"I Believe It Can Work For Me"

My sponsor has asked me to start at the beginning of the preface of the Alcoholic’s Anonymous “Big Book” and read at least 2 pages a day with my highlighter and pencil. Today she asked me what I had gleaned out of it. I started to point out some familiar phrased in the first ten pages or so.  She stopped me and asked, “On the very first two pages of the Preface [xi-xii].  I was kind of dumb-founded.  It just talks about when the organization was started and about the publishing of the various editions of the book.  Boring.

 

I thought for a moment and realized that the message of the preface was that the over the years success and recovery has come from the original  AA program and 12-steps and that in looking to all the other resources out there we have to be careful not to dilute or back-burner the basic core program of recovery.  The only sentence I actually had highlighted on those two pages was:

 

“Yes, I believe this program can work for me too.”

 

That was simple, but I realize over the last two years I have spent considerable time and mental energy trying to outsmart the program or find a reason to justify my exceptions.  It is as if I lost sight of the fact that the original program I followed to lose 180 pounds and to find sanity worked and as if I thought it was just not as good or as applicable as what I was able to find and navigate on my own.

 

She suggested the importance of the word:  “Identification”  rather than Comparison.  That has given me lots to think about.  I wrote in my margin of the book:  “The Big Book is the basic text for our society. We study and dissect it, not “read” it.”  

 

I hadn’t even read it for over three years!

 

I still feel strongly the LDS ARP program is essential in integrating the gospel of Jesus Christ, the atonement and repentance into recovery.  However, one of my greatest frustrations as an LDS Addiction Recovery Missionary was seeing people come and gain a testimony of the steps and still relapse or not find recovery from their actual addiction.  I have felt for some time how important it is as a church to make sure we send a clear message to recovering addicts:  Use the ARP program to keep everything you do in gospel perspective, but also:

 

Commit to a specific program where those who have successfully recovered from your specific addiction can help lead you through the recovery process.  For alcoholics and food addicts (and I believe other kinds of addicts) that has to involve a deep study of the Big Book.