THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

Step four, ‘making a searching and fearless moral inventory,’ was the topic of our step meeting today of our rather ragtag group on a similarly wearying drizzly day.

As we went around the room to share the importance of preparing ourselves to be rigorously honest in attacking the fundamentals of our personality defects and vigorously scrupulous in scrubbing our respective consciences, it became clear to me that there was a pall hanging over the proceedings.

Jack suggested that if one hadn't been careful to do an honest fourth step, complete or not, then success in the program was unlikely. He went on the say that there was always room and time to repeat the step because life was an unending revisitation of your moral failings and staightenings of crooked paths taken. It was, in fact, just the beginning of that guide for living meant to last a lifetime. Incompleteness to start was to be expected and opportunities to repair and mend were always present. But to fail to do a fourth step or to attend to it properly was to invite failure in the program.

After many other shares I was getting pretty antsy because of the large hole in the conversation of what had not been said, and that was, how does one get to doing step four? Of course, you have to do steps one, two and three. Joe, another twenty-six year survivor of the rooms, declares that just walking into the rooms demonstrates a desire to accept steps one and two, that you realize that you are powerless over alcohol and your life has become unmanageable. Having come into the rooms you have admitted that a power greater than yourself, even if you only believe that power is only the power of the people in the rooms, can help restore you to sanity. However,if you haven't even walked into the rooms then these two steps remain unaddressed, at least as far as AA is concerned.

Further,our Methuselah goes on to assume that step three 'Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over the care of God as we understood Him' is further manifest by having walked into the rooms for the first time even if one's understanding of God is the AA group itself or the proverbial and oft joked about doorknob on the front door.

But I was having trouble with this on this particular morning because J... had just gone out for the second time in as many weeks. And I recalled for the group how I had done my first three steps and presumably fourth step many years ago and fifth step and more and maintained a sobriety that I believe was only maintained by coming to meetings every day. And the adage 'don't drink and go to meetings' as the routinely stated admonition to ward off the bogey man of the drink to maintain sobriety, is only so many words if the hard work of steps four through ten are not seriously undertaken. For I am here to say that just not drinking and going to meetings is an insufficient way to stay sober. It may keep you from getting drunk but it won't keep you sober. As it did not for me when after two years I chose, as we always do for reasons only we know, to go out and then my sobriety was gone.

Sobriety is a state of mind, not a chemical state. Abstinence is only the first of many required acts.

So once again I asked how do you really get to step four, how do you really get someone to want to not drink and be sober? THAT IS WANT TO BE SOBER? Of course the answer is simply the not so simple answer that you cannot make someone want to be sober. You cannot make someone not want to drink...they have to come to it themselves. You can try to be there to help that person try to be sober, try to want to be sober, try to help him stay sober. But you cannot make him sober.

And you cannot risk your sobriety in order to do that. And that is why I brought this up at the meeting today. I was frightened. Frightened for my sobriety, my mental stability, my mood and ultimately my happiness.

I realized that when I walked into the meeting this morning, had J... been there, I would have had to pull him aside and let him know in no uncertain terms that he would have to want to be a sober person. He already knew what I and others thought he needed to do to start down that road; and what he steadfastly had rejected because of personal fears, chimeras and demons.

I would have had to say that his reasons may have been fine and good for him. But not on my time,not with my emotional investment,not with my emotional capital. I had put in as much as I had been willing to risk, but I could not,for my own health and sanity,risk anymore.

If he wanted to regain the support that I had offered he would have to demonstrate his willingness to do the hard work.

And I said this to the group and one by one they assented not only by nodding but by other shares, that revealed similar frustrations and fears that despite their greater sober time than mine, they were just as wary of getting any closer to J... who had not yet demonstrated the willingness to get to step four.

But it really doesn't make me feel any better to acknowledge that AA is for those who want sobriety not for those who need sobriety. Particularly when you have developed a close relationship with a fellow sufferer. But this serves as a dire reminder of how brittle and tenuous is our hold on sobriety and success in this program. We don't want to fail others for many reasons but particularly because we see in them our weaker selves. And the guilt that wracks us is, had we not been the recipients of the generosity and kindness of the strangers who helped us, where would we be now?

© res 2/8/11