JACS Library - Our Stories

JACS: Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependent Persons, and Significant Others

JACS LIBRARY - OUR STORIES

A Fifth Step on Mother's Day

There's no place like home. There's no place like home. I am glad to be back in the midst of this sober family. I love you all for being part of my sober experience. The whole group has become more intense for me.

Please, allow me to share. At a Saturday night midnight meeting, a candlelight meeting, I shared the following. Perhaps, I was very tired and my defenses came down. Maybe, it was the right circumstance. This was the first time that I was able to share this without crying. I feel the need to share this again with more of my family.

My mother was my greatest enabler for many years. She had breast cancer when I was about seven years old. She lived with cancer and constant pain for all her years. She lost both breasts and a rib to the disease.

She was 67 years old when this took place. I was about 31 years old and in my active addiction She had a broken left shoulder from a fall. She had been prescribed injectable Demerol for the pain.

I followed my pattern. I took the Demerol and Mom got injections of water. She had been prescribed morphine in the past and I injected her with water. She had been prescribed Methadone and I injected her with water. This pattern had been going on for years.

I took every medication she had. She often gave them to me willingly and denied herself even her sleeping pills. At the end, she kept her medications in plastic bags pinned to her inner clothing. It mattered not. I would find a way to feed my addiction with Mom's medications. She slept and I stole.

Mom used to loan me money till I could get to the bank the next day. This was before the advent of the Automatic Teller Machines. This night, she refused to loan me the $30 I asked - begged - for.

Knowing my devious ways, she tried to hide the money between her seat cushion and the arm of her chair. Being an active alcoholic, I saw this move. I picked her up by the elbow of her good arm ( I did not want to hurt her!). I deposited her on the floor and pocketed the money.

Mom was on the floor. She was going, "Heh, heh, heh." Breathing hard. I told her that I knew she wanted me to leave and deposited her back in her chair. Of course, I was the one who wanted to leave. I had my money now and could afford to feed the monster.

I found out Mom slept with a knife under her pillow that night. So afraid was she of her only son. The next morning, Mom was nowhere to be found. There was a rapping on the door and the police demanded entry.

They told me that I could leave and give them the door keys. Else, I was under arrest for assault. I turned over the keys and went to prepare to sleep in my car. As I passed the staircase, I heard my mother crying. She was on the landing above and was watching me being escorted to the elevator by the police.

Mothers being what they are, I was back home in three days. I then found out she was not breathing hard when I put her on the floor. She was trying to call. "Help! Help! Help!" She had not the breath to scream or cry out. I made elegant promises and meant them all. I would stay clean and sober. Did not happen then.

Two years later, still addicted, I got on my knees to my mother. She was 69 years old and shrinking. I was watching a clock slowly ticking down and there was no way to rewind the mechanism. I was watching Mom dying.

I told her, "You must hate me." She put me on her lap. I had to look way down and she had to look way up in order to make eye contact. She told me that, "You are my son and I love you. I do not understand what you are doing. I only want you to be happy."

I went back to my seat on the couch in tears. Mom continued, "What will you you do when I am gone?" Good question, I thought. I answered, " I will probably jump out that window."

Three weeks later, I came home and a chill went through my body as I went to put the key into the lock. I knew Mom was gone. So it was. I called the police. After taking all her drugs. I was still an addict. They removed the body that once belonged to Mom.

I sat on my spot on the couch. I looked long and hard at the window. I decided not to die that night. The next day, I started my journey towards sobriety. I enrolled in a methadone program. Still drank.

How to make amends for the past? A water injection cannot be changed. The money stolen constantly from Mom cannot be returned. Not to its rightful owner.

My amends are on a 24 hour a day basis. The amends to Mom start and flow from my getting and maintaining my sobriety.

I am doing the best I can to help my sobriety grow. This allows me to be the person that I can be. Perhaps, the person my mother raised me to be. A being of love. The seeds were planted by the love of my parents. Mom, used to take homeless people upstairs and feed and clothe them.

I am carrying on the tradition Mom showed me - in my own humble way. Hey , Mom, are you watching? Can you see? Ira, your son, is trying to do the next right thing. I choose to believe that Mom is watching. That she knows. I love you, Mom.

Thought I could do this without the tears. Guess not. As I shared this, I realized this was par of a Fifth Step. Blessed by being around some of my sober AA family, I was enfolded in love. It is all right. A friend in program and I spoke on the meaning of the Fifth Step for a while.

<Step Five "Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."

ALL OF A.A.'s Twelve Steps ask us to go contrary to our natural desires . . . they all deflate our egos. When it comes to ego deflation, few Steps are harder to take than Five. But scarcely any Step is more necessary to longtime sobriety and peace of mind than this one.

A.A. experience has taught us we cannot live alone with our pressing problems and the character defects which cause or aggravate them. If we have swept the searchlight of Step Four back and forth over our careers, and it has revealed in stark relief those experiences we'd rather not remember, if we have come to know how wrong thinking and action have hurt us and others, then the need to quit living by ourselves with those tormenting ghosts of yesterday gets more urgent than ever. We have to talk to somebody about them.

So intense, though, is our fear and reluctance to do this, that many A.A.'s at first try to bypass Step Five. We search for an easier way - which usually consists of the general and fairly painless admission that when drinking we were sometimes bad actors. Then, for good measure, we add dramatic descriptions of that part of our drinking behavior which our friends probably know about anyhow.>

In sharing my story above, what is gained ?

Admitted to God...

Surely, God already knows???? For me, the admittance to God is the admittance that I can be forgiven. That I need forgiveness. More, that I deserve to be forgiven. Heck, that I wish to be forgiven. The shame is transmuted to guilt. Shame is a *state of being*. Guilt can be worked on through the 9th Step. By making amends. I am ready to be forgiven and to move on.

...to ourselves

Most assuredly, I already know of the acts I perpetrated in my insanity??? Yep.
However, the Step asks that I *admit* to it. Admit to full responsibility for the act. For the acknowledgement of the pattern from which it stems. The following Steps allow me ot break the pattern. The link in the chain is snapped!

...and to another human being

Why, for the sake of love, why? Herein lies the beauty of the 5th Step for me. I can *pretend* to forgive myself. God, sort of by definition, is in the business of forgiveness. Another human being, ah, that is a different matter.

However, in program we do the 5th Step after the first four... with the help of those with what we seek. Sobriety. My doing the previous Steps put me in touch with *the winners* in AA. They do not judge. I happened to do my 5th with my sponsor.

He did not comment on, " the exact nature of Ira's wrongs." Rather, he shared situations from his life which paralleled mine. We spoke of the alcoholic belief in *terminal uniqueness."

I understood from his sharing that no human is without a past. Humans make mistakes. Mistakes are correctable. With contrition (tshuva), amends can be made.

I learn from my mistakes. Only, when I am able to share the pain of them with another human being. Feedback or not, the Fifth Step freed me to move on in the Steps. To accept that I am human. We are perfectly human and, therefore, humanly imperfect. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God's world by mistake.

We need a 5th Step. The Big Book (pg. 72) states,
"... If we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking."

How has the 5th Step been worked in our Sober journeys? What interpretations of the 5th Step helped us to work this, sometimes difficult, Step?

Gratitude,
M...