“After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again.” (The Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)
“Some will be drunk the day after making their resolutions; most of them within a few weeks.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)
“They are over-remorseful and make many resolutions, but never a decision.” (The Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)
“3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)
“Let him know you are available if he wishes to make a decision and tell his story, but do not insist upon it if he prefers to consult someone else.” (Chapter 7, Big Book)
“If you have already made a decision, and an inventory of your grosser handicaps, you have made a good beginning.”
“Decision is the whole business here; a door must be shut for ever.” (G. K. Chesterton)
When I made the decision to stay sober, it had to be a decision that would prevail forever, not a temporary decision, not a provisional decision, not a hope, not an ideal, but a commitment to a course of action: that course of action was building a life around the programme and running my life in accordance with the programme.
The door must slam and lock, and the keys must be lost.
I did ‘take my will back’ for a couple of years (i.e. reversed my commitment to place AA at the centre of my life, and attended only sporadically), but I made another decision to commit to AA, and that decision has not been reversed.
Along the way I make mistakes and have certainly had excursions into self-willed behaviour, but the basic scaffolding of turning my will and life over to God has not been decommissioned or dismantled.
I don’t think it’s possible to ‘take one’s will back many times a day’ in the sense of reversing Step Three.
Either the Step has been taken or it hasn’t.
If it hasn’t, it’s possible to play-act it, as I did for a few months before I got finally sober, taking some of the actions of those who had turned their wills and lives over but without the actual decision having been made itself.
If there’s real double-mindedness, a lukewarm commitment to the programme, a constant back-and-forth, a continual to-and-fro, a dilettantish dabbling, a taking-what-I-want-and-leaving-the-rest, flurries of activities interspersed with periods of idleness and programme amnesia—where I’m living as though I really do not have a programme—the (rhetorical) question is: Did I really take Step Three in the first place?
For me, Step Three is like the decision to move to a new country.
Firstly, I must actually move there and set up home.
Secondly, there is the job of becoming a good citizen.
I might make a terrible hash of the latter, but that does not mean that the former has not taken place.
When I make a terrible hash of the latter, I’ve not reversed the decision to live there.
Contrariwise, if I have not moved there, I might eat the food of the country, listen to its radio, and learn the language, but moved I have not.
In fact, the latter person might be doing a better impression of a national of that country, but it is the former who is actually living there.
I find it useful periodically to check that my Step Three decision really is in place:
Is my life structured (albeit with flaws) around God and AA, or are the latter adjuncts to ‘my life’ (‘my life’, ‘my programme’, ‘my steps’, ‘my sponsor’, ‘my meetings’, ‘my higher power’)?