Step Three – Alcoholics Anonymous
A vulnerable newcomer
As an agnostic newcomer, step three of Alcoholics Anonymous felt like an insurmountable obstacle. Before I describe my experience with the third step, it feels important to tell you how unstable I was in early sobriety. Moreover, the negative conditioning of my early life had deeply distorted my perception of reality. I will demonstrate why I could not embrace any notion of God or a higher power.
An angry agnostic
When I put down the alcohol at the age of thirty, I was an angry young man. At a very young age, I was placed in foster care by my mother. This abandonment affected me deeply. My foster mother was a deeply religious woman. She saw it as her duty to instill in her foster children the values of the Catholic church. That said, she was emotionally cold and indifferent, frequently shaming me and putting me down. I was blamed for things that went wrong and became the scapegoat of the family. Rather than the redemptive love of Jesus, all I experienced from my foster mother was rejection.
As a young boy, I wondered where God’s love was in all this rejection and abandonment. Not only did I resent my mother for putting me in care, but I also blamed God for allowing this to happen. I began to view the world through the distorted lens of resentment. I projected her hypocrisy onto the church and resented going to Mass on Sundays.
At the age of eight, my mother took me out of foster care. She sent me to a Catholic Boarding School run by a Polish order of priests. Here again, we pupils had to go to Mass daily. By the time I was ten years old, I wanted nothing to do with either God or religion.
Steps three – First Exposure
When I was new, I almost got up and left the meeting when I saw the “God” word mentioned in the twelve steps. “Why was God or a higher power involved in getting over addiction to alcohol?” I thought. I only stayed in AA because I had nowhere else to go and was terrified of drinking again. Without booze to prop me up, I felt too raw to cope in normal society.
In hindsight, I couldn’t think of a less appropriate intervention to treat my alcoholism than the idea that some supernatural power was going to keep me sober. I was so angry and full of prejudice toward God that I made a conscious decision not to get a sponsor and work the steps.
At the time, I didn’t know that AA was a spiritual and not religious program. To me, it was all the same nonsense. I was determined to prove to myself that I could succeed without a sponsor or the Twelve Steps. The Good Orderly Direction (GOD) offered in AA was not for me. As it turned out, this attitude resulted in several close brushes with death.
David B
Eventually, after thirteen years of relapse in AA, I went down to Chelsea, where I knew I would find David B. He had a reputation for being a tough sponsor, but someone who helped many alcoholics. Like me, many of them were “last gaspers.” I was ready for someone like David, I had the Gift Of Desperation (GOD)
” Even these last gaspers* often had difficulty in realizing how hopeless they actually were” (12&12 Step one p.22)
Thank God for David! Even though he was a practicing Catholic, he was a unique old timer in AA because, despite being religious himself, he never tried to shove God down my throat. David was a real “AA purist” when it came to the traditions. He never allowed his religious beliefs to interfere with his AA service work. He was all about carrying the AA message to the alcoholic who still suffers, irrespective of the personal belief system.
In my last blog, I explained how easy step two was with David using AA or the Group Of Drunks (God) as a higher power. As I will explain, Step three with David was also so simple that it was almost too good to be true.
An agnostic takes the third step.
David invited me to his flat to take step three. I was worried that some invisible notion of a higher power might be involved. My worst fears began to be confirmed. After I arrived, he suggested we get on our knees together and say the third step prayer.
“Don’t worry,” said David. “What you are doing by getting on your knees is demonstrating your surrender to alcohol. You cannot deny that for the last thirteen years in AA, you have not been able to stay sober. You are merely confirming your surrender to step one by kneeling. Since the dawn of history, kneeling has demonstrated complete defeat; in your case, the enemy that has beaten you is alcohol. By getting on your knees, you are also humbly acknowledging that, drunk or sober, your life remains unmanageable. We both know that “running the show” (BB p.87) of your life since you came into AA has ended in one relapse after another.
The third step decision
David asked if I now had the “willingness” to go to any lengths.
*” When he acquires willingness, he is the only one who can make the decision to exert himself.” (12&12 “Step three” p.40)
“At this stage of your recovery,” he said, “based on your admission that your attempts at managing your life have ended in one relapse after another, and produced nothing but pain and failure, the decision you are making in step three is to follow Good Orderly Direction; namely, to allow me to take you through the first nine steps.”
“We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God (Good Orderly Direction), as we understood him.” (Step Three)
Wow! No pressure to believe in an invisible supernatural deity. Then David said something that came as an even greater relief to me, an agnostic.
“With your step three decision, you are exactly where you are supposed to be. When you get to Step Twelve, there is no promise of a God awakening. What Step Twelve promises is a spiritual awakening, not necessarily a God-awakening. These days, secular spirituality, not requiring a belief in a monotheistic God, is becoming increasingly more popular amongst spiritual seekers.”
Having had a spiritual awakening* (not necessarily a God awakening) as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. (Step Twelve)
The step three decision in action
Next, David immediately put me on step four to test my step three “decision.”
“Though our decision (Step Three) was a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face, and be rid of, the things in ourselves which had been blocking us.” (BB “How it works,” p. 64)
I wish that, as an agnostic, I had received this type of guidance at the beginning of my AA journey. I will always be grateful for David. He told me not to get too hung up on the “God” word and to get on with the rest of the steps.
Over the years, thanks to the sponsorship I received from David B, Jamie M, and then Witek from Poland, I have put together a comprehensive written assignment on Step Three. If you are interested, it can be found on page 149 of my book, The Twelve Steps for Agnostics. I hope you find it a helpful resource in your recovery.
In fellowship
Andy F
*Spiritual awakening for AA members who don’t believe in the God of religion:-
Secular spirituality is the adherence to a spiritual philosophy without adherence to a religion. Secular spirituality emphasizes the inner peace of the individual, rather than a relationship with the divine. Secular spirituality is made up of the search for meaning outside of a religious institution; it considers one’s relationship with the self, others, nature, and whatever else one considers to be the ultimate. Often, the goal of secular spirituality is to live happily and/or to help others.
Wikipedia
