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.

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: 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.