Promises, promises.

I used to wake up every morning and make promises to myself. “OK Nadia. Get it together. TODAY you are not going to drink.” And then, by the afternoon, I’d somehow find myself with a drink in my hand, saying “well, maybe just ONE…I mean, it’s been a hard day.”

My promises to myself were worthless.

But last night I heard a formerly incarcerated man say that “the promises are coming true” for him. But the promises he was referring to were not the flimsy ones he made to himself.

"The promises", if you are not familiar with them, are on page 83 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous - and they wildly proclaim what can happen if you admit the truth that you cannot by your own efforts free yourself from your addiction, that maybe God - or a Higher Power of your understanding - could help with this, and then follow some simple instructions for growing up and un-fucking your life.

The Promises:

Promise 1: We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.

Promise 2: We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.

Promise 3: We will comprehend the word serenity.

Promise 4: We will know peace.

Promise 5: No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.

Promise 6: The feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.

Promise 7: We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.

Promise 8: Self-seeking will slip away.

Promise 9: Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.

Promise 10: Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us.

Promise 11: We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.

Promise 12: We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Can you believe how beautiful those are??

I love that these are promises and not levels of a sobriety game you unlock by your own spiritual accomplishments, I love that they are simply descriptions of the way God cleanses us, redeems us, and renews us when we just clear our shit out of the way. (I think that this is how our “spiritual practices” work - they don’t earn us anything - they are just a process of de-cluttering our hearts and minds so that we can experience and draw upon what is always already there: God’s love and mercy.)

But more than anything, I love that these promises are not empty. As much as I struggle with my own shit still, I admit that at different points in my sobriety, when I have taken the time to NOTICE, I have found myself baffled to realize that each one of these promises has come true (maybe not all at once, but still…).

How in the world did I get from who I was to who I am? Well, whenever I cannot draw a straight line between what was and what is, whenever the math doesn’t work, I can only assume there is a factor that is “unsolvable” for and some of us call that factor God.

If you are suffering from addiction, I promise you there is a solution. For me, it was, is (for the last 29 years) and will likely always be the fellowship and the 12-steps of AA.

(People differ on their interpretation of the tradition of maintaining personal anonymity - it was established when there were just a few hundred members of AA - when having one member relapse when it was publicly known they had been sober in AA would have a devastating effect on the public perception of the fellowship’s efficacy. Millions have gotten and stayed sober through AA now and I choose to be public about my membership.)