AA Prayer Works…and Now a Study Shows Us

Early in recovery we are often given the instruction to memorize the Serenity Prayer and to use it as often as possible. Over the years that prayer and others like the Prayer of St. Francis and our own

Seventh or Third Step prayers become tools on long-term recovery.

I  have wondered if those prayers are just good cognitive habits or spiritual tools or a kind of magic, but I always love the stories we hear in meetings about a man or woman in recovery encountering a tough situation and then, they say, "I prayed, and then …" And then something happened. The situation changed or it didn't change , but says the speaker, "I didn't drink."

So now we have the start of some real research looking at the power of prayer for people in long recovery. And it turns out that the early evidence shows that using prayer to resist or decrease cravings works:

Here is what the researchers at NYU are finding:

“Our findings suggest that the experience of AA over the years had left these members with an innate ability to use the AA experience — prayer in this case — to minimize the effect of alcohol triggers in producing craving,” said senior author Marc Galanter, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse at NYU Langone.

Like me, you may want to share this bit of encouraging spiritual and recovery evidence with folks you know, so here is the link to the full article at PsychCentral. A gratitude prayer may also be in order after reading this news:

http://psychcentral.com/news/2016/05/14/brain-images-show-aa-prayers-reduce-cravings/103279.html

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More news: My new book, "Never Leave Your Dead" will be published by Central Recovery Press in early June.  It's the story of  military trauma and family trauma, and the long but possible road to

recovery for veterans and families. It is a story of resilience and redemption. I hope you'll take a look.

Mychal Judge's Serenity Prayer

Last week I was in a meeting on Cape Cod and a man named Richard spoke about a version of the Serenity Prayer that he learned from Father Mychal Judge. Mychal was a Franciscan and the Chaplain of the New York City Fire Department and he was, sadly, the first fatality in the 9/11 tragedy at the World Trade Center.

The prayer goes like this:

God take me where you want me to go.

Let me meet who you want me to meet.

Help me to say what you want me to say

And keep me out of your way.

That is a prayer for clarity and surrender. And it’s simple. Now I have it in my wallet and in my daily planner.

Serenity Prayer Redux

Maybe this is one of those consequences of long recovery but recently I’ve realized that my serenity prayer has been on automatic pilot and that I need to refresh it to really hear it. I know the words and I say the words but I haven’t had those words come from my heart in a long time.

In fact, I realized this week that I have been missing the “wisdom” part of the prayer completely.

When I began to listen in to hear how my head automatically fills in parenthetical thoughts I heard the serenity prayer in my head going something like this:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (Them, you, other people, most things—yeah that’s right, I’m not in control). Courage to change the things I can (That would be me, my job to change myself, Oh dam, it’s me again, my fault, my side of the street, gotta work on me some more.) And the wisdom to know the difference. (Huh? The difference? Sometimes it’s not me? I don’t have to automatically assume my bad?)”

My recent gift has been the back covers of our Grapevine Magazine. The new editorial team has a fabulous graphic designer who makes the Serenity Prayer on the back of each issue into a work of art---styles vary but each is a beauty. The design made me look at the prayer in a new way—kudos to graphic design—and I heard what I had been doing with that prayer.

Wisdom, huh?

Cognitive Serenity Prayer

I’m in Cognitive Therapy mode and I’m facing the depth and consequence of my “schema” or deeply held beliefs. I see the ways I am held prisoner by them, the ways that others in my life are affected by them and the intransigence of these beliefs. There are days—today for example—when my belief in abandonment, defectiveness and emotional deprivation are like fossils or like anchors or like invisible operating systems. Choose your metaphor.

So looking thru the Cognitive Theory lens what if Reinhold Niehbor’s Serenity Prayer meant something like this:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
(The actual situation, the practical solution, the tangible: I have cancer; I lost my job; my husband left me; my retirement investments tanked; my lover died.)

The Courage to change the things I can.
(The internal, the elegant solution: This is not proof that I am bad or being punished; I have skills to apply to this situation; I am loveable even if not by this person at this time; I’m not stupid the economy is hurting; someone may leave or die but that does not mean they are abandoning me.)

And the wisdom to know the difference.
(Do I need to effect a practical solution or work through to an elegant one? Is this something to fix on the outside —like get a new job? Or is this something to change inside—grasp the difference between the grief of losing someone I loved versus the pain of believing that I have been left because that is my fate?