INTRO: Fourth Step

Blaming is a bad habit.  It is one of many bad habits that I practiced when I came into AA.  I blamed myself for drinking too much.  I blamed my parents for not preparing me to live a better life.  I blamed leaders in my chosen profession for not recognizing my genius, and I dragged the past with me wherever I went.  I was angry, fearful and insecure.  I was confident that I would be able to recover from alcoholism, but I was not sure if I would recover professionally and personally from the consequences of my drinking.

The thought of a searching and fearless moral inventory, which is the action taken in AA's fourth step, did not intimidate me at first.  I was experienced in taking moral inventories.  I was critical of everybody and everything.  I was as least as hard on others as I perceived them to be on me.  

I was encouraged by the fact that the fourth step began with a resentment list.  I was eager to blame my drinking on somebody or something other than me, and yet as I went through this step, column by column, I began to understand that there was nothing fearless or moral about the inventories that I performed in the past.  The blistering critiques of other people that I would share with anybody and everybody who would listen to me were cowardly and immoral, because I was not willing to subject myself to the same scrutiny to which I subjected the ones I blamed for my suffering.

A searching and fearless inventory is similar to looking into a well-lit mirror after an especially hard night drnking.  Evidence of abuse and self-abuse is glaring.  The anger that fuels the making of the resentment list may be justified; it also is cancerous as one strives to be whole, to be at peace, rather than at war, with himself, herself or anybody else.

Anger, as I experience it, is self-protective and defensive.  It is related to the fears that one confronts in the second column of the personal inventory.  When I felt threatened, often because I was insecure, I would lash out in an effort to guard my fragile ego that I would crush with the next drink.

Intimacy is difficult, if not impossible, when one does not know who he or she is, is subject to drastic emotional surges and craves intensity in all situations.  Honesty is a linchpin of the program.  First, one is honest about his or her drinking.  By step four, one is honest about how he or she contributed to related problems.  In my experience, relationships are a huge related problem; romance is an even bigger one. 

I like the fact that AA uses "columns" language when taking this inventory, because, architecturally speaking, a column allows a structure to stand.  Without columns, structures fall.  For the alcoholic, life without anger, resentment, fear and unhealthy relationships makes drinking far less attractive than it is with them.  The possibility of ever drinking moderately again is smashed in the first step.  With this step, the columns that support one's drinking tumble, too.                

The fourth step is about noticing patterns that lead to bad places emotionally and changing them.  For me, it was important to ask, "Why did I go to these bad places emotionally in the first place?"  By answering this question as openly and honestly as possible, I noted that it often had to do with thinking more highly of myself than I ought to think and/or feeling as if I did not measure up to the standards by which I judged others.

When the patterns started changing, there were fewer instances of anger, fear and relationship dysfunction to report.  When there are fewer problems, there are fewer opportunities to blame.  Noticing one's role in creating the problems that do exist becomes easier as one experiences more balance in his or her life, and this balance is made possible by not insisting on dragging the weight of the past wherever one goes.