It truly seems like the time between my posts gets longer and longer. I read people who post almost every day. I’d love to be one of those people, but I’ll make no promises.
Since my last post, things have gotten more and more challenging. At this point, recovering people have been away from their in-person recovery meetings for several months. I am seeing many stories daily about what a strain this has been for people in early recovery. My hope is that with the easing of restrictions around the country, we will once again, soon, be able to join in fellowship.
In the meantime, there are thousands of Zoom meetings across the United States. Give yourself a treat and visit meetings from outside your area. Sobriety and Recovery are everywhere and if you are like us, a meeting is the only place where everybody understands what you’re talking about.
Continuation of Steps Three and Four
I don’t know how anyone can complete the Fourth Step without psychological damage, given the amount of information spread these days.
Before we go there, there’s just a little more to say about the Third Step. The Big Book says that “though this decision was a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face, and to be rid of the things in ourselves which had been blocking us.’
Here is an essential distinction in the Big Book where it says “at once.” That’s a key. A lot of people wait and wait and wait to move from Three to Four. Sometimes this is the discretion of their sponsor. By and large, though, I think this is at the discretion of the individual who puts it off and puts it off because it feels like something that either A) they are going to fail or B) they relinquish control of their history in some way.
These are the issues with which some people are concerned. “I’m not going to be able to do this thing correctly.” All of a sudden, we went from some discussions about spiritual things, about turning things over, about turning over the need to control things. Now, all of a sudden, we have “homework.” And when we start to face homework, especially if we tend to be poor students, that causes a great deal of anxiety. It even causes stress among people who consider themselves good students.
All the information, instruction, and education about doing the Fourth Step are everywhere, in every town, in workshops, pamphlets, and online guides with an explanation on how to do the Fourth Step. Then you also have people within the program itself who say, “You just do it the way the book says.” And by and large, the experience for most people is that the book is hard to comprehend.
Sometimes it requires a person to fumble through a Fourth Step, maybe using a form, possibly using some online guide, to fully understand how the Big Book approaches what the individual is supposed to do. If an individual is truly ready to take a Fourth Step, then the process isn’t that difficult. Some people do significant, complicated Fourth Steps where they delve into every nook and cranny of their past (or “every dark cranny of the past” pg. 75. Some crevices are darker than others.) and write down every nickel they stole from their mother’s purse and every other wrongdoing, which of course, becomes the “immoral” inventory. They’re truthful, but they’re digging up things that probably aren’t causing them a great deal of distress at the time. More importantly, are those things that they’re not putting down because they do cause pain. They are concerned about what somebody who reads this might think. Or what a person might think of them if they were to tell them about this deed of theirs that feels dirty or secret to them. It feels overwhelming in such a way that it’s easier not to talk about it and focus on those little things; several small things that don’t cause them to feel bad about themselves or feel dirty. To make a connection between Three and Four, what we need to decide is what exactly is it that is blocking us. What is it that we need to uncover of which we need to be rid? And how is it that this Step naturally leads from a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood Him?
When I make that decision, and I follow it with the action suggested, what the Big Book describes as “uncovering and getting rid of the things that are blocking me.” It may be unlikely that I have “that” in mind. In other words, I don’t know that I look at this as the objective of the inventory.
What I look at is that my sponsor or the Big Book or people in the program are telling me that I have to do a Fourth and Fifth Step, or I will probably drink again. And for some of us, that’s a scary proposition, especially if we’ve spent a lot of time going to meetings and reading the Big Book and talking to our sponsor and talking to other recovering people and making an effort to stay sober. We learn that all the work we’ve done up to now will be for naught. We need to follow through and immediately or “at once,” as the book says, complete a Fourth Step. So, it just feels again like homework. It just feels like one of those checkboxes that I have to check, and it seems like it’s a daunting task.
There’s a lot of information I have to write down. I have to write down resentments. Who do I resent? Well, hell, I don’t know if I even have resentments. Do I have people I’m mad at, do I have institutions I’m mad at, do I have situations that I got myself involved with that make me angry or uncomfortable? These are all things that I need to write down. And then I have to look at the reason I feel the way I do about them. And I have to look at where I am at fault. I do that not only for resentments, I also do it for fears, but I too do it for sexual conduct, and then I look at the harms I’ve done others. There are basic things I need to look at in every inventory. Probably the most important thing I need to look at is what is the exact nature of these wrongs because I’m later going to be discussing that. And the nature of these wrongs is probably, without question, the thing that blocks me from other people, most assuredly, and by extension prevents me from connecting with a Higher Power.
So in recognizing that my Higher Power is the source—I’m not the source, I’m a pipe—and I open that pipe to not only receive the source but be the conduit for it as well. The things that block me from others or block me from God are the things that might be called character defects. Those are the most prominent things I find about myself when I do an inventory. I won’t spend a lot of time discussing the completion of a Fourth Step inventory, because there’s plenty written about that. That’s not an area into which I want to go. With this one provision, if a person currently feels they have done the Fourth Step and have not felt the relief reported to happen by others, then there is something of a disconnect between Step Three and Step Four. That disconnect is an understanding of why the inventory needs to be thorough, complete. It needs to be careful and comprehensive because we don’t want to leave anything to block us. If I’m turning my will and my life over, and that’s everything, then cleaning out everything that prevents me from that goal I need to do. And I may not know whether I’ve done that or not. I may not have a clear idea about what I’m keeping hidden.
Usually, the things that people keep hidden are the things that have power over them but have little meaning to those who aren’t them. So, for example, you can tell your sponsor the worst thing you ever did or the worst thing you thought you ever did, and your sponsor’s response could be, “Yeah, we do a lot of crazy things when we’re drinking.” Now, the individual who feels like this is the worst thing they’ve ever done would be potentially offended by such a cavalier response. But the truth is the sponsor doesn’t have the emotional attachment to the nonsense that I’m putting down on that piece of paper. Exactly why, when I put it down on the piece of paper, a great deal of it looks nonsensical or inane or tacky or trivial. And there are going to be pieces of the stuff I put down that are not those things. But by and large, most of the things I write down in a Fourth Step over time become negligible. Because the person I wrote about was who I was and what I did when I was under the influence of something else. I didn’t understand there was a solution to the feelings I had of not fitting in. All the feelings I had about not been a part of or not succeeding. I felt like I was a failure because I wasn’t smart, handsome, or able to dance.
What causes me to stall on Step Three is that second part of the Step where I’m turning my will and my life over to “God as we understood Him.” God, as I understand him. God, as I perceive him. God, as I conceptualize him. However, I want to put that. So I’m using a word, “God,” which is full of all kinds of harmful or pejorative meaning to me. I’m trying to apply that in a microcosm. I’m trying to use that in a niche. Because at this point, when I’m working the steps, I’m working them sort of as an exercise. So, they have a narrow conceptualization for me. They have a small achievement—a kind of spiritual checklist experience. Either I do it, or I don’t do it.
I’m probably not even aware of the profoundness unless I happen to be a philosophy major, which I’m not. But I probably don’t notice that there is a quality to these steps that makes them change and move over time. All I can see right now is that I have something of which to take care. And when I hit Three, this seems like too significant a commitment for me to do in a niche. In other words, I’m not even sure I have the ability or the capacity to do what this Step is asking me to do. I’m turning my will and my life over. I have no idea what that is. I don’t know what my will is, and I don’t know what my life is because I haven’t fully lived it yet. So I’m not sure what I’m doing when I make this decision. And then I have this new thing of turning it over to God. Now we’re into a quagmire of understanding. We’re going back and forth about is there a God or is there not a God. This word, as a benchmark over time, has become kind of its detriment as opposed to its asset. Because what we’re honestly talking about is the recognition that we must give up the fact that we are at the center of the universe.
We need to believe that there are actions, people, groups, nature, intelligence that are greater than we are in a collective way. Low and behold, there is relief for this crap I’ve been carrying around because I thought I had to. I could conceivably turn over a great deal of it to something more powerful than me and take away my need to manage things I don’t need to manage. My management of these things is illusionary anyway. It’s like control. I don’t have it, I just think I do. Or I just believe that I can impact how people feel about me. If I wish hard enough, I can make the weather be beautiful tomorrow for our outing. I will make sure that there are no bugs for the camping trip. Whatever it might be, I feel like there’s this sense of control. And when those things don’t turn out the way I think they should, I take responsibility for that. I take responsibility for the failure. And this is the downside of control. If I’m deciding to turn my control, my will, and my life, over to the care of something greater than myself, then I no longer have to take responsibility when things don’t work out. I do what I can, but the outcome is going to be whatever the result is, and I am not responsible.
Finally, next time we will move on through Step Four and get to the space between Step Five and Step Six.
Notes from the Half Measures Seats 