1st Step ACTIONS

We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable.

In the first series that I wrote for this blog, I shared my experience, strength and hope based on my first experience of AA's 12 steps.  The second series was more philosophical, as I considered the principles behind the steps and how they apply to life in recovery.   This series, the third one, is all about actions, the steps within the steps that help the person in recovery to be, and to stay, sober.

I remember sitting in a clubhouse with another alcoholic who was beginning to work the steps after I had been sober a while.  He asked a lot of questions, all of them good.  The tone of the conversation began to bother me, however, because this person was spending too much time trying to figure why he (or she) was an alcoholic without considering the actions that help the alcoholic to step up and to step out of the problems that lead one into AA.

Eventually, I redirected the conversation by asking this person, "Do you know what the most important  body part in AA is?"  The first response, which was wrong, was "the head."  The next response, which was equally wrong, was "the heart."  The following response was "the liver."  Wrong again.

At last I shared my opinion.  "It's you ass," I said, "Your ass is the important body part in AA.  You have to bring it to meetings.  You have to take it to places where you may help other alcoholics.  You have to do stuff, important stuff, so that you spend less time in your head and are governed less and less by your emotions"

AA, as I have been taught since the first meeting that I attended, is an action program, and this series is an honest effort to look at the actions that help the alcoholic to work each of the 12 steps.


1. Be honest about why you are in AA.
Nobody comes into AA on a good day.  I know that I didn't.  Life was spiraling downward, and I was looking to stop the spiraling.

I put off going to an AA meeting for years, but the fact that I even thought about attending a meeting before I spent a night in jail following a DUI suggests that I belonged in AA years before I arrived.

While I did not have any doubts about whether I was an alcoholic or not when I arrived, some men and women do, but let's face it, if one has to ask if one is an alcoholic, then one probably has a problem, because this person is not in a chocolate factory wondering if he or she is a chocolate bar.


2. If you have any doubt about whether you are an alcoholic, then go out and drink exactly one drink per day for one week.
If the thought of going out and drinking only one drink seems absurd to you, because you know that the first drink leads to the next one and eventually into oblivion, then this experiment may not be necessary.

When I came into AA and someone suggested controlled drinking, I was overwhelmed by fear.  If I could control my drinking, then I would never have driven drunk or spent a night in jail in the first place.  

For men and women who continue to drink in the face of mounting consequences, the only option is to abstain from drinking, which is why AA is an abstinence program.  Alcoholics who do not take the first drink never become drunk; those who ignore this simple truth will drink and drink again, and in so doing, will continue to suffer and to inflict suffering.

3. Admit that you are powerless over alcohol.
Admitting that one is powerless over alcohol is not as dramatic as it sounds (which is disappointing given how much alcoholics enjoy drama).

I admit that I am powerless over alcohol every time that I walk into an AA meeting; walking into an AA meeting, in fact, is one of the most honest things that I do.  By walking into a meeting, I am not able to lie to anybody, including myself, about why I am there.

If I am to experience power, I have to distance myself from that over which I am powerless.  If I notice that the place where I live is engulfed in flames, I do not stay inside.  I step outside of the place where I may be most comfortable and ask for help.


4. Admit that your life has become unmanageable.
The list of people who were willing and able to help me is much longer than I thought that it was when I stepped into the program.

Bridges had been burned.  Relationships had faltered.  The mountain of debt before me seemed insurmountable.  Life had become unmanageable, and the evidence was glaring.

Sure, I was tempted to blame anybody and everybody for the problems in my life, but the cold, hard fact was that I had driven myself over the cliff and distanced myself from people who were willing to break my fall.

I thrashed around flexing muscles that only I could see, and when my vision began to clear, I had to start accepting responsibility for the consequences of my actions that included the decision to take the first drink.


5. Stop talking, and start listening.
In the first meeting that I attended, I sat with tears in my eyes before sharing.  One of the sad facts of this scene, as I remember it, is that I had to speak.

By speaking, I placed myself on center stage.  The self-pity, which was authentic, was also a way of calling attention to myself.  While it was important that I spoke, that I admit that I was, and am, powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable, it was also important that I start listening, because all of the information that I had to share at that point in my sobriety was about the illness.

Soon, it became evident that I would have to look outside of myself for healing.  Something out there was more powerful than alcohol, and by this stage in the program, I was clear that it was not me.

12th PRINCIPLE: Service

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

The twelfth step assumes: 1) a spiritual awakening; 2) a message; 3) a desire to help other alcoholics; and 4) an expectation of more of the same.  

An awakening is only a beginning, but the spiritual awakening of an alcoholic is the beginning of a life facing promises rather than running from fears.  A spiritual awakening is somewhat mysterious, and the experience and celebration of this mystery differs from person to person.  

The message that the alcoholic carries is a story: his or her story and the stories being told in meeting after meeting throughout the world.  AA, at its best, is not about institution-building or proclaiming the gospel of AA, but about sharing experience, strength and hope.  Whether someone accepts another person's story as truth or not should not affect one's feelings about one's self or one's life in the program. 

Validation comes from within and from the quality of one's relationship with the God of one's understanding.  Helping another alcoholic to achieve sobriety feels good, but this feeling may be almost as habit-forming and self-indulgent as one's drinking life was before AA.

Not drinking changes one's life.  Working the steps improves one's quality of life, and it improves every aspect of the sober person's life provided that one is disciplined enough and open enough to be made happily and usefully whole.   

Wake up!

The first question that I ask alcoholics after they arrive at the twelfth step is, "How do you feel?"  The response is almost always positive.  Even among those who grumble, it does not take much to help them to acknowledge how much better they feel now than when they first came into the program.

Recognizing that one is in a completely different and better place is an acknowledgement of a spiritual awakening.  For me, it is not essential to be able to name the exact time and nature of the awakening.  What matters is that a fundamental change has occurred in a person's thinking and feeling.  How one experiences life and pursues happiness has changed.  If it has not, then it is probably time to repeat one or more of the previous steps.

In the novel East of Eden, John Steinback writes, “A kind of light spread out...And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.” 

The changes brought about through AA may not be as dramatic as the changes described in this novel, but at the end of one's first experience of the steps, not being afraid anymore is enough.

Say something.

Speaking about a spiritual awakening is challenging.  Trusting the experience was difficult for me given who I was and the experiences that I had before coming into AA. 

On the one hand, when speaking about one's spiritual experience, one does not want to come on too strongly (which, for me, is tough given that I seem to have two settings: completely off and full-speed ahead).  On the other hand, it is important to be assertive enough to make a difference in another alcoholic's life when given half-a-chance to do so.

Meetings help me to articulate my experience of the program so that when I have an opportunity to help another alcoholic, I am able to say what I have to say as succinctly as possible.  Listening to how others understand their programs helps me to understand mine, and now, as I do less and less rambling in meetings (as opposed to how I behaved early in the program), I am able to help other alcoholics simply by sharing in meetings. 

Do something.

Helping other alcoholics helps me to feel useful, and I rarely felt useful before coming into AA.  In meetings, I often hear alcoholics speak of the importance of service work, but when I am completely honest with myself, I have to admit that what often qualifies as service work may bolster one's ego.

Making coffee or emptying ashtrays is one thing.  Announcing that one made coffee or emptied ashtrays is another.  Only one of these actions fosters humility.  Only one of them contributes to sober living.

Leading meetings constitutes service work.  I have no doubt that meetings that I have led have helped men and women to achieve sobriety.  I also have no doubt that I have enjoyed the attention that I received when leading these meetings.  The fact that I know when I am ego-tripping is progress; the fact that I am unable to help myself reminds me that one of our mottos is, "progress not perfection." 

Be something.

What I have to watch, perhaps more than anything, is acting as if I have somehow graduated or completed the program.  The step that follows step twelve is step one.

I am grateful that I feel confident in my program.  I do not think about drinking often and am rarely in situations in which drinks are readily available.  If I go a while without practicing the steps that have brought me to this place in my sobriety, then I begin acting drunk, even though I am not drinking, and before long, I am thirsty for a drink.

At this point in my sobriety, life is more about what fills me up spiritually and emotionally.  When my spirit is full and I am emotionally engaged in relationships and activities that are life-giving, my life becomes the message that the twelfth step calls me to share.  In sobriety, like in active alcoholism, actions speak louder than words.

11th Step PRINCIPLE: Consciousness

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.

Every source that I consulted before outlining this blogpost cites a different principle for the eleventh step.  Among the principles suggested are awareness of God, attune-ment, spirituality and contact.

Prayer and meditation, which are the primary actions taken in the eleventh step, heighten one's awareness of God.  Knowledge of God's will strengthens one's self-understanding and sense of mission.  Notions of spirituality in AA are vague by design so that one is able to feel in touch with a power that is greater than, and beyond, one's self without feeling squeezed by a person who, or tradition that, lacks vitality.

For me, the eleventh step is about consciousness of both one's self and the God of one's understanding. Both what I pray for and how I understand the God to whom I pray say something about me.  Self-consciousness and God-consciusness encourage sobriety.

Prayer speaks volumes.

Does prayer come naturally for you?  If it does, then what do you say, and what does how you pray reveal about your understanding of God?

I prayed regularly while I was drinking.  Since I quit drinking, I find that my prayers are more earnest than they were before, and I feel less embarrassed about speaking to God.

The God of my understanding now differs from the God of my understanding then in that I believe that God speaks through more voices now than the God of my understanding did then.  This feature of the AA program, in my opinion, enables groups to thrive.  

The openness about different interpretations of God encourages each person in AA to be engaged theologically while affirming the individual's search and respecting personal boundaries (which is a habit worth practicing).

When I pray to God, I remind myself that God is there, and when I am open and honest with this God, I tap into a power greater than myself that motivates me to help other alcoholics including myself. 

Be still and stop (over)thinking.

Meditation quiets my mind and helps me to stop thrashing around in search of control.  Saying that I have turned my will and my life over to the God of my understanding is one thing.  Actually doing it is another.

Meditation heightens my consciousness of who I am in relation to God.  When I am quiet and still, I trust God to be God.  I place myself in a position to respond to God rather than asking God to respond to me.  

As I accept my place in God's world, I become more comfortable with who I am.  I do not have to visit and revisit situations that I do not like and/or understand in an effort to control the uncontrollable, and thus, I am able to invest time and energy in the things that I can change, which leads to serenity.

Persevere again.

The pursuit of peace in one's personal life demands changes; one is changed through these stages.  When I drank regularly, silence was a scary proposition.  Now I welcome it, because it has become one of the places where I gain clarity and calmness.  

American philosopher William James, whose work is cited in the Big Book, observes that, "My experience is what I agree to attend to."  Is this your story?  This statement definitely pertains to mine.  

By attending to one's self and to the God of one's understanding, one's conscious contact with his or her essence, and with God, improves, and with this improvement, one becomes noticeably less restless, irritable and discontented and more secure, sane and satisfied.  

Attending to serenity and to sobriety produces serenity, sobriety and peace of heart and mind. 

10th Step PRINCIPLE: Perseverance

Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Alcoholics understand defeat.  At least this one does.  

The problem with admitting defeat when one is an alcoholic is that this admission may lead the alcoholic to blame somebody else for his or her problems and/or to resort to self-pity.  The person who chooses blame and self-pity may not stay sober for long.  

Accepting that one is an alcoholic is a beginning to a life of sobriety.  Accepting responsibility for one's actions, regardless of who set the conflicts over which one obsesses in motion, builds momentum and continuing to practice acceptance in all one's affairs maintains the good life that emerges by virtue of working the steps.

Restart, repeat.

Within the steps, there is repetition, and of course, after completing step twelve, one returns to step one again.  Step ten repeats steps four through nine on a regular, and ideally, daily, basis.  When anger, fear and ill-will are addressed promptly, the destruction that follows in their wake is limited.

For me, I have become familiar enough with some of the destructive impulses in my thoughts and actions that I am able to identify and to address them before they wreak havoc on my life or the lives of others.

Even when these strong and strange thoughts and feelings sneak up on me and I give into them, or when I discover a new destructive, or self-destructive, pattern, that I had not noticed before, then I know what to do.  I center myself in the God of my understanding.  I question where these thoughts and feelings come from.  I acknowledge inappropriate behavior, and I strive to make it right with whomever I have harmed as soon as possible.

Step ten, like step one, has to be practiced every day.  If I drink, then I reset the illness that led me into the program.  If I stop taking inventory, then my thoughts and feelings, slowly but surely, become as twisted as they were when I came into the program.

I consider steps four through nine as the first bath after almost being buried alive, and I think of step ten as the daily shower that keeps one healthy, clean and attractive while reminding the alcoholic of the grave that one was digging for one's self when drinking.    

Life does not stop.

One's quality of life improves in AA, and the tenth step is one of the biggest reasons why.  To think that the quality of one's life will improve every day, however, is an unreasonable expectation (and, as is often said in meetings, expectations are resentments waiting to happen). 

Quality of life improves over time, as does the quality of one's problems.  For example, I have not been arrested for DUI, been in jail or paid an attorney or court since I have been in AA.

However, life does not stop when one stops drinking.  Excitements come, and disappointments go, and yet by staying centered in the program, I am less likely to spiral into pride or despair, both of which contributed to my drinking.        

Persevere.

The first 90 days in AA felt like boot camp to me.  I was humiliated and terrified.  I committed to attending 90 meetings in 90 days and was feeling drab physically.  I was eating ice cream by the half gallon in an effort to replace the sugar that alcohol once provided me.

At the end of 90 days, I felt that I had accomplished something and was grateful when my sponsor suggested that I cut back to five meetings per week.  After missing a meeting, however, my equilibrium seemed to be off, and I actually ended up attending more meetings than were suggested of me for a while.

What worked for me works for me.  At the end of 90 days, there is another 90 days, and if any of us are to achieve the next 90 days, then we must take care of business today, which is when the tenth step is to be practiced.

Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said, "If you are going through hell, keep going."  My drinking life serves as an illustration of this point, and yet in my sober life, I am finding that the opposite also is true.

9th Step PRINCIPLE: Discipline

Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, 

except when to do so would injure them or others.

Greek historian Thucydides observes that, "Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage."

AA requires courage from the meeting throughout the 12 steps.  Courage is required for one to be honest about how much and how often one drinks when one comes into the program, and it takes courage to trust anyone or anything from a sponsor to an invisible God of one's understanding.

The courage that one begins practicing in the fourth step applies to the ninth step, which leads one out of the safety of clubhouses and meetings and into the wreckage of one's past where one meets the persons that one has wronged face-to-face without alcohol to help one to cope with the confrontation or to help one to project or to blame one's faults onto another person.

The ninth step is about assuming responsibility for past actions.  It is about taking one's medicine while remembering that the objective of taking medicine is to be made complete and whole; it is about being healed.

Be disciplined.

Children are disciplined by parents out of a desire to help them to better themselves.  Some parents are abusive, and their children are broken at an early age.  Discipline, at its best, however, builds up; it does not tear down.

Before I came into AA, I did enough tearing down for a lifetime, and while I suffered consequences, I was not built up in the process (much of which was my fault).  By looking at the past and by looking at myself in the mirror, I recognized that it was time for me to accept myself as I was, to embrace myself as may be and to ask for forgiveness.

It is important, I think, when taking the eighth and ninth steps, to be as specific as possible.  If a debt is to be forgiven, then both the debtor and the person owed must be clear about the scope and nature of the debt.  

If the problem is financial, then a lump sum or payment plan should be discussed.  If the problem is relational, then perhaps the only appropriate amends is to live a sober life.  If infidelity is involved, then it important to remember that the point of this step is to constructive and not destructive, especially when the well being of families may be at risk.    

Self-discipline.

Accepting the discipline of other parties as punishment for crimes for which one is willing to plead guilty at last is respectable; being able to avoid similar circumstances in the future is self-respectable.  The ninth helps one to notice patterns and to retrace steps that one does not wish to revisit---ever. 

Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel says, "Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself."  By saying "no" to the impulse to simply move on from one's past without making things right the ones whom he or she has harmed, one's dignity grows.

The same discipline that helps one not to drink also helps him or her to stay out of trouble in personal, social and professional relationships.  One does not stop thinking like an alcoholic just because one quits drinking.  For me, I have stopped acting like alcoholic, for the most part, but I have not yet stopped thinking like one. 

Act first.

In AA, actions come first.  In the first step study that I attended, the leader of the group stated repeatedly that "AA is an action program."  

The ninth step is about taking actions that bust wide open any pride or self-loathing that one has yet to turn over to the God of his or her understanding.

The actions that I took involved everything from saying that "I am sorry" to spending money.  I consider both investments.  Some of the people to whom I apologized I will never see again, but if I do, then I will be able to look them in the eyes.  

Sure, I had to hear people share stories about me that I did not want to remember, but remembering them and responding to them like an adult, rather than as a child, I am hopeful that I will not repeat them, and yet when I am wrong, I will be able to acknowledge my wrongdoing and to act constructively and accordingly, because, at last, I have practice accepting discipline.   

8th Step PRINCIPLE: Sympathy

Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Forgive me if this principle departs from the one that you associate with the eighth step, but in my experience, this step goes beyond brotherly love, which is the eighth step principle in the clubhouse where I attend the bulk of my meetings.

The eighth step is about relationships---all of them, not only the ones with one's brothers.  Alcohol had an adverse effect on most of my relationships: professional, personal and romantic.  Men and women of all ages appeared on the list of persons who I had harmed, and in this step, for the first time, I began to think seriously about how to set the record straight.

To set the record straight, to effectively take this step, one has to step outside of one's self and consider the consequences of one's drinking from another person's perspective.  One has to think what other people thought and to feel what they felt, which, in the end, is an exercise in sympathy.

Sympathy, not self-pity

Sympathy is about sharing the suffering of another person and offering comfort and encouragement.  Sharing this suffering is tricky for the alcoholic, because the alcoholic is responsible for the suffering that he or she is offering to share.

Accepting responsibility for another person's suffering is not the same as groveling.  Acceptance is marked by humility, not humiliation.  It is not about being absolved of one's actions; it is about pleading guilty in the court of another person's opinion and be willing to serve the sentence rendered.

If one writes an amends list with a particular outcome in mind, then one is setting up one's self for disappointment.  The eighth step is not about having debt forgiven without retribution or rekindling a romance.  It is about establishing a set of guidelines that will allow the alcoholic to be free from a past that cannot be changed to be changed in a future in which the principles of AA are practiced.

Share the suffering; face the future.

In the classic novel Dracula, Bram Stoker observes, "Though sympathy alone cannot alter facts, it can make them more bearable."  Step eight does not change the past; it changes the person who is willing to make amends for the consequences of his or her drinking.   

When writing one's amends list, it is important to be as clear and concise as possible about how one has wronged the other person and what the range of appropriate responses are.  For example, if the nature of the offense is financial, then one should be preparing a proposal that will eventually allow for the debt to be considered paid in full by the wronged party.  If the problem is relational, then the amends make look like a heartfelt apology that includes a promise to move on.

The eighth step requires the alcoholic to step back into the past but not to stay there.  Revisiting the past may be painful, and yet this step is essential to coming to a place in one's sobriety in which he or she neither regrets the past nor wishes to shut the door on it.      

A subtle bond 

Kate Chopin, in the novel The Awakening, writes, "Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love."

Strange, wonderful and magical stuff happens as one prepares to meet his or her past face-to-face.  Understanding one's past from another person's perspective is humbling, and with this humility, one begins to respect one's self and one's neighbor in ways that one was incapable of doing when one's alcoholism raged.

One of the ultimate goals of the eighth step, for me at least, is forgiveness.  By the time that the amends list is complete, one should be beginning to feel better about the person one is now, because one is beginning to notice the difference between one's current and former self.  

Situations that led the former self to run away cowardly suddenly provide the occasion for stepping up and stepping into the opportunities that may be faced courageously.  If this is the life that you want for yourself, then, believe me, I am sympathetic. 

  

       

7th Step PRINCIPLE: Humility

Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

American author Ernest Hemingway says, “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”

Hemingway was an alcoholic, who committed suicide in 1961.  He struggled with depression and with drinking to excess, which, in my experience, may go hand-in-hand.

Alcohol is a depressant (I am surprised how many men and women who are in AA do not know this fact when they arrive).  I do not know which comes first: alcoholism or depression.  By the time that a person suffers enough to step into that first meeting, it does not matter.

Admitting that one has a problem takes time.  So does arriving at a place in which one is willing to change and to be changed.


Now that one is entirely ready...
Step six prepares the way for step seven.  While I am not sure if anyone is ever entirely ready to have God remove one's defects of character, I do think that one comes to a place in one's sobriety in which one has to decide whether to open one's self to the future or to be haunted by the past.

For the clinically depressed person, opening one's self to the future is easier said than done, and yet for those who ask for help, especially those who ask for professional support, there is hope.

Knowing one's self and the God of one's understanding helps one to understand his or her place in the universe.  By this point in the steps, one usually has enough experience, strength and hope to know that the God of his or her understanding, who is more powerful than alcohol, is more powerful than his or her shortcomings.  


Ask.
Why would any of us be reluctant to ask God to remove our shortcomings?  Because many of us are naturally fearful.  We would rather be afraid than free, because fear is all that we know.

Fear of drinking again kept me sober for a while, but fear of drinking again is not enough when I bulge with self-pity or pride.

For me, it is helpful, when taking this step, to think about the alternatives to the shortcomings that I am asking God to remove, because when the shortcomings are removed, something has to be planted, watered and nurtured in place of them.  For example, I pray that I will be more fulfilled than self-pitying and more humble than proud.


Welcome balance.
Humility, in my experience of the program, is that the heart of AA.  Without an ounce of humility, one is incapable of taking the first step, much less the next six.

Hemingway's quotation applies here: humility is about striving to be superior to one's former self not to any other human being.  My former self (and sometimes current self), my drunk self, is self-pitying and proud.

When I am pumped up with pride, I think of myself more highly than I ought to think.  When I am caught in a web of self-pity, I look for someone other than the God of my understanding to lift me out of despair.

Since I have been in AA, I am becoming more balanced, because I am beginning to understand, practice and remember that the highs are not as high as they seem initially; neither are the lows.

I am better able to place life in perspective, because I am less likely to exaggerate the significance of any given day.  If I stay sober through whatever problems that I face today, then I will have a chance at being happier, more joyous and freer tomorrow.

6th Step PRINCIPLE: Willingness

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

One of the questions that beginners are asked repeatedly in the AA groups in which I am active is, "Are you willing to go to any lengths to achieve sobriety?"

I ask this question of people whom I sponsor, too.  I also ask a follow-up question, "Why are you willing to go to any lengths?"

For the first 90 days, and probably more, I was motivated by fear.  I was afraid to drink, because I did not want to suffer any further consequences of alcohol abuse, and I was afraid not to drink, because I was not sure how to face the mounting consequences of my drinking without alcohol.  

Motivations change.  

Anything that helps a person to survive the first days of sobriety without hurting one's self or another person is probably a good thing, but somewhere along the way, one has to stop being motivated by something that produces anxiety, like fear, and to start being motivated by something life-giving, like hope.

One problem to consider is that alcoholics often forget about the horrible consequences of our drinking or convince ourselves that somehow it will be different next time.  If I had not come to believe that life would improve by staying sober, then I probably would be drinking again by now.  I am not suggesting that life gets better every day---it does not---but that one's ability cope with, and respond to, difficult circumstances improves with one's commitment to the program.

Now I am willing to go to any lengths so that I may enjoy the freedom that AA promises and provides, and this experience of sobriety is even better than when I was willing to go to any lengths simply because I was afraid.

Don't drink before you think.

Motivations change.  So do thought patterns.  For me, motivations changed first, and this change was more instinctual, or spiritual, than intellectual.  

Alcoholism had burned me deeply enough that I was not looking to go near that flame for a while, and while I was not drinking, the program began to work its magic in my life.

Sometimes when meetings go off-topic, or become too philosophical, someone will help the group to focus by asking, "What does this have to do with not drinking?"  Good question!  

This question is one that the person, who is not thirsty at a particular meeting, may forget to ask, and if one goes a while without asking this question, then he or she may end up at a bar.  I have heard plenty of relapse stories that begin with men and women spending too much time in their minds rather than taking the actions that lead to a better quality of life.

AA, first and foremost, is about not drinking.  Take that action first, and then take it again and again, and your focus will change for the better.   

Be clear about your defects of characters.

The willingness required in the beginning of the program is required when taking the sixth step.  I think that it is important for those of us in AA to sit with steps four and five before taking the sixth step.  

Sitting with the inventory and with the conservations with a person one trusts that follow is, in my opinion, how one becomes entirely ready to God remove the defects of character that were, and perhaps, to some extent, still are, mixed up with one's anger, resentments, fear and toxic relationships.

The prayer with which step six concludes is about letting go, which was not one of my strengths when I came into the program, and, in truth, is a strength to which I aspire often, even now.

Trust the God who challenges you.

Remember when you pray the prayer, which follows this step, that you are praying to the God of your understanding, the God who breathes life into your program.  

Be as honest as possible, and trust this God to heal and to forgive.  Remember that you are a sick person, not a bad person, and that the changes for which you are asking will take time and that you will be asked to participate in the process.

Be sure that the God of your understand is different enough from you to hold you accountable for future actions and forgiving enough to help you stay sober should the patterns that you are asking God to change repeat themselves.

After praying this prayer, you may feel lighter, but remember you will still be an alcoholic whose life is only beginning to change.  This change will be challenging, but it also will be worth it, and after you travel the road of happy destiny for a while, you will look back at the lengths to which you have gone and give thanks, because it will have been worth the effort.

5th Step PRINCIPLE: Integrity

Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

The steps build on one another, and nowhere is this pattern more evident than in step five.  Honesty, which is the first step principle, is synonymous with integrity, which is the fifth step principle. 

Steps toward integrity

Honesty and integrity, however, are not the same.  One may be honest without practicing integrity, but it is impossible to practice integrity without being honest.  When I was drinking, I did not have a problem being truthful about other people's problems; I had difficulty being truthful about mine.  

Another difference between honesty and integrity is that honesty is practiced (or not) in any given moment; integrity is earned over time.  When I came into the program, I lacked integrity, and as I sat in those first meetings, I often thought about how wonderful it would be to accumulate time.

The respect and self-respect cultivated in the fifth step is the result of a process to which a recovering alcoholic returns again and again.  Taking this step calls one to practice the courage championed in the step four, to be as hopeful as one is when taking step two and to speak frankly to the God whom one trusts in step three.

Say it out loud.

American humorist Will Rogers says, "Lead your life so you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip."  For me, and for everybody whom I have ever met in AA, it is too late to follow Rogers' advice in some situations. 

One of my problems in the beginning was that I blamed my problems on the parrot and the town gossip rather than on the one who is ultimately responsible for my life: me.

Sure, there are good explanations for why I was, and sometimes still am, angry.  I have been wronged.  I have followed bad advice.  I have had a series of bad breaks, and yet nothing that has appeared on any resentment list that I have ever made justifies acting out in public or lashing out toward another person.  Nothing on this list is made better by ever drinking again.

One of the objectives of the fifth step for me is to be able to look at myself in the mirror and at other people in the eyes again.  Another objective is to leave the past in the past and to live in the present as Rogers advises.

Speak openly and honestly.

The phrase that I trip over every time that I read the fifth step is "the exact nature of our wrongs."  At first, the gravity of this statement frightened me, but eventually, I arrived at a place in which I am rarely afraid, because I am not haunted by the past in the ways that I used to be.

Swiss poet and novelist Hermann Hesse says, “You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself.”  Until one admits the exact nature of his wrongs to God, to one's self and to another human being, how will this person be at peace?  This person will not.

Confession is good for the soul, and for many who are taking the program seriously for the first time after decades of active alcoholism, this is especially good news, because they did not know, or had forgotten, that they had souls that could be filled with warmth and assurance after years of stone cold bitterness.  

Relate.

The warmth that the fifth step brought into my life was first and foremost in relationships.  Once I accepted responsibility for the wreckage of my past, I began to feel more and more comfortable in the presence of God and other people.  With comfort came confidence, which differs from arrogance in that  confidence invites company, arrogance pushes people away.

American poet Samuel Johnson writes that,  “There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity."  

Think about how many people come into AA feeling sad and lonely.  Think about how virtues like honesty, hope, faith, courage and integrity contribute to one's ability to love one's God, one's neighbor and one's self.  Confidence comes from understanding who one is, past and present, and not from pretending to be anything that one is not.  

There is freedom in this confidence that begins with honesty and is achieved, over time, through integrity.

4th Step PRINCIPLE: Courage

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

If you had asked me if I were courageous back when I was drinking, then I would have told you that I was.  I would have spoken at length about the professional and personal obstacles in my life that I had overcome.  At that time, alcoholism was not one of the obstacles that I had overcome.  It was overcoming and overwhelming me, and I was not yet courageous enough to ask for help.

Go backstage and evaluate the performance.

Exercising courage is not the same as being bold or brash.  Before I started working AA's steps, I was assertive to a fault.  It was not enough to have something to say; I had to call attention to myself in an effort to command the widest audience possible.  If I had a problem with you, then I would confront you publicly, not privately, because I thought of life as a performance and felt that I belonged, not behind the scenes, but on center stage.

I prided myself on my intelligence and wit, and pride went before the fall.

Be honest about the past, and trust the God of your understanding.

The fourth step afforded me an opportunity to face facts about myself and to practice the principles that are championed in the first three steps.

Step four asks an alcoholic to stand in front of the mirror sober for the first time in a long time, and if one takes "the searching and fearless moral inventory" without flinching, then one will be honest about one's past, and all of the anger, resentment, fear and bad decisions made there, and to believe that life will be better on the other side, because the God of one's understanding is caring for him or her through the process.

Complete the step---no matter what!

In Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch says to his son Jem, who is angry about the conviction of an innocent man, "I wanted you to know what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."

Admitting that one is powerless over alcohol and that one's life in unmanageable is almost the same as saying that one is licked.  Trusting a Power greater than one's self to see one through, no matter what, requires courage that is motivated by faith and hope, and with this motivation, one is able to see a better life on the other side of alcohol, perhaps for the first time.

Practice all of the principles, especially the most important one.

The poet Maya Angelou says that courage is "the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you cannot practice any other virtue consistently."

Courage assumes fear.  Courage does not proceed without respect to the consequences.  Courage understands the gravity of a situation and forges ahead anyway.

How many alcoholics sit down to write a fourth step and have no idea of what will appear on the list?  I am sure that one's initial list is incomplete.  One does not remember everything, because of blackouts, on the one hand, and denial, on the other.  The fourth step is about overcoming denial inasmuch as it is about confronting the anger and fear that have marred all of his or her relationships past and present.  When this denial is overcome, one takes a giant step forward in pursuit of freedom from this potentially fatal illness.

Courage counts!

The encouraging news in the fourth step is that all of the events that appear on the moral inventory are in the past, even when the consequences of them are not, and facing the consequences of past decisions is better when one has faced his or her past and is better equipped to live in the present.  As Winston Churchill, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom says, "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

3rd Step PRINCIPLE: Faith

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.

If I made better decisions, then I would probably not be in AA.  Or I would have introduced myself to the program sooner than I did, because when I noticed that I was not able to control my drinking, I would have sought help rather than order another drink.

The judgment that I brought into the program did not serve me well, and yet as early as the second step, the program trusted me enough to formulate an understanding of God that would help me to be and stay sober.

AA is inherently optimistic.  In the first step, it asserts that men and women who are wired to drink may be able to stop and then be made happily and usefully whole.  In the second step, the program promises that the alcoholic's life will improve through faith, and in the third step, one begins to actively trust the God of his or her understanding.

Place your bets.

French philosopher Blaise Pascal suggests that faith, at best, is an educated guess, but, in truth, it is a gamble.  Pascal's wager, as it is known, says that it is better to assume the existence of God than to act as if one is alone in the universe.

If I place my faith in God, and God doesn't exist, then what I have lost?  A few more wild nights?  But: if God exists and I have faith in this God, then what I have gained?  Everything.

Conversely, if I flatly deny the existence of God and God exists, then I am subject to God's mercy (best case scenario) or wrath (worst case scenario).  If I do not believe in God and God does not exist, then I forfeit only the hope that belief in God provides.

Foster a sense of well being.

Faith and hope are not the same, but they are intimately related.  Both foster a sense of well being that diffuses anxieties and calms fears.

Hope looks forward and trusts that everything will work out for the best.  It clarifies one's place in the world in which he or she lives now, and it motivates one to act in accordance with the promises before him or her.

Faith is more deeply rooted than hope.  Sometimes hope precedes faith.  For example, one may not be able to trust the God of his or her understanding until one has a sense of what one's future with this God will be.  Often faith comes before hope, because faith is passed down from one generation to the next, and in my experience, faith flourishes in communities where human beings gather to be made well.

Encourage and be encouraged.

In the beginning, I applied Pascal's wager to my experience of AA.  I had doubts about the program and even more self-doubt.  I did my best to proceed cautiously and confidently and am happy about where the program has taken me.

Still, I remember in sitting in a Big Book study early on and thinking, "If I give AA everything that I have and AA is wrong, then what have I lost?  But if AA works and I choose not to work the program, then what would I gain?"

AA provides me with a sense of well being by placing me in an open and honest community of people who have suffered and are striving to be well.  Walking into an AA meeting is one of the most honest things that I do.  Nobody asks why I am there, because they are there for the same reason.  As we share in each other's joys and sorrows, we encourage and are encouraged.

Encouragement, in the end, may be the essence of faith and hope, which begin and end in love.

Be decisive.

AA, like life, consists of living with the consequences of a series of choices that begins with the decision to go to that first meeting.  Then, one has to decide if one is an alcoholic or not, if one is powerless over alcohol or not, if one's life is unmanageable or not, if one is able to believe in a Power greater than one's self or not and if one is insane or not.

The questions asked in the third step are: 1) Would God make better decisions directing my life than I have?; 2) Am I willing to trust God completely at this point in my sobriety?; 3) and Am I comfortable enough with my understanding of God to accept this God's care?

In AA, I am positive that I am not alone in the universe.  I feel God's presence in the stories that are told and the experiences that are shared.  Meetings help to center me and to feel connected both to the group and to the God of my understanding, who proves time after time that trust in this God is a sure bet.

2nd Step PRINCIPLE: Hope

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

There are two big, bold pronouncements made in the second step that many alcoholics are reluctant to accept: 1) that God exists; and 2) that alcoholism is a psychological disorder.

Power greater than ourselves

I recognize that the language used in the second step is "a Power greater than ourselves," but let's face it: the program encourages belief in God.  Read on in The Big Book.  In the step three, one is asked to turn one's will and life over to the care of God as he or she understands God.

I wonder if alcoholics, who are working the steps for the first time, ever feel deceived.  I did not, but faith came naturally to me, almost as naturally as did drinking to excess.

To the person who feels rejected by the God with whom he or she was raised, this step offers hope, because AA offers theological freedom.  The God of my understanding may not look or act like yours, and yet the differences in our understandings of God do not prevent us from sitting in meetings together or helping one another to achieve sobriety.

Restored to sanity

Both the person who suffers from alcoholism and I are there for the same reason: to recover from "a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body," which, let's face it, introduces another truth that may be difficult to accept: the second step asserts that alcoholics are sick.

On the one hand, I did not like being told that I was/am insane.  However, wasn't it Albert Einstein who said that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of "insanity"?  I considered Einstein a genius, even when I sat in the same bar, drinking the same drinks and driving home for years.

On the other hand, there was something comforting in thinking about myself as sick, as opposed to thinking of myself as bad.  Sick people heal.  Bad people are punished, dismissed and forgotten.  Maybe the God of my understanding would act compassionately and remember me.

Exodus life

Inasmuch as alcoholics strive like to think of themselves as unique, ancient wisdom helps me to practice AA's 12 steps.  For example, I am not Jewish, but the story of the Exodus helps me to think about alcoholism.  The Hebrews are slaves in Egypt until Moses leads them out.

One of the titles considered for The Big Book before it became The Big Book was A Way Out.  The big difference between slavery in Egypt and the affliction that the alcoholic suffers is that alcoholic suffering is self-imposed.  However, before I completely understood the nature of alcoholism, I was already lying to myself about how, with more self-discipline, I could manage my drinking.

I had to suffer before I could hear the voices that helped me first to understand the nature of my oppression and then to follow them through a wilderness, up steps and to a place where promises are fulfilled.

  

The assurance of things hoped for

In the Christian Scriptures, faith is defined as "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."  The terms of the things hoped for are set by God, or in AA-speak, the God of one's understanding, who knows the way out of alcoholism.

When I came into the program, I was not sure of much.  This uncertainty did not stop me from being bombastic and making big, bold pronouncements on every subject under the sun, but it did open me to accepting the possibility of being accepted by a God who welcomed alcoholics, all alcoholics, from every station in life from which one wandered into a meeting.

When I attended my first meeting, I was sure that I would be convicted of a DUI, and yet the suggestion that the God of my understanding was with me, even when it felt like this God was not, was comforting as I faced one of the most difficult periods of my life, which, for the most part, is behind me now.

Avoiding real disaster
The Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism assures his followers that, "No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster."

In the final years of my drinking, it was increasingly difficult for me to imagine life getting better.  I sat in the shadow of a mountain of debt, and the wreckage of my past haunted me every day of my life.

It was not until I was arrested for a DUI and felt like I had no choice but to go to AA that life began to seem manageable again.  I knew that it would take time to clean up the mess that I created and that time was one of goals of every person in the program.  At last, the disaster of lost hope was averted, because at last, I was able to stop worrying about an imagined crisis and to start addressing a real one.

The sum of human wisdom
Alexandre Dumas, who is best known for writing The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, writes that all human wisdom is contained in these two words, "Wait and hope."

With jail behind me and a court appearance before me, I was not equipped to do either one, but I did not have a choice.  I had to wait and hope.

At that stage in my sobriety, feeling that I did not have a choice was good for me, because given a choice, I would drink, but after waiting and hoping for a while, I started making better choices, and now that I have made a few of them, I choose to wait and hope and am confident that good things will come from these choices. 

1st Step PRINCIPLE: Honesty

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol---that our lives had become unmanageable.

I have attended AA meetings throughout the United States, and in many of the clubhouses where I have attended meetings, a list of 12 principles appear alongside of the 12 steps and 12 traditions.  

The principles

The principles on this list differ from clubhouse to clubhouse.  The differences are not drastic, but I feel that I should acknowledge them in the beginning of this series so that if the principles that I discuss here are different from the ones that appear in the place where you attend meetings you will understand why (alcoholics, in my experience, are reluctant to trust other people, so I am careful to nuance what I say in an effort to establish credibility from the beginning of this series).

The practices

The principle practiced in the first step is honesty, and honesty, in my experience, does not come naturally to alcoholics.   Before I came into the program, I was able to twist any story to say whatever I wanted it to say.  Often I deceived others; sometimes I deceived myself (especially when I thought that people believed the same lie that I had been telling for years).  

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth

Fundamentally, honesty is about telling the truth, and yet it is much, much more.  Honesty is not simply the absence of lying; it is telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth regardless of whether it advances one's personal agenda.  It assumes knowledge of one's self and situation and a willingness to share this knowledge with another person so that he or she may be helped.  

The result of honesty is trust.  One starts trusting his or her judgment and the judgment of others (for me, trusting others came first, but I am sure that for some, trust starts with one's self).  Being able to trust another person over a long period of time results in loyalty, and with a sense of support and experience with being supportive, one comes to feel part of the group to which he or she belongs.

Admission

In AA, the first act of honesty is admitting: 1) that one is powerless over alcohol; and 2) that life is unmanageable.  "Admission" language assumes that something is concealed (or at least one thinks that something is concealed).  It also implies wrongdoing and hints at willingness to change.

Admitting that one is powerless over alcohol and that life has become unmanageable bumps up against one's pride, and even though I was humiliated when I came into AA, I still had an extraordinary amount of pride, especially for a person who was recently released from jail.

Practicing the first step imparts life skills that help beyond not drinking, but when one comes into the program, not drinking may be all that one can think about, because the consequences of his or her drinking sit like elephants in the meeting room.       

Be yourself.

From an early age, I was taught to, "Be myself."  Later in life, I wondered, "What if one is an asshole?"

The line between being an alcoholic and an asshole is fine.  With enough to drink, I always was myself, and this self was an asshole.  Of course, the next morning, I would blame whatever I did or said on alcohol, and yet as I stepped into recovery, I began to think of myself as the person who did and said all of these embarrassing things.

Being one's self leads to a better quality of life.  Being one's self while drinking alcoholically leads to consequences that lead one into the program, and being one's self while suffering these consequences, leads to the admissions of powerlessness and unmanageability.

Be open to being empowered.

One of the biggest lies that I told myself was that alcohol helped me to relax.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  When I drank, I gave myself permission to go to the darkest and most vitriolic places in my psyche and to be honest about how I felt about other people.  All of the feelings that I expressed were negative, and sharing these feelings did not bring about trust or loyalty.

Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, "Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery."  For me, as an active alcoholic, nothing was harder than speaking the truth about myself, though flattering myself was one of the few practices that I did well.  The opposite was true with respect to my thoughts and feelings about other people.  I preferred criticizing to complimenting, which led to feeling increasingly disconnected from my peers.

Be willing to change.

When I came into AA, this pattern had to change.  I had to begin to look as critically at myself as I looked at other people, and I had to begin to overlook the qualities in other people, especially members of AA, that led me to dark and vitriolic places so that I could let them help me help myself.

Given where I was when I came into the program, it was not difficult to find men and women who seemed more empowered than was I.  Life seemed more manageable to them, and yet I still found myself judging them by some ridiculous standard that, in the end, was more alcoholic than sober.

When I stepped up and accepted responsibility for the actions that led me into AA, I opened myself to the possibility of life without alcohol.  I was not sure if this life would be better, but I was convinced that it would not be worse.  For the first time in a long time, I was being honest with myself, and with time, I started being more honest with other men and women, and slowly but surely, I started feeling better about myself again.

INTRO: Twelfth Step

The twelfth step assumes a spiritual awakening: "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry the message to other alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs."  In AA meetings that I attend, this statement is interpreted as both threat and promise.  For the person who has had a bad experience with religion, the suggestion that being and staying sober is somehow contingent on his or her having a spiritual awakening is terrifying.  For the alcoholic who is open to, and maybe even hopes for, a spiritual awakening, this statement is encouraging.

The second assumption made in the twelfth step is that the spiritual awakening that occurs is the result of these steps.  The step does not specify which ones (and the ones that make the biggest difference probably differ from alcoholic to alcoholic).  For me, the first step helped me more than any other during the first year, and then once the craving passed, the tenth step became essential to achieving and maintaining the emotional balance that is a hallmark of serenity.  The point is that the program brings about change worth celebrating.

One of my most satisfying moments in sobriety was sitting in a meeting in which a man whom I sponsor was recognized for completing his first year.  The changes in his life were obvious to me, as, I suspect that, the changes in me were, and are, obvious to my sponsors past and present.  Noticing the changes in somebody else, like noticing their faults when I was drinking, comes more naturally than noticing what is happening with me.

To me, the twelfth step is about helping another alcoholic to achieve sobriety, regardless of the form that this help takes.  Too often, this step is reduced to participating in interventions.  The "carrying the message" language certainly points to helping another alcoholic by assisting with an intervention, and yet there are other methods for sharing one's experience, strength and hope.

Following my DUI, I was not able to drive for a few weeks.  During that time, my sponsor would give me rides to two meetings per week.  One day, when he arrived to take me to one of these meetings, I said, "Thanks for working the 12th step!"  Meaning: By giving me a ride to a meeting, you are helping me to be sober, and I appreciate your generosity.  What he heard, however, was: "Thanks for coming to perform an intervention."  He panicked.  He thought that I had started drinking again until I was able to explain what I meant.  Later, we laughed about this episode after we shared our understandings of the twelfth step.

AA is not a linear program; it is cyclical.  The steps have to be practiced again and again and again.  When I come to the end of a cycle, I begin again, and hopefully, every time that I repeat the steps, I am able to dig more deeply into the principles behind them and to practice these principles with more confidence and serenity so that when I help other alcoholics, as a sponsor or as one who shares during meetings, they will be overwhelmed by the experience, strength and hope that has changed me.

INTRO: Eleventh Step

Before I came into AA, I prayed often and meditated never.  Praying improved my conscious contact with God, as I understood God.  The problem was that contact does not lead anywhere when one does not feel anything.  Subconsciously, I blamed God for the setbacks that I faced in life.  Some of them, like alcoholism, were related to nature.  Other disappointments may have been attributed to bad decisions and/or bad luck.  Still, I wondered, "Why doesn't the God of my understanding intervene?"

I prayed at the hospital between the scene of the accident and being taken to jail for the DUI, and I prayed in jail.  When I attended my first AA meeting, I prayed the Serenity Prayer with the group in the beginning of the meeting and the Lord's Prayer with them in the end.

The thought of meditating made me laugh.  I was the opposite of a contemplative when I came into the program.  Meditation, I thought, was for men and women who were comfortable withdrawing from the world and sitting with themselves.  It was not for the person whose body still ached from drunk-driving into an inanimate object.

AA changed my prayer life, and this change started by praying as often as I did with men and women who were as desperate as me.  Even after I accrued some time in the program, praying with a group of other alcoholics was different than praying within a faith community.  Alcoholics may be called to prayer with profanity (a feature of life in AA that still makes me laugh), and yet the only thing that is considered profane in AA is not taking sobriety seriously.

Everybody at an AA meeting has come to a place in which he or she had to admit that he or she belonged there, and for those with some time in the program, remembering his or her first meeting always breeds gratitude.  Praying not only improves my conscious contact with God, it also improves my conscious contact with others whose hearts yearn for healing and wholeness as much as mine does.

I did not experiment with meditation until my second year of sobriety.  Now that I have, I think about meditating differently.  For years, I have heard people say, "Prayer is talking to God; meditation is listening to God," and yet the meditation experiences that are the most meaningful to me are the ones without words, not mine or God's.

I sit regularly with a group of Buddhists, who have taught me the spiritual and psychological value of being still.  I sit for a half-hour at a time with this group and think about nothing but my breath, which, of course, is a power greater than myself.  I have the same sense of relief and relaxation after meditating that I do after attending an AA meeting.  Both provide me with an alternative to going through life restless, irritable and discontented.

I pray for God's will for me, even though experience has taught me to be careful when I become too clear about what God's plan for me is.  When I pray for this knowledge, I find that I may become impatient.  Once I think that I know what God's will is, I think that change should come quickly.  Sometimes I complain, because I want God to disclose more of the future than God is in the business of disclosing.  I am aggressive in pursuing what I interpret God's will for my life to be, and yet I find that I am more content when I focus on receiving the day than seizing it.

Stuff happens, even in sobriety, and yet when I am centered spiritually, even the most tragic events are bearable.  Prayer and meditation center me spiritually, like steps four through ten center me emotionally.  By practicing the steps together, I find balance in my life, and with this balance, I am able to be at peace and to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.

INTRO: Tenth Step

By the time that a person arrives at the tenth step, the past should be behind him or her.  The first steps helped me to unpack the baggage that I brought with me into AA.  By confronting the past, I conquered fear.  By recognizing how I contributed to the problems that I brought with me into the program, I let go of resentments on which I had fixated previously, and by virtue of these actions, suddenly, there was space in my life for serenity, which alluded me when I was drinking.

The first time that I made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself, I was sifting through 40 years of anger, disappointments and frustration.  The fourth step, at least in theory, is daunting, but once that step has been taken, and one has set the record straight with one's self, the God of one's understanding and one's neighbors, then one may live freely in the present without looking over one's shoulder.

One of the first big thoughts that I had upon after entering the program was that, "One of biggest threats to my sobriety is my inability to stay in the present."  Every time that I thought about the past, I was afraid of the consequences that I may face, and every time I thought about the future, I became anxious about whether or not I would be able to live the life that I thought that I wanted to live.

The tenth step is about living in the present.  If one does a fourth step every day, which is essentially what the tenth step asks the alcoholic to do, then one's emotional baggage is not able to accumulate and is less likely to express itself in destructive or self-destructive ways.  I think of the tenth step as taking out the trash, and I recognize that one's home smells best when the trash is disposed daily.

I wish that I were disciplined enough to do a thorough tenth step every day.  I am making process toward this goal, but honestly, I am not yet there, even though I have noticed that I feel better in proportion to how frequently I take tenth steps.  I have experimented with different formats from written to spoken ones.  I journaled for a while using the columns laid out in The Big Book, but I did not feel like the events of everyday life were drastic or dramatic enough as the highs and lows of 20 years of active alcoholism.  

The format that works best for me now is based on the Serenity Prayer, which is prayed near the beginning of almost every AA meeting that I have ever attended: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference."  Serenity comes by practicing wisdom, and I practice wisdom by looking at my life since the last tenth step and discerning which situations call for acceptance (the things that I cannot change), which ones call for courage (the things that I can, in fact, change) and how I will live in accordance with this understanding.  

Often the anxiety that I experience in my life is a direct result of trying to place a situation in the wrong column, and forcing situations into the wrong column aggravates, or are further evidence of, alcoholic thoughts and behaviors (i.e., character flaws), the only appropriate response to which is to change my thoughts and behaviors and to ask the God of my understanding to change me.

Amends eventually became instinctive.  One does not have to wait until he or she has been through some formal evaluation to recognize when he or she has offended, insulted or otherwise wronged another person, and in my experience, as one becomes more experienced making apologizes, fewer apologies are necessary, because the filter between one's thoughts and actions gets thicker and thicker.

The tenth step is about being centered in the practice that has brought one to this place in his or her sobriety.  This practice is not without challenges, especially from within, and yet it is effective for today, which, in my experience, is the only place for an alcoholic to be, because this is the only place where serenity resides.       

INTRO: Ninth Step

Only so much in life may be quantified: for example, time and money.  The value of everything else, from heartache to joy, is approximated.  Both numbers and experience are subject to interpretation, and interpretations make the biggest difference when they are shared.

I drank for 21 years, and by the time that I quit, I was spending $5000-$6000 per year on booze.  I am sure that there were fewer amazing experiences than I remember, because truth be told, I do not remember much, and by the time that I arrived in AA, the pattern was rather boring: I drank as soon, and as often, as it was prudent for me to do so, went to sleep/passed out and if it were early enough when I woke up/came to, I would drink more.

The steps helped me to understand how I drank and why I drank.  Even with a plan to stop before I drank too much, once I started drinking, quitting was not an option.  The best and only defense against this phenomenon was, and is, not to take the first drink.  I drank because I had problems, from psychological to interpersonal to social problems, and drinking always made bad situations worse.

When I started feeling better physically and emotionally (and for me, the changes occurred in that order) following my introduction to the program, I started being more honest about myself, my past and how my blatant disregard for self-destruction impacted others.

Guilt is good only to a point.  It helped me to complete the searching and fearless moral inventory, to recognize the part that I played in the drama of my life and to notice patterns that I strive not to repeat in my sober life.  I prayed, and continue to pray, for God to help me to lead a life in which fewer apologies are necessary by changing my emotional default settings.  

Among alcoholics, steps four, five and nine have reputations for being the toughest.  The fourth step is about looking in a well-lit mirror in which one's faults are glaring.  The fifth step requires the alcoholic to trust another person enough to ask him and her to look into the mirror with you, and after consulting with the alcoholic about what he or she sees, the ninth step is about implementing the plan by which the alcoholic will make amends.

The best advice that I received as I prepared to take the ninth step was to take this step without shame.  I was told to say what I had to say.  Be honest.  Accept responsibility.  Do what was necessary to make it right, and look the people to whom I was apologizing in the eyes.

As much as I was taught to dread the ninth step, my experience of it was anti-climatic.  I imagined every encounter to be more confrontational and painful than it actually was.  Figuring out what the amends looked like was the toughest part.  When I was not sure how to right a particular wrong, I asked the person whom I had wronged.  When I was not sure would injure another person, I asked my sponsor.

Most of my amends were face-to-face.  One was a carefully worded letter.  Sometimes money or promises were involved.  The amends helped me to clear my conscience, to be sober, and yet it was also important to me that I do my best to help the other person hear me when I said, "I'm sorry."

The work-related amends were simple and straight-forward conversations that included a few measurable guidelines.  The bulk of the personal amends were offered and accepted verbally.  In some cases, the person(s) to whom I apologized seemed suspicious about whether I was sober, or would stay sober, and in these cases, it was important to me to be as sincere as possible and not allow their responses to spark resentment or fear.

Confession: I am not completely comfortable with "the living amends" language that I often hear in meetings, because for me, making an amends is about helping one to live in the present without being haunted by his or her past.  The notion of a "living amends" troubles because it suggests that the past is always with you.  Of course, it is in one sense, but in another, it is not.

To repeatedly apologize for the same offense fosters codependency in the relationship, and it prevents the alcoholic from leaving the past in the past, not regretting it or shutting the door on it.  Sometimes one is not sure enough is enough, which is the same mindset at the center of the alcoholic's problems, and so, at times, it becomes necessary to hear another alcoholic say, "Consider that amends is complete."

Sobriety, like the wreckage of the past, is difficult to quantity.  I know how long it has been since I had a drink.  I know how much money I have saved by not drinking, and yet I am incapable of placing a number on the value of feeling self-respected and forgiven.  Whatever it is, I think that it is best measured in gratitude.

INTRO: Eighth Step

Previously, I noted that was I raised in home where God was like Santa Claus.  Praying was about asking for what one wanted and then trying to persuade God to provide by practicing piety.  When God did not act quickly enough when I asked for something, I appealed to Mom, who was, and is, always looking for an occasion to shop.  She almost always gave me what I asked for, provided that I completed whatever emotional obstacle course that she set before me.

By the time that I arrived at the eighth step, I was familiar with the notion of making a list.  I did not expect the resentment list that I made when taking the fourth step to be the one that I would be checking twice when I started noting who I had wronged.  Returning to this list after identifying and examining the destructive and self-destructive behavioral patterns in my life was a humbling experience---almost as humbling as starting to ask God to remove these defects of character every day.  I sought change, and yet I was not completely sure of the change for which I was asking or what I expected.  For the change to be lasting, it had to seem authentic; it had to be authentic.

What I had to watch, and to be prepared to change, then and now, are actions that are motivated by self-pity or pride, which, as looked at that first resentment list, more often than not, contributed to the resentments that, more often than not, were expressions of fear or feelings of failure related to ridiculously high expectations.  While considering who I had harmed with my sponsor, saying that this person or that person deserved my wrath was not an acceptable response, because harboring grudges does nothing to promote one's sobriety.

Of course, some anger and actions are impossible to justify, even by an alcoholic.  Revisiting the resentment list, I created a list of people I had wronged.  Then I was asked to create a list of people I had wronged who had not wronged me.  At first, I was not sure that I could come up with one, but as I looked at how my resentments affected innocent bystanders, sometimes years after the fact, I was able to put together a list to which I would add names as I remembered them, sometimes in the middle of the night, often first thing in the morning (and now that the haze of active alcoholism has passed, I still remember stories).  

Please note that making a list is the first half of this step.  Becoming willing to make amends to all whom one has wronged is the second half.  AA recognizes that it takes a while for obsessive personality types to warm to the notion of change, especially changes in them or in their circumstances.  For example, one comes to believe in God in the second step; the searching and fearless moral inventory in step four is separate from, and a prelude to, sharing the results in step five.  All that step eight requires in terms of making amends is a willingness to do so.

It is surprising to note that step eight is the first place in the steps where the term "willingness" appears, especially when one considers how many open discussion meetings are based on the subject of willingness.  Until this point, the only hint of willingness is in step three when one turns one's will and life over to the care of the God of his or her understanding.  One's willingness to be cared for, which differs from being given everything that one asks for, precedes one's willingness to make amends so that one may be assured of comfort as one takes the next step toward freedom from a past that cannot be changed in anticipation of a future in which one will be changed by the God of his or her understanding.