I’m grateful for a visit from my daughter. I’m grateful to get to make breakfast. I’m grateful for all of the chances and grateful I didn’t give up. I’m grateful for things like forgiveness and redemption. I’m grateful to be sober today.
In the midst of all of the turmoil of the last several months, I impulsively reached out to someone, someone who I was very close to for a long time, someone who was very important to me and someone with whom I have unfinished business. We hadn’t talked for a bit, but I wrote an email and said I’d love to catch up, he said, “yes,” and then I explained the catch-up was more in the nature of a Ninth Step. I’ve done the clenched teeth version of this before, but to be honest, there are people on my list who warrant a Ninth Step and who haven’t gotten one. It was mostly because I was afraid. So here we go.
When everything seemed to be going wrong for me, when the fear and insecurity were rising like the water levels in one of those doomed submarine movies, it suddenly occurred to me that the right thing to do was to do those Ninth Steps. That points to one remarkable transformation already, it was fear that kept me from doing some of them, now it’s fear compelling me to do them. That’s not the right way to say it, but the idea is that sobriety has given me the ability to turn difficult emotions, negative thinking patterns into something that looks more like a positive outcome. Something that is a more positive outcome.
So, I’m taking a train trip to go do a Ninth Step. I always say things are so different these days, and they are. I really don’t know how this will go or what it will feel like. In another emotional judo-flip, I was starting to feel anxious and my alcoholic brain was trying to come up with talking points, with other topics to discuss. I caught myself doing that, reminded me that we are there for one reason only and what happens after that is what happens after that. You know what happened?
That inner turmoil turned to peace.
The resentments spawned by the absence of obvious rewards for the very virtuous behavior involved in stopping drinking can be a hidden trap. You hear a lot of this in early sobriety, even knowing the “promises” are kind of spiritual in nature, there is still the expectation that doing the next right thing is going to lead to the next right thing for me, right? And it will, this is where the gratitude and humility part come in:
I no longer am the sole determinant of what the next right thing for me is.
I’m not a leaf on a stream, borne ceaselessly into certain currents, but I’ve realized where I stop. I’m a planner, a plotter, a seize the strategic advantage person and an alcoholic. Those things are kind of connected for me. So now, the task is to do my part and then shut-up and let the wheels turn.1 I feel like expressing yourself openly and honestly, without the ability to determine what happens after said open and honest expressions, is often called “Vulnerability.”
For some reason, being a believer in evolution and natural selection and such, the idea of being vulnerable seems, well, like a bad idea. The concept I like better is calling it courage. Not that any of this resembles walking into an arena with lions and being expected to either fight them to the death or put my head in their mouth. This simply requires being true to myself. If true courage is simply expressing what’s in your heart, well, then I think that’s pretty apt for this exercise.
One of the beautiful and so very meaningful parts of sponsorship, why it’s such a powerful tool in maintaining and deepening sobriety, is the example set by others. One of the sponsees has been doing Ninth Steps and they have been so moving and beautiful. What we’ve come to realize is that while Steps Eight and Nine are focused on the wrongs done by us to others, and the explicit command of the Ninth Step is to “make amends wherever possible,” the real benefits of Steps Eight and Nine are for the alcoholics and addicts.
People say that Steps Eight and Nine are cathartic and releasing and redemptive and all sorts of other true things. They serve to release us from the prisons of shame and regret that clanked down on us as we hurt person after person, burned bridge after bridge. They help us see why things happened. But I think the most important thing is that they represent self-honesty and humility.
One of the lies that kept me drinking is that it didn’t really hurt anyone else.
Steps Eight and Nine shine the light on that lie. Steps Eight and Nine allow me to finally see what actually happened—not just the version that plays in my head. This is the part where the witnesses and victims get to talk. But that all sounds kind of harsh and bleak and retributive and that’s not at all what it feels like. There is an amazing amount of hope generated by knowing that you are going to be open and honest and literally not knowing what comes after that. It’s a relief to know that all that’s expected of me is to do the next right thing. It’s terrifying to not have more of a plan than that.
I very much believe in always having a plan. This goes back a long ways with me and was certainly encouraged during the scouting years. I have plans for lots of very unlikely eventualities (even playlists for some), so it felt a little jarring to not have the conversation more planned out, to not have talking points in my head, to not have a plan. Until I realized I did. I’m going to go see an old friend, explain what I’m sorry for, a little bit about why and then I’m going to sit down and shut up and let the Big Guy handle things from there. That is a plan I can get behind.
When I was a very wet-behind-the-ears litigator, a very imposing judge interrupted me very harshly and said, “you made your case, you’re winning, now it’s time to sit down and shut-up before you start losing.”