Sober But Stuck Obstacles Most Often Encountered That
Keep Us From Growing In Recovery
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16 137
Anger and Rage
Carol B.
17 145
Anger and Rage
Karl K.
18 153
Judgmental Criticism of Others
Frank D.
19 162
Making and Keeping Friends
Brian B.
20 170
Financial Insecurity
Maria C.
21 177
Financial Insecurity
Kevin L.
22 185
Job or Career Dissatisfaction
Carlos S.
23 192
Fear of Reaching Out and Asking for Help
Matthew M
24 199
Compulsive Sexual Behavior
George J.
25 210
Fear of People and Social Situations
Jack P.
The Promises of A.A.
Page iv
The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcoholthat our lives had
become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could
restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of
God, as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the
exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of
character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to
make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except
when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong,
promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious
contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for
knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps,
we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these
principles in all our affairs.
Page v
The Twelve Traditions
1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery
depends upon AA unity.
2. For our group purpose there is but one authoritya loving God as
He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are
but trusted servants; they do not govern.
3. The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop
drinking.
4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting
other groups or AA as a whole.
5. Each group has but one primary purposeto cany its message to
the alcoholic who still suffers.
6. An AA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the AA name
to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money,
property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
7. Every AA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining
outside contributions.
8. Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional,
but our service centers may employ special workers.
9. AA, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create
service boards or committees directly responsible to those they
serve.
10. Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence
the AA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than
promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the
level of press, radio, and films.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever
reminding us to place principles above personalities.
The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions are reprinted with
permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services. Inc.
Permission to reprint does not mean that AA has reviewed or
approved the content of this publication, nor that AA agrees with the
views expressed herein. AA is a program of recovery from
alcoholismuse of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions in
connection with programs and activities which are patterned after AA.
but which address other problems, does not imply otherwise.
Page vi
Author's Introduction
This book is about getting unstuckovercoming the obstacles and
emotional barriers that threaten sobriety and serenity. I think that
just about everyone gets stuck at some point during recovery. At its
best, grappling with an unyielding personal problem can be
frustrating; at its worst, it can be a nightmare. Getting unstuck
involves change and risk. This book is a collection of personal
stories by members of AA. It is about the risks they took and the
tools and actions they used to break through the barriers that were
limiting their enjoyment of a sober life.
With few exceptions, those whose stories are included are
longstanding, active members of AA who have ten or more years of
unbroken sobriety. I believe that there is in the AA fellowship a
healthy respect for members with ten, fifteen, or twenty years of
active sobriety. It makes sense that a fifteen-year AA veteran
describing his or her long but successful struggle with, for
example, unhealthy dependent relationships will have a better
perspective and possibly more self-understanding than a member
with fifteen months of sobriety.
It's pretty evident that AA members are on a quest for solutions to
their problems, and since the objective of AA meetings is recovery,
discussions at the meetings often center around personal problems,
barriers, and me tools and approaches that can provide relief and
resolution. AA
Page vii
members' thirst for knowledge is reasonably well documented
through book sales. Over 10 million copies of AA's "Big Book"
(the classic Alcoholics Anonymous) have been sold, along with
approximately one million copies of paperbacks like Living Sober
and Came to Believe. Hazelden claims sales of more than seven
million copies of Twenty-Four Hours a Day. CompCare Publishers
has sold a million copies of A Day at a Time. AA members, eager
to learn how other alcoholics solved the kinds of problems they are
experiencing, are definitely drawn to the printed word. My role in
Sober but Stuck is that of a compiler who has assembled for the
reader a valuable collection of personal success stories.
To determine which are the most significant problems that cause
AA members to get "stuck," I talked with over a hundred veteran
members from all areas of the country. Based on these open-ended
discussions, I drew up a list of twenty-five major problems. A
second group of AA members was asked to rank these threats to
sobriety as to how difficult they were for Program members to
overcome. The result of this inquiry was the development of a list
of nineteen major troublesome areas that form the basis of this
book. The nineteen problems most commonly experienced, that
caused recovering people to get "stuck," were these:
· Fear of intimacy and closeness
· The need to control or dominate others
· Fear of rejection and abandonment
· Unhealthy, dependent relationships
Page viii
· Fear and anxiety
· Isolation and loneliness
· Depression
· Feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem
· Fear of failure
· Resentments
· Strained relations with parent(s)
· Anger and rage
· Judgmental criticism of others
· Difficulty in making and keeping friends
· Financial insecurity
· Job or career dissatisfaction
· Fear of reaching out and asking for help
· Compulsive sexual behavior
· Fear of people and social situations
In their personal stories, these long-time AA members tried to
answer the following questions:
· In what way were you stuck?
· How did you feel about being stuck? Angry, ashamed, frustrated,
helpless, other?
· What actions did you take that didn't work?
Page ix
· What did you do that contributed to your staying stuck?
· What positive actions did you take that began to turn things
around?
· How long did it take you to overcome your problem?
· In what ways did other people help you? Who helped?
· What were the most important actions you took to get unstuck?
By sharing their most personal and heartfelt struggles, these long-
time Program members continue to practice the Twelfth Step. They
carry the message of hope to others who, though recovering and
grateful for sobriety, are still grappling with personal problems that
keep them "sober, but stuck."
Page x
To all who follow in the footsteps of Bill W. and Dr.
Bob. May we resolve our recovery issues and grow in the
Program, as we continue to celebrate our sobrietya day
at a time.
Page 1
Fear of Intimacy
Janet M.
I just didn't trust relationships, but at the same time it was very, very
important for me to be in one. I would characterize myself either as
angry and controlling or, alternately, clinging and dependent.
I didn't even know that I was afraid of intimacy. Such a notion was
beyond my comprehension. Like my alcoholism, I had to first
admit that I had a problem. And, like my alcoholism, I was blind to
it. However, this fear had not only interfered with my life; in some
instances it ran my life. It also caused me a great deal of emotional
grief and probably accelerated my alcoholism. I know this all
sounds rather dramatic, but I really did have very serious problems
with this issue. My unconscious fear made me do many things that
I'm not proud of. In sobriety, I did what lots of people did: I
repeated my early behavior patterns over and over again until the
pain was so intense that I was forced to take positive actions or get
drunk.
I'm never too sure where all this began, probably in my childhood.
I had a pretty miserable family life even though I was born into a
professional family. My father, a very hard-working and successful
dentist, was also an alcoholic, a periodic drinker. In fact, there is
alcoholism on both sides of my family tree. My mother had many
aban-
Page 2
donment issues stemming from her father's actual abandonment of
the family when she was five. As a result she had anxiety attacks,
phobias, and a compelling urge to exert heavy control over
everything. Both my parents were filled with pent-up anger. Of the
two, my mother was more likely to explode in a rage, to throw a fit.
My father couldn't release his emotions till he got drunk and, when
he did, all hell would break loose as my parents battled. All this
really frightened me, and I can recall at an early age trying to
manipulate the conversations and activities of my parents to keep
them from getting into arguments. Peace, at any price, was what I
wanted.
I think that I lost myself to the family problems when I was a little
girl of eight or nine. Sometimes I would get sick, just to shift
attention when I felt that a fight was brewing. The worst part of
growing up was the tensionnever knowing if my father would come
home drunk and how fierce the fight might be. When my mother
flew into a rage, she would sometimes strike my father viciously.
Scenes like that were rare but, when they occurred, I felt very
frightened and helpless. My father never touched my mother or me
or my sister, but he would roar around punching walls and actually
kicking down doors. Usually he would get drunk over a weekend
and just stay drunk till Monday. When I was older, my mother took
my sister and me to relatives on weekends, leaving my father to
himself.
My mother was very controlling, always wanting to know what I
was thinking and doing. She smothered me to the point of
intrusiveness. I had no safe boundaries. All this is the background
