Step Two: We came to believe in a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

The first Spiritual Principle found in the Second Step is Hope.

“OK, so I’m insane. Now what?,” You ask? In Step Two, we are offered hope that we too, can get better. Hope is a belief in something that is possible. It doesn’t mean that by working this step we will be instantly restored to sanity. It means that if we continue to stay clean and sober and work the rest of the steps, that we could be restored to sanity. That sounds like a pretty good idea! How do we be restored?

In the First Step we learned that we were addicts and or alcoholics and that our lives had become unmanageable as a result. In the Second Step, we come to learn that the answer to this un-manageability is a Power greater than ourselves. It doesn’t say God. Just a Power greater than ourselves.

We begin by continuing to practice the Open-mindedness and willingness we learned in the First Step. Open-minded to the idea that this Power does exist and there’s hope for us and a way out of this crazy life we’d been living. Using the Willingness from Step One, we can begin trying to rely on this Power. We show our willingness by going to meetings, taking the suggestions and listening to other’s experience and how they dealt with similar situations. We then begin applying those solutions to our own problems and stop doing the crazy things we were used to doing.

The next Spiritual Principle is Faith. Faith in this sense doesn’t mean a religious conviction. In fact, there is nothing religious about the 12 Steps of Recovery. Spiritual, yes, religious no. Faith in this sense means we can “act as if.” “Acting as if” doesn’t mean lying to our sponsor or others, or doing things to look good or sound good. In this sense, it means living our lives in a way that we believe we have already been restored to sanity. After taking suggestions and applying these new answers to our life we start to have a little faith that things will be ok and they will work out for us too, if we work for them.

Following Faith comes Trust. Now trust may be something new to us, something we may never have had before; except when we went to the dope man and gave him some cash and trusted him to come back with a little bag full of drugs. But now that we’re clean and sober, we have to re-learn how to trust in a Power greater than ourselves. We do that first by trusting what others are telling us is true, that they’ve been clean and sober for x-amount of time; that they have some joy in their lives today; they believe in us and want to help us for nothing in return. We can learn to trust in the process of recovery.

Finally, having a little more humility that we practiced in the First Step, will help us here, as well. Our best thinking was what got us here, to this treatment center or to our first meeting, or to jail or the hospital. By realizing that we can’t do this alone, we become humble enough to throw our hands up in surrender and ask for help. We ask others who have gone before us for help. We ask a Power greater than ourselves for help. We learn to become reliant upon this Power and get the evidence we need to go on to Step Three. Go to Step Three