Step Six

 

I was told that once I completed Step 5, I should go somewhere where it was quiet and spend a hour or so carefully reflecting on the first 5 steps. I should ask myself if I had taken them to the best of my ability. Let's see what conclusions I arrived at:

I was sleeping in a cardboard box under the bridge. I had no job, no place to live, my personal possessions could fit in a shopping bag, my family had all but disowned me and the only friends I had were a bunch of drunks at the local AA club. I had tried 39 times to stop drinking and I was unsuccessful in my attempts. I think it was safe to conclude that I was powerless over alcohol and that it had made my life unmanageable.

When I was under the bridge one day, sitting on one of the concrete pylons, smoking a TM I had got from a friend down at the meeting, it occurred to me that I hadn't had a drink in almost two months and that ever since I had humbled myself enough to ask God for help, I hadn't even wanted to take a drink. Here it was another two months later and the thought of drinking had never occurred to me. So I had come to believe that there was a power greater than Bernie that could restore me to some modicum of sanity.

That day under the bridge was the day I actually took Step Three for the first time. I had taken it every day since and my life was improving. So I was giving step three a determined and persistent trial.

I had completed my 4th step inventory according to the clear-cut directions in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and I had admitted my findings to God, to myself, and to another human being. So I was satisfied that I had taken these steps to the best of my ability.

My sponsor used to say if you do the first five steps the way they're supposed to be done, they give you Step Six as a freebie. This step is one of the easiest to explain. In step 4, I learned what my defects of character were - the Liabilities from column 4. In step 5, I admitted those defects. And in step 6, I become ready to have those defects of character removed. It's that simple. Why would I want to continue to be selfish, dishonest, angry and afraid? I had gained nothing and lost everything by holding on to those things. Of course I was ready to get rid of them. And how do I get rid of them?

That's the next step.

Step 5

 

I always like to start each of these sections with a quick review because although I wrote each section in one sitting, it may be that you've been reading them each week, so its always a good practice to refresh our memory.

In Step 1 we learned that we had lost the power to choose whether we would drink, use drugs, gamble, or engage in other self-destructing behaviors. We were without power. Power-less.

In Step 2 we saw that we could not recover on our own power and that we would require the help of a Power greater than ourselves. I remember when I was working in a recovery house one of my clients asked me, "What do they mean by a power greater than ourselves?" and I replied, "They mean a power greater than ourselves."

In Step 3 we made a decision to place our will (our thoughts and our feelings) and our lives (our actions and our behaviors) under the care of whatever god we had chosen to believe in. And taking step three is like the learning of any new task, we get our best results by practice, practice, practice.

In Step 4 we learned what our defects of character were. We learned that we had often been selfish or dishonest or angry or inconsiderate or afraid or perhaps a combination of all the above. A point that I did not make in the previous essay but which I will make now is that alcohol does not cause alcoholism. Slot machines do not cause compulsive gambling. A job does not cause workaholism. And even in the case of drug addiction, marijuana or crack cocaine or oxycontin does not cause addiction. It is never the fault of the source, always the fault of the user. I would point out that in the case of an infant born addicted to heroin, that would be the exception to the rule.

It was our defects of character which were the primary cause of our drinking, and of our failure at life. That is a quote from AA literature, but not from the Big Book. That is from the book Twelve Steps Twelve Traditions. I may have started to drink as a result of peer pressure, but I continued to drink because of greed, pride, selfishness, etc.

Once we complete the inventory, we move on to the 5th Step (the second Action step). The step reads Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. The wrongs are, of course, our defects of character, the ones we discovered during the 4th step inventory process. Note that it says "the exact nature of". The nature of a thing is the character of it, not so much "what" we did, but "why" we did it.

I have learned that there are 3 types of relationships I need to build in order to live a happy and purposeful life. I need to establish a relationship with God, a relationship with myself, and a relationship with the people around me. I started to build a relationship with God in the 2nd and 3rd steps and a relationship with myself and the people around me during the 4th step. Now I continue to build these relationships by admitting my findings of the 4th step.

Admitting this stuff to God and to myself is fairly easy. It's the process of admitting it to another person or persons that poses a stumbling block to many of us. I was fortunate in that I met someone I knew I could trust with the deepest darkest parts of my story. It is recommended that you search your acquaintances for someone you can trust. Some people choose their doctor or a member of the clergy. And some people choose to take this step with their sponsor or, as they called them in the old days, their spiritual adviser.

The idea is that we use the information we discovered during our 4th step inventory and although we should disclose the things we did, it is, as previously stated, more important to talk about why we did what we did.

It took me approximately 1 hour to complete the first 3 steps, 1 hour to complete my 4th step inventory, and 2 hours to complete step 5. That's a total of 4 hours to complete 5 steps. I should point out that it took almost 4 years for me to start doing them. Those were not years of sobriety. Those were years of slipping and sliding, making a bit of progress, messing up, drinking, stopping, starting, stopping again. I know today that the reason I could not stay stopped is because I did not do these steps. I was suffering from untreated alcoholism. A common misconception is that all we need to do is stop drinking and everything will be okay. But if we do not identify the causes and conditions of our alcoholism (that we discover in step 4) and do not treat those conditions using the remaining steps, we will drink again. It is not a theory; it is a proven fact.

With that in mind, I suggest to anyone who may be suffering from alcoholism, addiction, or other forms of compulsive behaviors, that you treat your condition with whatever means works for you. For me, it is these steps. For you, it might be some other process.

In closing I would say that if you have admitted the exact nature of your wrongs to God, to yourself, and to another human being, then congratulations, you have taken step 5.

Step Four

 

My old sponsor used to say Steps 1, 2, and 3 would be the ones that saved my life, steps 10, 11, and 12 would be the ones that kept me alive, and the ones in between (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) would determine the quality of the life I led. To quickly review:

Step 1 identified the problem (a lack of power). Step 2 offered a solution (power). Step 3 gave me an opportunity to choose between the problem and the solution.

The next 6 steps are where we do the work necessary to apply the solution to the problem. The first of these action steps is Step 4 - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. The act of taking a personal inventory is not a novel idea. It has been around for centuries. Even the philosopher Socrates is credited with the saying: The unexamined life is not worth living.

I know I make many references to the book Alcoholics Anonymous, more commonly referred to as the Big Book, and it is because the clear-cut directions for taking these 12 steps can be found in that book. The 4th Step inventory process is referred to in the Big Book as a personal housecleaning, which many of us have never tried. Before I entered recovery, I had never tried one. My first wife tried this inventory step numerous times, however it always seemed to be my inventory she was taking.

The Big Book also says that a personal inventory is a fact-finding [searching]and fact-facing [fearless] process [inventory]. It is an effort to find the truth[moral is a synonym for truth]about the stock-in-trade [ourselves]. I worked in many restaurants so I know how to take an inventory. We used to take them daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. Simply put, they are a record of what we had, what we used, and what we have left. I never worked for any restaurants that took a business inventory of what we had when the store opened up 50 years ago. So, if you have an inventory guide or set of questions that want you to talk about your childhood or your years as an adolescent, that's not what we're doing here. We want to know what's wrong with us now.

One object [of a 4th step inventory] is to disclose damaged or unsalable goods, to get rid of them promptly and without regret. Let's pretend we work at a fruit stand selling apples, oranges, peaches, and pears. Our apples and oranges are bruised and rotting, but our peaches and pears are ripe and juicy. It stands to reason that we have to get rid of the bruised and rotting apples and oranges and replace them with fresh ones. Naturally, we keep the peaches and pears because they are okay. Makes sense, right?

That's what we do in the 4th step. We find the rotten fruit and get rid of it. There are lots of 4th step guides available on the internet or in treatment centers and you are more than welcome to use one of those, but I use the one in the Big Book. Why try to fix something that isn't broken? There is a very helpful explanation and they even give you an example of one on page 65.

The example they give is concerning resentments and we can presume it is just a sample of the author's inventory. There is some controversy in recovery circles about how many columns there are in a 4th step inventory. It is my understanding that there are 5 columns. In the example I am referring to there are 3 columns. The other two columns are discussed in the following pages but no examples are given.

We start a 4th step inventory by making a list of people, institutions, and principles with whom we are angry. To simplify that even further, we list people, places, and things that we are angry at. When I was drinking, nobody had to tell me who I was mad at. I told anyone who would listen. So now they ask me to make a list on a piece of paper. How hard is that? My list had about three dozen entries, Most of them were the usual song and dance - my wife, my father, my brother, my boss, etc.

After I wrote that list (column 1), I asked myself why I was angry at them. My sponsor had suggested that I keep my answers brief - she cheated on me, he beat my mother, he lied to me, he fired me for no reason, etc. I'm not writing a book, just a short story. So that becomes column 2.

In column 3 I wrote down my injuries as I saw them, what part of self was hurt or threatened by what happened. In most cases, it is our self-esteem or our pride, our pocketbook, personal relationships, that sort of thing.

So now I had a few pieces of paper with some writing on it. It might have taken me 30 minutes to write this stuff down. When I was finished, I read it back to myself and I came to the same conclusion that almost everybody does. There were a lot of people in my life that did me wrong. In the big book it says, to conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got. And that's because most of us did not complete the inventory. There are two more columns and they are the most important ones.

We asked ourselves where were we at fault? My sponsor told me to look at each one and ask myself, in my relationship with that person, place, or thing, was I ever selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, angry, or afraid? So I tried that and although at first I didn't want to admit it, I was that way in every relationship I ever had and in all but a few instances, my injuries were brought about by something that I did that prompted these people to react.

Under the direction of my sponsor, I got another piece of paper and put it beside my 3-column inventory. In column 4, I listed my faults. Beside those, in column 5, I listed things I should have done instead. My sponsor then told me to look very carefully at that second sheet of paper because what I had written in column 4 were my apples and oranges, the rotten ones, and in column 5 were my peaches and pears. Liabilities and Assets. Wrongs and Rights.

There are two other sections to the Inventory. Fears and Sexual Conduct/Harms Done.

The fear part is easy. We made a list of any fears we had, even though we had no resentment about them. We asked ourselves why we were afraid. The answer is fairly obvious. All my life I had relied upon myself and in the end I had failed myself. When I took the third step, I had without realizing it, placed my reliance upon the god of my understanding, so now I can rely upon him to remove any fears I have.

As for the sex conduct, I'm certainly not going to get into it here, but the book says we all have sex problems. It's part of being human. I know that I made mistakes in that area of my life. When there was coldness and rejection at home, I used that as an excuse to shop around the bars for a woman who understood me. When I was single, I was selfish and greedy and unfaithful to many of the women I was involved with. I did a lot of things that I am not proud of, but I made a list of those people I had emotionally injured by my sexual conduct and I made amends to them. By using columns 4 and 5 I was able to shape an ideal for my future sex life. Its really quite simple. I just ask myself if its selfish or not? If you need professional help for your sex problems, or for any other problems, by all means, go get a therapist, just don't confuse your therapist with your sponsor or vice-versa.

I learned something very valuable while doing this part of my inventory. In the Big Book it says We treat sex as we would any other problem. I don't know if I was supposed to read between the lines but I did anyway. That means we treat all of our problems the same way. And what do we do? In meditation we ask God what we should do about each specific matter.

Even today, 20 years after taking the steps, I still have problems. And I treat all those problems the same way. When I woke up this morning I said a little prayer, "Show me what to do today. Show me the stairway I have to climb. Let me do your will, not mine."

It works for me.

Altogether, it took me an hour, maybe two, to write my inventory. So, if you have an afternoon to spare, grab a pen and some paper, and write your inventory. Once you get it all down on paper, then you have taken Step 4.

Step Three

 

I read somewhere that in the first 2 steps, there is no action, just thinking.

Step 1 identifies the problem as a lack of power. Hence the wording that we are powerless. Powerless means to be without power.

Step 2 offers a solution to our problem and the solution is power. It's not rocket science. It's very simple.

Step 3 gives us an opportunity to choose between the problem and the solution to the problem. Do we want to continue to die or do we want to live?

Again, it doesn't take too much thinking. Do I want to sleep in a box under a bridge or do I want to sleep in my own bed in my own home? Do I want to keep waking up trying to figure out where I was last night?who was I with? what did I do? am I in trouble again? Whose blood is this on my shirt? Is it mine? Or did I hurt someone? Or would I rather wake up knowing where I was and who I was I with and what I did.

The choice is mine to make. No one can make it for me. Its true that you can lead people to water but you can't make them drink the water if they would rather drink something else instead. All you can do is let them know where the water is, and show them how much better off you are after you drink from the stream. I made a decision to drink the water.

I made a decision to turn my will (which is my thoughts and my feelings) and my life (which is my actions and my behavior) over to the care of the god of my understanding.

As I mentioned in the previous essay on step two, I had only a little understanding of who God was to me. I knew my God was a power greater than myself and I knew from watching examples of the people around me who had a god of their understanding, that great things could happen if I remained honest, open-minded, and willing. That was enough for me to make a beginning.

I have been doing this deal for almost 26 years and I can say that today my understanding of these things has broadened and deepened over the years. But, at the time I took Step 3, my understanding was at the best of times flimsy. I had faith and I had hope. I had doubts too. I think I still needed to see the results.

William James wrote a book called The Varieties of Religious Experience. It's recommended reading for the atheists and agnostics who doubt the validity of the spiritual approach to recovery from addictions. It's quite a hefty volume, about 750 pages, and it talks about the different ways people find God.

Basically, there are two types of spiritual awakenings. The instantaneous kind where God appears in a burning bush and tells you to go build an ark or something, and the educational kind, where the awakening happens gradually. Mine was somewhere in the middle of the two. In that church in Meductic I had sensed the presence of God, but I still needed to be shown.

This whole process of doing the 12 steps is not just about recovery from addictions to alcohol, drugs, gambling or other forms of compulsive behavior. Our main reason for doing the steps is to help us establish - or re-establish - a relationship with God. We have been sick, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

We are the sick and the lame and the blind and the deaf, the lost sheep in the flock. We are the ones Jesus talked about. We are ones the Buddha sought to bring enlightenment to. We are the ones lost in the Great Alone on the black road of spiritual darkness. Put whatever spin on it you want, that's who we are.

If this method isn't for you, if you feel you can do this some other way, if you have any reservations, maybe you should stop reading this and go read something else. It won't offend me.

I, too, was skeptical. For one thing, it sounded too easy. For another thing, they said the word God too much. There was a time that when a person said the word God in a sentence, I stopped listening and missed everything else they said. But here's a little trick I learned. What if the word God was an acronym. G.O.D. - good orderly direction. I can take direction. That's easy.

Here, take this key. Yeah keep going down this street, turn right at the third stop sign, about 100 yards down you'll come to a locked gate. Should be a sign with the number 3 on it. Put the key in the lock and turn it. The gate will open and you can continue on your journey. Just follow the directions, you'll be fine. I can do that without using the word thy or thine and if later I want to use those pronouns, I can choose to do that, too.

One of the things I found appealing to me in the 12 step philosophy was the lack of dogma. There is strict adherence to spiritual principles but no strict adherence to any specific religion. I apply the principles in accordance with how I understand god.

Many years after I sobered up, our group was hosting a meeting at detox. We usually conclude our meetings with the Our Father but one gentleman objected to this, saying that he didn't think we should use a specific prayer, especially a Christian one. His tone led me to believe that he expected us to make him conform. But we didn't. We said no maybe we can skip the prayer tonight. After the meeting, he hung around and chatted with us and seemed impressed with our lack of strict rules.

There's a little riddle I like to use about step three to illustrate that it is an action step. Three frogs are sitting on a fence. One frog makes a decision to jump off the fence. How many frogs are still on the fence? I know you think the answer is 2, but the correct answer is 3, because making a decision to do something and actually doing it are not the same thing.

In the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, on page 63, down toward the bottom of the page, is a prayer. We call it the Third Step Prayer. I say it every morning and these are the words I use. You can use whatever words you want as long as you do it.

God I offer myself to you, to build with me and to do as you will. Relieve me of the bondage of self so that I may better do your will. Take away my difficulties so that victory over them will bear witness to those I would help. Amen. Once you say that for the first time, you've taken Step Three.

Step Two

 

The lack of power we have over drinking, drugging, gambling, overeating, etc. is often referred to as a dilemma. According to the dictionary, a dilemma is a situation wherein a human being is faced with a choice between two equally unfavorable alternatives. The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous tells us time and time again what those alternatives are - "to be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live life on a spiritual basis." In other programs they say "jails, institutions, or death." One of my favorite sayings is "locked up, covered up, or sobered up". But no matter how you word it, the result is the same. If we continue to drink, or drug, or gamble, our lives will never get better, they will only get worse.

Since our problem at this point is a lack of Power, the obvious and inevitable solution will be Power. The 12-step philosophy states that we must find a Power by which we can live and it must be a Power greater than our own. But we're not bible salesman. As one of my favorite speakers used to say...you don't have to wear an orange bathrobe and start eating walnuts. You don't have to go door-to-door passing out pamphlets.

I was born Anglican, whatever that is. In my time, I have been Protestant, Jehovah Witness, Mormon, Seventh Day Adventist, Rosicrucian, Buddhist, Hindu, Wicca…you think it up, I have probably been it. I was so busy trying to understand other people’s understandings of God that by the time I got to AA, I was borderline atheist. I had lost interest in looking, had left the search for my maker in the bottom of a bottle. What I didn’t know was that alcohol had become my higher power.

When I was young, I went to Sunday school, I followed the ten commandments, I said my prayers at night. I did all the things we're supposed to do in order to gain passage into the kingdom of heaven or whatever word you choose to call the place we go to after we die. But when I was a teen, I joined a street gang. Sunday school became an uncool thing. The older I got, the further away I got. At the end, I did not believe in God and I did not want to believe in God and I didn't care if you believed in God as long as you did your believing someplace else.

And so I made a mistake that many others have made. I tried to do a 12-step program without doing all 12 steps. It didn't work very well and so I concluded that the 12 step program didn't work. I tried "other" programs, but none of them worked for me either and so I concluded that none of those programs worked. The point that I was lacking was that I was trying to do things my way even though I had proven it to myself time and time again that my way of doing things was the way that didn't work.

I had heard a slogan, Fake It Till You Make It, and I never really grasped what that meant until a kind gentleman explained it to me. He said, all you have to do is pretend that there is a God or supreme being or whatever concept you associate with the word God, and then your live your life the way you think your God would want you to. If the god of your understanding was the Christian god, then be a good Christian. If the god of your understanding is Buddha, then be a good Buddhist, and so on. When your life is at an end, if you find out that there was no such thing as God, the only mistake you will have made is in being a good person and living a good life. If on the other hand you choose to ignore God and you find out at the end of your life that there really was a God after all, well buddy you're going to be in deep kaka. So it just makes more sense to fake it until you make it.

As far as God and all that is concerned, I was never unaware of what that meant. I read the King James version of the new and old testament at least a dozen times. I read translations of the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita, I followed the teachings of Lama Suryas Das, and so on. I just didn't think it would work for me.

But one day, in the early days of December, 1997, I was standing on the shoulder of the Trans Canada highway just outside of Meductic, New Brunswick. I had been hitch-hiking in a snowstorm for 4 days. I didn't know it but I was suffering from frostbite and in a few days I would likely die from exposure. I had been without a drink for that 4 days. Anyone who has suffered delirium tremens during detoxification will tell you that a snowstorm is not the best place to do it.

I had an opportunity to have a drink in a roadside bar and I remembered that old wives tale about a shot of rum warming you up. I had ten dollars in my pocket so I knew I could get at least 2 shots. I started to wonder if Meductic was big enough to have a drunk tank because I would probably end up there. Down the road was a little country church. The doors were open and it looked warm and inviting. I deliberated for an hour or so. In my head I could hear the voice of an AA oldtimer, "If you don't bend your knees, you WILL bend your elbow." Meaning if you do not find something to believe in, you will drink again.

So I went to church that day. And I got down on my knees because that's what you're supposed to do, right? I can't recall all of what I said and no doubt it was the lamest prayer God had ever heard, but the gist of it was, "If you can get me back home to AA, I'll try this time. I'll try to believe." I'd like to say that there was a big bright light, that angels started singing and time stood still, but that's not what happened. But I can say this. It was like someone put their hand on my shoulder and said, Its going to be okay. I haven't had a drink since. And I haven't wanted to have a drink since that day. The voice in my head, the one that always talked to me (Where can I get a drink? How much money do I have? Who do I know that's got money? What can I sell?), that voice, the obsession of the mind that is part of alcoholism, that voice is gone. I still had a long road ahead of me. God didn't send a helicopter to airlift me home, but he did send a few good Samaritans.

In the book Alcoholics Anonymous, during the discussion on step two, it asks a simple question:

Do I now believe or am I willing to believe that there is a Power greater than me that can solve my problem?

I don't know if I believed at that point but I was willing to believe and at the end of the day all I require is willingness. f you are able to look back at the wreckage in your life, and to search within yourself and if you can answer yes to that question - Do I now believe or am I even willing to believe, then you have taken step two.

It's as simple as that.