“I must turn in all things” (Chapter One, Big Book)
Imagine a room with a radio built into the wall. The radio tells me what to do. Now imagine it only has one channel, with no dials: no ability to adjust the volume, no ability to change the channel. That’s me before recovery. I can be excused because I was ignorant that there was another way. The only channel was the devil’s channel. [If you don’t like the word ‘devil’ you can call it the ego, or self, or addiction, or something.]
Now imagine the person coming into recovery. Some technicians come in and adjust the radio. They can’t get rid of the devil’s channel, but they do install a dial, which gives me access to a different station, and I can do what that station tells me to do instead. That new channel is the God channel. The only problem is that the dial keeps turning, by itself, back to the bad channel.
I’m powerless over:
- The system: the fact I have to listen to the radio
- The system: the fact that, to decide what to do, I have to listen to one of the stations on the radio
- How many stations there are (before recovery, one; in recovery, two)
- What each station is broadcasting (the devil and God decide that, respectively)
- The fact that the dial, once turned to the God channel, turns repeatedly back to the devil’s channel.
What I’m not powerless over:
- Turning the dial back to the God channel
- Obeying what the God channel says (knowing what the devil’s channel has been saying)
“Everything is in the hands of God except the fear of God” (in other words: once in recovery, I can freely choose to fear God, in the sense of standing in awe of a great power, who I recognise as the Authority above me).
Powerless, yes; helpless, no.