Please do not fake it until you make it

12-step groups have two sets of canonical texts - the first one is the officially-selected set of books and pamphlets called “conference-approved literature”, so called because at some point the General Service Organization (GSO) has gotten together and voted to lend those documents the official seal of approval. The second set of canonical texts is the loose group of sayings, slogans, aphorisms, and punchy sentences that have been passed around from person to person from meeting to meeting over the many years that 12-step meetings have been around. Nobody has formally voted to include any of those slogans, but they’ve achieved and maintained an organic life of their own because for whatever reason they’ve managed to resonate with lots and lots of people.

I say “for whatever reason” because there quite a few reasons why a saying might take on such a life of its own. One reason might be because the saying genuinely contributes to a lot of people by summarizing and pointing towards a lot of helpful wisdom. Another reason might be because people heard it said a lot and started repeating a lot just because they wanted to fit in. Another reason might be because a saying sounds a lot like it might be wise, and might even sound similar to other sayings that sound wise.

I’m pointing to all of this specifically because I want to take a look at a saying that screwed me up in early recovery - or, maybe, a saying that I used to screw myself up. The saying is “fake it ‘til you make it”. It implies that “faking it” can be a part of a path to “making it”. Do you not understand what to do, or not understand how to do something? Just pretend that you do, and reality will eventually catch up to you.

I’d classify this saying as being one that sounds a lot like it might be wise. It’s pretty close to some other sayings that have resonated with me - sayings like “sometimes you have to act your way into a better way of thinking”. This rings true for me big time in the realm of motivation - if I feel unmotivated to do something, it probably won’t work for me to sit around and wait until I feel motivated to do it; a lot of times the most helpful thing for me to do is to just get started on the task anyway, and then as I make progress on the task I’ll feel better about doing it and the motivation to see it through will show up for me. The same principle applies with doing creative work - sometimes inspiration comes from the act of creation, rather than before it.

There are also many areas of life where it’s my say-so alone that determines whether or not something is true. For example, “I am capable of publishing a blog on the internet” is something that is true or false entirely based on whether or not I assert that it’s true. Whether I believe I can do it or believe I can’t do it, either way I’m right.

So, what doesn’t work for me in the slogan “fake it ‘til you make it” is the word “fake”. I’m not “faking it” by sitting down to work on something knowing that I don’t want to do it; I’m being honest with myself that I don’t want to do it but taking action because I think I can feel motivated down the line. Similarly I’m not “faking it” by leaping out of a cloud of self-doubt and declaring “to hell with my self-doubt! I can do this!”. I am “faking it” when I start being dishonest about what I want, how I feel, and what rings true for me. That dishonesty pretty much defined my very early encounters with recovery.

Traditional 12-step meetings are soaked in religious language, and many even feature explicitly Christian prayers. That did not work for me at all when I started showing up in the very early days. I wanted something to change in my life, but I didn’t know if I wanted to get sober like that, at least not if it involved completely throwing away most of what I held to be important and true for me.

Eventually, inevitably, things got worse for me, and I got desperate. But the religious language and goals of the program just didn’t work for me, until I heard someone say “fake it ‘til you make it”. So I faked it! I said the prayers in meetings, I said prayers in public with my very first sponsor, and it felt way off and wrong for me, but when people asked if I felt like I was on the right path I said “yeah…!!”. I was faking it until I made it. I made it my mission to sound sober, to make sober-sounding noises in meetings and with the people in my life. To an extent, it worked! I didn’t feel any better, but people stopped being mad at me. Eventually I figured out that I didn’t have to believe in God to sound sober and get people to stop being mad at me, and that if I could fake believing in God then I could fake not-drinking too.

There resulted a few months of both drinking and going to meetings, making sober-sounding noises and even picking up chips. It was an exceptionally miserable experience, and eventually I stopped even trying to fake it. Years later, after losing almost everything, I found an agnostic meeting and I’ve been sober for real there ever since. On top of finding a community where I could be honest about who I am and how the world shows up for me, I found new success in sobriety by making authenticity a top priority for me. I went to traditional meetings too, and one time the meeting was reading a some conference-approved literature called “We Agnostics”, which occurred to me (and still does) as a crude but well-meaning attempt to convert people to some sort of religiosity. At the time I resented the hell out of that chapter, and I resented the hell out of the religious expectations of the traditional program, so when it came to be my turn to share I let loose on everyone there. Using nothing but swear words for punctuation I denounced the corruption of the program, the stupidity of everyone there, the madness and unfairness of everything they expected of helpless people, and when I was done the whole room said in unison “Thanks Max! Keep coming back!”. I was stunned. People came up to me after the meeting to shake my hand and tell me that was the best share they’d heard in a long time, that I’d given their recovery new life that day, and that they really hoped that they’d see me the next time they got together.

I learned that I never really had to fake it until I made it, that authenticity from me will bring me connection and bring life to others even if (especially if) I’m certain that what I have to say will be risky. I also learned that no matter what you have to say, no matter what your truth is, no matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, they really aren’t going to kick you out.