For Gregg M. and all others who might struggle with this issue

“We of Alcoholics Anonymous”[1] are a mixed lot, today representing a cross section of nearly all humanity.  Lacking proper support for the claim, it is still reasonable to assume that nearly anywhere there is alcohol, the A.A. path to recovery has been blazed.  Thus, we must assume that our experiences in recovery are as varied as our roots, and even where greater commonality exists, with each recovery comes at minimum, the differences in our personalities and our pasts.   Still true however, is this: “The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a common solution”[2]

Genuinely working with others is largely a spiritual endeavor arising spontaneously from gratitude for having been given freely the gift of a new and happy life.  Where before was “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization”[3] comes a new life with new meaning.  Surely, the spiritual basis for recovery infuses truly working with others.  It is small wonder than that a successful relationship between sponsor and sponsee exhibits great commonality at least where spiritual dilemmas are concerned.  Nowhere is this more evident than in working the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

This personal meditation arises from work with my sponsee, struggling as I did, with Step 4.  I attribute the similarity of his struggle with mine to the greater power that guides us in our relationship – it is expected and beyond coincidence that we are given the opportunity to help each other in such profound ways.

With that introduction, I will now explore the topic of this meditation.

Step 4 is that point at which we begin an honest assessment of our lives and understand the full assemblage of our character.

Here we begin to explore the wreckage of the past, examine our personal responsibility for the harm we have caused others and the harm we have caused ourselves.

It is not enough to overcome the obsession to drink through admission of our powerlessness over a mere substance or in admitting the unmanageability in our lives – for many of us, our AA life began when, emerging from a drunken haze into the A.A. meeting room, it was the unmanageability of our lives that had at last become too much for us and we sought help.

Nor is it sufficient to then acknowledge the insanity of our drinking career, accept that a higher power might exist, and then by simple decision give all of our problems to God.

Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob new better. Our text tells us that, “Our liquor was but a symptom.  So we had to get down to causes and conditions.”

The causes and conditions we seek are inexorably bound up in the unmanageability of our lives.  That unmanageability, I believe, emerges more from the make-up of our character and “self-will run riot”[4] then from our affair with alcohol.

In my case, alcohol was the salve on the wounds that I had incurred fighting my own fears and insecurities; a battle that had raged on long before I took my first drink.  Whether I was born with an “allergy” or developed it as my need for escapes from life grew ever more frequent, is irrelevant.  If anything, God gave me alcohol as the path to His Grace, since neither priest nor philosophy had ever convinced me of His existence.

Once in A.A., relief from my obsession with alcohol was nearly instantaneous.  But such relief was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  My fears and insecurities only intensified and no amount of sobriety could relieve the stranglehold of my denial.  I was truly the “ego-maniac with the inferiority complex.”  I don’t to this day know why anyone becomes mentally impaired in this way.  No amount of searching my past has accounted for the cause of that condition.

My 4^th Step was not an event but a process undertaken over the next two years.  I lacked not willingness.  I painfully examined my shortcomings, my grudges, my part in every instance of wrongdoing I could recall.  The mental list was long and over time grew redundant.  In fact, it had been in the nature of my various writings over several years that I confronted my transgressions in detail.  It was pointless to formalize a grudge list or write further on the nature of my misgivings.   These things were not hidden in my sub-conscious at last to be revealed.

Did I feel the hollow of my soul?  Did I encounter the overwhelming despair of deep regret?  Yes! Yes!  Did I gain new insight into my character defects? Did it help? No. No it did not help.

So despite several temporary sponsors, I relapsed for two hours one night with a drunken lover.  I turned in my 11 months of progress the next day.  Five months later, again in the company of the same drunken lover, and some heavily drinking, if not drunk family members, I recovered a miniscule butt of a joint I had stumbled across a few days earlier and took two drags – I hadn’t drank and wouldn’t drink, but escape was in the air.

It didn’t work.  I was appalled at my weakness.  I realized at once that it was the active search for escape into my illusions that I had conveniently overlooked in my search for character defects.

It was a turning point.  Alcohol really wasn’t my problem.  It was my emotional imbalance, my need to escape me that was at long last revealed.

So I sought a new sponsor, a real sponsor, someone tough and genuine.  I picked a woman, although not without some discomfort.  It wasn’t a concern for conflicting motives: although she was surely a looker in her day, she was at least 25 years my senior.  But I was reluctant to discuss some sordid details of my past or the ever present need for a woman in my life.  It was more important that she worked a good program, was a leader in the club and contributed greatly her time and energy to the A.A. way of life.  She was a model in the fellowship of A.A. and too smart to be fooled.

I called her, told her the most recent slip and my realization, and asked her to be my sponsor.  She agreed.  She told me to turn in my chips again and start over.  She asked what step I was on and I told her Step 6.  She tested my thoroughness of Steps 1 through 5 and asked me questions relevant to 4^th Step work.  Apparently my candor and revelations were sufficient to satisfy her assessment of my progress.  While I had made many admissions to previous sponsors, this relationship was really the basis for my 5^th Step.  While we never read my mental 4^th Step together, I felt her assessment was fair enough.  I was at last again on the path forward.  I felt better.  I had a renewed hope.

Shortly thereafter I tried “hitting my knees” and, while I felt awkward, a profound sense of purpose materialized.  I began to attribute many wonderful, and completely unexpected events to that power greater than myself, that something I had only previously been willing to accept, but from which no serenity had flowed: as far as I was concerned that higher power was active only in the fact of my sobriety.

But now, it seemed that my mental health, my serenity, my good days were always a function of my spiritual health.  Where before, a good day was an abstraction in relative levels of satisfaction, now a good day was any day I was grateful for my sobriety and aware of the blessed nature of all good things in my life.  I took Step 6, albeit, as usual, not formally with my sponsor, but in the privacy of my own mind.

I took Step 7, in the privacy of my bedroom, on my knees with the prayer from page 76 on my lips and in my heart.

The book tells us that in Steps 8 we rely on the “list of all persons we had harmed and to whom we are willing to make amends.”   Then, in taking Step 9, “we go out to our fellows and repair the damage done in the past.  We attempt to sweep away the debris which has accumulated out of our efforts to live on self-will….”    Especially to our enemies, we go to each person “in a helpful and forgiving spirit, confessing our former ill feeling and expressing our regret.”

My drinking career had been largely a functional one.  I was by all accounts a “high bottom” drunk having by God’s grace avoided jail, sanatoriums and the grave.

I was a hard worker with little wreckage among friends, due to the fact that I had few friends.  Those few friends had remained my friends, and over the first several months of my sobriety I had made amends for the embarrassments I had caused, which from their perspective was my principal offense.

The people I had offended and behaved most badly toward were my parents, my siblings, my wife and my children and myself.

My parent’s love and interest in me had never failed, although they had had less involvement in my life as my drinking progressed.  But our relationship improved immediately after I admitted many things to them about myself, but especially because, sober, I was once again someone they appreciated spending time with.

Too, my father had a long affair with whiskey, but had quit on his own 12 years before I joined A.A.  He perhaps withheld judgment and was least harmed by my drinking, though only because he could relate so well.

Dad passed away a few years ago, but we had become very close.  He was in many ways, the champion of my sobriety as I shared with him my A.A. experiences, including much from the Big Book and my increasing reliance on a higher power we both called God.  He always demonstrated a sincere appreciation for the new outlook on life that sobriety and A.A. had given me.  Who knows, maybe in some ways I was his A.A. sponsor for the last eight years of his life.  He seemed always willing to hear my account of the solution with which I had been blessed.

I don’t know that I harmed my mother over the course of my drinking, but I’m certain that I could have been a better, more loving and caring son.  But here again, she was happy for my involvement with A.A. and was always keeping up with whether I was going to meetings and staying involved.  While now she has grown frail, we have shared long talks about life and love.  We speak often and remain close.

I will never know if my ex-wife and mother of my children and I would still be together had my drinking not caused so much damage.  But our marital problems were deeper then my drinking.  While she had certain affinities for certain substances, and drank too, none were or have become the central focus of her life.

Just before we separated, we both started using a particular drug, which seemed to enhance our intimacy together.  Over time, she stopped having fun and with that, she stopped the struggle of our life together.

When I examined my part in the failure of our marriage, I quickly realized that the enormity of my misgivings would not soon be sorted out.  It is always easy to point to the blatant disregard, dishonesty and unrestrained arguments.  But I also realized that while the big things seem most worthy to admit, the accumulation and repetition of small sleights, excuses, and failure to follow through on simple promises, probably erode a marriage more than the big things destroy it outright.

I reasoned that the purpose of the 4^th Step is to understand, not assassinate our character.  If the 4^th step becomes self-degradation, if we go beyond our ability to find and reconcile both our bad qualities and the good it is a dangerous condition often leading only to the pity pot and beyond.

The solution for this was to make amends for as much as I could genuinely feel was a lesson learned that would not be repeated.  It took many years to uncover, identify and make amends for all that I was my part in that failed relationship.  The rumblings of guilt are gone and too our credit, as parents we have reformed a relationship that supports the welfare of our children, and which, at least for me, has left active only those memories that promote good will and genuine appreciation for the woman she has become.

During the first two years of my recovery, I had made my best effort to jump ahead to Step 8 anytime the opportunity presented.