Step Two

"Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

There was way too much insanity in my life when I was using drugs and stuff.... I had no faith whatsoever that my Goddess would remove it from me!

The 12x12 says there are three types of addicts: those who won't believe in God, those who can't and those who do believe in God but don't have the kind of faith it takes. I was the third kind of addict.

Some people don't believe that clinical depression is a form of insanity. I believe it is. It makes no sense, and has little basis in reality. Oh sure, when I was going through it, my mind was convinced there had to be some reason for it. I latched onto whatever bad episodes had occurred in my life and blamed it on those. I've been through sexual, physical, psychological and emotional abuse in addition to losing my mother at the tender age of three. Surely that was enough to have caused depression. The thing is, those incidents shouldn't have caused 20+ years of suicidal ideation. I really believe those incidents caused my PTSD -- of which I have most symptoms.

My insanity was what led me to use drugs. I tried everything before drugs I could think of (except doctors and medication) to get rid of it. I studied all kinds of occult, prayed to many different deities, studied Buddhism in depth and sought enlightenment. I even tried atheism at various periods during my life. I did all kinds of religious rituals. I stuck with the ones that seemed to work, and discarded the ones that didn't. But nothing relieved the insanity. My poor self esteem (which goes hand in hand with depression most of the time) led me to stay in abusive relationships much longer then I should have. Those abusive "relationships," of course, only made things worse.... I'm a little bit stoic at times, feisty and not the type to hole up and pull covers over my head. I didn't try suicide till I was in my late twenties. Life was a constant battle between me, myself and I -- digging for reasons to stay alive. My mother's death probably kept me from trying suicide for many many years. I didn't want to do that to my oldest daughter.... I would get up and get out of the house at least once a day. I didn't want to complain about something as unacceptable in my family as simple feelings. Quite simply I hid the way I was really feeling quite often.

I figured if God was real, She or He would take my depression away just because I prayed that S/He would.

Things got much worse when I started using drugs. It was around the time I started smoking marijuana all the time that I really developed serious psychosis.... I went off my meds quite often and finally stayed off them for the entire three years I was homeless. I had a lot of practice at pretending everything was okay. I had many people that did not spend a lot of time around me snowed that everything was okay and I was totally sane. I kind of have an ear for what people want to hear anyway.

The meds didn't help with the depression (which I still wasn't communicating about) and I was sure they wouldn't help with the rape hallucinations (which scared the crap out of me.)

It says in the 12x12 "obviously, the dilemma of the wanderer from faith is that of profound confusion..... He is the bewildered one." I was very confused. I still am, to some degree. I'm still not sure why God/dess doesn't want to take my schizophrenia away and if S/He can't -- why not? I mean, I tried faith in all sorts of forms to relieve it. I had to accept that God/dess works through doctors and probably helped the doctors and scientists develop the medications I take that work so well. I had to accept that faith in God involves listening to and communicating with others what is really going on.

My Higher Power is love. I've always known love is powerful. It can heal wounds. I just don't know if it can heal brains....

The reason my higher power is love is because when I was in jail, I got a bookmark that said God is Love.

Many things that had happened in the past convinced me that this is true. It seems like the Godless types in my family and in my life were lacking in spirituality too. I've been in several situations where I could just feel "the love in the room," and I wasn't alone in that. It always made me feel better. The fact that it was "in the room" and others could feel it helped convince me. It helped make sense out of the fact that people tend to fall in love with each other instead of people just falling in unrequitted love all the time. I always knew that God was everywhere, and love is everywhere too. Animals feel love. I liked the idea of love making the world go around. This concept freed me from believing or feeling obligated to believe everything people say and have said about God. It helped me to sort out the truth from the lies. I know God isn't capable of anything but loving behavior and it gave me peace and reassurance that there is such a thing as divine forgiveness, grace and tolerance..... God loves us and wants us to love ourselves as well as others.

It was God who relieved me of addiction. God and Goddess put me in a place where I could get treated for all my insanity instead of sending me to prison (for the crime I committed.) I guess love has to flow between people too, for it to work it's miracles..... So, love did restore me to sanity -- although it certainly wasn't what I pictured at all.

It's okay to be disgusted with religion in AA and NA. I get disgusted with dogma a lot. I know that love touches all people (although many people don't want anything to do with it, after all). This concept convinces me that God doesn't turn his back on anyone. That whatever religion or culture people belong to doesn't really matter, because unless someone is truly evil, they will be brought to a better place when they die.... Love is AWESOME.