The idea of surrender presented in the first step—“admitted we were powerless over lust, that our lives had become unmanageable”—seems to turn many people off from even giving recovery an honest go.  That’s probably just as well, because the admission of powerlessness and unmanageability is not an aspect of recovery—it’s the very basis of it. Nothing works without the complete and unconditional capitulation.

So it’s no wonder that many subscribe to the notion that before they can get better, most addicts need to get worse i.e. they need to hit bottom.

It’s extremely important to qualify that bottom is not an objective term; to the contrary, it is very much subjective.  There are no rules for how bad your life has to be or how crazy you need to have become before you are allowed to say that you’ve had all you can take.   When to call it quits is a judgment call that differs for everyone.  You don’t hit the bottom, you hit your bottom.   Each of us has our own breaking point.

Here’s a good starting point.  Ask an active addict, “Is this as bad as you ever want to feel again in your life?”  “Can you imagine things getting any worse, without you losing your mind?”

Only the individual can decide that he’s sick and tired of being sick and tired.  As many an old-timer has been heard to say, “When do you hit bottom?  Whenever you stop digging!”

You can’t tell someone else they’ve hit bottom.  This is particularly difficult for codependent spouses because while the addict may be willing to go through more hell before he or she is ready to admit what’s happening, the codependent may already be at the brink.  In fact, in a marriage between a codependent and an addict, the codependent will often hit bottom in their codependency before the addict has hit bottom in their addiction.  The codependent can actually begin to recover while the addict is still out there “doing more research.”

Today it is common to see more people coming into the 12 step rooms that are “high bottoms.”  Whether the addict is just starting to face consequences or already has one foot in the grave, it’s all the same disease.  A high bottom addict once said, “I’d rather spend the rest of my life in recovery trying to prove that I belong there, than spend the rest of my life out of recovery trying to prove that I don’t.” The Twelve Step meetings have effectively “raised the bottom” of addiction.  Instead of playing things out to their death, insanity or institutions, addicts now learn from the stories of others who followed the disease further down the hole and lived to tell the tale.

Returning to God

You don’t have to be on your very last leg to call out to God.  You can turn things over to him at any point you want.  It does seem to be human nature that we cannot seem to bring ourselves to believe just how dependent we are and just how powerful He is until we are standing at the brink of utter collapse.  But it doesn’t need to be that way.

You can surrender to the One when your existence becomes too crazy or painful to bear which is surrender out of fear or you can surrender to God right now, out of love.  The former is called humiliation, the latter is humility.  They both get you to the same place, one just necessitates going through more discomfort that the other.

Surrender is Admission

There’s a terrible misconception that surrender is the same as loss.   But surrender is not loss, it’s not even compromise.  When you surrender you don’t give up anything.  You just admit the TRUTH.  You give in to it.  Even the perfectly righteous surrender to God.  They want to live in perfect harmony with truth.  Surrender isn’t just for people who have messed up their lives.  It Is the basis of relating to reality.

The eleventh step teaches us to begin each day by acknowledging our dependence on God.  This admission serves as the foundation for everything else we set out to do during the day.  We cannot start building until we have that foundation.  I admit that I didn’t put myself here on this world.  I did not create my own life.  I am not an existence apart from God.  I am an extension of Him, very much dependent upon Him in every way and at all times.  Because I admit this, I am truly grateful.  Everything in this program is built on the simple acknowledgement that God is God, and we are His people.  He is the father, and we are his children.  It is from this acceptance and admission that all growth ensues and all healing takes place.