By Ian Cron
My book The Fix explores the Twelve Steps in detail and illustrates the power they had in the context of my life story when I was facing my addictions. (Yes, that’s plural, because just when I think I have a handle on one struggle, another has often seemed to take its place.) Whenever I’ve reached the end of my rope, the Steps have become my lifeline. The accompanying workbook uses that foundation to help you explore and harness the same dynamic power of the Steps in your own life.
You may be thinking, That’s great, Ian. I’m so glad the Steps have helped you and countless alcoholics and addicts . . . but I don’t really have a problem with drinking and drugs. So this workbook probably isn’t for me. While I appreciate your concern, let me assure you that the Steps are not just for those who hit rock bottom and find themselves forced into recovery. Addiction takes many forms, and if you’re honest, you likely already know that you often rely on certain compulsive patterns more than you should.
This is why it’s important to reconsider what you know, or think you know, about the Twelve Steps. They don’t just help you abstain from a substance or habitual self-defeating behavior, though that’s obviously a big benefit. More importantly, they also address the underlying emotional, spiritual, and psychological issues that caused your addiction in the first place. They offer a concise course in expansive living—a different way to relate to yourself, to others, and to God. The Steps teach you a healthier paradigm for pain management. They teach you how to live joyfully in a broken world where you will never feel quite at home. Let’s take a look at Step One.
Step One: We admitted we were powerless over
_____________ — that our lives had become unmanageable.
I’ve been where you are, and I wish I could say Step One is easy.
But it’s not. Unless you had extraordinary parents and early caregivers who taught you the art of truth-telling, especially regarding things you are powerless to change, then this first Step may seem like more of a cliff than a curb. It all depends on how far you are from the truth.
If you’re brutally honest with yourself, you probably know that willpower—no matter how strong yours might be—is not enough to overcome your sticky attachments. I’ve always prided myself on pushing through whatever obstacles life throws at me and refusing to quit. Only, some of my ways of coping with acute loss, pain, and crisis persisted and became a way of handling the chronic discomfort, anxiety, and stress of daily living. Thus, an addiction was born, and it grew until I realized what a thief it had become.
No one likes to admit they’re defeated—even when you know that you are. We’ve been conditioned since birth to push through, keep going, fake it ’til you make it, and never let ’em see you sweat. Admitting defeat and accepting that you’re powerless is for losers, right? But consider this: How much more do you have to lose before you face the truth?
Step One flies in the face of pretending to be a superhero with a blunt, Kryptonite-studded counterintuitive directive: Admit that you’re powerless over your addictions—and, as a result, your life is unmanageable. Well, actually, Ian, you might be thinking, I can stop any time I want, thank you very much. I don’t really have a problem with ______________. It’s just, well, you know . . .” Yeah, I know, my friend. I know how to translate the language of denial really well—because I became fluent in it a long time ago.
So, even if you are telling yourself that you can conquer your addiction by yourself, humor me for a moment. Just rip the sticky bandage off and accept that Step One applies to everyone and anyone—including you. Why? Because Step One is the only one you must accept 100% in its entirety in order to move on to the Steps that follow. Working the Twelve Steps is an ongoing process, again and again and again, that requires grit, determination, and perseverance. If you’re not looking the truth about your addictions squarely in the eye, then you will likely falter at some point and start deceiving yourself again.
Many people who turn to the Twelve Steps do so out of desperation. They have hit the lowest point in their lives and have lost everything—family, home, career, health . . . everything. Finally, they come to the realization that they’ve got no game. They can’t beat their addictions by themselves. They can’t just white-knuckle it and bulldoze forward on willpower.
I hope you don’t have to reach that point to face the truth.
If this is too much for you right now, that’s okay. You can either keep going and allow the reality of this truth to sink in slowly or you can wait until this truth becomes undeniable. But I hope you can acknowledge your own powerlessness and keep going. Because if you’re bare naked with the truth, you know you probably would not even consider starting The Fix and The Fix Workbook if some part of you wasn’t in pain or feeling confused, ashamed, fearful, frustrated, or weary in your soul. Deep down, you know that despite your best efforts, you can’t do what you want to do or stop doing what you don’t want to do. This is why admitting the truth is your best starting point.
Admitting the truth of Step One frees you to quit trying to change by yourself in your own power. The fundamental truth of this first Step is not that you are weak and defeated but that you need God, you need help from other people, and you need to focus on the reality of your limits in order to grow spiritually. You need a divinely initiated solution to heal the wounds that are driving your addictions and recurrent self-sabotage.
Meeting You Where You Are
Look, I get it.
No one wants to feel powerless.
No one wants to admit their life is unmanageable.
Powerlessness often takes us back to childhood and times in our lives when we had little to no agency and were unable to stop others from hurting us, leaving us, or shaming us. Those feelings of abandonment and deep sadness, of anger and resentment, of impotence and immobility—no one wants to go through all the ingredients served up by powerlessness.
However, until you admit that you’re powerless over your addictions, you will continue to diminish your own power by pretending otherwise. (The irony, right?) The good news implicit in Step One is that you still have plenty of choices. And right now, admitting the truth is one of them.
Step One does not say that you are powerless over your life. No, it asserts that you are powerless over your addictions and habitual self-defeating behaviors. You certainly have the freedom to choose how you respond to many, if not most, aspects of your life on any given day. But your ability to choose also reflects some choices you regret . . . but continue making again and again. Choices about how you handle stress, pain, disappointment, frustration, shame, guilt, trauma, fear, and uncertainty, just to name a few.
If you refuse to admit you’re powerless over your addictions, then you give them even more power. If you compulsively keep doing stuff that hurts you and others to numb the pain—then you do not have the power to fix yourself. Because once you start indulging your addictions, denying and ignoring and justifying and sugarcoating them, they take on a power in your life that you didn’t realize you were choosing to hand over to them.
The same goes with facing the truth about what’s not working in your life. Are you willing to admit the way your addictions consume your life, both internally and externally, with wild abandon? Like a wildfire left unchecked, your addictions will scorch your humanity, inflame your relationships, and incinerate everything you have.
Perhaps at this point you’re thinking, Now, that’s a bit overstated, don’t you think, Ian? I’m all for hyperbole to make a point, but it’s not like I’m some homeless addict trying to pawn his kid’s iPad. Fair enough. But I invite you—no, I dare you—to be honest about what’s not working in your life right now as a direct result of your addictions (or, if that word seems too strong, we’ll call them “unwanted behaviors” or “addictive patterns”). No matter what label you put on them, you know they’re costing you more and more: your peace, your attention, your time, your sanity, your energy, your stability and security. Don’t fool yourself that no one else in your life has noticed. Just ask them.
Powerless and unmanageable will never be pretty words that you love. Not unless they remove the blindfold of your addictions and allow you to see clearly the truth—and a way forward.
Questions to Ponder
- When have you started out believing yourself “in control” before becoming “out of control” with a substance or behavior? What occurred to cause the shift?
- Describe the last time you felt powerless in the face of an addiction or compulsive behavior. What events, thoughts, and feelings led up to that desire for all that your addiction seemed to offer?
More From Ian
As a person in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, Ian Cron is no stranger to destructive habits. It wasn’t until he embraced the Twelve Steps that he found true freedom. He knows from personal experience that Twelve Step recovery is more than just a life-saving strategy for guiding substance users into sobriety. Everybody is addicted to something to numb the discomfort of living in a messed-up world, he says, but the good news is that if you committedly “work the steps,” you will eventually have a vital spiritual awakening that will give you an entirely new and radically beautiful orientation toward the life God has for you. In The Fix and The Fix Workbook Ian guides us in learning how to work each of the Twelve Steps so we will finally be given a “new pair of glasses” through which we will be able to see ourselves, others, and the world in a startlingly new way–and ultimately take hold of the freedom God has been waiting to give us all along.
Ian Cron
Ian Morgan Cron is a bestselling author, nationally recognized speaker, Enneagram teacher, trained psychotherapist, Dove Award-winning songwriter, and Episcopal priest. His books include the novel Chasing Francis and the spiritual memoir Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me. Ian draws on an array of disciplines—from psychology to the arts, Christian spirituality and theology—to help people enter more deeply into conversation with God and the mystery of their own lives. He and his wife, Anne, live in Nashville, Tennessee.