Step 2 of Alcoholics Anonymous:
We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
There is a great deal of depth in this simple statement. “We came” means that we took the first step, we opened the door to the possibility. “We came to” refers to “waking up” or coming to consciousness following our initial step of Faith. “Came to believe” is yet another movement toward our Higher Power and it suggests that we had a fundamental change of heart.
I came to my Higher Power while I was in Fairview Psychiatric Hospital, following a 5-day drug-induced psychosis that laid me flat on my back–having to be treated and cared for by mental professionals. In that terrifying loneliness of my own mind I began to realize the harm that I had done to my body and spirit. Had I not been “locked down” for 7 days I am not sure that I would have ever come to God. During this period I “came to” psychologically and spiritually.
In the days that followed I had a profound sense of comfort and comparative serenity as I came to believe that my Higher Power was drawing near to me as I was drawing near to him/her.
Where had my thinking gotten me to this point in my life? I was homeless, very much lonely, afraid, paranoid, depressed, seeing hallucinations and being told by my doctors that I was “mentally ill.” This is where my best thinking got me.
But there is a power greater than myself that heard my cry for help and answered. I needed to be restored to sanity. In meetings recently I have heard insanity defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Personally, I am not sure that I expected much of anything at this time in my life. On some level I knew that I was insane. But as the days and weeks passed following my entering treatment, the fog began to lift and I began to see just how insane my life had become.
