I don't make much of a secret about my being a friend of Bill W's; while I don't talk in any detail about my fellowship or the program, folks who know me know of my relationship with the 12 Steps.

That said, one of my recent morning meditations found me examining a phenomenon that happens frequently in my fellowship, as well as the prepoderance of human interaction:  Change.  I'm not going to focus too much on my fellowship, other than to say there are some I see coming to meetings and working the steps, who, for their own reasons, stop coming to meetings and stop working the steps.  Before I'd spent much time in recovery, I'd wonder where they went, what they were doing.  I'll share what I've found out shortly, but first I want to blur the lines a little bit...

Picking an event in human history, like the Holocaust, where 13 million human beings were slaughtered, we can see how the uncovery of this horror created a groundswell of human revulsion at the sheer dimension of death and man's capacity to harm man.  Speeches were made, laws were passed, countries were founded, and human beings around the globe, no, not unanimously, but at least overwhelmingly decried, "Never Again!"  Each year there are memorials observed in various parts of the world that help keep the visage of that human-created maelstrom on the radar.  But there's an interesting thing happening... at least in my observation:  As more and more of the actual Holocaust survivors die their natural deaths, there are fewer voices to remind those of us born much later of what happened, and to keep alive the vigil so that indeed it happens "Never Again".

And at the same time as those who were alive and survived are now dying, there's a new breed of human beings who actually deny what happened, choosing instead to challenge what had been documented so carefully and 'professionally' by the debacles' actual perpetrators. 

Many who hear these re-writers of history are moved to action, counteracting those who would have everyone believe that the Holocaust was a mirage, a non-event; their profound sense of duty at keeping the story alive serves all of humanity. 

What I find most instructive about this unfolding of human history, is the number of people, mostly the youth, willing to believe, and even embrace those who seek to rewrite history... or even worse, a supposedly enlightened set of people who say, "That was then, this is now... that could never happen again... things have changed".  Oh really?

Here's what happens in recovery, truly a microcosm of the human species, when participants either seek to deny the hell they created for themselves, or worse yet say, "I can handle it... things are different.  Look, I've changed, that was then, this is now... I would never do that again!"  It took a few years, but I began seeing some of those people, who had come and gone from recovery, coming back... admitting that they left because they thought they had their addiction whipped... that "THEY COULD HANDLE IT", "I BELIEVED I HAD CHANGED, THAT I COULD NEVER DO THAT AGAIN. 

What happened?  They stopped doing what made them safe, and fell victim to the most human of all traits... the capacity to forget.  They lost all memory of how bad their life was, how their addiction had nearly killed them.  What they thought as they were leaving the fellowship was, "I've changed"; "I can handle it"; "Now that I know what I know, I won't ever do THAT again".  And every single one of them who has come back, has decried the insanity of their thinking... that the only way to maintain the change, was to continue doing the things that made them healthy... that kept them clean and sober.

Interestingly, those who have come back did so because they got so battered by the addiction that they came back in far worse shape than when they arrived the first time.  Beaten, near-death... and only then on the edge of the abyss from which there was only death, they came back to what they knew worked... meetings, the fellowship and the 12 Steps.

And so it is with human history... if the human race doesn't embrace and keep vigilant with the efforts at averting the disasters that we invoked on our-selves in the mid-20th century, we are destined to relive that savagery, I have foreseen, on a much grander scale.

I know this is not a new concept... but I heard someone say, "We couldn't possibly do that again" meaning the Holocaust, and my mind instantly locked onto what I see happen in recovery.  Remembering isn't enough... because human memory fades. 

Action is the only thing that works at maintaining change... the change being lived... those who stop taking action, stop doing what got them clean and sober, stop memorializing the end of the Holocaust (you can fill in any human, life-altering event you wish), are doomed to experience what they thought they'd escaped.

Maintaining change... it's really as easy to do it as to say it... you just have to be willing.

-Peter