Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

Hello and welcome. I am your host. Joseph Devlin, and today we're going to continue reading out of my book, a step out of darkness, chapter nine, titled, What is this 12 step program? So let's get at it.

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Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path Alcoholics Anonymous today's clinically accepted recovery practices now emphasize addressing the social circles you are immersed in, as well as the mind, body and spirit. Alcoholics Anonymous encompasses and addresses all of these concerns naturally, you are asking yourself, what is this 12 step program that I see on TV or hear about in the treatment centers Well, Bill Wilson and Dr Bob Smith are the originators of the AA 12 step program and what we call today Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous is a free program and fellowship founded in 1935 and it was not until 1939 that the book Alcoholics Anonymous was published. This basic text includes the outline for the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. See Appendix A many 12 step members will summarize the program as practicing these principles in all of our affairs. By practicing these principles, the hope is to break the strongholds that were influenced by the addiction. These 12 step principles require that you utilize self will to take an introspective look at yourself. These principles are a reminder that putting down the substance is but a start, a big start, but just a start. Naturally, none of us are too excited about taking an in depth look at ourselves, identifying and taking ownership of our strengths and weaknesses is challenging work. I believe this challenge is magnified in somebody who is new in recovery, most addicts are beyond comprehending living a life not filled with shame and guilt. The overwhelming majority of the individuals I have worked with acknowledge that by the time they admit the addiction is a problem for them, they have already resigned themselves to the fact that life cannot be different, and that this way of life that they do not enjoy is where they are called to be with no way out. This is an unimaginable and horrific way to live for someone in addiction, this is a common hopeless outlook on life, the 12 step recovery program and fellowship will remove this hopeless feeling and provide direction to a way out. The program works. People who have addictions outside of alcohol have also sought to adopt this model because they know it works. There are more than 258 fellowships and support groups that have been formed based upon the AA fellowship and program. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Okay,

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I'll stop reading there today.

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I want to jump back to that first quote from the book Alcoholics Anonymous, and it says, rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. And to me, that's such an important statement, because if it's not, if we don't take something serious, and we don't really follow everything everybody's doing, like it's a program that's outlined, there's a there's a fellowship, there's a program of Alcoholics Anonymous, or any 12 step program. And if we just take bits and pieces of it, it's not going to be successful and overwhelming. That is what I hear from folks who say, Hey, listen, the 12 step program didn't work for me, and I just liken it to a recipe. You know, if I try and make chocolate chip cookies and I follow all the ingredients, except for I put in raisins instead of chocolate chips, it's not going to taste the same. So it is not something that you really kind of pick and choose, even when you follow the program. It works. It says who, those of those who have thoroughly followed our path have been successful, and when you have over 258, 12 step fellowships and programs out there that have imitated what the original aa has done, it really shows you that it does work. So I think that is extremely important for everybody to realize, you know. And I also. Start off by saying, you know, really, if you look at

treatment centers today or referrals, individual counselors, they really will say that, hey, listen, we need to address your your social circles that you're with. We need to look at the mind, body and spirit, if you're if you're working with anybody who's not addressing these four areas, then, you know, you might, I strongly suggest you look around, because it's about a whole change when it comes to addiction, because we're many facets that were affecting the individual that have led to the addiction and has allowed the addiction to continue. You know, when we talk about social circles, I mean, if you even want to dig deeper, look into birth order. There's really amazing statistics, and that can show you some personality traits that happen just by simply where we were born. Let's takes a look at all of this, again, I'll also say this is that the 12 step program was one of the first things to say is that, hey, listen, they don't have a monopoly on recovery. So they do say is that, hey, listen, this isn't for everybody, and that's okay. But I'm just, I like putting this into into the book, because I think it's so essential to be able to be in a group, to be able to look at something that's going to be the mind, body and spirit, something that is free. You know, not everybody has the means to access insurances or the ability to travel from, you know, their home to a treatment center. So this is just another thing that you can do, but I want to be very clear. I mean, 12 step recovery is not treatment. It's something that you can do in adjunct to treatment. So part of what I wrote in here is that you know, identifying, taking ownership of of our strengths and weaknesses is challenging work, and when you follow the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, which I have listed in appendix A in my book, if you Follow that step by step, you have to take an inner look at yourself, stopping the addiction, arresting addiction, meaning not participating in it is a great start, but it is just a start now. It says, Okay, now, let me just take a look at some of these other things that were going on inside of me, or how I'm wired. Where, where did my decision processes come from? Where do my thoughts and values of my own self come from? And a lot of this, all of those things were the things that continued to allow an individual to participate in their addiction, as well as for many folks, it was, hey, this was fun in the beginning, but now this addiction has taken over on a chemical level of the body, so that the ability to choose is gone and but it was all these other things that these choices in the way of life and the way of thinking that even allowed it to escalate to the point of Continuing to participate in your addiction to the point where it just it changed you chemically, so that your your normal functioning of choosing to, you know, food and shelter and to reproduce was overridden By the addiction. And you know, most of the individuals that I work with really say that, hey, they were, you know, by the time they admitted that they were in their addiction, they were so steeped in the shame and guilt that they didn't see any other way out. And they thought that, hey, man, this is just a lot that I've got a live man, this is my call. And so just some people get that, and this is what I'm going to do and live out the rest of my life. And didn't think that there was ever a way out. And you know, there's 1000s upon 1000s of people in the 12 step programs who will say, we felt the same way, and there is a way out. So accessing this, I think, is extremely important. Because look, some somebody who's in addiction, they're feeling so much shame and guilt that you know they don't, you know they know what they were doing was wrong, especially towards the end of their addiction, but they're just they didn't have the ability to choose it, just kept it was overridden by the addiction in itself. And so when I look at that, you know that that that shame and that guilt, I look at the the point of like, guilt, you know that you we can look at that and say, Hey, listen, man, that is like even, you know, we combine the shame and the guilt and we say, Hey, listen, is it there's a difference between looking at me as a bad person like I am. I. Bad person, versus separating myself and saying, Hey, listen, I made some bad choices. And you get into a 12 step community, you have a bunch of folks who know exactly what that feels like. They know what it feels like to feel like I'm a bad person. But hey, listen, there's a way out, and we can help guide you in that process. If you're willing to thoroughly follow our path. And also thinking about the idea of shame, and I look to, I like to think about the idea of the compass of shame, and the fact that when I'm feeling this way about myself, that I'm feeling that, hey, you know,

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I'm a bad person, or have made bad choices.

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You know, I look to respond in many different ways, and some, several of them are like to attack others, to attack myself, to withdraw or the avoidance. And the avoidance had been the addiction for a very long time. The withdrawal is to set myself back in that isolation. And then the other is to, like, attack others. And many of many of us listening today know what that's like to have a loved one attack them during the midst of their addiction because it's like, hey, it's being pointed out to them that, hey, listen, you know you maybe you're not fulfilling this obligation, or you came home really late last night, or you were so intoxicated, you know, you fell asleep at the dinner table, that the individual lashes back out at them because they were feeling like a what I'll call a positive affect, meaning like they weren't they weren't feeling bad about their decisions at that very moment in time, but when it's brought to their attention, they're going to fight you on it, and then some others will just kind of become Self deprecating and just, hey, I'm such a horrible person. I am so bad. You know, I can't believe I, I came in late again. I

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can't believe I'm using again. Oh, man, I can never do this. I'm not good enough. And it really seeps into their being of who they are. And I think it's important for us to realize that this this shame and this guilt can be lifted when we look, when we get folks together and say, Hey, listen, you're not the only one out there who's had a problem with addiction. You're not the only one who've done some pretty crazy stuff within your family. It begins, there's a bonding that ends up happening, and says, Hey, listen, I see other people who, okay, they're telling me they had the same experiences with their family and, wow, they're married, they have a job, you know? They have a house, okay? It gives me hope I can get there. And what the 12 step program also offers a lot of that, a lot of hope. And you know, if I go back to this idea of taking a look at, like, you know, the ownership of our strengths and weaknesses, I think that's so often overlooked in the 12 step program, because, you know, there's a part of the program is that you're going to look at your strengths, you're going to look at your weaknesses and Hey, say, Hey, listen, I'm going to be armed with the facts about myself. Say, Hey, listen, I know this is how I operate. I know how this is how I respond in certain situations, and to be able to identify that and realize that, hey, I have a choice moving forward on how I can respond in any one of these scenarios. Most of us don't want to do that kind of work, because it really takes a reflection. We have to look at ourselves and say, Hey, man, what am I reflecting to the rest of the world? You know, how is it that when somebody confronts me on something, how do I respond? Hey, what happens when something doesn't go my way? How does, you know, what is my my natural response to things? Hey, who are the people that I'm really hanging out with? Are people uplifting me or bringing me down? What am I doing to uplift people? And you know, it's, it's a it becomes a choice on how I want to live my life. And it's why there's 258 fellowships out there, because there's many of us suffer from some problem, and we don't have a way out. We don't we think that, you know, you know, with the same mind that I have that created this problem, I'm trying to think my way out of something, and as Einstein says, that's impossible. We can't do that, right? Cannot solve the problem with the same mind that created it. And so I need the help, I need the fellowship, and I need a program of direction in order to get myself out of it, you know? And but again, hey, you know, I'm a counselor, I'm a coach, and I know that 12 sub programs, not for everybody. So if you're not going to get into that, if you're not going to tap into that, that free resource, please. You know, give me a call. Get somebody connected with me, because either way, you're going to have to take an introspective look at, hey, what is your family situation been like? What are the things that you've been doing? What's the community that's around you? What's your what's your mental What's your physical? What's your spiritual life look like because of all those small changes? Because if you try and do it all at once, it's going to be way overwhelming. Got to make little, small, incremental changes. And when you do that, and you get on a course and a program of action, life will change. Life will get better, and you will have long term stability as well as sobriety. So I'm going to my next episode. I'm going to continue talking about this and the 12 step program, but I just want to kind of give you a little bit of a bite of of it goes way beyond just stopping. It has something to do with hey, let's address the shame. Let's address the guilt. Let's look at a program of action for ourselves. We're going to look at our strengths as well as our weaknesses and realize that, hey, we've just been making bad choices, we're not bad people, and that we have intrinsic value in this world. So I want to thank you all for listening today and until our next episode,

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remember, sobriety is a family affair.