A Lesson in "Self-Will Run Riot"

"Most people try to live by self-propulsion. Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great. Everybody, including himself, would be pleased."

-- Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 60-61 --

Interestingly, in this description of the self-centered "actor" (at pp. 60-62), the writer of the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous does not distinguish between alcoholic addicts and 'so-called' normal people. Quite the contrary. "(O)ur troubles," he notes generically, "are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme case of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn't think so." (Emphasis added.)

The realization that the vast, vast majority of all people are self-centered is a most useful tool in our recovery. It is not that the typical self-centeredness of others justifies our self-centered behaviour, but rather, knowing this (and always keeping in mind that we are an "extreme case of self-will run riot"), it (a) helps explain why we so often find ourselves "in collision" with others, and (b) points to the dangers that our obsessive self-centeredness poses.

While others may argue in grocery store check-outs, lie to their boss, or act aggressively while driving in heavy traffic, etc., as non-alcoholic addicts they are not prone to go home and drink or drug themselves to death. Rather they will cope with their obsessive self-centeredness in any myriad of ways - watching television, going to the gym and working out excessively, chain-smoking, gambling or perhaps just consoling themselves in the love they have for their family and relaxing in their pool. The point is, that unchecked, the self-centeredness of the alcoholic addict, will always (or so it seems) lead back in one way or another to addiction.

I remember being warned in the earliest weeks of my sobriety not to let any other obsession - for women, for work, or for whatever - seep into my life. I also remember being told that anything I put in fromt of my sobriety I would lose. It was easy to follow this advice at first, or so it seemed. I was married with a good union job, a home and a year-old baby. And as I immersed myself in A.A., working the steps, working with my sponsor and helping others, I never thought that all I was warned against would happen to me.

With four years of sobriety under my belt, I was persuaded to go back to finish the university degree I had abandoned when I was out there "performing." Unknowingly, I had channelled my obsessive nature into something that conventional wisdom says is beneficial. My wife, my parents, my friends and family, even my employer were solidly behind me, and I excelled. Success bred more success, or so I thought. But, as the renowned economist, J. K. Galbratih famously observed, "the trouble with conventional wisdom is that it is usually wrong," and it would take another 10 years before I began to understand this bit of wisdom.

Just shy of ten years sober, having gone back and got not one but two college degrees, and having traded in my coveralls for a three-piece suit, I was working 12 to 14 hours on a typical day as I forged a new career in the law. Moving to a new town, it was all too easy to let what was left of my membership in A.A. lapse. Knowingly, I made the decision that I did not have the time to go to A.A., that spending what little time I had with my wife and two young daughters was far more important, and that - after all - I wasn't going to drink or drug again, etc. Little did I remember the advice that wiser old-timers had given me early in sobriety: don't swap one obsession for another, and never put anything ahead of your sobriety.

Five years later, with a failed marriage, a decimated career, and a botched suicide under my belt, I was brought back to A.A. by one of those old-timers, craving a drink or drug for release but too frightened to try.

With the help of a new sponsor who had drank after fifteen years sobriety, and was once again fifteen years sober, I went back through the Steps and became an active member of A.A. Another wizened old-timers took me back through my story (and his) and convincingly demonstrated to me how the problem of the alcoholic - at least this alcoholic - does, indeed, center in the mind, while another deeply spiritual old-timer taught me to meditate.

In time, and not without setbacks, I regained all that really mattered to me and more. Through the application of the Steps and daily work (not without backsliding) on the maintenance of my spiritual condition I have attained - however falteringly - to what Bill W. rightly called "a new state of consciousness and being."

Of course, there were amends to make, character defects to work on and many, many meetings to make. And, of course,  I regret that I put a lot of people through needless suffering. Yet, I cannot help but think that without the suffering I endured by turning my back on A.A., I likely would not have learned much about my nature or the nature of my fellow man. And I would certainly not have found the conscious contact I now have with a Higher Power that is far greater than my limited "self."

(One of my favourite speakers says that alcoholics in recovery are the luckiest people in the world; that most people go through life wondering simply if there is a God, while we in A.A. get to experience the effect that God has in our lives and the lives of others.)

Thankfully, I survived the ultimate lesson in how dangerous "self-will run riot" can be; and, if I can draw any lessons to pass on to others to save them from relapse back into addiction or worse it is this: (a) the problem of not only the alcoholic, but each of us, centers in the mind, and (b) that the alcoholic addict is extremely self-centered, and thus, if unchecked, is very dangerous to himself and others. For that reason, please - I beg you - don't let any other obsession seep into your life, and never, ever, put anyone or anything else before your sobriety.

Peace.

Step Six: Aiming at Perfection

"We aim at perfection," my sponsor often says, "knowing that we are going to fall short." This, of course, is the gist of the message in the Step Six essay in The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, which helps us examine if we are "entirely ready" to have all of our character defects removed by the God of our understanding.

Step Six, in essence, asks whether we are ready to lead a wholly spiritual life - a decision that is difficult for all of us.

"(I)t seems plain," we read, "that few of us can quickly or easily become ready to aim at spiritual and moral perfection; we want to settle for only as much perfection as will get us by in life, according, of course, to our various and sundry ideas of what will get us by."

 Accordingly, "the difference between striving for a self-determined objective and for the perfect objective which is of God," is a mark of whether we are "entirely ready" to have our character defects removed through our efforts and with the grace of God. "The key words "entirely ready" underline the fact that we want to aim at the very best we know or can learn," Bill notes.

The difficulty with Step Six, it seems, is that when we honestly look at ourselves, we see that we are almost wholly reliant upon our habitual attitudes to get by, and to "manage" our lives and our interactions with others. Is there much difference between the man who projects a surly and -ill-tempered persona to keep other people walking on eggshells, and the beautiful woman who is alternatively flirtatious and coy in order to get her way with others? And what about the person who projects the image of being meek, mild and deferential? All these, and so many other roles we play, are the stuff of the tragedies and comedies of all ages.

Taking Step Six means that we become ready to drop these false personae and, with faith, allow our true "selves" to emerge from the shadows cast by the false egos we have habitually presented to the world. It is when we becoming willing to take what seems to be a huge risk in presenting our real character, that we embrace the aid and assistance of a Power greater than our small, self-cenetered egos. "This," we read, "is the exact point at which we abandon limited objectives, and move toward God's will for us." But we do not do so alone.

"Draw near to God," we read in the Scriptures, "and God will draw near to you." (James 1:8) As the great American Transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson observed:

"This intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space and not subject to circumstance. Thus in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contradicted."

"If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice. If a man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out of acquaintance with his own being. A man in the view of absolute goodness, adores, with total humility. Every step so downward, is a step upward. The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.

"All things," Emerson observes, "proceed out of the same spirit, and all things conspire with it. Whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the whole strength of nature. In so far as he roves from these ends, he bereaves himself of power, or auxiliaries; his being shrinks out of all remote channels, he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death."

"The perception of this law of laws," Emerson suggests, "awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm and to command. It is mountain air."

["The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson," Modern Library Classics, pp. 64-65.]

"(A) blufffing of oneself will have to go the way of many another pleasant rationalization," we read in the Step Six essay. "At the very least, we shall have to come to grips with some of our worst character defects and take action toward their removal as quickly as we can." And it is Step Six which "is the exact point at which we abandon (such) limited objectives, and move toward God's will for us."

Problems of "Fancied Self-Sufficency"

I'm seldom short of astonished when reading the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous or the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (or, indeed, any of the vast collection of AA material) at just how deeply significant and meaningful the material there is  - particularly the material which I just skimmed over, or just plain missed. in my early sobriety. And to make matters worse, for the first five years of my sobriety I belonged to a group where each week we studied the Twleve Steps and Twelve Traditions. It is truly remarkable how effective the "roadblocks of indifference, fancied self-sufficiency and prejudice" were in my case.

[Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p 28]

I had been rewarded throughout life for my intellect and, indeed punished (or so I perceived I it)  when my intellect failed me  - by dint not just of my alcoholic addiction, but moreso because of my other glaring character defects, in sobriety, chief amongst them being myself-centered fear about how I was going to get on in this life). Therefore, for many years I was loathe to truly turn my will and life over to the care of a God I did not know, didn't understand and, further, didn't believe in, even though I thought I had.

I was the man whose "instinct still cried out, 'Yes, respecting alcohol, I guess I have to be dependent upon A.A., but in all other matters I must retain my independence.'" After all, who else would be concerned with getting my outside to feel like I supposed the insides of others felt? I was the man dominated by "fancied self-sufficiency," yet wholly oblivious to it.

[Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pp  35-36.]

In other words, for many years I remained "the actor" carrying on as best I could, but still suffering "from the delusion that (I) could wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this life if (I) only manag(ed) well." I could accept that when I was drinking and drugging life was unmanageable, but I could not understand and accept that life remains "unmanageable" once I put down the bottle and the bag. Wasn't it my job as a newly sober and responsible" alcoholic to manage my life that was formerly unmanageable?

[Alcoholics Anonymouis, page 61.]

In the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, the discussion of Step Three asks the self-sufficient alcoholic in my situation to look at the so-called "normal' people" and to consider how well they seem to be doing 'managing' a life based entirely on the exercise of their self-will and their own egoic internal direction.

Should his own image in the mirror be too awful to contemplate (and it usually is), "he might first take a look at the results normal people are getting from self-sufficiency. Everywhere he sees people filled with anger and fear, society breaking up into warring factions. Each saying to the others, "We are right and you are wrong. Every such pressure group, if it is strong enough, self righteously imposes its will upon the rest. And everywhere the same is being done on an individual basis. The sum of all this mighty effort is less peace and less brotherhood than before. The philosophy of self-sufficiency is not paying off. Plainly enough, it is a bone-crushing juggernaut whose final achievement is ruin.

[Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 37.]

First published in 1952, seven years after World War II and at the height of the ensuing Korean War, is this description not just as valid today? Tuning in to the nightly news, reading the newspaper or watching the behaviour of other drivers in ordinary traffic ought to be enough to convince anyone that it is just a valid description of so-called "normal prople' today, if not more so.

So what is the alcoholic addict to do? We can't drink or drug and we can't just act like other people? How then do we act, ans what do we rely on when figuring out how to act? The answer, as so often is the case in this 'simple program for complicated people' may be found in our very basic principles. "Let Go and Let God" is one of the slogans we may use to great effect. Admit that one is not only "powerless over alcohol," but admit also that one's life has, in fact become unmanageable," and was all along.

Perhaps the best illustration of this idea of 'letting go' and ceasing to struggle to control one's life and the lives of others - even with the best of intentions - is found in the point form summary of our  entire program of "self-examination:, meditation and prayer." At the end of the "How It Works reading, the "three pertinent ideas" speak directly to the truth that life is inherently unmanageable, both before and after we quit drinking.

Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our stories before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:

(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.
(b That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
(c) That God could and would if He were sought.

 We then read, that "being convinced we were at Step Three, which is that we made a decsion to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him,"  we are now required to understand that "any life run on self-will can hardly be a success." Therefore, for success in attaining and maintaining sobriety, and for living a contented and purposeful life, we need to have or develop a faith (even on a trial basis) that life is already being managed quite well, and that our trying to take over management of it is, at best, superfluous and at worst dangerous .

Take it from this member who came to AA for help with his drinking problem; today, 22 years into my sobriety, the things I have lost in sobriety were the things that I tried to manage the most; while the gifts that surprised me the most, and that I cherish the most, came unexpectedly out of left field.

So when I have a problem today, it is at root a Step One problem. I have moved in to manage some aspect of my life that I have no business running. My stubborn intellectual self-sufficiency has cropped up again, and damn it, this time I'm right!

That's why, no matter how long I'm sober it pays to have a sponsor. He can usually see right through me to the root of the problem - self sufficiency - while I remain opaque.