We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it

I used to think that the reason I drank and used drugs was because of my past.



I'd rant and rave about the awful stuff that had happened to me, and I'd talk about how I needed to forget.



You didn't understand. You couldn't possibly understand how bad it was, how much I needed to drink because of my past. When I heard the 9th Step promises read at meetings, I would scoff inwardly at that line about the past: "We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it."



And then, when I was in treatment in 2008, my counselor told me something that really surprised me, and hurt my feelings a little bit. (Which, truthfully, was never a difficult task for anyone to accomplish.) I had written out my little life story, and it was full of self-pity, full of all of my usual excuses about "my past." Linda looked at me and said bluntly, "You don't have a past, Holly. All of this stuff is still in your present. The purpose of the 12 steps is to give you a past. Once you have gone through the steps and cleaned up your wreckage, you will gain perspective on this stuff and be able to use it, rather than using over it."

In my previous "attempts" at getting sober, I had never been willing to go past the 3rd step. I would start writing a 4th step inventory and get all wrapped up in the "woe is me." I also knew that once I quit carrying all of my hurts and grudges around with me in a figurative little suitcase, I would truly not have an excuse to drink or use again. What I never realized though, was that by carrying those things around with me, I was choosing to remain a victim.

When I was a little girl and my uncle abused me, I didn't have a choice. He was bigger and stronger. When I was 19 and almost passed out drunk, I didn't have a choice. The guy I was with was bigger and stronger, and I ended up pregnant.

But for me to continue to use those abuses as reasons to drink was to willingly place myself back into those hurtful situations. It was to continue to be a victim.

I had to choose to move on, to let go of my past and to allow God to place it into the framework of my life. It still isn't pretty, but I've made peace with it. And now I truly understand what the 9th step promises go on to say: "No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experiences can benefit others."