A few years ago Mike Tyson come out and openly discussed his battle with addiction. In usual crazy Mike fashion, he spilled the beans through a couple manic interviews, both of which had their share of twisted logic and rabbit chasing rants.
Watch one of them here:
But hidden inside the craziness were some of the greatest baseline recovery takes ways I’ve heard in a long time. Specifically around the 9th step amends process. If you don’t know, the 9th step of Alcoholics Anonymous says this…
“Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others”
Here are 10 great quotes from Iron Mike.
- If I don’t do what the book tells me to do I’m going to die.
- Life is short, I want to make amends with everybody.
- I’m a vicious addict.
- If I don’t follow the steps I’m useless.
- I was wrong and I’m glad I was man enough to make my amends
- Love and forgiveness is the great focus of my life.
- I have no control over anyone but me.
- I owe it to my sobriety to make amends to everybody
- I have a lot of pain and I want to heal it.
- I just wanted to make my amends. If he accepted it or not, at least I could die and go to my grave and say I made my amends with everybody I hurt.
As you can tell by reading the quotes, Mike is doing all he can to find freedom and sobriety. He is going to meeting and working the steps. A part of that process is making amends to those he has harmed. It seems as if he and his trainer had a quite a feud back in the day. This feud and the associated fallout obviously did not sit well with Mike. I can imagine it pushed him to drink a time or two. But realizing that if he drinks again he will die, Mike is ready to do whatever he has to do to find sobriety. Even if that means cleaning up a relationship that have been damaged for over twenty years! Mike has clearly realized that no matter the details, the time has come to make amends and let the past be the past.
Addict or not we all have amends we need to make. Every day that we wait to reach out and begin this process the harder it is to step up to that person and start that tough conversation. There is a great lesson that lies within Mike’s public profession. We see that by putting off our amends we give guilt, shame, anger and pain the opportunity to build up. We then typically try and make it go away through drinking and drugging. But furthermore, we lose great friendships and we find ourselves 20 years down the road lost, alone and drunk.
Challenge: Do you have an amends to make? If you do, don’t push it off any longer. Today is the day to start the process. Freedom is just around the corner!