The 12 Steps for Everyone [Step Two]

Hola mi Gente,
Many people take issue with 12 step fellowships, calling them cults and ineffective. I don’t care to debate that here. I don’t know if the following will get you clean, but it is what helped me recover and it’s a set of principles that continue to guide my evolution as a human being.

These posts are best read in order. My take on the first step can be found here.

Faith and our Deepest Experience

We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
 -- The Second Step, Narcotics Anonymous

As most who read these pages know, I am an addict in recovery. I’ve been clean (yes, clean, not sober!), one day at a time (sometimes one breath at a time), for going on more than 26 years. What follows is a narrative of my journey toward wholeness. I don’t know if this will work for you, but if you were to ask me, this is how I got clean and recovered my life. My story is extreme and you might find it hard to identify with some of its elements. All I ask is that you try to identify with rather than compare my story. As they say in the rooms: listen to the message and not the mess.

I believe all people, regardless of whether they are addicts or not, can benefit from a rigorous application of the 12 Steps.

So take a thorough FirstStep and what happens? We’re stuck in a bad place. I mean, c’mon now, coming to the full and painful realization that my way of doing things was fundamentally fucked up wasn’t a revelation that filled me up with spiritual joy. Furthermore, my bottom had me staring at some very harsh consequences. The last time I took a drug or drink, I was in detention and looking at a possible 15-year prison sentence. Talk about despair.

But years before I got to that mess, the first time I read this step, I literally walked away from Narcotics Anonymous. My understanding of the core principle of this step, faith, at that time caused me a lot of discomfort. I am not a religious person, nor do I believe in a patriarchal God-in-the-sky. To make matters worse, as I continued reading down the steps, I kept seeing the “God” word and the phrase “Higher Power” and I decided then that it was bullshit.

Consequently, I went through the five worst years of my life. The second issue I had with this step was the implication that I was insane -- restore us to sanity. Years later, when in desperation I came back to NA, I did so with a more open mind. But I still had major issues with this step…

 

My sponsor at the time suggested that I simply commit to keeping an open mind and to make this process a personal search. The beauty of Narcotics Anonymous is that the fellowship doesn’t demand you do anything. There are no “thou shalts,” no “shoulds.” As part of taking this step, my sponsor suggested I do a close reading and learn the terms. One of the first things I liked about the step the second time around was how it starts, “came… ” and then, “came to… ,” then, “came to believe… ” In a very real way I was finally coming to my senses -- I was awakening. The opposite of despair is hope and I came to understand that hope is what the Second Step offered me.

Faith was a harder score to settle, but there are enough agnostics and even atheists who are recovering addicts because the Twelve Steps allow for a kind of spiritual democracy. You do not have to believe in anything, or join any religion. You do not even have to apply the steps. They are simply suggestions and since whenever I followed my own suggestions, I usually experienced tremendous suffering, I figured it was time for me to listen to some alternative proposals.

There are many different meanings of faith. At one extreme, there is the more common understanding of faith as blind faith, but that’s just one way of looking at faith. There are degrees of faith. In fact, we all have daily moments of faith and belief. We have faith, for example, that when we turn on the faucet, water will flow. We have faith that our car will start, or that a toaster will work. We also have many beliefs. We believe, for example, that we have a personality. Actually, many of us believe we are our personality, though, scientifically speaking, there’s no brain center that organizes personality. Your personality is a set of beliefs and quirks that you constructed in order to operate in the everyday world. Similarly, scientists have faith in reason and logic to solve problems.

Shit, some of us believe that if we shove money inside of hole in the wall (as many of us did in the 1980s when we copped reefer or heroin), a bag of dope will materialize. LOL! I’m not kidding. Back in the day, the way you copped drugs was that you’d stick your hand with your money in a hole and a hand with bag would come out. I had complete faith in that transaction.

So early on in my recovery process, faith for me had to mean a temporary suspension of disbelief. What that means is that I made an agreement with myself to keep an open mind. Sometimes faith can mean trust. I came to believe that the spiritual principles of hope, freedom, and willingness would restore me to sanity. And believe me, by the second time around, I knew I was insane.

I have been studying human behavior for over a two decades now, and the best definition of insanity I have come across is: doing the same actions and expecting different results. Even an infant knows better not to stick his hand in the socket after the first go-round. But as adults we oftentimes commit the same behaviors -- especially in the area of relationships -- expecting different results.

Sometimes faith can mean trust in a teaching, or self-confidence. As a Buddhist, my Higher Power is the Dharma (The Law), a clearly defined set of ethical and cognitive principles. In sports, a group can develop faith in their ability as a team to overcome extreme odds. In that same way, I came to believe that the fellowship and principles of Narcotics Anonymous could restore me to sanity. Why? Because I was seeing people in the fellowship taking back their lives. People all around me were helping heal themselves and one another. I have been to NA meetings where a particular individual cried in despair because she couldn’t pay her rent, then see her cry in joy once again several months later because she was able to pay her rent.

Initially, my Higher Power was the group. I came to believe that what I couldn’t do alone we could do together. Like a team. Eventually, my spirituality would evolve and I would come to embrace Buddhism as my path. The historical Buddha didn’t make any claims to divinity and his last words, as he lay dying (of all things, food poisoning) were, “… be a lamp unto yourself.” What that means to me is that ultimately, you must walk your path. It means that sayings, scriptures, or instructions alone will not save you. Ultimately, if you want to awaken, to come to your full realization as a human being, you must walk your path -- whatever that path entails.

And that’s what the second step helped me begin. It helped begin to walk the walk, trusting in my experience that I could be restored to sanity by a power greater than myself. The Second Step helped me come to a different understanding of faith, one that wasn’t associated with dogma or religion. I wanted a faith that encouraged and emphasized love and respect for ourselves as a foundation. I wanted to experience a faith that uncovered our connection to others, rather than designating anyone as separate and apart. The faith I came to know as part of my recovery process and that I describe in this post does not require a blind faith or even a belief system; it is not necessarily connected to a God, though it doesn’t deny one. This faith I speak of is not a commodity we either have or don't have -- it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.

My name is Eddie and I’m recovery from civilization...

Resources

Addiction is one of the most pressing problems in our society -- a society that actually encourages consumption at the expense of substance. If you think you have a problem, give yourself a break and try something new, it just might save your life…

Alcoholics Anonymous: Official website

Narcotics Anonymous: Official website

Books I have found useful:

Allione, Tsultrim (2008) Feeding your demons: Ancient wisdom for resolving inner conflict. (click here) 

Ash, Mel (1993) The Zen of recovery (click here)

Chodron, Pema (2005) When things fall apart: Heart advice for difficult times (click here)

Griffin, Kevin (2004) One breath at a time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps (click here)

Z., Philip (1990) A skeptic's guide to the 12 Steps (click here)

Note: The featured artwork is by Ben'hUsry.

Redemption Song

Hola mi Gente,
I usually post this around this time of year… it’s a Thanksgiving tradition of sorts on this blog. Sometimes, when I think this too self-indulgent, or passé (I am a walking cliché, it seems), someone will send me a message usually beginning like so: “I read your blog and I never comment… ” (LOL!) And it never fails, someone will tell me that reading the following helped them, or they shared it with someone they thought it could help. So… here goes.

Redemption Song

My life is my message

The cliché that life is stranger than fiction is true enough. And believe me: my life has been pretty much “strange.” Thanksgiving Day has its own personal meaning for me, as I am certain it does for everyone. Actually, Thanksgiving Day has layers of meaning.

First, there is the glossing over the very real consequences of colonialism, the mythical version of Thanksgiving creates a fairy tale out of land theft, betrayal, brutality, and genocide, functioning to erase the very real and traumatic experiences of entire indigenous nations. This whitewashing and outright erasure of indigenous history is not only inhumane and oppressive to indigenous people, it is also unfair to all U.S. citizens who stand to learn from a rich and equally tragic history.

On another level, people of Puerto Rican descent have traditionally taken US holidays and used them as opportunities to express our own cultural identity. For example, Puerto Ricans will eschew the traditional holiday fare of turkey and potatoes and substitute lechon and pasteles, Puerto Rican culinary staples. If we do cook turkey, we cook it pavo-chon-style -- a turkey prepared in a manner that makes it taste like lechon (pork suckling). Also, the holidays are always a chance to celebrate our music, our unique forms of dancing, and kinship ties. Therefore, Puerto Ricans subvert the mythical (actually genocidal) Thanksgiving and give it their own meaning. And as humans, that’s what we do best, we create meaning.

Thanksgiving Day is also now primarily identified as a secular all-inclusive day of expressing appreciation for life and having gratitude for the things we need to live a happy and healthy life. As a Latino, the cultural values of extended family ties and Thanksgiving evoke childhood memories of large (and often hilariously insane) family get-togethers.

However, for me Thanksgiving holds its most significant meaning on a very personal level. You see, it was on this day twenty-six years ago that I experienced the first of a series of “spiritual awakenings” that would drastically change my life. The exact date is November 26, 1990 and it often happens that it falls on or near Thanksgiving Day. A couple of weeks before that fateful day, on a cold, drizzly November day, I was so overcome with despair that I considered and attempted suicide. It is actually a little funny: As I climbed over the rail on the Brooklyn Bridge’s pedestrian walk (it’s not easy to jump off that damned bridge!), I was so skinny from malnutrition and years of substance abuse that a strong Nor’easter wind knocked me back on my ass to the pedestrian walkway. I saw this as the ultimate failure which gives you an idea of my state of mind at the time.

I walked away from that only to opt for a more torturous suicide: the daily act of chasing that White Lady, Heroin. Ensnared by my warped thinking, I had this fear that I would botch up my own suicide and merely succeed in paralyzing myself, condemning myself to chase drugs from the disadvantage of a wheelchair. In fact, I remember another addict who was in a wheelchair. I decided I would make someone else put myself out of my misery.

And though I speak lightly today of that time, I was so miserable. I do not believe in a God in the traditional Christian/ Judeo sense -- an anthropomorphic omnipotent super being. Yet back then I would pray each night that some Higher Power would find it in its mercy to take my life me my sleep. Still, every day I awoke to my pain and despair. I would always wake up sick and broke, but somehow manage to spend $300 by the end of the day, feeding a merciless heroin habit.

If you are wondering, I fed my drug habit by ripping off drug-dealers, never a safe proposition. One day a victim of one of my swindles threatened me with a gun. I grabbed the gun by the barrel, put it to my forehead, and begged him to shoot. All I asked was that he made sure to kill me because, “You would be doing me a favor, motherfucker.” This occurred in broad daylight in the middle of a crowded New York City street. I remember a crowd forming and people screaming; but what I remember most was thinking that this was my way out. “Do it,” I yelled. He pulled the trigger and… 

Nothing happened.

I don’t know if the gun jammed or if it wasn’t loaded, whatever the reason, the gun failed to discharge. My would-be “assistant suicider” freaked out, yanked the gun from my hands, and walked away. I called after him, letting him know he could get another chance. That’s how much I wanted to die. And, I thought, I could do nothing right.

That wasn’t the worst of it, my life continued to bottom out until November 26th, 1990 when I experienced an incident so traumatic it would change me and my world in an inexplicable way. Actually, most people would consider the events that transpired on that cold, dreary November day as a defeat. Very simply, after being released from New York City’s infamous jail, Rikers Island, for exactly fourteen days, I was re-arrested. It was also that last day of my active addiction -- the last day I took a drug.

I didn’t know it then but it was the beginning of a new life: a life that today is far from perfect, that has suffering, illness, death, and many challenges, but also contains an invincible of joy at its core. This is part of the reason I do the work that I do. I know even the worst of us have the potential to liberate ourselves from socially constructed or self-made prisons. And let me be clear: we’re all “doing time” in some way, we all wear shackles. To a degree, we all enact patterns of behavior or carry the proverbial baggage.

No, I am not a religious person. My personal view is that religion is for people who are afraid of hell and spirituality is for those who have already been there. I simply try to be the best person I can be on a daily basis and oftentimes I fall short of the mark. However, my intentions are usually good and my direction somewhat orderly. I try to live a life centered on compassion for others, personal growth, self-actualization, and passion for social change.

On that day, twenty-six ago, I had no way of knowing of the possibility of life as it has manifested itself for me today. The past year has been one of the most challenging for me in a long time. A lot of that has to do with being unemployed. Today, I will most likely lose all my property in storage, my cell has been cut off, and I’m living in… well, you get the idea. Yet, I am for the most part happy today. It’s a happiness independent of any person, place, or thing. On the surface I can be sad, happy, angry, disappointed, disgusted -- I can be experiencing any number of attachments -- but at the center, at the very core of me, there is an invincible joy greater than any drug-induced high I have ever experienced. And believe me, coming from me, that’s saying a lot.

On that day, sitting there in the midst of total failure and utter humiliation, I came undone. And that was a good thing, because in experiencing complete obliteration I became open to something more than my small self. In emptying myself, I came to see that what I perceived as the void was in reality my innate and boundless potential as a human being.

I am genuinely grateful. As I said before, this past year, as with all years, has been a challenging. I have experienced sadness, frustration, happiness, love, rejection (the full catastrophe!). I could easily surmise, if I were so disposed, that my life, that life itself, sucks. But that’s a coward’s lie. Life is a gift -- probably the most precious of gifts. My life today is like a redemption song -- a song of freedom. And at the very least there is nothing worse (or better) than that fateful day twenty-five years ago. Today I woke up and I am… here… and for that I am most grateful.

May you all have as much to be thankful for.

My name is Eddie and I am in recovery from civilization… 

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Making Hope Possible

Hola mi gente,
This is for the energy freaks who may not adequately appreciate that attention to all of life, and not just the positive, is essential in envisioning and creating a better world.

Please consider making a donation to my campaign HERE. Alternatively, you can use PayPal, where you can also set up a monthly donation, HERE. 

Your generosity will support my writing and advocacy as well as my desire to amplify the voices of those who don’t get heard, but are the ones most directly impacted by the compromises we in the advocacy world make on a daily basis. In fact, id there is a heaven, the first words you might here are, "Good thing you gave to Eddie when you did, otherwise your ass would be out." LOL

Making Hope Possible

Los Indignados march in Spain. The banner reads "It's not a crisis, it is the system."

To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
 -- Raymond Williams

The above quote appears in all my email signatures and serves as a reminder for me… 

So! Some of you may ask, “Who are you to ask for a donation? What have you done and are doing?” Simply put, I am a dedicated activist, writer, and advocate who for the past 20-plus years has fought for human rights at a time in our shared history that demands that the human species achieve some fairly unprecedented evolutionary advances. 

I don’t want to run a long laundry list of the world’s problems, but I think it’s safe to say that humankind now faces some fundamental and unprecedented challenges. These include questions about our modern forms of social organization and governance, and questions about our planet-destroying system of maximum production and consumption.

The answers to these very important questions are my challenge.

The shadow looming over us all, of course, is climate change global warming caused by human activity -- a technological incubus that has been haunting us for more than a generation even as our so-called leaders look the other way. That is surely because to confront the sources of global warming and its consequence, climate change, is to confront the very foundations of capitalism itself. The very real possibility that we are about to unleash an ecological disaster that will make all extinct is simply the most urgent of a long cascade of other environmental crises now underway -- the massive species extinctions, dying coral reefs, depleted groundwater, lead zones in the ghettoes, and so on. Our impact on the planet’s ecosystem is so pervasive that it now qualifies as a separate geological era, the Anthropocene.

It is customary to speak about problems such as “the environment” and “economic inequality” as if they were something out there as abstract policy issues somehow separate from us. But in fact these problems are rooted deeply inside of us -- in how we relate to our world, how we relate to each other, and how we have structured our institutions. We are still under the Cartesian delusion that our bodies and minds are separate, and by extension that humanity is different from nature. This lets us maintain the dangerous denial that we can continue to recklessly pillage the biosphere, particularly if there’s money to be made.

So why do I bring up these troubling thoughts? 

I think we are also at a time and place in which we have rare opportunity to plant a seed for creating a society based on compassionate logic and ethic -- and to make coalitions with others who are searching for a new way to live. The same technological advances that threaten our existence on the one hand, can serve to bring us together to envision and create the kind of world we want to live in on the other. It can start different types of conversations, movements, and projects. The ripple effects of these efforts could go far beyond the local to the global. In fact, we have seen such nascent movements appear. There are the global occupy movements here in the States and Los Indignados in Spain, for example. There were the Arab Uprisings. And before that, there was the anti-nuclear movement, and the Zapatistias in Chiapas, and on and on… 

While we stand at the precipice of extinction, we’re also at the start of evolutionary quantum leap the likes that we have never seen before. As with every evolutionary leap, there are several potential outcomes -- death and life being the two main ones.

But before I on to why I have these wild visions, let me share some of my experiences on the frontlines of activism. It might help explain why I see so much potential. 

I “re-awakened” during the early 1990s, and became depressed at the sorry state of the U.S. political culture -- and the even sorrier state of progressive activism. The neoliberal Trojan horse, Bill Clinton, was the one who gave us telecom deregulation that resulted in massive media consolidation, the loosening of securities and banking laws that culminated in 2008 financial crisis, and so-called welfare reform has decimated poor people and the most vulnerable in our society. At the same time, nonprofits have become so professionalized and locked into their funding base, they don’t dare to experiment or innovate lest it marginalize them politically or, worse, be cut off the nonprofit-industrial teat (more on this in a post to come soon).

I came to realize that liberalism, at least as co-opted by the U.S. two-party system, was not going to produce the kinds of changes our society really needs. It became clear that conventional public policy and law have been taken hostage by the two major political parties, which themselves are both under the thrall of business elites. It is an incestuous alliance of the two great forms of power in our country, which systematically seek to diminish both democracy and the power of the people.

I am not saying that we simply walk away from politics, policy, and law. These institutions remain vital arenas of engagement. But, if we are honest with ourselves, we would admit that our politics today is too structurally compromised to produce much significant change. The game is rigged and most of us know this. We live in a runaway society -- an oligarchy of crony capitalism, poorly performing government institutions, declining democratic participation, and slow-motion ecological collapse.

But if the 1990s created despair in me, I also discovered the great, transformative potential of the power of the people -- the commons -- which has been my passion for more than twenty years. One way to understand the commons is as everything that we inherit or create together, which we must pass on, undiminished, to future generations. The commons could be understood as a social system for managing shared wealth, with an emphasis on self-governance, fairness and sustainability. The commons is also a worldview and ethic that is ancient as the human race but as new as the Internet. 

There were two other things going on in the 1990s that pushed me out of the liberal tradition and into the grassroots. The first was the emergence of the World Wide Web in 1994 as a popular medium. As I began to write for the web (first in Usenet newsgroups then as a blogger), it gradually became clear to me that parts of cyberspace is a realm in which neither the state nor the market is the driving force. Here, social cooperation is the norm and hugely productive without markets or formal law. I learned to see that the Internet is really a massive hosting platform, a new fantastically adaptive infrastructure that is generative because it lets people self-organize their own resources.

When blogs, wikis, and social networks began to proliferate in the early 2000s, it was clear that something very new and different had arrived: a more democratic, less hierarchical way to organize and to challenge the mainstream narrative. This phenomenon simply cannot be explained by mainstream economics and its model of human beings as selfish, rational, utility-maximizing materialists.

The second thing that I encountered since then was the unlikely rise of an eclectic social movement based on the principles of common interests. It has had several notable international social movements, and it has many active hubs of strategic action. It is what makes hope a reality.

Which brings me back to the great British critic, Raymond Williams, who put it so well: “To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.” That is the real challenge that we face, to overcome cynicism and hopelessness, and to bring about the many serious alternatives awaiting our creativity.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery for civilization…