Dallas Bragg argues that recovery programs teaching reliance on a higher power condition people to feel helpless. He says you are the ultimate higher power in your own life, and every choice is a sentence you write. Without deciding, external circumstances decide for you.
Traditional recovery is going to tell you that everything can be your higher power except yourself. You've been conditioned to feel powerless, incomplete, like you need something or someone else to be in control of your life experience. Basically, you need a savior. Does that sound familiar to you? But here's what you're not used to hearing. You are the ultimate higher power in your life. Free will is what animates you. Free will is the force that makes you the creator of your own story, the author of your own narrative. Every choice you make is a sentence you write. And if you don't write it, the outside world writes it for you. So at the end of the day, in that decision moment, nothing and no one else matters but your final choice. Not your sponsor, not your therapist, not your family, not even the divine forces you pray to. They can all offer wisdom. They can all offer support. They can all offer perspective. But the choice, the actual exercise of free will, belongs to you alone.
