Having grown up with two alcoholic parents and having an older brother and a sister who were alcoholics and drug addicts; and then becoming an alcoholic myself ... I identify with those struggling with the challenges that accompany heavy drinking, drug use, and living with alcoholics/addicts.
Although I was open to working the 12 Steps the first time I joined my first 12 Step fellowship 1991 I did not recover until years later. Like hundreds of thousands of others who join 12 Step programs each year the person I chose to lead me through the 12 Steps did not know what to do with me when it came to taking me through the Steps, and so in 1991 I went back out for 3 more years.
When I returned to 12 Step recovery this time in 1994 I chose another person to lead me through the 12 Steps and again I was unknowingly presented yet another watered-down approach to working the 12 Steps. Therefore at that time in 1994 I worked the 12 Steps using what I would call a very watered-down approach; there are a lot of very watered-down approaches to working the 12 Steps out there – that is why the recovery rates are so low today. (In the first 20 years of AA recovery rates were above 75% today they are estimated to be below 8%)
Probably the worst part about having used that watered-down approach in 1994 was – looking back I was about 95% certain “I had worked the 12 Steps the proper way”!
In addition to working the 12 Steps with a sponsor in 1994 I also attended a very popular weekend seminar that was intended to introduce people to the AA Big Book (The AA Big Book was the book written by the first 100 people to get sober in AA in the 1930s). The $100 seminar involved two AA old-timers sitting on a stage skimming through the AA Big Book – reading from the book talking about it as they went along. My big take-away from that seminar/weekend was - I learned clearly the solution to my alcohol/drug/spiritual problem was somehow outlined “in the Big Book” – but what I didn’t realize at the time was the approach I was shown at the seminar skipped not only entire pages from the AA Big Book – they skipped entire chapters thus offering once again another watered-down approach to working the 12 Steps.
For the next three years - n the back of my mind I suspected I might have been missing something – but did not know where to go to get what I was missing. I attended an AA Meeting every day, I joined Al-Anon also because I was raised in an alcoholic household and I shared at every meeting because I was certain I had found the answer.
The Correct Way for Working the 12 Steps
In 1997, when I was three years sober, a man sat down with me and read me the first 172 pages of the AA Big Book. What I saw, learned and experienced was indescribable. My whole perspective on 12 Step recovery changed dramatically as was catapulted to a whole new spiritual level with very little effort on my part. Basically I learned how to sponsor others and most importantly 12 Step recovery started making perfect sense to me because I was learning how to work the program right out of the AA Big Book. I was no longer at the mercy of plethora of people who made very little sense at meetings. What I was learning at meetings was very inconstant, ambiguous and once again very watered down.
My mind cleared. I went to college and in 2001 I graduated from the University of Connecticut with a bachelor’s degree in Business/Management Information Systems. In 2002 I started studying another book called, “A Course in Miracles”. ACIM helped me to better understand the whole spiritual dimension I had been working so hard to understand. In 2010 I returned to college and in 2012 I recited my Masters in Technology Systems from East Carolina University.
Working the 12 Step straight out of the AA Big Book was such an eye-opening experience for me in 2012 (After I graduated) I spent two years (over 5,000 hours) creating a 10 hour video series and an easy-to-use fill-in-the-blanks workbook designed to completely re-create the one-on-one sit-down reading the Big Book process that helped me so much (The process they used when recovery rates were 75+%). The 10 hour video series takes/walks people through the AA Big Book one sentence at-a-time, with a dictionary, explaining the book’s hundreds of ideas, concepts, principles, and directions for working the 12 Steps. The videos explain and demonstrate exactly what newcomers need to do to work the 12 Steps the proper way, skipping nothing. I do not subscribe to the belief if a newcomer doesn’t make it in 12 Step recovery their failure is always the newcomers fault. I hear people in 12 Step meetings say, “You can’t say the wrong thing to a newcomer!” Nothing can be further from the truth – unless of course you are one of the hundreds of thousands of 12 Step program members who don’t know what to say to newcomers because they were never shown the proper way to approach and teach newcomers – and so you don’t know there is a clearly defined way to approach them and teach them. I am not suggesting everyone who comes to 12 Step recovery is willing and ready to work the 12 Steps and recover. What I am saying (and I speak from experience) not everyone who takes on the role of sponsor is ready for that responsibility. The video course and workbook is designed to change all that. Somebody needed to step up and create a solution to the (shortage of qualified sponsors) problem.
Here is the video that breaks-down and explains the first Chapter in the AA Big Book called “The Doctors Opinion”. This is one of four chapters (in the AA Big Book) written to help the newcomer break-down, learn, identify-with and understand what it means to be an alcoholic/addict.
The rest of the videos and the workbook can be found at my website: Rellennium.com
I am now 23 years clean and sober. I cannot express in words the overwhelming gratitude I have for the man who took the time to take me through this process and the men who wrote the AA Big Book. Please check-out this video and share it with whomever might benefit from the video series and workbook: includes alcoholics, drug addicts (any kind of addict) and their family members.
THE DOCTORS OPINION