“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves…”
Over the years that I’ve been active in recovery programs, I’ve come to see that the 4th Step seems to drive a lot of people back out into their addictions due to fear of facing themselves. The 4th Step may sound simple in its language but upon further inspection, it really does involve a lot of work.
My first sponsor in recovery was through AA. Having worked her program in AA and remained sober for close to 25 years, she was as well versed in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous as a Catholic priest would be with the Bible. When I began the work and made it to this step, I was told to get a notebook and informed that I’d be doing a lot of writing. There are many ways that people might approach doing the steps but she being an old timer said I would be doing it The Big Book Step Study Method. I had no idea what that meant but I followed her advice and bought myself a nice 3-ring spiral binder and about a 100 pages of loose-leaf paper. About three months later, I finished my first 4th Step.
I believe the main reason why many people relapse with this step is due to something I call the mirror effect. When I was active in my alcoholism or any of my addictions, there were so many glaring defects of my character that I didn’t see. I was numb most of the time and while many often pointed my defects out, I wouldn’t listen, see, or pay attention to any of it. Mainly because I didn’t want to. This step exposes all of those character defects. It’s like looking in the mirror and seeing ourselves for the first time. When in addiction mode, most, including myself, don’t want to look in the mirror and point the finger at ourselves.
In the first part of doing this step, my sponsor had me writing down everything I ever felt resentful towards in my entire life up to that point. That list proved to be quite long and was the easiest part of the step for me. I wrote down the names of the people that had picked on me when I was growing up. I wrote down the names of my alcoholics parents. I wrote down the name of the man that molested me at the age of 12. I wrote down jobs I worked at that had fired me, bosses I once had that all too often yelled at me, and friends and partners that had walked out of my life abruptly. I even wrote down myself and God as I felt both had let me down over the years. By the time the list was done it was over 100 entries.
The second part of this step was a little harder in that it entailed writing down next to those entries, a description of what it was that I was resentful at with each of them. Writing the name of a person, place, or institution that basically ticked me off at some point in my life was easy for me. Putting down on paper the exact words of why I was ticked off was much harder. It meant that I had to remember and recollect a lot of pain that I went through. It brought a lot of junk up to the surface that I thought had been long gone. As I wrote, I realized none of it had ever left me. It had all been suppressed way down within me because of all the addictions I kept myself numb with. Because of this, throwing my notebook across the room became a common occurrence. I felt angry all over again at things that had happened so long ago.
When I finally moved out of the phase of recollection, I started the third part of this step which was to write down next to each of those entries whether they affected my self-esteem, security, ambition, or personal relationships. What I found is that pretty much in every case, all of them were affected. Ironically, I had to add my sponsor’s name to my resentment list at this point because she made me write over and over again each of those words next to every single entry even though I saw the pattern early on in my writing. I was grateful when I finally finished this part of the step and found myself breathing a sigh of relief. I told my sponsor I was ready to begin my 5th Step and she laughed and said I still had plenty more to do with my 4th.
And boy, she wasn’t kidding.
The fourth part of the 4th Step proved to be the most difficult for me. I have wondered often if this is the part of the step that drives people to pick their addictions back up. It’s nicknamed The Turnarounds. During it, each of the previous resentments that were written are taken into further introspection and analyzed with four words. Selfish. Self-Seeking. Dishonest. Afraid. My sponsor said it was time for me to look at each of my resentments and see where I might have been selfish, self-seeking, dishonest, or afraid in all of them. In other words, the resentment was to be turned around along with my finger pointing at all those things I resented, and I was to ask myself honestly and fearlessly, how I might have created this own resentment. It took me a very long time to make it through this part of the step. I know a big chunk of the three months it took me to do this step was in part because of this phase of of the 4th Step. I realized by the end of this part of the work this step entails, that I in fact did bring all of these resentments upon me through my own selfish, self-seeking, dishonest, and fear based behaviors in life. Something good began to happen though after completing this phase of the 4th Step writing.
I had begun to feel lighter and had more determination to keep going forward in my recovery.
The final part of the 4th Step was the sex inventory. It’s where my sponsor had me look at all the people in my life that I used or affected on some level with sex. She told me it didn’t necessarily mean I had to have been with each of those people sexually and that it could have been behaviors that were just leading towards it. I had to get really honest with myself here and it was probably a good thing that I had done such thorough turnarounds in the previous part of this step. After coming up with about 23 names, I was to answer with each of them the following questions: Where have I been selfish? Where have I been dishonest? Where I have been inconsiderate? Whom had I hurt? Did I unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion, or bitterness? Where was I at fault? And finally, What should I have done instead? Thankfully, I didn’t find this part of the 4th Step taking too long. I think it really was in part due to the fact that I just wanted to be done with the step at that point after doing those excruciating turnarounds.
When all was said and done, and I said “That’s a wrap!” on my first 4th Step, I had filled almost every one of those 100 loose-leaf pages that I had purchased and about 90 days of my life had passed by. There are definitely benefits that I noticed came with doing such a thorough searching and fearless moral inventory of my life with this step. First, I realized how much I created my own drama throughout most of my life. Second, I saw how much of the craziness in my life could be prevented in the future. Third, I felt a thousand times lighter and didn’t feel as resentful towards all of those people, places, and things that I had written about. And most importantly, fourth, I truly began to feel closer to the God of my understanding and I knew that AA and 12 step recovery were going to be a part of my life until the day I die.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
