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."

1st Step PRINCIPLE: Honesty

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

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

The principles

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

The practices

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

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth

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

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

Admission

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

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

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

Be yourself.

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

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

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

Be open to being empowered.

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

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

Be willing to change.

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

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

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

INTRO: Twelfth Step

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

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

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

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

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

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