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.

Treatment is a time out that protects a new beginning. We enter a community of people who are starting new by stopping. 12-Step meetings are also safe places where we can start fresh and learn how to live life differently. In treatment and in meetings, we listen to the wisdom of 12-Step recovery; many of us learn to listen for the first time because most of us thought we had the answers to our lives.

It sounds so simple, so simple, in fact, that most of us don’t want to trust it at first: “first things first,” “keep it simple,” “one day at a time.” Discovery starts by stopping. In that “time out” we begin to listen. We meet others who have the courage to sit still and together we learn to live differently. We learn simple steps of action we can take that make a difference. We learn that the wreckage of our lives begins to clean up as we do, first things first, simply, one day at a time.