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.

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."

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.

INTRO: Seventh Step

The wisdom that other alcoholics share at meetings is essential to recovery.  In the beginning of my AA experience, I was desperate, which, among other things, meant that, for the first time in a long time, I was at a place in which I was willing to listen.  Almost all of my adult life, I thought that I deserved more than I had, and yet by the time that I crawled into AA, hoping against hope for a better life, I recognized that I did not know everything, and I wondered if what I did know would help me to feel good about myself and the mark that I was making in, and on, the world.

To quote another alcoholic, who spoke eloquently in one of the first meetings that I attended, "I felt like a piece of shit in the center of the universe."  I felt badly about myself and judged myself by standards that would not allow these feelings to change, and yet I craved the spotlight and believed that if people really knew me, they would be able to find something amazing in me that I could not, or would not, find in myself.

I was humiliated when I came into AA, and the distinction between humiliation and humility may be helpful here.  Humiliation is not just feeling like a piece of shit; it is knowing that others share one's low opinion of one's self and fixating on this knowledge.  Being handcuffed, bailed out of jail and appearing before a judge confirmed that I was not better than anybody else.  The law that applied to people that I dismissed as less sophisticated than me also applied to me, and I had to come to terms with the fact that I was not any better at obeying the law than I was at moderating my drinking.  Something had to change.  I had to ask for help.

Humility, which is one of the objectives of the seventh step, enables a person to be comfortable in his or her own skin without having to set himself or herself apart as better than the rivals that he or she manufactures out of thin air.  Being set apart leads to feelings of loneliness.  Humility allows one to be part of a group without establishing a place in the hierarchy.

A humble person is comfortable on stage and working behind the scenes.  He or she finds value in everything that he or she does and in the world around him or her and is fulfilled by whatever it is he or she is doing.  A humble person is not weighed down by guilt or shame.  This person is open-minded and opened-hearted enough to accept whatever the God of his or her understanding gives to him.

The action called for the seventh step is to "humbly ask God to remove his (or her) shortcomings."  This step assumes that the person in recovery is increasingly comfortable with the God to whom he or she was introduced step three and that this person is no longer in denial about the guilt, pride, shame, arrogance and fear that led to the consequences that led him or her into the program.  The trust that one places in another person in step six is extended to God in step seven.

In my experience, one's faith in himself or herself grows in proportion to his or her faith in God and in other human beings and vice versa.  This faith is made possible through self-awareness, the beginning of which is the searching and fearless moral inventory in step four.  For me, saying what I had to say to the God of my understanding was not as difficult as saying what I had to say to another person, because the God of my understanding was with me in the past, is with me now and will be with me in the future.  Plus, I did not worry about the God of my understanding saying anything to anybody about what I confided in this God.

Obviously, I was only beginning to trust again, and yet by this stage in recovery, it seemed as if life was beginning again, which signaled a drastic change in my thoughts and feelings.  I was not as anxious as I used to be.  When I came into AA, it seemed as if life was crashing around me, but suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, though I am sure that it was by virtue of the steps, I started believing that something beautiful could be built from the wreckage of the past.

    

INTRO: Sixth Step

One of the first places that I found myself clearly described in The Big Book was in the phrase "restless, irritable and discontent".  I was never satisfied with anyone or anything.  I liked having options.  I thrashed around in search of a better job, a better relationship and a better city.  Of course, it is impossible to know what "better" is when one is unsure of who one is, where one is going or what he or she really wants.  I lacked direction but was highly motivated to chase whatever opportunity presented itself with reckless abandon, because I did not do anything in moderation.  When I came into AA, drinking was not my only problem.

Steps four and five helped me to understand why I did what I did and felt what I felt.  I suffered because of what I did to myself and to others.  I noticed patterns of destructive and self-destructive behaviors that were often fueled by pride, on the one hand, and self-pity, on the other hand.  I specialized in self-sabotage.  Until I was willing to change and be changed, I would not have a chance at being satisfied with who I am, where I am or what I am doing.      

The sixth step calls for two disciplines with which I did not have much experience when I came into the program: focus and patience.  This step requires a person to be "entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character."  I do not know that I ever considered myself entirely ready to do anything, especially something that would eliminate one or more of the many options that I cherished.  I worried that giving up dishonesty would adversely affect my ability to survive, and maybe thrive, professionally and personally, even though I knew that dishonesty contributed to the past that I was only beginning to remember without grimacing.  Giving up wicked emotions and the irrational behavior that accompanied them was difficult enough without submitting to someone's timeline, namely God's, but in the end, I determined that God's plan may be better mine.

Being entirely ready and actually taking the next step are distinct actions.  Both require patience.  Sometimes I sense a big difference in my thoughts and feelings immediately after taking a step.  Often the changes take time.  As I accumulate years in the program, I gain a deeper and deeper appreciation of the value of time.  Life is not about rushing somewhere; it is definitely not about rushing nowhere.  Life is to be savored soberly, according to the rhythm of God's life, not mine.  Of this truth, I cannot be reminded enough.

INTRO: Fifth Step

The longer I drank, the more I often drank alone.  I sat at bars by myself and would drive home from them almost every night.  When I went out with other people, I would drink as they did, at least in the early years, and drink more after we said "goodnight".  Often I would stop on the way home to purchase more alcohol to drink before I went to sleep.  At some point, I stopped going to sleep and started passing out night after night.

I do not remember much about the accident that led to my incarceration.  When I attended my first AA meeting upon my release from jail, I was not feeling much but fear.  Alcohol does that to a person.  It takes away  his or her ability to remember; it takes away his or her capacity to feel.  

Statements like "alcohol does that to a person" make less sense after the fourth step than they do after the first one.  Even though I knew that I was powerless over alcohol, I chose to take the first drink hoping that alcohol would numb senses and calm fears.  Irrationally, I thought that it would help me to forget the past and set me up to succeed in the future.  It did neither one, because I insisted on dwelling on the past and fearing the future, and in so doing, found it impossible to live in the present.

Looking at myself honestly and sharing this story with another person helped me to accept myself as I was without beating myself up or blaming all of my problems on alcohol.  The moral inventory helped me to recognize how much I lied to myself about who I was and how my drinking affected others.  It helped me to start being honest with myself so that I would eventually be able to trust my thoughts and feelings.

The fifth step opened me to the possibility of trusting God and other human beings.  It is about practicing the honesty that the fourth step demands with somebody other than one's aggrandizing and loathing self.  There were few surprises when I did my personal inventory.  In my gut, I remembered how I wronged others.  The challenge was being honest enough to write down these wrongs.  Then, once they were written, the challenge became speaking them aloud.

The fifth step says that we "admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."  Notice that the audiences are God, ourselves and another human being.  The God of my understanding was familiar with my offenses, as was I, so what I was doing in the first part of this step was simply acknowledging what was already known, and there is power in knowing.  Admitting the exact nature of my wrongs to another person was the bigger problem, because one of the problems that I was admitting was how I struggle with pride.

The word "admitted" appears in the steps for the first time since the step one in which "we admitted we were powerless over alcohol".  For me, this language serves as a reminder that all of the alcoholic's problems are related.  Both the first step and the fifth step are about letting go of that which stands in the way of being who we are and of being well.  

Taking the fifth step with another person is an intimate act (which is not to be confused with a romantic one).  It establishes faith in the possibility of a mutually affirming relationship with another person.  It help one begin to trust again.  It empowers one to set his or her sights on life on the other side of the consequences of alcoholic behavior, and about this much I am sure: this life in relationship with God and neighbors is far, far better than drinking alone. 

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.    

INTRO: Third Step

Years ago, I asked for help, but as I became an adult, I stopped asking and started demanding that I be given what I thought that I deserved.

One's understanding of faith and life begins at home, I think, because home is the place where one first experiences everything from authority to autonomy.  On the one hand, my parents provided me with food, shelter and educational opportunities.  On the other hand, they were prone to emotional outbursts, which led to feeling unsafe and unsure of how to pursue thriving relationships. 

Looking to protect myself, I retreated into books.  With this education, I distanced myself from faith and life and expected good things to happen by virtue of my accomplishments.  When life did not meet my expectations, I drank, and then I drank some more.  Now I attend meetings with other men and women who sabotaged their lives with lofty expectations.

AA's third step calls for a decisive action: to turn one's will and one's life over to the care of God as one understands God.  This statement assumes: 1) that one knows what one's will for his or her life is; 2) that one is able to experience God's care; and 3) that one's understanding of God allows for a meaningful relationship to exist between this person and God.

As an adult, I have changed cities and jobs often.  Every time that I transitioned from one situation to the next, I was abundantly clear about why I was making this change.  I have pursued different career paths and seem to prefer whichever one I am not pursuing at the time.  Since becoming a member of AA, I am clearer about the nature of the work that I find fulfilling, but I am less certain about what this work looks like in everyday life.  By understanding who I am, I am better able to be in a relationship with anybody, including God, and to follow wherever God leads me in recovery.  

It is difficult to understand why I was reluctant to turn my will and my life over to anybody or anything, especially God, before coming into the program, because, as an active alcoholic, I was never in control.  I was controlling in professional and personal relationships, but I was not disciplined enough to achieve, much less sustain, meaning, magic or success in any area of my life.  

Because I was unable to meet the expectations that I set for myself, feelings of failure haunted me.  I looked to others to help me in ways that I was unwilling to help other people.  When they could not, or would not, help me, then I began to think of the world as a cruel and harsh place.  I did not trust anybody, especially myself, because I assumed that everybody was as selfish as me.  I felt abandoned by God and neighbor and that nobody was willing to give me a second or third chance.  I was not willing to forgive myself or anybody else and assumed that everybody else was as unforgiving as me.

I was raised in a home where Christmas is celebrated and the line between Jesus and Santa is often blurred.  As an adult, I have come to think of Christ as compassionate and God as forgiving, although I was taught from an early age that God gives commandments to an imperfect people and then judges them for being imperfect.  Christmas seemed like a time to pay off the emotional debts of the past year.  All was to be forgiven if the parents spent enough money on gifts.  In the end, I believed in asking for presents but not in forgiveness.  Now I believe in humility, which asks for nothing but peace.

The God of my understanding is forgiving and empowering, and I am finding that the more that I trust this understanding of God, the better I feel about myself and about other people.  I feel safe more often than I feel threatened.  I am more forgiving, because I feel forgiven.  Even though the third step seems to emphasize understanding God, I am finding that the third step is actually about experiencing God as a peaceful presence in one's life, work and relationships, especially those circumstances in which peace is brought about only through forgiveness.           

INTRO: Second Step

By the time that I arrived in AA, it was difficult for me to deny that I was an alcoholic.  The evidence was overwhleming: I was powerless over alcohol; life had become unmanageable.  In addition to the DUI, I was making questionable decisions professionally and personally without fully suffering the consequences of my actions.  I thought that if I were given a chance to succeed, then I would, and the quality of my life would drastically improve.

Obviously, I was in denial---not about being an alcoholic but about related problems.  Alcohol was a problem, but it was not the only one.  I drank to cope with feelings of disappointment and anxiety, and in so doing, created more problems with which I coped with alcohol.  I am not sure which came first: the alcohol or the problems.  It does not matter.  To be well, both have to be addressed.

The first step is about admitting that one is powerless over alcohol, that one cannot drink under any circumstances.  The second step is about trusting: 1) that something more powerful than alcohol exists; 2) that this power is willing to help; and 3) that this help includes restoring the alcoholic to sanity.  

The stumbling blocks in this step are theological and psychological.  Plenty of people in AA arrive with religious baggage.  Bad experiences with religious institutions or people representing them have led to anger, cynicism and fear (which contribute to other problems).  Trust does not come naturally, and yet without help, one has no chance of overcoming a power greater than himself or herself, like alcohol.  Self-sufficiency is self-defeating.  In the end, the second step is about asking for help whether this help comes from God, a group or one of its members.

The problems that I was looking solve when I came into the program were practical ones.  I wanted to stop drinking.  I wanted to be sure that I was gainfully employed and that my family was intact.  I wanted to feel better about myself and the direction in which my life was headed.  I was tired of spiraling downward.

The suggestion that I was insane offended me.  I had baggage with religious institutions, but even in the depth of my illness, I believed in God.  I prayed.  I read self-help books and met with therapists (whose access to the truth was distorted by my twisted version of it).  Surely, I was not insane, as AA suggests that I am, and yet given the number of times that I drank and expected different results, I came to believe that I was.

As I sobered up, I began to see the past more clearly.  I remembered embarrassing stories.  I wondered what I was thinking when I made some of these decisions that I regretted, and I questioned whether my judgment was better than anybody else's.  I started asking for help, and in so doing, acknowledged that I did not know everything, that I had more than one problem.  I began thinking of myself more as a sick person than as a bad person, and the quality of my life---and my problems---began to improve.  A power greater than myself was beginning to work in my life.  I was being humbled in the process, and humility sets the stage for gratitude.