Opps sorry I have MD and hard to see.. Crusty not Cruary..

Amends Story, Part 1
One thing I woke up to in early sobriety was how I had damaged the people I loved and whom loved me, namely my family. And I felt really bad about it.

I was a big mess of resentment, self-pity, remorse, and guilt. I felt like I was about this tall (1"), which is what I think I was supposed to have felt like when I woke up to the truth that I had single handedly ruined everything worthwhile in my life. And I didn't know what to do with that.

We live in a society of instant gratification, of "Feel good now!" thinking and have been conditioned to believe that what feels good is good and what feels bad is bad and my history is that if I feel bad I have to do something to feel better. And at two months away from my last drink, I felt bad and all I could think of was how bad I felt and about feeling better.

I had been going to lots of meetings because I had nothing else to do at that time. I heard talk of amends, but didn't really know what that meant. I had read the steps off the wall. I believe they make a mistake for guys like me when they put the steps on the wall, because they leave out the directions in between.

I had been married for ten years and that marriage had finally broken apart under the strain of my drinking and selfish actions. I have a son who was eight years old when I got sober. A son whom I had broken promise to and had terrorized in my drunken rages.I put the woman I was married to through hell for ten years before she finally couldn't take it anymore and the marriage was gone and I knew it was my fault. So in that guilt and remorse, I went over to what used to be my house without letting her know I was coming. How arrogant and insensitive of me to just go barging in there like "Look at me I'm sober!" I gave her a bunch of mumbly sorry-ass sh1t that she'd been hearing for ten years. I had no right to expect her to ever even want to talk to me again, much less listen to the same old worn-out lie that I'd given her every time I had gotten sober for a month or two. I believe that the greatest harm I did to my family was that every time I fell down, I got back up and gave them some false hope. It took years for my former wife and my son to trust me again.

Any way, she listened and replied "I know that you are sorry, you are a sorry S.O.B.! Now leave because I've called the police!" There was a restraining order and needless to say, I spent a night in jail for breaking it.

I knew that she was right. I knew I was sorry. I'd been sorry my whole life. What I didn't know was tat I don't get to say that anymore. But I went away and had to live with that. In fact, there are some things that I just have to live with, because I can never make them right.

Fast forward a few months....

Amends Story, Part 2

At about six months sober, I finally broke. I couldn't stand being sober, but I didn't want to drink anymore. I was going to AA meetings, but was mad at about everyone in them because I wasn't getting what you promised. Those "AA Promises" that we dangle like carrots like they are something to get were not happening for me. Instead, I was experiencing a different set of promises, those "Do nothing promises" embodied on page 52. And I hit bottom with the second half of The First Step, farther away from a drink than I'd been in seventeen years. And I surrendered to my condition once more and said "Help me!"

I met a man who did not dangle anything in front of me like a carrot. this guy cared more about me that about hurting my sensitive little alcoholic feelings. He didn't give me empty platitudes and slogans. If one more well-meaning person had walked up to me and said "This too shall pass," I would have grabbed them by the throat, because "It' wasn't passing.

I had been around AA and treatment in the 80's and in the 80's and early 90's, one of the catch phrases was self-esteem. I felt really bad, so I thought I had low self-esteem and told John that I needed self-esteem. He said "Anybody that treats people the way you have should feel bad. If you want self-esteem. live esteem-ably." Another time I told him I felt guilty and he said that was probably because I'd been living in such a manner that would cause me to feel guilty. He could say this stuff to me because he loved me and he had a real answer.

So, he took me through the steps and about ten months sober, I was in amends. Which brings me back to where I started...

Amends Story, Part 3

Of course, my former wife was on my Eighth Step List.

This time I had written an inventory and clearly saw where I was wrong and I knew why I was going to her. And I was fully prepared to have her tell me that I was a sorry S.O.B. again and to never to talk to her again.Which would have been correct. But it didn't matter, because I was free. I get free the minute I'm willing and I'm not going to ease a guilty conscience because I am free of that. Amends aren't for me. I've used up my whole life on me and it nearly killed me and hurt a lot of people.

This time I called and asked if it was OK if I came over. I told her that I needed to talk to her about the harm I'd caused her and asked her if she could give me some time and she said yes. Now, like I said, I don't believe that I was going there for me. And here's why:

I tried to tell her what I was making amends for and she didn't want to hear it. I realize that I'm so insensitive that I know what I did, but I don't really know the true extent of the harm I caused, so I asked her if she would mind telling me how I'd affected her. Because I was already free, I was giving her the chance to get free as well, knowing that she didn't have to take it if she didn't want to. But she did. What she said really woke me up.

You see, I thought the harm had been the drinking, the cheating, the lying, the abuse, the never being there. But what she said broke me wide open. She told me that what had caused her the most pain was watching the man she fell in love with turn into somebody that she couldn't love. She said it had caused her to become bitter and hard. What a terrible harm I'd done her, I'd damaged her spirit. She talked for an hour or so and I watched her get free of stuff she'd been carrying around for ten years. And relationship changed on the spot.

And it began to heal. I asked her how I coyld make it right and she told me to be a dad to our son. So I started showing up when I said I would and doing what I said I would do. She was with a guy that I had resented terribly, but I got to know him and found he is a good guy. He helped me fix my car once. I found myself sitting in the stands by her AND him watching the kid play ball. Eight years ago or so, they got married.

You don't get from "You are a sorry S.O.B. and get out of here" to being at the wedding on your own power.

Thank God it isn't about being sorry and thank God it isn't about me feeling better, or that relationship would have never been healed.

>> I had been around AA and treatment in the 80's and in the 80's and early 90's, one of the catch phrases was self-esteem. I felt really bad, so I thought I had low self-esteem and told John that I needed self-esteem. He said "Anybody that treats people the way you have should feel bad. If you want self-esteem. live esteem-ably."

Never heard that one before but it sounds like total BS to me. Your sponsor was right when he said
"Anybody that treats people the way you have should feel bad".

IMO steps 4,5 & 9 should make us feel bad, at least at first, and are sometimes (not always) followed by some release from fear, guilt & shame. Humility does far more for us than self-esteem. Humility:

"is the foundation principle of each of A.A.'s Twelve Steps. For without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all. Nearly all A.A.'s have found, too, that unless they develop much more of this precious quality than may be required just for sobriety, they still haven't much chance of becoming truly happy. Without it, they cannot live to much useful purpose, or, in adversity, be able to summon the faith that can meet any emergency."
(12&12 page 70)

Not sure where you are coming from with the BS stuff, but I had a good sponsor. I would not be alive if I had not encountered good, solid, sponsorship.

Feeling bad and dying in AA is what drove me to a deeper level of desperation.

I actually got free in my first inventory. Free of stuff that had been there since earliest memory. It hasn't returned.

After my first Fifth Step. my sponsor sent me home for an hour to reflect on what I had just done. He said that he would come by later and pick me up. He was going into Seattle to speak at a large speaker meeting. When we got there, he said, "Oh, by the way, you are the first speaker." I was terrified and asked what I should say. He told me to go in the bathroom and say a prayer and then come out and tell the truth. I don't remember what I said. but I remember getting up behind that podium and talking for half-an -hour. After wards it came to me that I had experienced what the book says happens after a Fifth Step. I had just spent several hours revealing myself to another human being and left there feeling like that maybe for the first time in my life there wasn't anything in between me and another man. And I had just spent an hour being alone at perfect peace and ease and that while I was behind that podium I could look the world in the eye.

In the Ninth Step, I was free and although I was humbled by what people told me when I made amends to them, I was free and no one could make me feel any way. One person told me when I called them up that I was a bastard ( which was true, I had been an absolute bastard to this person) and to never call them again. My amends to that person is that I have never called them again.

And yes, there will always be amends. I'll get free and so will others.

"Not sure where you are coming from with the BS stuff, but I had a good sponsor. I would not be alive if I had not encountered good, solid, sponsorship."

It was not your sponsor that I was calling BS, it was the catch phrases "self-esteem" that I was calling psycho-babble.

My take on steps 4,5 and 9 are what mystics would call "self-mortification". I have been using self-mortification techniques my whole life to get spiritual experiences (ask a Jesuit what a Cilice is). I sometimes used alcohol and drugs to get some self-mortification and spiritual experiences combined.

I know we don't like to use the word sacrifice in AA but if you looked at the original manuscript it sums up the program in 10 words on page 97:

"Self-sacrifice for others is the foundation stone of your recovery".

"It was not your sponsor that I was calling BS, it was the catch phrases "self-esteem" that I was calling psycho-babble."

OK. I didn't think that you were. just wasn't sure what you meant.

Yeah, the eighties and nineties. The good old days. Everyone was running around looking for their inner child. I think I needed to find my inner adult LOL!

Actually the amends are about us , not the other person. They are supposed to make us "feel better"

In a sense yes, it is about us. But only in the sense that I am cleaning my side of the street.

If I am going to make amends in the spirit of forgiveness, however it becomes more than just about whether I get free or not, because I am already free. They can tell me to go "f" myself and it doesn't matter. And it is about them in the sense that forgiveness means setting them free. To paraphrase Emmett Fox, it takes two to make a prisoner, the prisoner and the jailer. The jailer doesn't get to go home until the prisoner is free, so if I am holding a resentment towards you, I am holding you prisoner and I am a prisoner as well. If I tell you I love you and I have a resentment, I am a liar. If I tell you that I love God, and I have a resentment, I am a liar.

I do not believe that amends, or any part of a spiritual process is about feeling better. I've been trying to feel better my whole life and it has nearly killed me. To use the process as a means to feel better is just another way of trying to manage my life and it diminishes the process itself. It cheapens it to the level of just another one of these self-help and self-empowerment,and self-improvement programs.

"At the moment we are trying to put our lives in order. But this is not an end in itself. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us."

Pursuing happiness, pleasure or feeling good has been my downfall. I was useless to myself and everyone else when I got sober. And the pursuit of feeling better just led to more discontent. But when my sole aim is to be useful, I feel good most of the time and I am happy. But happiness isn't necessarily "feeling good." Happiness is a sense of being content with the way life is right now, even though I may not be comfortable with it.

When I am useful I am happy.

But my usefulness doesn't depend on if I feel good or not. I don't live my life by how I feel. If I did, there are mornings I wouldn't go to work.

>> Actually the amends are about us , not the other person. They are supposed to make us "feel better"

If all I wanted was to "Feel Better" I would go back to drinking.

I don't think drink would make me feel better
If I went back to drinking I would more than likely kill myself.
It feel better to do what is right, even if it hurts.
Than to feel f__k up!!!!

Let me rephrase that:

If all I wanted was to "Feel Better" I would be a hedonist. If there is one thing that I have learned about spritual growth it is:

NO PAIN, NO GAIN!

The book tells us if we dont feel ready to make amends we pray for the willingness to do it, we also pray before and after if we dont we are at risk of going in full of self and the "What can I get out of this" attitude that we alkies no so well. I initially did amends because I was told to I later did them because I enjoyed the peace and serenity I got from them and because I actually wanted to do them and give others peace of mind.