How Mainstream Recovery Nearly Killed Me!

Why the middle-of-the-road approach doesn’t work for the hopeless addict, but the ‘Big Book’ does.

After chronically relapsing for years in mainstream recovery, one night, in a packed 12-step meeting, it all came to a head.

Back from another catastrophic relapse, I had just finished sharing my hopelessness and desperation with the room when someone loudly called out, ‘Fuck You!’

They didn’t quite say those words. In fact, what they said was far worse.

What they said was, ‘Keep coming back.’

And just like that, the meeting moved on as if I hadn’t spoken.

I sat there feeling more alone than ever as those words burned deep to the core.

Keep. Coming. Back.

After all, I’d already finished the twelve steps in their entirety multiple times: three times in a drug fellowship and twice in a sex & love fellowship.

Yet here I was, still totally helpless and seemingly more hopeless than addicts that had been in and out of the rooms for twenty years.

I was beyond desperate.

After the meeting, a fellow 12-step member came running up to me, convinced he could help, ‘Have you ever thought about doing ‘ninety in ninety’ ?’

‘Ninety in ninety’ was the common twelve-step fellowship wisdom of attending one meeting a day for ninety days.

My world collapsed.

I’d just done over two hundred and ten meetings in three months.

The Real Rock Bottom

My journey in recovery was one of relentless chronic relapse.

And this was while working with therapists, psychiatrists and going to any lengths necessary in twelve-step programs.

I did have spells of sobriety here and there, but ultimately no matter what my sponsor’s, therapist’s or doctor’s direction, no matter how many daily meetings, sessions, prayers, meditations, gratitude lists and workshops I attended and completed, I always found myself back in the madness and chaos of addiction.

I experienced countless rock bottoms. I lost count of the times I thought I’d had the rock bottom experience to end all rock bottoms.

But the real rock bottom wasn’t at the end of a relapse, feeling terrified and disgusted with myself for letting myself down again.

The real rock bottom was when I was sober.

The real rock bottom was knowing one hundred per cent that I would relapse again regardless of what I did.

Relapse wasn’t about ‘if’ it would happen but ‘when’ it would happen. And that when wasn’t up to me. I had no choice in the matter.

It appeared relapse was happening to me, not by me.

The Ones That Slip Through The Safety Net

Let me be clear; this isn’t about right or wrong.

I am not saying that mainstream recovery approaches, whether they be twelve-step fellowships, trauma therapies, rehabs and treatment centres, don’t work, far from it.

They do work for the majority of the population.

They have and continue to save millions of people’s lives day in and day out. They have a solution, and all of them play a vital part in long-term sustained recovery.

What I am saying is mainstream recovery doesn’t work for everyone.

It doesn’t work for a ten to twenty per cent minority that comes into recovery who are, in fact, truly powerless.

They’re the ones constantly building up their lives in and out of recovery, only to burn them down to the ground again in senseless, repeated relapse.

They are as baffled as you when asked why they keep doing this.

They seriously don’t know why they are doing it. They sincerely want to stop but honestly can’t stop relapsing.

Everyone is left scratching their head as to why they can’t stay sober.

After all, they’re going to the exact same meetings and treatment centres as everyone else, working the same steps and taking the same course of action.

While everyone else has no real difficulty staying sober and clean once in recovery, they struggle to make it through each day.

The book of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), also known as the ‘Big Book’, was written specifically for this type of addict.

The Big Book names this type of addict the ‘real alcoholic’ or an ‘addict of the hopeless variety’.

The Lost Message

The Big Book was first published in 1939, and its purpose was to show other real alcoholics precisely how the first hundred people of A.A. got sober.

It puts forth an honest account of real alcoholics’ stories with this fatal condition showing what the problem is and why the hopeless addict is completely powerless.

The Big Book clearly says that no human power can solve the problem.

We are beyond all human aid.

This, by its very definition, rules out practically every standard middle-of-the-road recovery treatment and method.

It also states repeatedly throughout the book that only a spiritual experience can solve this problem.

The good news is the Big Book has a spiritual solution and a program of action that sets up the conditions for this spiritual experience to happen to the addict.

Sadly, this powerful transformative message has been reinterpreted through decades of handed-down verbal traditions and additional commentaries around the work.

Although well-intentioned, these handed-down verbal traditions and additional commentaries were added much later and have moved away from the original intention of the work.

This has led to a distorting of the Big Book’s powerful message that leaves many addicts out in the cold, unable to recover as the true nature of the problem is misrepresented.

As such, mainstream recovery approaches tell you that you’re an addict and are powerless, but there is, in fact, something you can do about that powerless situation.

This ignores the tragic truth of the real alcoholic, as described in the Big Book.

An Illusion Of Power

Due to this misrepresentation of the problem, mainstream recovery focuses on sobriety and trying to stay sober and clean.

But for the addict of the hopeless variety, the focus needs to be shifted to recovery and letting go of control.

However, mainstream recovery approaches never really relinquish control.

Rather, they get hopeless addicts to embark on a series of daily actions and duties to stay sober and clean as if they can somehow earn their spiritual experience.

Furthermore, mainstream recovery forces a narrative that doesn’t fit the reality of this fatal condition to the extent that it exists in the chronic relapser.

Instead, mainstream recovery talks about cravings and a constant obsession to use or act out and look at all the reasons why not to relapse as a way to prevent relapse.

This includes writing out lists of the damages caused to the addict’s life from relapsing and if they ever feel the urge to relapse to ‘play the tape forward’, ‘call a fellow addict’, and my personal favourite, ‘Just don’t pick up!’

Frothy emotional appeal seldom suffices. The message which can interest and hold these alcoholic people must have depth and weight. In nearly all cases, their ideals must be grounded in a power greater than themselves, if they are to re-create their lives.

~ Big Book page xxviii

If the problem was as simple as ‘Just don’t pick up!’ many, if not all, addicts would have stopped years ago.

Every addict knows that once they start, all bets are off.

They lose all control and can’t stop, which leads to the obvious answer, then just don’t start.

Abstinence is the answer.

And herein lies the problem we can’t stay stopped for reasons unknown.

Hence why we are powerless.

But mainstream recovery washes over this inability to stay stopped with default slogans and mantra-styled platitudes before placing the blame back on the powerless addict.

‘They haven’t had enough consequences!’

Not experiencing enough pain and consequences is often cited in mainstream twelve-step fellowships as the reason why addicts are still relapsing.

But what if that wasn’t always the case?

What if something else was going on for those chronic relapsers that genuinely do desire to stop?

After all, the consequences for these addicts are all too clear. No one has to point them out.

They can see that they are losing everything.

Deep down, they’re scared to death by the situation they find themselves in.

Yet despite this, these addicts are unable to escape this inevitable downward spiral of complete self-destruction that ends in prisons, institutions, hospitals and death.

These addicts clearly ran out of consequences a long time ago.

In fact, the worse the pain and consequences of relapse get for these addicts, the more they relapse.

This is the reality of this fatal condition.

I wasn’t in recovery because of the terrifying consequences of relapse. I was in recovery because those terrifying consequences didn’t stop me from relapsing.

The Recovery Trap

I knew I didn’t want this life of relapse. I knew I was relapsing against my will.

I’d lost count of how many times I’d surrendered and handed my will over to a power greater than me.

I honestly wanted sobriety.

I meant business, but I seemingly couldn’t stay stopped or surrender either!

What was I missing here?

What I didn’t see was that I was caught in a never-ending cycle of relapse and recovery mainly because of this mainstream approach.

Constantly being told there was something I was or wasn’t doing enough of, which was causing me to relapse, left me with a raging obsession not to relapse.

I applied every tool and strategy in the recovery box to stay clean and sober, all to no avail.

In the end, I was white-knuckling it, using nothing more than fear and willpower.

Instead of letting go absolutely, I was holding on absolutely!

This struggle with fighting the condition, trying to stay sober and clean led to exhaustion, depression and, as the Big Book says, ‘incomprehensible demoralisation’.

The Truth

I finally discovered that powerless really did mean powerless.

But I wasn’t powerless over cocaine, sex or anything else.

I was powerless over relapse itself. This is a relapse condition.

Due to the blank spot feature of this condition, it appeared that no matter what I said or did now, tomorrow or whenever, at certain times, I wouldn’t recall any of it with sufficient force to stop me from relapsing.

It meant I couldn’t rely on rational thinking because of this strange type of amnesia around relapse.

It was not what I was thinking.

It was a lack of thinking around this area that made me go back and relapse again and again.

And I wasn’t even aware that it was happening to me.

That’s why consequences, self-knowledge, fear, common sense, burning desire, or sheer iron willpower wouldn’t ultimately work.

When I finally saw and experienced this, I did let go. Not of the substance or process, but I let go of my old recovery ideas.

To access the spiritual solution on offer in the Big Book, I had to let go of the idea that I could do something to fight this condition and stay clean.

I knew now the reasons not to relapse weren’t what I needed, no matter how well-intentioned those reasons were that good-intentioned fellows gave me.

I was powerless, helpless and hopeless, but I wasn’t godless.

If a solution presented to me wasn’t showing me how to have an effective spiritual experience by first getting me out of the way, then it wasn’t going to work for me.

Middle-of-the-road platitudes and ‘just don’t pick up’ recovery wouldn’t cut it; that message would kill me.

Final Thought

The Big Book says addicts are not like most people.

But when I hit that emotional rock bottom in that 12-step meeting after being told to ‘keep coming back’, I felt different from most addicts in the room.

However, despite this, I did keep coming back.

Back then, I didn’t realise I was exactly where I was meant to be: in a fellowship of addicts who genuinely wanted to be helpful to other hopeless addicts.

Although deeply depressed, thankfully, I still had faith.

And because of my faith in something greater than me and the rainbow of people that make up the fellowship, I kept looking for a solution that would work for me.

Amid this desperation, I met my new sponsor in those same rooms, who showed me a different approach and gave me a new experience with the Big Book.

If you find yourself in a similar situation to mine, working very hard in recovery yet still relapsing more than ever. Or lost in relapse and deadly afraid of another one.

I hope my posts on this page will begin a new process and experience with recovery that will guide you out of the grip of this fatal condition’s tyranny.

This isn’t about right or wrong. It’s about honesty, willingness, and letting go of old ideas to transform this illness from a curse into a blessing.

DJ