The road doesn't end, so sit back and enjoy the ride!
I am enjoying this life I get to live in recovery, my second chance to discover who I am and really live my new life to the fullest. I returned recently from a business trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina, a place I have wanted to visit for a long time. It’s amazing to be totally present for an experience even as those around me used alcohol to heighten or perhaps dull their own experience. I know that feeling because I was that guy for a long time. But now, I get to be conscious and of equal importance, allow others to have their own experience.
Back at home, our Thursday night Emotional Sobriety step study group has been continuing the journey through Step 4. Last week the group took a close look at the 2nd paragraph on page 50 of “The 12&12″:
Since Step Four is but the beginning of a lifetime practice, it can be suggested that he first have a look at those personal flaws which are acutely troublesome and fairly obvious. Using his best judgment of what has been right and what has been wrong, he might make a rough survey of his conduct with respect to his primary instincts for sex, security , and society. Looking back over his life, he can readily get under way by consideration of questions such as these:
This paragraph ends with a colon, but the questions that follow are spread over the next two pages, so in keeping with the format of looking at one paragraph at a time, we stopped the reading right there knowing that there was plenty to look at before we even get to the questions. In addition, it was important to note that we were coming out of a previous paragraph that ended with a question: Now willing to commence the search for his own defects, he will ask, “Just how do I go about this? How do I take inventory on myself?”
It is interesting to note at this point that we have come through eight pages of Step 4 and they are just now talking about beginning to take an inventory. Those eight pages have been helping me to look at myself in relation to my instincts and character defects and how fear drives me into this viscous cycle of acting in these defects and never having my instincts satisfied. I’ve had to find the shoes that fit, to see myself in each of the alcoholic characters they describe. And of course, as the passage above states, I must be willing to begin the search for my own defects.
What hits me the most about this paragraph is the differences in the 4th Step techniques between the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous and “The 12&12″. The “Big Book” was written by the first 100 in early sobriety and is the basic text. The 4th Step columns method is a great beginners way for me to look at myself. At the same time, the method is so straightforward and simple that I can use it as a lifetime practice beyond the first time I do it. As a matter of fact, I’m doing one right now. My list is very short compared to the the last time I did it, proof that I am growing in this program, but also proof that I still have stuff to work on no matter how long I have been sober.
Since the “Big Book” method was laid down in 1939, others have taken the column method further, broadening and deepening the application as it was first written. One particular example is the Big Book Awakening Workbook which I find to be an invaluable study guide when working with the men I sponsor.
The other broadening/deepening technique I love is right here in “The 12 & 12″. ”The 12 & 12″ method has some similar qualities and some very obvious differences to the “Big Book”. Traditionally, I and most others I know were to taught to follow the example of the column method set forth in the “Big Book” (BB page 65) which starts with making a list of resentments: In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. We listed people, institutions or principles with whom we were angry (BB page 64). From this first step of making a list, I then create my columns. But what wasn’t talked about in much detail and doesn’t figure into this first list is the part the “Big Book” actually asks me to do first: First, we searched out the flaws in our make-up which caused our failure (BB page 64).
Obviously, it was much easier to get me to look at my resentments as a jumping off point before I came around to my part, but nonetheless, there is no clear cut method for first looking at my flaws in the “Big Book”. It unfolds later as part of the 4th column process after the resentments are looked at: Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes….Where were we to blame?…When we saw our faults we listed them (BB page 67).
Over the next twelve years after the “Big Book” was written, Bill W. and others appeared to have desired a way to go deeper. This is my case as well. With long term sobriety, I have dealt with resentments and seen my part and I’m not afraid to look at myself. I recognize that I have character flaws and they aren’t your fault. I need a way to dig deeper, to continue this inventory taking as a lifetime practice.
The 4th Step method that we are introduced to in this current paragraph of “The 12 & 12″ gives me a specific technique for looking at my flaws first. As a matter of fact, the whole 4th Step method in this book is designed around searching out my character flaws. It starts with pondering, then making a list of my defects or flaws rather than my resentments and now starts to introduce me to a series of questions which will allow me to do some deep writing on those flaws.
The good news for me in all of this is that I am not just bound to one technique. I have two different ones from A.A’s two primary books on the Steps which I may apply at any time in my recovery that I find my self struggling. The other good news is that “The 12 & 12″ is written in essay style and its 4th Step method encourages me to do my own writing in response to the upcoming questions in that same essay style. Having this option means the 4th Step stays alive as a lifetime practice because it allows me to go deeper each and every time.
John,
Been a while since I’ve been by and I am glad I did tonight as a variation of this very topic has been on my mind. I live in Boston and there is a group here called the Hyanns Big Book Study that has taken root and has begun to spread throughout the northeast. There is a specific thread in their beliefs that the 4th step out of the 12 x 12 is not a viable method. In fact they disregard the 12 x 12 almost entirely, for all the reasons I am sure you have heard…”written on acid” or “to make money”. It’s always bothered me because it is the message I heard from people like yourself and KC out of the 12 x 12 that saved my recovery and allowed to grow spiritually. Since, I have gone back and use both the Big Book and the 12 x 12 and find they are both vital to my recovery.
The 4 column method I did very early in recovery in a treatment center. I was definitely able to get to the root of some of the most troublesome aspects of character. I then did a 5th Step and experienced what I believe to be a miracle. In the Big Book, it says on successful completion of the 5th Step, there is a good chance the drink problem will have disappeared. That was my experience after 20 years of alcohol kicking my ass.
But of course we know that is not the end of the story. Things come up and I dealt with (and continue to deal with them) through the 4th (and 10th) Step, in essay form, out of the 12 x 12. But my issue is these Hyannis Group people are adament I did a “half ass, treatment center 4th Step” and (hard to believe!) in walks resentment! I don’t really have a point in all this except for this recovering alcoholic, both methods are invaluable. The 4th Step, in either form, allows me to look at those people, places, institutions, fears and sex conduct that led to my drinking. Either way, I have to get the stuff out and my experience (much as yours) is both work.
Last thing, the 4th Step has the evolved rep as the “money” step to many in the program. It’s through your left coast message that I realized without 1, 2 & 3, I am only kidding myself that ANY type of meaningful 4th can be done.
As always, your writing is insightful and gives me pause to think. Tonight, home alone with my two kids, I needed this, thank you!
TMQ
Great writing John, I really liked last nights meeting.
Good Evening,
Much of my frustration with meetings comes from the delusion that the solution to my alcoholism is going to be found in the gatherings of fellow AA’s. I have some sort of steadfast obsession that ‘next time the meeting (any meeting) will have my solution’.
It is blindness and my spiritual laziness. Meetings actually quit working 19 years ago. I needed to break out of my insane life that kept on happening. No matter what I did to be different, I was always the same. I did not know how to change. Now I realize that I cannot see or change myself. God is who shows me myself and who changes me.
The problem was more spiritual and I literally suffered emotionally, mentally and spiritually. The hidden thing I later finally saw was that I was not shown how to really work a solution until I had irrevocably hit bottom. I finally did not need another hero. When I admitted I was done, the key turned, and I was shown. I was ready for anything, including all the severe physical reactions they talk about in the 12×12. Withdrawal from lies is much more impossible than withdrawal from alcohol without a Higher Power.
In working with others, I know I do not have the power to make them see anything. I cannot really give it to them, nor do I have the power to keep them from getting it. No matter things go. All I really have to offer is my true experience.
I did not know I was dying. I did not want to know. Why would I? It was out of sheer desperateness that I admitted my powerlessness. My admission burst forth out of me one night and I knew I was going to crash for the last time. I was falling apart. I was facing doom. I really was, and everything I believed I loved had turned away. “How dark it is before the dawn.” Really. No gushing, self-impressing drama. Truly done. When my AA friend replied calmly that maybe God could take over now, it was quite unexpected. The welcomed shock of rising from a rubble that I thought was my grave. I began to see that the failure I had not been able to admit, that I reluctantly spewed out over the telephone, was exactly what had to happen in order for me to make my passage into the steps.
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous was my text. For my personality type, I benefited from seeing not only my behavior, but my motives as well. Motives are the bigger part of my selfishness and alcoholic control. I could succeed in my profession and do my work well, and still wonder why nothing worked. The ‘cash register honesty’ offered in the questions on page 50 in the 12×12 are definitely to be faced, but in early sobriety I could not bear to look at those without going into tremendous remorse and shame. Unwritten inventories will hopefully realize that a true inventory is not to be torment-ridden. The freedom and peace found at step 1 and the belief and trust in a big enough God gives us the ability to see our human frailties as well as other’s. We do not spare ourselves with excuses anymore because we find access to Courage and Understanding that is beyond our limited capabilities. Clarity, Forgiveness and Peace are big gifts from the fourth column of resentments, the third column of the fear inventory, and the columns in the sex inventory.
The 4th Step out of the Big Book also brought my shortcomings to me without me realizing it. In resentments. I start out kicking ass in the second column. The third column is where I reveled in my victim. Finally I have to look at it all from another view. I knew I had to or I would go mad. I have no choice about the drink or the madness. That is my lot.
I suppose these inventories can be called “techniques’, but the practice of them gives me access to the truth, which is way beyond any result of methodology. The Destination is beyond thinking and effort; beyond human aid, and beyond human solution.
Thank you.