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The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous is filled with references to the importance of honesty. In chapter five, “How it Works,” words that are read at the beginning of most 12-Step meetings, we are told: “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.”

Many addicts discover in sobriety that the courage they exhibited in their disease was very different from the courage that they embraced in recovery. Addicts courageously daily discover new ways to manage their disease and the consequences and complications that result from it, using denial, escape, justification, manipulation, and external resources – whatever works at the time – to keep from dealing with the real pain of addiction and the underlying spiritual malady.

And When we were Wrong…

When I was drinking my defenses were strong and it was important for me to be “right” about everything. At one point when I was seeing a therapist, I remember feeling that if I admitted to being “wrong” about anything, I would be “wrong” about everything. I was afraid that the hole in my soul would implode and all the defenses, masks, cover-ups and damage control would be sucked into that hole and I would be left with nothing. I would be nothing.

Addiction robs human beings of impulse control. Locked in the cycle of the phenomenon of craving and obsession to use, time is lost; addicts lack the ability to be here now. The demands of the disease are so overwhelming that it requires immediacy of use to change, control, or escape any feelings of discomfort.

When drugs or alcohol no longer worked for us, most of us experienced an overwhelming sense of desperation. We asked, How did this happen to me? How could I have sunk so low? We have no clue how to begin. The wreckage of our lives seems to loom so large and the sense of powerlessness is so great, that we don’t know where to start. Add to the powerlessness, the many attempts to manage the drugs and alcohol and the residual damage of consequences. So, on the one hand we experience an inability to effect change, and on the other, a compulsion to try.