We Try...

One cold and rainy Sunday evening I agreed to make a 12-step call to a local psychiatric ward. A young woman checked herself in with the hope of getting sober. Her substance use disorder had become so odious to her that she preferred death to another day of dependence on a drug for survival. Five days in, she was getting sober BUT she could not tolerate the way her body was reacting to the detox process. She HAD to get out. She COULD NOT tolerate this unease for ONE MORE DAY. She was one small step away from ripping out her hair; her body refused to cooperate with her heart’s desire for sobriety. She was unable to manage her body’s complete commitment to using as a way to feel less irritable, restless, agitated, anxious and desperate.

She did not welcome my visit. She knew I was there at the request of her mother and assumed I was there to convince her to finish what she started. I, however, wanted to pick her up and rock her. I wanted to soothe her frayed nerves. I did not want to get her sober or make her stay or manipulate her into behaving. I felt her pain. As I was leaving she said to me, “Hey. I’m out of this place tomorrow. But thanks for showing me compassion. Everyone else just shows up and yells at me.”

In the early years of my own recovery, I mistook 12-step calls for competitions not compassionate care. I thought we were there to snatch someone from the jaws of death. This aggressive evangelistic approach to recovery never worked for me, why did I think that I should work with others?

Today, I focus on the word “tried” in this step. All we do is try. And we do so from the perspective of recovery - with compassion. Other principles that are intrinsic to the steps include: belief and faith in a Higher Power, surrender, humility (not humiliation), forgiveness, wisdom and hope. The twelfth step is about hope. Not perfection. Not about eradicating all our anxieties. My friend is stuck on a psyc ward believing that somehow to get well she must be perfect. Oh how I wish I could convince her that recovery is not so much about change but transformation. Some things do change, some things about ourselves are stubbornly resistant to change. Recovery makes it possible to be good enough, well enough and resourced enough to find help on the days when we are in that freaked out, insecure and neurotic and emotional place (F.I.N.E.) that once triggered our dependencies but today….does not.