Summary | Excerpt

Excerpt from Sane: Mental Illness, Addiction, and the Twelve Steps

I remember the first time I read the Twelve Steps at Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I sat down with my cup of coffee, avoiding everyone’s eyes, and stared at the steps on the wall. I made it through Step One all right—didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I got the general idea—and then I came to Step Two: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I tripped over the word sanity, nearly laughed out loud, and then nearly cried.

“Sanity” was not something I was particularly familiar with.  I have a mental illness, bipolar disorder, and that in itself had taken the sanity I desperately wanted away from me time and again. Compounded with years of the insanity of alcoholism and addiction, I was, at that time, pretty well convinced that sanity was something I could never hope for. I sat there as that AA meeting was called to order, slumped in my chair and wondering if I should just walk out. I thought there was no way I could ever have what the people around me seemed to have—laughter, companionship, stability—and sanity.

I was very wrong. The Twelve Steps lead me on a fascinating, rewarding, difficult, and powerful journey to a place of ever-increasing sanity and stability, a place I never thought I’d be.

This book tries to take the Steps back to the basics, setting out some suggestions and ideas for how they can be practiced by someone who deals with mental illness. In many ways, we will work the Steps no differently than anyone else—addiction is addiction. But the fact is, there are certain challenges the Steps appear to pose on first glance that may make them seem intimidating, or even impossible, for those of us with mental illness. They are by no means impossible, and they don’t have to be intimidating. This book integrates commentary on the Steps themselves with ideas on how someone with a mental illness may find them particularly challenging, and particularly useful in all areas of their recovery. 

The Steps aren’t the only things that support mental wellness. They didn’t cure my mental illness, and they won’t. That’s not their job, and they don’t claim to be a miracle cure for anything. But, practiced thorough and consistently, they can light the way on what is sometimes a very confusing path to recovery. The Twelve Steps, in conjunction with all the other essential supports to mental health, are exactly what the Big Book says they can be: they are “a program for living.”

When I was still caught in addiction, and still not able to manage my mental illness, basic living was a constant struggle. Between the Steps and ongoing mental health management, living becomes a truly amazing thing.