Thursday, December 1, 2016

Promise Five

"No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others" The Fifth Promise

To me this might be one of the most important promises. That's because when I first came into the program I might have had the idea that I was beyond saving. Or maybe it was just my ego telling me that no one had done the terrible things I had while they were out there using.

After sitting in the rooms of 12 step meetings for year after year and listening to the stories I think that I might've heard it all. But as usual, I find that I can always hear a story that borders on fiction because it is so incredible.

While I used the bad experiences from my childhood and in my early life as an excuse for my drinking, they were bad enough for other members to understand why I drank. But as time went on, I met people in the rooms who went through experiences that I thought were much worse than mine. I understood why they drank and did drugs. Some of their experiences were so painful that alcoholism seemed like the only rational response for them to kill their pain.

So this promise provides benefit in a few ways. For many of us we find out that we weren't quite so terrible as we thought. When we look at our behavior in comparison to some of the others it helps our self-esteem a little bit realize that we weren't the only ones on the planet trying to destroy ourselves.

While I never went to 12 step meetings with the idea of comparing myself with others, inevitably I realized that as a group we shared experiences in common. Not that that made what we did okay, but it helps us realize that if there's hope for the others in the rooms, then there's hope for all of us.

Some of these experiences in this fifth promise are not all bad. As people tell their stories after a period of recovery we can see how they worked their way through problems without relapsing. Without reverting to their old behaviors.

And when we hear things like that it makes us realize that we also can deal with the issues in life that make us sometimes feel like returning to our old behaviors.