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1. We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.
For three weeks and two days, Spencer has had a calculator running in his head. It started with the money in his bank account (everything, savings and emergency fund and all) and has ticked down with every purchase he's made, every bit of change slipping through his fingers and every twenty passed between palms behind the recreation center on Fourth Street. The only thing that makes the calculator fade into the background, give him some space to think, is Dilaudid, and it's Dilaudid that he can't afford. He can't buy a single thing until the first of the next month, not if he wants to make rent and the payments for his mother. Not if he wants to eat next month. Not if he wants to keep his secret.
It's the realization that the shame of being exposed as an addict would be worse than the catastrophe of unpaid bills that does it. He gets halfway to Fourth Street three times in one night, catching himself at the last moment and pulling himself back to his apartment with thoughts of the look on Gideon's face were he to find out. Of course, Gideon already knows. He's not sure how many other members of the team know, but he's sure Gideon does. A failure like this, though, proof of the depths to which he's sunk, would be somewhat different than the simple fact of his drug use. He can't bear the thought of the disappointment in Gideon's eyes, so after scratching his arms bloody in the bathroom and regaining the ability to track his own train of thought, he opens his laptop and searches for Narcotics Anonymous meetings in the Quantico area.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Spencer knew before entering his first meeting that all Twelve Step groups are spiritual to some extent. He'd assumed he'd be able to tolerate it, but as he walks out, he finds himself wondering if he happened upon a particularly religious group or if he's simply less willing to act out Christianity than he had anticipated.
He's not unfamiliar with Christianity. Of course, he knows it well on an academic level, but beyond that, he'd attended a few days of church as a child. Sunday school had been one of his father's last attempts to build Spencer a friend group. He'd thought the hour spent together with children his own age would help him build his social skills, and Spencer's psychiatrist had supported the idea. It hadn't worked, though, and without the conviction of any real faith, his father's willingness to cart an unhappy four year old to church at seven in the morning on the weekend quickly waned. Still, Spencer remembers enough of the experience that the faith expressed at the meeting wasn't totally foreign. It had just been intolerable to a degree he now, on the bus home, finds himself at a loss to explain. When they'd prayed, Spencer had kept his eyes open like a rebellious child.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
He saw the light. In that shed, flat on his back and out of his mind, he'd seen it.
When, on the third session, the others bow their heads in prayer, Spencer closes his eyes.
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
The crowd of an average Narcotics Anonymous meeting is a mixed bunch, and Spencer finds himself spending most of his time during his first few meetings profiling his fellow attendees. There are the reformed ones, the long-time members with their advice and their conviction in the program. There are those in the middle of their journeys, tired and ebullient in turns. There are the young ones, even younger than Spencer, who don't often come back. Actually, many of them don't come back. Spencer didn't, not until almost a full month after his first meeting.
He tries to envision himself sitting in the meeting, a view from on high, just another addict, indistinguishable from all the rest. The first time he does this, he finds himself so repulsed that he skips the next week's meeting. He may be an addict, but he works a full-time, respectable job. He keeps it together, so why can't they? Why can't the other members, all sitting in the same thin plastic chairs and fidgeting with the same thick plastic coins, keep it together?
On the way home from his fifth meeting, he passes a man huddled in a doorway on the street and remembers how close he had come two and a half months ago to failing to make rent.
5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
The only thing that keeps him from turning away from the door once he's started to approach it is the knowledge that on the far end of the room, the janitor is watching him. On shaking legs, he makes the final ascent up the stairs, rehearsing his script in his head and praying fervently that Hotch won't force him to deviate too far from it. It's not often that Spencer experiences verbal difficulties as a result of his autism, but when he does, they tend to come at the worst possible moments. Right now, if he's to do this right, he needs to say it right.
Squaring his shoulders, he knocks on Hotch's office door. "Come in,'' Hotch calls from inside. He sounds distracted. Spencer's just glad his blinds are closed already.
He cracks the door open, enters headfirst. "Hi, uh, Hotch. Sir. Um."
Hotch looks up from his desk and frowns. Spencer reminds himself that Hotch frowns at everything. "Sit," Hotch says, and Spencer is glad for the silence that follows. Hotch seems to understand that… he seems to understand.
It takes him a few tries to get his vocal chords to cooperate. For a free-falling, shameful moment, he thinks he's gone mute, and swallows desperately before trying one last time. "I, uh. I'm really sorry." Spencer is suddenly and fiercely thankful that he followed his instincts and didn't go to Gideon. He would never have been able to get even those words out, not with Gideon's piercing eyes on him.
Hotch's frown deepens into something softer and more concerned. "For?"
"For how I've been acting the last, um, the last few months." This time, Hotch says nothing. Spencer gives up on his facsimile of eye contact and stares down at his twisting hands. Just say the script. "Um. For the last, uh. Since T'tobias Hankel, I've, uh. I've had a problem with Dilaudid." He swallows again with a dry sound. "I'm an addict, and I, I need some help." Don't look up, don't pause, don't cry don't cry don't cry. "I appreciate you looking the other way and I, uh, I understand if you can't anymore, but I just. I've been going to NA meetings, but I need some." His voice gives way. "I need help," he rasps.
For a moment, the only sounds are the rain outside and the high-pitched hum of the lights. Don't cry. Don't cry.
"Spencer," Hotch starts. Spencer keeps staring at his hands, warped with the hot tears welling up against his best intentions.
"I'm so sorry. I—"
"Thank you," Hotch interrupts. Spencer looks up. Hotch is staring right at him, hands folded on his desk. "Thank you for telling me. I know the last few months haven't been easy for you."
"Sir…"
"In terms of next steps—"
"I completely understand if this is the end of my—"
"Let me finish," Hotch says with a hint of a smile. "And let me know what you need. I can help you, Spencer, and we can keep this as quiet as you want. Just let me know what you need from me."
Spencer bursts into tears.
6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
By the time he reaches his third month, he's abandoned the idea of Christianity. He can't reconcile all the contradictions, can't make the beliefs work with what he knows to be the evidence-based truth. Still, he closes his eyes during prayer and speaks to something. Sometimes, he feels ridiculous, or worse, like he's about to end up in a room across the hall from his mother's. Other times, he remembers the shed and speaks softly to the light.
7. We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
"Hey, Morgan?" he asks one day when it's just the two of them alone at the coffee machine.
"Yeah, kid, what's up?"
"Can you… Can you tell me when I'm being an asshole?"
Derek looks up from the coffee he's stirring, eyebrows raised. "Huh?"
His own coffee is still too hot to drink, which he discovers when he burns his tongue on it attempting to hide behind a sip. "Um, I know I haven't, uh, haven't been the easiest to deal with in the last few months."
"Kid…"
"It's true," he presses on, "and I want to change that, and I, I, I trust you not to, not to, to, I trust you to tell me when I'm being an asshole. So if it's not too much of a problem, uh, can you?"
Derek gives him a long look. Spencer focuses intently on the space between his eyes. "Sure," he says after a moment. "And Reid?"
"Yeah?"
"You need anything else, I'm always here for you, alright?"
"Yeah. Um, thank you. For everything."
8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
He doesn't have any way of reaching Gideon. For two weeks and two days, he tells himself this, and he does not ask Penelope to find him.
On the seventeenth day, he texts her. On the eighteenth, she texts him. On the nineteenth, he writes a half-page letter, rips it up, writes another, rips it up, writes a third, and gives it over to her to mail.
9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Dear Mom,
I'm sorry.
Dear Mom,
It's been a rough few
Dear Mom,
I'm sorry I haven't writt
Dear Mom,
Please don't be
Dear Mom,
I'm sorry I haven't written much recently. Things have been busy at work I've been busy I haven't had time
Dear Mom,
I've been thinking for a long time about writing this letter. Specifically, I've been thinking about the medium, and whether what I'm about to say is even appropriate for that of a letter. Maybe, writing it out like this is a sign of cowardice, but you and I have always done better with pen and paper.
For eight and a half months, I was actively using Dilaudid. Thirty-seven days ago, I quit. I am now in recovery. I am a recovering addict.
Enclosed is my one month medallion.
Mom, I am so sorry.
10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
He thinks about writing his father after the Riley Jenkins case. He writes a few drafts and, with Derek's words about the death of his childhood in mind, burns them all.
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
His therapist recommends mindfulness as a replacement for prayer. When the urge comes, she tells him, try to acknowledge it for what it is. Look for ways you replace Dilaudid with other things, and try to identify the feeling you're suppressing or struggling with. Look inside before taking outside action.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
"Hey, Spence, what do you want to drink?"
"Ah, just a water for me, thanks."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure."