Step Three and the bus-driver

In a healthy person, emotional impulses are not followed simply because they are there. A bus-driver does not suddenly change route because one of the passengers so requests. In an active addict, it is as though the bus-driver, on hearing one of the bus's passengers request a route change, immediately changes route, regardless of whether the proposed change makes sense.

In recovery, the addict voice will still be there for a while. The addict voice is essentially a wanting machine. It wants drink and drugs and to act out. It wants all sorts of other things too. We do not have to do what a particular voice in our head tells us. Surrender means dropping the behaviour pattern of simply obeying every emotional impulse that passes through one's mind as though it is the great, wise God we have pledged allegiance to. Surrender to impulse is essentially obedience to ourselves. Surrender to God means saying to ourselves, 'it does not matter what I want. I have decided to surrender to God's will instead (on the basis that this is in my best interests)'.

On our own we are powerless, but with God, the transformative process of the Steps, and the fellowship, we are not powerless. Power is available.

The first time we resist an internal impulse, there will be enormous pain. It will take a while to practise resisting the impulse and actively seeking God's protection and guidance sufficiently for the mechanism to work 100% of the time. One might fail for a while, but one must persist.

What is interesting in the stories in the Big Book is that there are several examples amongst the founders of admitting the paradox that, whilst we are powerless on our own, we have power if we stick together. Anyone can stay sober for a day, and anyone can stay abstinent from acting out for a day, provided that obedience to self is withdrawn and replaced with obedience to God and sound principle, with the support of people around us in recovery.

The only thing standing in our way is an unwillingness to feel bad when we resist. Oh well! We'll just have to put on our big girl's panties and withstand the emotion. It is, after all, just emotion, and will pass.