In Alcoholics Anonymous there are suggested actions that people take called the steps.
Step One says: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable.”
Many places such as 30 day rehab programs or a California alcohol rehab are twelve step centered. Let’s take a look at the first part of the first step: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol.” In order for us to be ready to admit that we first had to reach our bottom and truly see/feel our powerlessness so that we could get to the point where we could surrender and seek out alcohol addiction help. We had to get to the point where we finally realized that not only has drinking not worked for us for a while but more importantly that no matter how many different ways we tried to control and enjoy our drinking it would never work.
In other words we had to fully admit to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics and therefore could not drink alcohol normally. This brings us to the second part of the first step.
“That our lives had become unmanageable.”Notice it doesn’t say and because of alcohol our lives had become unmanageable. That is because we come to find out that alcohol was not the problem. It was a symptom of our alcoholism. We also learn that it is a disease that centers in the mind as well as a spiritual malady. Our lives were not unmanageable because we drank it was unmanageable because of what that brought up for us and meant to us. Once we drank we couldn’t stop. The problem wasn’t in the liquid but rather the person that drank it. We were spiritually bankrupt and lacked the ability to recall the damage that came about as a result of our alcoholism. Through working the first step and starting to build a foundation we not only began to get relief from the years of suffering that drinking brought about but we found that piece by piece we were putting our lives back together and slowly watched as the unmanageability faded.