In chapter three verse six of the Book of Proverbs we read, “In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

“Submission” was not in my vocabulary. “Submission” was a teenage boy’s game in which they interlocked fingers to push the other to the ground and “submit.” Submission was something of a dirty word. It meant giving up or giving into someone or something. I submitted to no one and that did not get any better when my addictions kicked in.

I submitted myself to Jack Daniels and friends, without a fight. They were so kind I did not see them killing me. They made me feel good; more outgoing. Like the “Mirror of Erised” (desire spelt backward) in Harry Potter, the person looking into it saw what he or she wanted to see until it would drive the person insane. Addiction is, as the Big Book says, “Baffling, Cunning and Powerful.”           

How did I not see what was happening? Why was I so different? Why did my father take four hours to drink half a pint of Guinness and not finish it. I drank that much in whiskey to get warmed up. It’s the disease, stupid. It’s the disease.

I submitted without a whimper. I submitted with joy in my heart and a song in my head. Alcohol helped me do what I did not think I could do for myself.  I was just into my twenties, in college, in the year nineteen-hundred-and-sixty-eight. The sixties were at their height, and I got high with them.

Then came the crash. Not the stock market. No, I crashed. I submitted to a Power Greater than myself that caused me to tell my boss “I think I have a drinking problem.” Two months later I said, “I need to go to treatment.” To this day, the only rationale I can accept is that God spoke to me loud and clear to get my attention. Perhaps it was because God knew my marriage was not going to last and I needed to be sober in order to become a custodial single dad. I didn’t care for sobriety, but I stopped.

Four years later, a lot of meetings, therapy, and “interventions” by AA friends and people I did not know, but who cared enough about me to talk and share their experience strength and hope so that I could get the point, Step four brought me to my knees. I submitted to a loving God, a Power greater than myself and admitted defeat. I had lost all my values. I was not living up to the values I proclaimed. I was a hypocrite—a false self; a shell of who I could be.

I submitted to the person who heard my fifth step and was welcomed back to the real world—I had Defects of Character, and it was okay. I would learn to work on them and some of them might actually go away. “God was doing for me what I could not do for myself.”

It took me almost five years to submit to God, to the program, to the fellowship, to this way of life.  “In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

The Big Book puts it this way: “Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point….” It was all in or nothing. There could be no half-measures. Sobriety demanded submission to a way of life that was suggested as a program of recovery that works best for most.

I submitted to making Amends, admitting my faults, asking for forgiveness, being humble, accepting feedback in silent gratitude. And then the joy of complete submission. Constant contact with my Higher Power through prayer and meditation. Submission to a power that wanted only the best for me and did not want me wasted. Submission to a power that kept his/her promises; new freedom and happiness; no regrets; understanding serenity; my past was now my strength, a new outlook on life and no more financial fears. I was trusted to make decisions and know that I was not alone.

By submitting completely and wholeheartedly to this program, fellowship and this Power greater than myself, I came to realize that, “God is doing for [me]  us what [I] we could not do for [myself] ourselves.”

Séamus D.
Séamus D is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in the new Orleans area.