My fourth step was like a bundle of tangled up yarn, confusing and disorganised. In doing the fifth step over many months with my sponsor, we began to unravel it. Through his clear thinking and experience in the program, he was able to pinpoint areas I wasn’t able to see. Quite often I was encouraged to look deeper. Sometimes seeing my part was really uncomfortable, but the pain only hurt for a few moments and was then followed by the serenity that comes when we cease fighting, and start to accept responsibility. He knew that unless we did a thorough fourth and fifth step, the Promises wouldn’t come and I risked drinking again.
Before I started journeying with him, I was addicted to alcohol and benzos. He pushed me gently towards admitting I was powerless against my addictions and I needed my higher power God to heal and help me. His daily reminders and coffee chats remind me that my life is worth living and there is so much more in store for me if I work the program.
Having been diagnosed as bipolar type 2 in 2018, I’ve had 3 admissions in the last 6 months and AA has really convinced me that recovery is a struggle but that we don’t have to fight it alone.
One of the more profound discoveries was when we came to a family member with whom I’ve had a very challenging relationship. This most certainly had to do, partly, if not largely, with her own nature of which I cannot change. My resentment toward her could have easily been passed over as just normal rivalry within a family as it wasn’t easy to convey the significance of it in my writing, but he was able to pick up on the weight of it, recognising the feeling from his own experience. Having another human being relate to this, something I thought was an obscure dysfunction unique to my own family, brought a deep sense of spiritual connection. It was a higher power moment and I knew I wasn’t alone, that someone understood.
Thanks Jeremy and the rest of the Boat Quay gang for journeying with me as I aim to hit my 60 days sober mark soon!
I am so grateful to my sponsor for his guidance through the steps and I continue to pay it forward when helping others. Thank God for this program and for my sponsor!
How my sponsor helped me get sober.
Through some strange set of events, I came into the room last September. I immediately felt a sense of belonging that was missing all my life. What impressed me most was the honesty and vulnerability. I then found my sponsor and started my 12 steps. I desperately needed a solution, and someone was willing to give it to me, so I grabbed it with both hands. There were those cycles of “I’m not a religious person!”, ”I want to give up!” to “Wow! The sun is shining! Birds are chirping!”
It has been 90 days since I achieved sobriety and clarity. After a relapse, I came into the rooms as an emotional wreck. I was afraid, shy, and shrinking into myself, not knowing how to control these waves of emotions.
I started drinking much later in life while in university. It helped me fit in so easily. I could be the mad one, the funny one. As years went by, I needed to climb greater highs to avoid the pain of existence. Soon the craziness could not quieten the desperation in me. I was living for others but with bitterness and resentments. Nothing could fill the hole in my soul. There was a glaring question that always echoed within me at all times – “Is this all there is to life?” I was constantly swinging between extreme pleasure and pain, resulting in suffering and destruction.
My sponsor held my hand through all of this. Calm, wise, egging me on, instilling patience, urging me to keep going until I reach the solution. I remember my skepticism when I read the promises. Can I really recover from years of pain and trauma? Somehow we made it to step 4. By then, I had accepted that I was addicted to pain and suffering, and peace didn’t suit me. I had given up control of my life and gave it to my concept of a higher power – a fatherly, forgiving, protective figure.
And then something changed. We did step 4, 5, 6, 7 over 24 hours. I wrote down all the weights of resentment I had been carrying all my life, secretly hoping it would teach them a lesson. Boy was I in for a surprise! I hadn’t realized how badly these dark clouds had blocked the light I could receive from God. We have never been taught how to deal with life’s challenges and manage relationships. How to live for the soul, authentically, free from fears and judgments.
I had always done what was expected of me – study well, get into a good college, marry the right boy. I had this deep desire not to disappoint my parents, yet I rebelled. As a child of South Asian parents, we always lived double lives – the perfect daughter and the bohemian rebel. These two clashing voices created a toxic cocktail of shame, guilt, and resentments. I had an arranged marriage because I couldn’t fight my parents, two kids, dream house with perfect decor, but inside, I was dying. I couldn’t shop, date, drink, or eat away my sadness. A few good moments of acceptance and validation followed by disappointment and longing. I couldn’t sleep, and each morning I woke up, I was filled with dread of how I’m going to get through the next 24 hours.
I’m not sure if it was the exhaustion of marinading in my negative resentments or the lack of sleep, but I finally heard God’s voice for the first time when my sponsor asked how God would have me be, free from fears? It spoke to me . That clear voice of reason , free from ego and stupidity. The divine was within me all this time. It was a different feeling. I felt cleansed , light and floaty as a cloud. Like the light was finally shining in me. Seeing my part in my resentments was revolutionary. It gave me freedom from being the
After years of wallowing in self-pity and loathing, at the onset of separation, divorce, and thoughts of suicide, I finally received my gift of rock bottom and powerlessness.