I don’t particularly like failing.
I don’t like being wrong. I don’t like discovering that I’ve hurt somebody. I don’t like having to admit that something I was absolutely certain about turned out to be absolutely wrong. I don’t like rejection. I don’t like finding out that despite my best efforts, something simply didn’t work.
And I certainly don’t like watching an alcoholic relapse.
But here’s something recovery has been teaching me for a long time: Failure and failing are not necessarily the same thing.
Failing is… something that happens. Failure is…what I sometimes decide it means about me.
Alcoholics Anonymous has given me an entirely different way of looking at both.
We Came Here Because Something Failed
Think about it. Most of us didn’t arrive at Alcoholics Anonymous because our personal management system was working beautifully. I mean, lets get real. Quite the opposite.
The Big Book describes our situation rather clearly: “Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly.” That’s pretty strong language. They failed utterly.
- My willpower failed.
- My good intentions failed.
- My promises failed.
- My ability to control my drinking failed.
- My carefully constructed explanations failed.
- My attempts to manage everybody and everything around me failed.
And strangely enough, that failure became the doorway to recovery.
That creates an interesting question: What if some of the things I call failures are actually invitations? Not because failure is inherently good. It isn’t. Failure can hurt people, can have consequences, can destroy relationships, careers, finances, and sometimes lives. But failure can also expose something I desperately needed to see.
Relapse Is Serious. But It Doesn’t Have to Be the Final Chapter.
Let’s take perhaps the most frightening example in AA: relapse. We should never romanticize it. People die from alcoholism. A relapse after a period of abstinence can have devastating consequences. So when somebody drinks again, telling them, “Don’t worry about it, relapse is just part of recovery,” may sound compassionate, but I don’t believe it’s particularly helpful. Let me be clear – relapse does not have to be a part of anybody’s recovery. It isn’t a requirement. But neither does relapse have to become a verdict.
The more useful question may be:
- What happened?
- Where did the spiritual connection begin to weaken?
- Where did willingness disappear?
- Where did self-reliance creep back in?
- Did meetings become enough?
- Did sponsorship become optional?
- Did prayer become mechanical?
- Did helping another alcoholic get replaced by thinking about myself?
- Did I slowly begin believing that because I hadn’t had a drink for a while, alcohol was no longer my problem?
The point isn’t to conduct an autopsy so we can assign blame. The point is to learn something that might save a life next time. A relapse can become nothing more than another terrible drinking episode. Or, if the alcoholic survives and becomes willing, it can become information. Painful and sometimes expensive information, but information nonetheless. Don’t waste it.
Successful People Fail – A Lot
There’s a popular idea that successful people don’t fail. History suggests almost exactly the opposite.
People who accomplish difficult things generally accumulate a remarkable number of failed attempts, rejected ideas, bad decisions, experiments that didn’t work, and doors slammed in their faces. The difference isn’t the absence of failure. It’s what they do with it. That statement is so important, I’m going to say it again:
The difference isn’t the absence of failure. It’s what they do with it.
Failure becomes feedback. That distinction matters in recovery. If I touch a hot stove and burn my hand, that’s painful. If I repeatedly touch the same stove and then complain that stoves are unfair, we’re dealing with something quite different. Recovery asks me to become teachable. What is this experience trying to show me?
- Maybe I need more humility.
- Maybe I need greater dependence upon God.
- Maybe I owe somebody an amend.
- Maybe I need to listen more carefully to my sponsor.
- Maybe I need to stop trying to control an outcome.
- Maybe I need to accept that I simply wasn’t the right person for something.
- Maybe my idea wasn’t as brilliant as I thought it was.
- Maybe I need to try again.
Or perhaps, and this one can be particularly difficult, maybe I need to let it go. Discernment means learning the difference.
The Failure Can Become Part of the Message
Here’s where this gets really interesting for those of us in AA. My failures aren’t useful only to me. They may eventually become useful to somebody else. Think about what we actually do when we carry the message. We don’t sit across from another alcoholic and present a résumé of flawless spiritual achievement. We tell the truth.
- Here’s what happened.
- Here’s what I did.
- Here’s where it took me.
- Here’s what didn’t work.
- Here’s what finally did.
- Here’s where I screwed up again.
- Here’s how the Steps helped me clean it up.
- Here’s what God taught me through it.
- And here’s what I’m trying to do differently today.
That’s the language of experience. The alcoholic sitting across from me probably doesn’t need another person demonstrating perfection. They may desperately need someone who can say: “Yeah. I’ve been there. Let me tell you what happened to me.” Suddenly the thing I once considered one of my greatest failures becomes part of my usefulness to another human being. That’s quite a transformation.
That is why I still to this day often include (at 38 years sober) the story of how at 29 years sober and being an active member in AA, I stole a cup of coffee because my selfishness and self-centeredness wanted what it wanted WHEN it wanted it (read more about that story here).
Maybe I’ve Been Defining Failure Wrong
And maybe that’s the bigger lesson in all of this.
Perhaps recovery isn’t simply teaching me how to deal with failure. Maybe it’s asking me to reconsider what I’ve been calling failure in the first place. I used to think failure meant that I didn’t get the outcome I wanted. But what if I tried something, it didn’t work, and I learned something I desperately needed to know? Is that then really failure? What if I hurt somebody, recognized it, took responsibility, made the amend, and changed my behavior? I certainly failed in the way I treated that person, but is the entire experience a failure?
- What if something exposes a defect of character I couldn’t see before?
- What if I finally discover that my way isn’t working?
- What if I have to surrender?
- What if I have to ask for help?
- What if I have to start over?
Maybe some of those aren’t failures at all. Maybe they’re evidence that I’m becoming teachable. The program doesn’t promise me that everything I attempt will work. It doesn’t promise that I’ll never make another mistake, hurt another person, exercise poor judgment, or have to clean up another mess. What it gives me is a way to respond when those things happen.
So perhaps failure isn’t simply falling short of the outcome I wanted. Perhaps real failure is having an experience that could teach me something and refusing to learn from it. Maybe failure isn’t discovering that I was wrong. Maybe failure is discovering that I was wrong and insisting on staying wrong. Maybe failure isn’t falling down. Maybe failure is refusing the hand that’s trying to help me get back up.
And maybe success in recovery has much less to do with getting everything right than it does with remaining honest, willing, teachable, and useful when I don’t. That changes the definition considerably.
So, You Failed. Now What?
Maybe you drank again, hurt someone, your marriage ended, lost the job, disappointed your sponsor, disappointed yourself. Okay. Now what? That’s the question recovery teaches me to ask.
Not: “What does this failure say about who I am?” But: “What is this experience asking me to do?”
- Do I need to surrender?
- Do I need to inventory something?
- Do I need to make an amend?
- Do I need to ask for help?
- Do I need to pray?
- Do I need to accept something I cannot change?
- Do I need the courage to change something I can?
- Do I need to try again?
And someday, after I’ve walked through it honestly, perhaps I need to sit down with somebody else who has just failed and tell them what happened to me. Because that’s one of the remarkable things about this program. We don’t have to waste our failures. God can use those too. The Big Book tells us: “No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.” Maybe “how far down the scale” isn’t only about what happened before we got sober. Maybe it continues to describe something important about the way we live after getting sober..
My experience. All of it. The victories and defeats. The good decisions and spectacularly bad ones. The moments when I got it right and the moments when I couldn’t have gotten it more wrong if I’d tried. None of it has to be wasted.
If I remain honest, teachable, willing, and available, failure may tell me that something didn’t work. Recovery asks me what I’m going to do with what I learned (#teachablemoments).
So I failed. Own it. Learn from it. Repair what I can. Grow from it. And when the opportunity presents itself, use that experience to help somebody else.
Whatever you do, don’t waste the failure.
Note – This article appears in the blog for Rick W’s excellent website ‘Take the 12’. Rick W has over 38 years of sobriety and offers excellent free resources including his outstanding book ‘The Prep Steps: Setting Up Action In A.A’ – Bruce M.