Big Book 12 Steps ( pg 58 constitutionally incapable)

Yes the Big Book 12 Steps do refer to a person who is unfortunately ugh..well, (constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves). What does that even mean? A good description of it in my experience was when I was banging out meetings, going on commitments and setting up, cleaning up the hall. I was committed to my AA for sure everyday. I just couldn't get into the 12 Steps. Oh I wanted to, sure. I could talk about them all day, read about them even discuss them but actually do the work suggested? Nope. When I first came around it was the 500lb phone, now it's the 500lb pen. Man I got some serious self-will and blinding self centered fear going on here that I just can't see to get around. I got the Spiritual malady part but was convinced there was an intellectual cure for it. I'll eventually figure it all out myself? STILL THE PEOPLE WORSHIPPER... I had to search out or manipulate my acceptance other ways in AA and fortunately there were many. I could be what I thought was just as important to my group by becoming the secretary. Commitment chairman? Greeter? Cigarette butt picker upper? A real transformation in AA. Once a depressed drunk lost and alone in his emotional prison, now? A participant, a man of action sober. A man with purpose everyday and even between meetings too. Yep the outsides were great but my insides? Not so much. My life on a personal level wasn't going anywhere really but I could still dazzle with my AA stage presentation and feel good for a time or at least while the people were there. Talk, fellowship, hob nob, shuck and jive, and get my 5 minutes of fame every week while reading the secretary report to my group. Or even better was bringing donuts or sandwiches. There it seemed everyone liked me so it was easy to like myself for the hour and a half anyway as the kind and considerate donut guy with a room full of co-signers. I really believed I was being generous or unselfish. I had no idea just how sick I really was. There was a reason I withdrew from life and was drunk passed out everyday. There was more to it than not living up to daddy's expectations or in the end anybody's expectations. It was me. I was broken and nobody was going to fix me. No acceptance, no frothy emotional appeal. People were out and there was nothing else left. I needed the Spiritual realm of life but couldn't figure it out so nothing happened, nothing changed. Friends were sober and jumping in deep to the actual Big Book 12 Step AA program as written, all were changing for the better quickly but me? I just couldn't muster the power to humble myself. Too much fear. I blamed their new click, now they're better than me. I didn't know it at the time but I was a kind of people broker. A survivor. All things to all people for that needed emotional security boost. While my now distant AA Big Book 12 Step friends were talking of a Spiritual approach that solved their problems for the day, I worshipped people still. I didn't know what I didn't know? I mean hey, I didn't want to be the square peg but was trapped in my selfish existence. As if once again I couldn't keep up. One minute everyone is happy and then the next they're gone and took the happiness with them. I'd been like this forever seemingly with no change unless someone changes me and that didn't work anymore. I used them, arranged them to get my little blasts of self esteem. My emotional security boosts. I couldn't quite get the AA Big Book 12 Step suggested spiritual angle. Plus the God religious all roads lead to the Bible thing turned me right off to people so I wouldn't listen. I was ok with the (Higher Power) and spoke about it freely. Asking the Higher Power to keep me away from a drink or a drug today, no problem. Get into a jam and ask the Higher Power for extra help, great stuff. The walls went up when God talk started. "God" meant Dr. Bobs Heavenly Father and "Him" in the Book meant Jesus and then? I just don't listen. I'm unteachable so even talk of spiritual matters sounded like selling flowers at the airport or worse turning into my cousin the phony Catholic shyster who ratted me out years ago and who I was convinced I would hate till I drew my last breath. Clenched fist and tight lip was all I knew really. The rest of it? The Spiritual path suggested? It was just a blank. I knew nothing so it meant nothing. I was all willing or as much as I could be willing with Step 2 at the time. It was helping me stay away from a drink for the day. Keep me aware of Step 1 daily. But to actually move out of my way enough to make the suggested approach to the other 10 Steps? The Spiritual Path suggested in the Big Book Steps? Step from bridge to shore as the Book says? Join others on the suggested spiritual path? Nope not yet anyway.. The power to launch out into my horrific past remaining safe and protected? Writing a thorough moral inventory? It just wasn't there. I had no protection against my extreme guilt and shame. Going deep into my past was a suicide mission. I was not ready to become honest with myself, still not capable of the 12 Step work. Still incapable of letting go of my constitution. I was all about Step 1 and 2 pretty much. Had my free pass for Step 12 giving rides and being generally nice to people's faces in meetings. Talking about anything others were discussing at the discussion meeting as if some kind of AA wizard. As if I knew everything about everything except when to shut up. This was my power. Information yes, I'll gain friends and influence people with information. Jesus! Keep me away from the AA archives! Book quotes? Ebby said! Bill must think? Dr. Bob was weird. Max looks better with a new pair of glasses. What the hell is a plain ordinary whoopie party anyway! Yup. Page this or page that. I'm just a wealth of other's knowledge and well? They think it's all me. Look at me go all sober and smart? Uh, ninth grade education, laborer when I work. Kicked out of Sunday school. Without that girlfriend with a decent job and credit I'm broke living basically on the street. Yikes! I pretty much screwed up everything I ever touched but man, here in AA, the world of the unaccountable? "My brave new world" can I talk about feelings at the meeting or what! "Shut the door!" Those little old ladies hugging me, thanking me for my honesty! Yup.. that mothball lavender smell and some kind of iron corset bra thing giving you a stabbing pinch as you get bench pressed in front of everybody.. Oh yeah, he's a good boy. As the matter of fact in my head I'd do just about anything for anybody. I was quite a guy sober in my new skin. I was living the AA fellowship. Living the bumper stickers everyday. One day at a time, easy does it, live and let live. They were stuck everywhere. All good yet still not ready to let go of myself. Still dominated by selfishness. Sober yeah but self-centered to the extreme. Humble? I look damn good at the podium but would never admit it. Actually I'd deny any compliment as my version of humility. Just not ready yet for the 12 Step freedom that others seem to live in and pass around. If I could only figure out why? THE PAIN GOT WORSE SOBER... Change on my own? Talk therapy, friends fellowship. No change. 6 months sober again and again, no change. I had girlfriends in AA who I was ready to marry and live with forever but couldn't remember their last name. I was using people up fast by now. People places and things was like the tornado ripping through life. The low self worth was just feeding my character assassination. The fear was up front and obviously running my life now. A kind of paranoia really. What they think? I don't even know who they are? What I think others think I'm thinking? I'm acting on assumptions. I think if I act how I think you want me to act you'll like me. Think how I believe you think we'll have lots in common? Time wasn't healing anything anymore it was tugging on a open wound. People were now the enemy, not to be trusted. Ex girlfriends in AA. I had shite in my dinner plate. They were telling everyone how crazy I was. I couldn't go to meetings without freaking at the sight of her toyota or her friends ford in the parkinglot. I'd call some girl hoping for forgiveness and instead of listening to her voice I was obsessed with what I thought was another mans voice in the back round. I was gone man. Boxed in. Everywhere I went people were in my way. Everything I thought was all about me and I hated me. I remember thinking as the last new friendly hopefuls were off making plans to do something together without me? I wanted them to take me simply because I didn't want to be left with myself either. The old girlfriends haunting me daily as I now realize they were all good people and left me saving themselves. It was time. I was alone and ready. No more anything really. BIG BOOK STEP SPONSOR... I wish I knew what changes in a person. Where they are when they find the beginning in the end. Burned out rubble with no real direction anymore. The end of a downward spiral that really is just another horror of a day trying to live sober without any spirit. The self will no longer works, the constitution has failed. I had adjusted it, shared it, given it away even. Followed others lives to the letter hoping for courage and self worth only to find no matter how hard I tried? I couldn't get the same results. I mimic others? Do as they do expecting to get what they get? Nope, lost and alone as always. Moving from person to person looking for my savior, my Mama. Now I'm 27 living in an abandoned house. An abandoned person in an abandoned house. Married a few times? Kids who I'll never really know or understand. Money? Career? Wheels? How about the finer things in life like food or a drivers license. I keep to myself because everyone who knows of me is afraid if me. When you've had enough of yourself you know. Times up. Like the Book said roughly. Should I kill myself? No I'll wait. 2 bottles and oblivion. Nowhere to run to. So I get the Big Book 12 Step sponsor. Why or how I never knew it's what I needed I may never know. I thought I was honest with myself putting the drink down but I guess the honesty was what was also going to keep it down. I couldn't keep the drink down. I either didn't have enough honesty or it wasn't the right kind. Something was wrong, off..I was incapable, powerless. The Book said the booze was just a symptom of underlying causes. So it's the causes that need to be addressed. My frieken head. Why I think like I do, why such a fragmented constitution. A constitution that was really other people who I was trying to emulate. The angry father who demanded respect. When I acted like him people ran away from me yet I stayed with him afraid to break free? The Uncle who was a bigot, always better than everyone else. I would laugh and joke with him as if the rest of the world is a ghetto full of nobodies going nowhere. While we were somehow special. My mother who would always save me so how could I not want to be like her and save everybody else. I became the caregiver initially doing well in AA. Pretty much everyone shows up as a sparrow with a tattered wing. I seemed to be drawn to broken people in need of fixing, in need of care. Trying to have 2 or 3 friends without turning one against the other out of fear? Always searching for validation from people. They seem to always like each other more than me? Sharing imaginary secrets behind my back or when I'm not there I just know I'm missing out on my control and now they're closer friends.. In my constitution I'm better than everyone I have to be. I have to turn it all around. They're all screwed up and I'm not. Am I that overly sensitive? That insecure? Well yes. Yes I am or lets say "have been" very sick. Very Alcoholic..I fit the description in the Book of a "real alcoholic". I am spiritless, morally fragmented. A man of weak character who alone cannot differentiate between right and wrong especially when it comes to Alcohol.. I am obsessed with selfish behaviors and thoughts that are driven by self centered fear. Not good, no not good at all. Hopeless apart from Spiritual help I have tried to stay sober but always drink again. Ok I give up. THE 3RD STEP DECISION... By the skin of my teeth I got into the written directions, the 12 Step work. Stepped from bridge to shore. Joined my sponsor on the Spiritual path suggested in the Big Book 12 Steps. I surrendered in my Step 3 and did launch out on my course. I had courage. Strength. I was capable of becoming honest with myself. So yeah. I was constitutionally incapable of being honest with myself and I didn't die. Still hung around AA. I put the booze down and lived as long as I could in my selfishness and fear. When it was time to change it was time to change. Not before not after. When I was ready to be reborn? I surrendered to a whole new attitude and outlook on life. I had the power to accept a psychic change offered in the 12 Steps. But hey...That's me and my experience. It's Alcoholics Anonymous and not Stepsherpa's Anonymous for a reason right? It's no longer all about me and what a relief that is. I'm free! I can walk the Big Book 12 Step spiritual path hand in hand offering fellowship and hope day by day with the new man. I have been gifted with a way out of self centered fear for the man who suffers as I have. All that was needed for me was not to need anything. It's the willingness that's key. Who you or I am seems to matter little. The Spiritual path is wide, I have never felt crowded. I am a free man today. I will give you a hand up. I will show you what I have done to keep on the path. I will offer myself freely if you fall. I will wait for a time when you are slow. I will step aside and let you pass if you must. So the endgame here? Now that I am constitutionally capable of being honest with myself? I practice the Big Book 12 Steps keeping myself Spiritually fit that another may benefit. This is my psychic change. A purpose, a reason for living sober.