Step 2

“Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

 Love is a power greater than us. And it has the power to bring sanity to our mind. For true Love is the essence of reality itself, an infinite and mysterious power that from its sheer beauty and radiance has compelled the formless to take form as the life, world, and universe we know. On the human level, love has the power to quiet every mental and emotional disturbance. True love accepted in the heart and given to one’s self quiets inner emotional turmoil, trauma, and distress. True love become known in the mind, adds clarity and perspective to the content of thought and can also quiet mental and emotional disturbance. In addiction, our thoughts are distorted and twisted out of perspective to reality. We have thoughts of self-loathing and contempt. We have thoughts of imminent disaster on a continuing basis. Our whole orientation toward life has been hijacked by malfunction deep within the brain through which the mind believes that use of the substance is as important as survival itself. Love corrects this distortion by presenting the addict with reality and guiding him or her through the process of recovery by which the brain malfunction is corrected. In true recovery, reason is restored to its operational capacity to control impulse and properly assess reality at any given moment. Love has the power to do just this and all of its ways to the recovery process. It replaces the object of addiction with a deep-seated continually satisfying state of awareness in which one is much more in touch with their own and estimable value and the preciousness of life. In recovery, the basic human need of establishing and maintaining a meaningful, ongoing emotional connection with another human being becomes the object of living, instead of the blind, destructive, obsession for chemically induced pleasure. The 12 steps themselves are a prescription to learn and express love in a genuine way and if a person follows their suggestions they identify and correct attitudes and behaviors that are unloving, in that they result in effects that do not honor the value of a person or other people.

To the degree that I recovering addict gets in touch with Love, a true and genuine higher power, and follows the ways of love in their recovery, to that extent do they become restored to sanity. As a person truly engages in the 12 step recovery program, they see over time that their mind functions in a much more productive and effective way. It is by a clear apprehension of reality and appropriate assessment of causes and conditions, that person can make the best decisions in response to that reality of the moment. This is another way of framing sanity and it is a certain result of finding and living a life of true Love.