The Power of now

The ties that bind us together

I can’t, of course, speak for anyone else in AA. I only have my own experience of alcoholism and the recovery journey. After many years of struggling with many of the ideas presented in AA, I am now entirely convinced of one thing. Alcoholism is an illness. I have also come to believe that the AA literature is correct in calling it a three-fold illness: mental, physical, and spiritual. Yes, even as an agnostic, I can see why alcoholism is regarded as spiritual as well as psychological and physical.

For this blog, I want to address the mental aspect of the illness. It has many facets. Our symptoms are not always the same. I might suffer from specific mental symptoms that someone else, sober in AA, may never have experienced, and vice versa. Although most of us will freely admit that we are mentally unstable, somewhat neurotic, and emotionally volatile, our specific symptoms can and do vary. What binds us together is the fact that until we came to AA, very few of us could tolerate our overactive minds and erratic emotions without the numbing effects of alcohol.

A simple program for complicated people

What I gradually came to realize was that my problems were no better or worse than anyone else in AA. Like all of us, I was a complicated person. My selfish and self-centered demands for attention and to be fixed from the outside were sometimes harmful to others and, ultimately, always harmful to me. When many years of therapy failed, I had no other choice but to get a sponsor and work the steps. I was lucky to have two agnostic-friendly sponsors who showed me how to work the program as a non-believer. I share my story in The Twelve Steps for Agnostics.

Practical philosophy rather than the twelve steps

When I was in early recovery, rather than getting a sponsor, I decided to pursue a lifelong interest in philosophy and the spiritual teachings of India. I joined a school of philosophy based in central London. We learned about Greek philosophers like Plato and Socrates and teachings from the Far East. There, I learned how to apply certain spiritual practices in daily life to find inner peace. These ideas were philosophical and not religious, so they worked fine for me as an agnostic. We learned practical techniques to overcome anxiety and negative thinking.

The power of the present moment

The school believed that man creates what he thinks.

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” 

William Shakespeare (Hamlet – Act 11  Scene 2)

One way to overcome self-limiting thinking was to live consciously in the present moment. If he dwelt too much in the past and projected anxiously into the future, this would paralyze his capacity to live successfully today, which made perfect sense to me as an alcoholic. There was no doubt that I was full of bitterness and resentment about the past and terrified of what the future may bring.

Intensive weekend workshops

The school’s program was very intensive. The group I was in would go away for weekend workshops. We would spend the entire weekend practicing the ideas we had learned at the school. It was all about learning new techniques for living more consciously in the present moment. Despite being an untreated alcoholic and highly unstable, I gained a lot of benefits by going away with my fellow students on these weekends.

I learned a great deal and had some compelling experiences. I would call them consciousness-expanding. These elevated states of mind became available to me by intensively practicing the techniques of living in the present moment. It demanded focus and concentration, but the rewards were incredible. Learning how to live consciously in the present moment was a sublime experience. “This was the answer to my untreated alcoholism,” I thought; “living in the power of now!”

Untreated alcoholism – Dwelling on the past and future

Sadly, this powerful way of living was impossible to sustain whenever I returned to my regular life in London. The past was on me again, snapping at my heels. Anxiety about the future would rob me of all serenity. Going to more meetings helped, if only for an hour at a time, but when the meeting was over, my thoughts would once again become absorbed in listening to my washing machine head for the rest of the day.

I would obsessively ruminate about the past and invent new scripts about the future. I had no control over it. Should I increase my medication? When it got bad enough, the first drink brought much-needed relief! Eventually, left to my own devices and continuing to sponsor myself, I could no longer deny that I was powerless over alcohol. Moreover, it became increasingly clear that my life was not only unmanageable but increasingly unbearable.

Becoming teachable

Whatever I did to feel better in sobriety was only a temporary fix. I had always found relief in instant gratification. I had been this way since I first started to overuse sugar in childhood. The only thing I hadn’t tried was taking the AA suggestions. I got myself a sponsor who reassured me that the steps would work if I used “AA itself” as my “higher power” (12&12 p.27)

By the time I got to step nine, I was a changed man. No longer was my head ruminating angrily about events from the past. I saw how dishonest it was to worry about the future. It became apparent that writing scripts in my head about future events was crazy. As I do not know what the future will bring, I may at least try to enjoy living in the day.

Going through the steps was like taking an invisible spoon and scooping out all the resentment, guilt, shame, and remorse from the past, as well as the fear and negative projections about the future. I experienced peace of mind for the first time since I could remember. The steps freed me to live and enjoy today.

Mindfulness

I became interested in Buddhism and went to various centers to practice meditation. Mindfulness is a simple practice that uses specific techniques to train one’s mind to focus more on the here and now.

Here is what the ChatGBT has to say about it:

“Mindfulness is essentially the practice of paying attention to the present moment, without judgment. Here’s a breakdown of what that means:

• Present moment awareness

• It involves focusing on what’s happening right now, rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.”

Despite remaining an agnostic, I wouldn’t change a thing about the AA literature. Many AA members believe in God, and that works for them. These days, the “God” word in the AA literature doesn’t bother me anymore. Those of us who remain unbelievers have found our own interpretation of a power, or powers greater than ourselves. A favorite of mine is the Power of Now, as a concept and as a practice.

If someone asked me if I would change anything about the AA program, I could only think of one thing. I would change the well-known AA slogan……..

………. One day at a time, to one ‘moment’ at a time.

In fellowship,

Andy F