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worth surrendering to, was certainly a quest i was on for quite some time, after i finally got clean. i was not sure that any program would work for me and having to believe in GOD, to stay clean was a HUGE non-starter for me. all the talk of choosing a HIGHER POWER littered with examples on inanimate objects and movie references, put me off even more. the fact was, i was looking for recovery in all the wrong places and hearing everything i needed to keep me separated, isolated and alone. when i ended up in that basement apartment in New Jersey, with a sack of dope and not enough time to flush before coming home, i got my very first clue about what i actually wanted and perhaps even needed.
that is an oft told story, but it is an indication of what it took for this addict to surrender to the program of recovery i call my home today. it may have taken another ten or eleven years before i came to a spiritual path that actually allows me to surrender to it, but that journey was one i needed to do and do not to this day regret in the slightest.the lesson that i learned was all that “hot air” about what to choose as a HIGHER POWER and the ridiculous examples that i was offered back in the day, were actually thinly veiled attempts to get me to succumb the peer pressure and go with the dominant culture based version. there truly is no reason why one has to believe in GOD to recover, no matter what others say. one does need to find a HIGHER POWER, but what that POWER looks like or is, is up to the individual.
for me, my problem boiled down to how do i surrender to a HIGHER POWER of any sort, when my spiritual path does not have one? that was the burning question for me, after i gave up the notion that i “had to” have a HIGHER POWER that looked like the one my peers all seemed to have. the path to accommodating the notion of a HIGHER POWER within my spiritual path was remarkably simple once i remembered that POWER did not need to look like, be like or even act like the GOD of my misunderstanding that i was cultured into carrying around with me. that revelation was as important to me and my recovery path, as the desperation i felt in New Jersey, all those years ago. the problem, as i see it, is that now that i can liberally use “GOD” in all my shares, i may sound like i drank the Kool-Ade and am now an adherent of a spiritual path that is part of the dominant culture. i see how someone could make that mistake and maybe, just maybe, i need to return to a place where i consciously refrain from using GOD when i share and remember that for me, it is the POWER that fuels my recovery. after all, if someone had told me that a long, long time ago, i may have … nah, i would not have, as i am stubborn and once believed i knew more than everyone else.

∞ DT ∞