Submitted by Amy Isaac, grateful member of the Seneca Recovery Community
My first experience with a 12-step program was when I was in a treatment center up north. I can honestly say that the first few days were all kind of a blur because I was going through some withdrawals and dealing with my feelings coming back. In early recovery there is a lot going on in your body, in your mind, and with your emotions. After the first two weeks in treatment, I can remember going to AA meetings. I remember there being a lot of non-native people and them talking about God. All I could think about was, “What do these people know about being Native and growing up on a reservation?” I would sit in the back with my arms folded because these people didn’t know anything about me.
After the first month of going to pretty much the same meetings and seeing the same people, my ears started to open up a bit. I could understand and relate to a lot of what was being said. I still wasn’t sold on the whole thing yet, and I still had my prejudice towards it. Then one day at a meeting, this old man came up to me and spoke to me in a way I had never been spoken to before. He was understanding and he showed me compassion, and he spoke with kind, soft words. I can’t remember what he said; I just remember feeling what he said. After he got done, he asked if I had a big book. I told him no and he gave me his. I still have that book, to this day.
After that, I started to open up a little more. I started talking in meetings and listening to what was being said. I spent 56 days in treatment and to be honest, it was and is, the best thing I have ever done for myself. I would like to say I stuck with the 12-step programs when I got home, but I didn’t. I did everything they told me not to do. Sure, I would go to a meeting every now and then. I even got a sponsor, but I never really used her. I would go to her or the meeting when my life wasn’t going the way I wanted. I wasn’t going for help; I just wanted to unload my crap to a bunch of strangers, and once I did, I wouldn’t go back until I needed to unload again. I still didn’t think these guys would understand me or what I had been through. The whole “god thing” was a big turn off, too. Being Native, I had a very difficult time with the word god because of what has been done to my ancestors “in the name of god”. Plus, my vision of a god was a punishing one and he hated me because of the way I grew up.
I lived this way for the first 7 years after I stopped using, and let me tell you, those 7 years were brutal. I knew nothing and I wasn’t getting any better. I was still stuck in my own miserable existence; not getting any better and wondering, “Why am I still feeling like this”? “Why, after I put down the drugs and the alcohol – do I feel like killing myself still”? “Why is my life not any better”? Then, I got a new job and things started happening in my life. Good things started happening and amazing people started coming in to my life. I would like to think I got the gift of desperation and I made one change that changed my whole life.
Not too long after I got my new job, I met a Seneca woman in recovery and she became my sponsor. I started going to AA meetings and NA meetings with her and working the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. This time things were different. Maybe I was different. Maybe living 7 years as a dry drunk in my own hell, sober, changed me. Or, like I said, maybe I got the gift of desperation. Whatever it was, all I know is I became open-minded and willing to do something different. I thought, “If I have to go back to those meetings, then that’s what I’m willing to do”. This time, going with my sponsor, I had to sit at the table. I watched all the people and saw them laughing and seen joy and happiness on their faces! I thought, “That’s what I want”!
The more I went to meetings and the more step work I did with my sponsor, the more things changed. I found out what alcoholism really is; and in doing so I found out so much more about myself. The more I sat there, the more I heard my story. The more I seen I was not alone. I am not going to lie it was hard. Opening up to people, letting people in, being vulnerable with people was hard. Working and dealing with past traumas and my childhood was hard. Finding me has been hard, but I could not have done it without other recovering alcoholics, showing me and sharing with me their stories, their lives and most of all, their recovery. You see today the people in those rooms are my family. They show me unconditional love and compassion. They show me that recovery is possible and that I don’t have to do it alone.
Today, when I go to the meetings, the laughter and joy that I first seen going in there – I have that today. I found a higher power that works for me and yeah they call him or her god and I say it is my Creator. Don’t get me wrong, life still happens – the good, the bad, and the in-between. I still deal with childhood traumas, grief, low-self-esteem, abandonment issues, and myself. All this stuff is not as bad as it once was, and I learn everyday how to cope and work through it. I have picked up a lot of tools that help on my bad days, and those days aren’t as bad as they once were.
