The Second Surrender

Every member who follows the AA program realizes two foundational things are being asked of him to surrender over-first is the admission of powerlessness over alcohol, and second is the unmanageability of their life.

We must accept that we are not going to regain power over alcohol, but likewise nowhere in the Big Book do the authors state that your life will eventually become manageable. By inference, their description of the person who expects the benefits of managing well will be disappointed. As recorded in Chapter Five of the Big Book, “Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well? Is it not evident to all the rest of the players that these are the things he wants? And do not his actions make each of them wish to retaliate, snatching all they can get out of the show? Is he not, even in his best moments, a producer of confusion rather than harmony?”

But my personal experience and observation of many others are that slowly and subtly as sober years in AA move along a member can absorb the idea that he should be demonstrating that he is successful in integrating back into a healthy life- often witnessed as he is successfully managing his life again.

The road does narrow for us. By that, I mean behavior that was once acceptable is no longer so. But we find that the prescription to turn our will and our life over to the care of God is not something that we can permanently check off our list. It’s part of our daily challenge as our rising success and confidence act against it, convincing us (along with the chorus of approbation from the World) that we can go it alone by managing well.

So, what slowly happens is that the very competency we gained by the daily practice of the principles of the program becomes the reason we no longer do it. Oh, we may acknowledge that we need our Higher Power to stay away from the first drink, but in all the other areas of life, we have regained our former mastery [or in some cases like myself, acquired it for the first time.]

Over time this produces the pressure for a “Second Surrender.” This can either come about from some bitter disappointment or setback or more often as a growing sense that things are just not the same as the buoyancy we experienced in our earlier sobriety.

What’s the remedy for this? How do we get back the sense of excitement and expansion that was so defining of our beginning years in the program-or can something else replace it?