren’t allowed to reference any kind of teaching that does not come from AA-approved literature. This prevents participants from talking about any other books, religions or spiritual paths. Because so often, that can really turn people off.

This also makes sense, given AA’s history. It was co-founded by a man named Bill Wilson who died back in 1971. The idea was to not veer away from the original formula known to work so well.

Whenever an organization springs from a charismatic leader, and then that person dies, it’s not uncommon for the organization to get stuck in time. This, however, is not how living things stay alive. For where there is life, there needs to be forward movement.

Evolution, after all, is an ongoing reality. Meaning, change is a natural part of life. Lack of change, on the other hand, means things wither and die.

So here we are in an AA meeting, 25 years down the road, and everything about it felt old and tired to me. I sat there wondering, “Would this keep me sober today?”

Alcoholism is an ego illness

I heard in AA meetings that alcoholism is an ego illness. I thought I probably knew what that meant. (Honestly, back then, I just knew I needed recovery if I wanted my life to go in a better direction.) But now, thanks to the wisdom from the Pathwork Guide, I really do understand what this means.

It means that whenever a person becomes an alcoholic, or develops any kind of addiction to anything, the part of us going haywire is our ego. In short, our ego got confused about its true function. First, it wore itself out by struggling the wrong way. And then, when looking for some relief, it let go of itself in the wrong way.

I am reminded of something else I heard in a meeting: “Alcoholics like to find a rut and start decorating.” Turns out, the part of our psyche that gets lined with ruts is the ego. We literally wear grooves into our egos through our old habits, one-sided opinions and overly rigid rules.

All this makes for a very cramped way to live. Eventually, the ego becomes exhausted from trying to squeeze joy out of such a cheerless existence. So, it wants a way out.

Rather than struggling in the right way, by doing the difficult yet enlivening work of clearing away our inner pain and disharmonies, our ego keeps running to avoid them. As a result, rather than learning to let go in the right way—which leads to true inner freedom and peace—we let go into addictions.

Going the distance

Another time, I heard someone say that people who go to AA meetings have a “broken coper.” In other words, we didn’t know how to cope with life, so we drank. Now we needed to learn new coping skills.

In meetings, we listen as other people share their “experience, strength and hope” with us. Over time, we learn new ways to cope with life that don’t involve alcohol.

But if that’s all the farther we go—learning how to cope—we still won’t reach Emerald City. For once we learn to deal with life, our ego must turn its attention to bigger horizons: Namely, the process of clearing away our hidden inner obstacles. Then, and only then, will it be safe for our ego to let go in the right way, which is the ego’s ultimate destiny.

This is how we align our will with the will of our Higher Power (in AA-speak). It’s how we learn to live from our Higher Self (in Pathwork terms).

This is the way to truly come alive.

When I was 26, I reached out for help, and AA was there for me. Beyond this, the wisdom of the Pathwork teachings has guided me through even deeper healing.

I am so very grateful for all of it.

–Jill Loree