DRA Step Twelve

IN OUR OWN WORDS:

Members share their thoughts on the Twelfth Step

At first I didn’t understand when my sponsor said, “You got to give it away to keep it” but after being around the Program for a while, I began to feel a lot of gratitude. I wanted to give back some of what was given to me so freely. I began to be a temporary sponsor for newcomers. It was then that I realized how this helping others business revitalized and strengthened my own personal recovery. I needed to help others as much for my own recovery as for theirs.

I’ve found the principles I learned by working the Twelve Steps are really good principles to live my whole life by. Not just so I could get and stay clean and sober and manage my dual disorders. But like when I interact with people at work or my family. They gave me integrity.

I remember how confused and frightened I was in early recovery. If I can tell my story at a meeting and reassure a newcomer so maybe they find a little more hope and stick with it, and be lucky enough to listen to a newcomer’s story to remember how it was for me. Maybe I won’t have to go back out and use it again to remember how bad it felt.

Anyone can do some Twelfth Step work. You don’t have to have much recovery to pour coffee or help clean up after a meeting. Besides, that’s the best way to get to really know people. You can’t really give what you don’t have, but we all have our story. That’s worth sharing even if it’s just telling someone at your first meeting that you are brand new to DRA.

A spiritual awakening? Well, I suppose it’s very different for everyone, but it’s really the changes we find in ourselves after working the Steps and being in recovery for a while. Deep positive changes in the way we look at things, in the way we react to life. We go from dependence to freedom, we go from letting everything in the world bug us to knowing how to find peace even when everything is going to sh*t. And from trying to control everything by ourselves with our willpower to letting others and even God help us.