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: 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.