Step 3: Part 3 Decided to stop singing I Did It My Way

Are you ready for Step 3? It’s easy to find out. Assuming that we believe that we are alcoholic and can’t manage our own lives, we’re through with Step 1. Furthermore, if we’ve come to believe that no human power could relieve us of our alcoholism and that God can and will, then we’re through with Step 2. We’ve learned our ABCs.

These are the basics that come from accepting the information presented to us in the Doctors Opinion and Chapters 1 through 4 of the AA text. Beyond just conclusions, they are our beliefs that we now own. On these truths we can build a program of recovery. Without the ABCs, it’s not possible. Only then are we ready for the Third Step. Look at what Bill says,

Being convinced, we were at Step Three, which is that we decided to turn our will and our life over to God as we understood Him. Just what do we mean by that, and just what do we do? Alcoholics Anonymous, 2012, p 60

What we do is forge ahead with the knowledge based on the ABCs. From here forward we are not looking to self for solutions. We make a radical decision. My way or the highway, is not a workable slogan for addicts.

Frank Sinatra’s I Did It My Way was my theme song before AA. I chose this video because it’s his last concert. It’s how he went out. I tried to live like that, I really did.

It reinforced my worship of self. It it was obvious even to me by the spring of 2007 that doing it my way was not working. During my first few months of AA, I was so crazy that I’d find myself driving over gravel roads looking for the perfect suicide bridge: right slope, right embankment, right buttress– so that it would work and still look accidental. I was hopelessly sick in my addiction, racing on the straightaways and skidding into corners. It’s a metaphor for my life in addiction and my early days of recovery.

The only thing that calmed me was going to meetings and reading the AA book. That’s why I sometimes went to 13 meetings a week. Life was too scary outside the rooms. I still didn’t want to ‘say the words of one who kneels’.

Step 3 for me actually started between two meetings. I went to the sunrise 7 o’clock meeting at the Fellowship Club. As with all newly sober alcoholics, I was experiencing agonizingly raw feelings that previously I had numbed. That morning both rage and fear gripped my mind and paralyzed me as soon as I left the corner meeting room.

Avoiding the coffee club in the hallway, I ducked into the first empty room and shut the door. I curled up in the corner and cried, before laying down prostrate * on the carpet. It didn’t smell good. I remember that. My life stunk and it felt right to be there, though.

I cried and I prayed. I gave up. Gave it all up. I was done trying to control, trying to make sense of my life. I made a decision that day. Come whatever, I wanted God to control my life. There was not one thing I was withholding from Him any longer. I gave up. The decision was made.

Admittedly, I had no idea of the cost, the process or the outcome of taking Step 3, but I had the heart for it. I had trust that He could and would help me out of the mess that was my life.

I made a decision, once and for all to do whatever the program prescribed. I was going to take the Steps, and take them like my life depended upon it, because that was true. It did. I was done trying to do it my way. And those are the words of one who kneels.

PS: What was your theme song?

* I was a drama coach while I taught high school English, so while this didn’t seem overly dramatic for me, it wouldn’t fit for most people.

Category : 12 Steps
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