Willingness is often confused with wanting. Plenty of people want to get sober & everyone deserves a sober life. So why do so many people fail to stay sober when their hearts desire it and they deserve it?
The beautiful thing about the 12 steps is that they work with or without your desire for them to work. You don’t have to be happy about being an alcoholic, excited to be sober or enjoy 12 step meetings for the 12 steps to work. All you have to do is sit down with someone who has worked them before and follow their suggestions and the suggestions outlined in the Big Book. When I first got sober, I was trying to figure out why I couldn’t control my drug use anymore. I liked meetings because I felt like I met people who finally understood me. I didn’t really like the idea of the 12 steps because I felt like I had already worked out all my issues in therapy. Mostly, the idea of a higher power is what I resisted.
Had I not gotten a sponsor that was able to put my fears at ease about the steps and had I not been so scared to keep using; I’m not sure that I would have been willing to work through the steps or take the actions that got me sober. My feelings about it were irrelevant. Either I was doing the work or I wasn’t, and only the action produces the desired result.
