Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Powerlessness

Mary Christine wrote such and excellent (post) yesterday.

I want to piggy back off this statement:

It is my experience that once I took any alcohol whatever into my body, I had no control over the amount of alcohol I would drink or what would happen to me once I drank it. And furthermore, it is my experience that I seemed to have no control over taking that first drink, thereby setting up this whole pathology. I do not believe I ever picked up a drink and said "I choose to drink today."


People in and outside our beautiful program have such a misunderstanding of the word powerless.  Powerlessness is not an outside circumstance or condition, it is at the very core of our addiction.  When every single cell of my body screamed "I do not EVER want to do this again!", I did it anyway.  When I would hold my children, beg forgiveness and promise it would never happen again, it happened again.

Do people really believe that millions of drunks and drug addicts just woke up one day and decided to find God?  Really?  God was the last choice for most of us.

Powerlessness = no power, no choice over the next high
God = power

With God, we have all the power we need to stay clean and sober.  Without God, we become powerless again and powerless people will drink again because they are powerless not to.  It is the pathology set in motion once again that Mary writes about.

Powerlessness does not mean permission by any means, but the still suffering alcoholic and addict will never seek the power of God until they can internalize (inner most self) the true meaning of powerless.  Sometimes we refer to this as "the light coming on in their eyes."  It is a profound sense of freedom when the alcoholic or addict digests the idea that of themselves they are without power to stop the madness, "but there is one who has all power - that One is God. May you find him now."

10 comments:

shadow0301 said...

Wow!! Every moving. Thank you for putting it in words for me.

Marcia said...

"May you find him now." gets me every time. such perfectly placed words.

Syd said...

Beautiful, Pam. Just beautiful.

Mary Christine said...

Thanks for the shout out - and thanks for elaborating in such a beautiful way.

dAAve said...

I found Him!
I found Him!

Annette said...

I love this. Thank God that he made Himself available to all of us!

Lou said...

When the "light comes on", it is a day we never forget.

Let Go, Let God said...

Great post today, Pammie. It did my heart good.

Bar L. said...

This is soooooooooo good. I was thinking along these lines on my walk and actually thought of YOU and some others and how grateful I am to know people that can speak from their personal experience.

Jess Mistress of Mischief said...

I went to a first step meeting yesterday (because of 2 newcomers the meeting reverted to a first step meeting - I love that)and found myself hearing the words and feeling the powerlessness in ways that I never realized.

Its amazing how deep the powerless feeling goes and how much affect it has when we desperately want some sort of power to make life different. Thank God ... there is One!