EXPLAIN SURRENDER

The Knock

Back when taverns were dark and everyone was a regular, a bartender’s knock after the drinks were set out meant the round was on the house. In that spirit, this is an occasional recovery advice column no one is paying for (but I do accept tips). You can submit your queries here.

Hi Ana,

I was sober 20 years and relapsed seven years ago. Needless to say, it's hard to stop now. Could you explain "surrender"? My sponsor has given me her ideas, but I don't quite get it.

Sincerely,

No surrender

This is one of the last letters I received before the end of my column at The Cut; it’s asking about one of the first things you hear when you walk into the rooms of recovery.

In 12-step programs, we talk about surrender constantly. You’re supposed to surrender your will every day. All the time. People tell stories about their surrender or when they surrendered or “what surrender looks like” but… explaining surrender?

Surrender is as obvious and as inscrutable as any other enormous human emotion: Love, hate, rage, grief. Surrender escapes easy instruction because unlike those other big feelings, surrender is less provoked than conjured. Someone else can make me mad or sad and possibly even joyful against my will. No one can make me surrender. I sometimes doubt that I can make me surrender.

And then there’s the question of why I should want to! Outside the rooms of 12 step programs, “surrender” is synonymous with defeat and inside the rooms of 12 step programs, well, it’s kind of synonymous with defeat as well — which may be why neither the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book nor the The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, the literature out of which the entirety of 12-step culture flows, use the word “surrender” at all. It’s not there! You know what word they use instead? “Defeat.”

So it is by circumstance rather than by any virtue that we have been driven to A.A., have admitted defeat…

We perceive that only through utter defeat are we able to take our first steps toward liberation and strength.

The principle that we shall find no enduring strength until we first admit complete defeat is the main taproot from which our whole Society has sprung and flowered.

I wonder if “surrender” wormed its way into recovery-talk so thoroughly because it implies a level or agency that “defeat” doesn’t. I wonder if AA and recovery culture could even survive if we said “defeat” as much as we said “surrender.” Consider what the official AA literature does say: “Who cares to admit complete defeat? Practically no one, of course.”

So instead we have “surrender,” which just as often gets gussied up as “letting go,” another term that implies there is a choice in the matter. And when you say “surrender” and “letting go” are a choice — The superior choice! The choice that winners make! — then suddenly you’ve created a closed-loop system in which the very people who least want to surrender or who are having the hardest time with it feel like they are losers and who wants to be a loser? Why should they surrender?

Those who find themselves in a relatively smooth stretch of recovery can often talk about their “surrender” as a beatific swanning into grace, a release of ego all the more noble for its humility. You only hear “and then I let go” from people who are sober and if you’re still struggling to let go, well, fuck them.

So maybe we should just go back to saying “defeat.” I know I was defeated long before I surrendered. And I know that my “surrender” did not feel like a fucking choice at the time: I was cuffed to a hospital bed with a tube down my throat and another up my urethra. I did not find any dignity in my refusal to quit fighting. I did not find dignity in quitting my fight. I was just tired.

I doubt bringing back “defeat” will win me friends among the A.A. critics who bristle at “surrender,” but I think defeat is a hell of a lot easier to explain. Did you wake up after having pissed the bed the third night in a row? Did you lose your job? Did you get arrested? Did you forget where you parked? Do you feel like life is no longer worth living? If your life was your mean cousin, would it be saying “Stop hitting yourself”? And, crucially, have you not been able to help yourself out of this bad situation, whatever it is? Well, my friend, you might be defeated!

“Defeat” sounds bad, but talking about addiction as a defeat sure makes the difficulty of finding surrender less alienating. Because, like the men said, “Who cares to admit complete defeat? Practically no one, of course.” Do you hate to lose? Sit next to me, we’ll commiserate at having lost together. (Commiserating with others is a significant portion what recovery is.)

Surrender is just the acknowledgment of defeat. To go back to the idea of surrender as a big emotion: Surrender is to defeat as grief is to loss. It is to defeat as rage is to injustice. It is to defeat as love is to unconditional acceptance.

And like any of those emotions, it can be avoided but never completely escaped. And like any of those emotions, it is possible to act in the spirit of that emotion even if we don’t feel it at the moment. And like any of those emotions, life would be impossible if we felt it fully all of the time, 24 hours a day. I’ll go one further: It is sometimes more important to take the action than feel the emotion.

If we waited until injustice enraged us to react to it, no system would ever change. If we felt only grief in response to loss, then how would we comfort each other and why would hold onto memories of the past? If we withheld affection or kindness until we were moved by love to show it, well, we’d probably be from an alcoholic family system, am I right, folks?

So, surrender: I get infuriated when someone talks about it as though it was a prancing step into freedom, la-la-la angels singing I feel so free now! I understand that it is, yes, a step (the first one!). But it’s not a step I have to love taking. I will make it a stomp. I will trudge. I might walk backwards, regretting every minute I move in the right direction and mourning my previous life. I might scream. I might not feel “surrendered.” Still, I can do the things that a person who has admitted defeat does. I will adhere to the terms of treaty, as it were. I will do the things I had previously refused to do.

What that looks like for me in recovery: I go to meetings when I don’t feel like it. I meditate when I don’t feel like it. I do service work when I don’t feel like it. I call someone to talk about my feelings when I don’t feel like it. I take my meds when I don’t feel like it. I am kind to others when I don’t feel like it. I am kind to myself when I don’t feel like it. And all of that means that, as of yet, I haven’t taken a drink when I do feel like it.