Step 5 at a Big Book study in Winston-Salem, NC

It is really good to be here tonight.

I, I think it's been about seven weeks. I don't know. I've, I've lost, I've lost track. But we spent a lot of time on the first step. We've gone over steps 2-3 and four in detail. A very, very brief synopsis of that material for anybody that hasn't been here the whole time.

Step one is an admission,

a full concession to our innermost selves, that we have a brain that will take us back to alcohol. And if we're a drug addict, we've got a brain that will take us back to drugs, no matter how strong the desire to stay separated from that is. No matter. No matter how many reasons we have

for not drinking or not using. No, no matter how strong our decision is

to stay away from alcohol or drugs, we end up back with the alcohol. We also have a a body that is is sickened as well. And how that works is once we start drinking there are times when we have little or no control over the amount we take. It creates an actual physical craving in our bodies, and the first drink

always asks for the second drink. The second drink insists on the third. The third drink demands the 4th

and many, many times we get tongue chew and knee walking drunk and that's not what we plant. That would be bad enough if it wasn't for the fact that there's a dash and it says that our lives are unmanageable and we found that there's both external and internal and unmanageability. The external is all the Duis and the lost families and and all the problems,

the jobs and not being able to manage your money and all the other things that happen

with active alcoholism. But there's also the internal unmanageability, which is emotional basically, and mental and spiritual. And how that works is that on a good day, your restless, irritable, discontented most of the time you pray to misery, depression, you're full of fear, you've got guilt and remorse

about the things that went on in the past and anxiety about what's going to happen in the future. And you get to a place, sometimes in sobriety, you get to a place where you're just pitifully and incomprehensibly demoralized. And many, many times we, we relapse over that. We take our own life over that or we get locked up over that. And you take the alcohol away from an alcoholic and don't give them something

a a spiritual answer. You just take away their alcohol and

you're not, you're not doing them any favors. What you know, the more you learn about alcoholism, the more you see that it's really a spiritual in nature. Alcohol is a symptom

and we learned we learned that I believe in the last couple of weeks here. Step 2 is okay. You know, I buy this. I'm in real trouble. I'm in way more trouble than I thought I was the thanks a lot, Alcoholics Anonymous, You know, you've painted me into a corner. Okay, there's a way out. I believe

that there's a way out. I believe that there's a power that I can access through practicing spiritual living which will afford me survival from alcoholism. That power, that power will enable me to stay separated from alcohol, from drugs. And if and if I if I practice spiritual

by, you know, maintaining my spiritual condition, I'll be safe and protected in in the sunlight of the spirit where I'm safe and protected from the next drinker drug. And the problems in my life start to get solved because I need to fire my manager and get new management because me

managing my own life didn't work very well. So that manager has to go and, and the power greater than myself has to come in. And there's many ways that we learn further on in the steps where, where we we find that we actually do get guidance from the Spirit.

I believe that there's a solution.

I'm not real happy about it, but I believe there's a solution.

There's just, you know, it, it says these are not easy alternatives to face dying alcoholic deaths, live life along spiritual lines. It's not an easy alternative. Face you would, you know, if you were saying it would be an easy little alternative to face, you know, you're going to die a horrible death or you're going to, you know, go to some meetings, practice some steps, help some people out. You know, somebody that's not insane would say, you know, where do I sign up? But but we got we go, you know,

tell us a little bit more about that dying and alcohol like that. How exactly the how exactly does that happen and how much time do I have? You know, you know,

so we're not real happy about Step 2, but we, we need to move, you know, we need to move forward. We need to move forward. So in step three, we make a decision

to go through these steps to live life along spiritual lines because we are out of plants. This is a plan that has worked for a lot of people. We reluctantly agree to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God to, to practice these principles in in all of our affairs and we move forward. And the first thing they ask us to do is to do an inventory. What are our gross, what are our grosser handicaps? What, what are the real problems in our life? And they manifest basically

anger, they manifest in fear, and they manifest in that horrible, uncomfortable emotional feelings of guilt, shame and remorse. Those are the things that cripple us. They keep us in the bondage of self, as the book talks about. And we need the inventory these things because we need we need to gain

mastery over them. Now, we're not going to be able to take care of these things on a frontal assault. We can't just say to ourselves, OK, I'm never going to be resentful again. OK, done. Next, You know that doesn't happen. You know, the next time somebody takes your parking space at the grocery store, you're freaking out.

We don't have like, we don't have the power to stay separated from alcohol. We don't have the power to stay separated from our character defects. We just don't, you know, we can't wish our character defects away. But there's a process that they the early as found for

moving past these character defects, outgrowing these character defects, bringing these character defects into, you know, a manageable area. You know, normal, normal people have normal emotions. Alcoholics are prey to, you know, extremes of all kinds. So we need, we need the inventory these things in steps in Step 4. And that's what we went over in the last two weeks. We looked at resentments

two weeks ago when we looked at fears and our conduct, especially our sex conduct. We looked at that last week. And that brings us to Chapter 6

into action. Now I will mention that

being being a pseudo intellectual, you know, I always voiced saw myself as an intellectual, even though I really had no education to back that up.

I wanted to figure this out. Didn't didn't everybody in here want to figure this out? Give me give me the Cliff node versions. Tell me what I need to know here to get out of this jackpot, you know, show me how to drink normally or, you know, or at least show me how to how to be happy not drinking and let me get the hell out of here. You know, I mean, that was really, that was really my, my,

my first impression. You know, this chapter doesn't say into thinking. It doesn't say, you know, into understanding, it doesn't say into figuring this thing out. It says into action because they found that action is really the only hope that we have for changing ourselves so fundamentally that we can overcome alcoholism.

One of the reasons why therapeutics don't seem to work very well on Alcoholics.

Like if an alcoholic wants to treat their alcoholism by going to a therapist,

therapy helps a lot of outside issues and it helps us gain perspective on what's going on in our life. And I'm a I'm a huge supporter of therapy. My sponsor happens to be a clinical psychologist and and he does counseling and therapy all day long. I'm all for it. But it, you know, in single handed combat against alcoholism, therapy is going to get its ass kicked.

And the reason is, is because in therapy they try to help you change your thinking, you know. Well, why did you do that, Chris? You know, you know, why did you vomit on that nun? You know, I mean, you know, and so, so I'll go sometimes I'll go all the way back to childhood, you know, like, like why I did that. And I'll start to gain a real perspective in what the heck is going on with my life. But I won't be able to stop drinking. You know, I'll know. I'll know

I am drinking, but I won't be able to stop. You know what they found out in Alcoholics Anonymous? Is, is, is we wanted help, help you change your behavior. We almost don't care what you think. Have you ever had a sponsor that, you know, you're trying to explain to the sponsor like how you feel about something? Well, well, well

think you know, and your sponsor tells you, look, if I cared what you thought, you know, I'd come to the booby hatch where you live and ask you, I'm I don't care what you think. I want to know what you're going to do. And and you know, I think we've all had people come at us like that. And there's a reason we, you know, we,

your feet, we don't care what you think a lot of times, OK, your, your brain is what got you into this mess. You know, the, the, the, the illness centers in the mind. So a sick mind is not going to unsick its own mind. You know, they're, they're has to be a process where we'll regain perspective. And that happens through behavior modification, the stuff that they ask you to do in Alcoholics Anonymous.

And here's a, here's a real big action. This is, this is a very, very big action step. Step 5 says, having made our personal inventory, what shall we do about it? We've been trying to get a new attitude, a new relationship with our creator and to discover the obstacles in our path. Steps three and steps 4.

We have admitted certain defects. We have ascertained in a rough way what the trouble is. We have put our finger on the weak items at our personal inventory. Now these are about to be cast out.

That's a hell of a promise. Think about that. The the things that you have inventoried in your four step are about to be cast out. This requires action on our part, which when completed will mean that we have admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our defects.

Now for the longest time before I was exposed to a four step, I know what I did wrong, but I didn't, I didn't, I didn't have a clue about how that manifests in me. When we look at the four step, we look at, you know who we're angry at. We look at why we're angry, but then we see how it affects our areas of self.

The only way for us to really have a resentment is to have our money, our power, our sex harm their interfered with.

That's what gets us every single time. So we now know that, but then we do something we've never done before. We look at our faults in the resentment inventory, in the fear inventory. We look at we look at the fact that don't we have these fears because self-reliance has failed us. We've been running the show and we're filled with fear.

Isn't the reason we're filled with fear because we've been running the whole show

and we start to change a little bit of our perception with that? And then in the Harms to Others inventory, we we review the event, we review the relationship, we ask ourselves the nine questions and then we try to put together a sane and sound ideal for our future relationships, for our future sex life.

See it all like that. It starts to become clearer now we have to admit it to somebody.

Now this was difficult for me. I was always told never admit anything, even if they've got you on video, you know, I mean, that's the way, that's the way I grew up, you know, and and so so put together every single thing in the source step and, you know, meet with somebody and tell them just what kind of a schmuck I am.

I wasn't really looking forward to this. Now, the first time I did a four step in the first, first time I did a fifth step, it basically went like this. I didn't have the benefit of a big book sponsor. They they were not available in North Jersey at this time. They there wasn't such a thing.

The book Alcoholics Anonymous had grown so out of favor that it was pretty much replaced with living sober and the 12:00 and 12:00. So when, when, when, you know, when I had when I was up against the four step, I didn't get any direction. You know, you would, you'd raise your hand in a meeting and you'd ask like, would anybody in here tell me how I can do a four step? You know, some old timer go kid, you do a four step with a pencil,

you know, and that's about, that's about the best you would get.

So, So what do you do? What I did was I went to the 12:00 and 12:00. I went to a bunch of step meetings. You know, I, I tried, I got Hazleton guides, I grabbed anything and everything I could find. And I started to put what I thought a fourth step was together. And basically it was a life story because I'd been in treatment and you know, they had you do a life story. So I did like a, an expanded life story. I listed out some character defects. I listed out some of the things that I did that I never told anybody. And I put this all together and I met with my sponsor.

We met out in a out in a park. And you know, I later realized I thought maybe he wanted to bring me back to nature like like a Yoda kind of experience or something. You know, he just wanted to walk his dogs while he was doing the fist step, you know, like, you know, killed two birds with one stuff. So anyway, anyway, when I got done reading this thing, I mean, I mean, I was reading it like I am such a scumbag,

you know, and I finally get done with this thing and two things happened. What? What one was She looked at me and he goes, Chris,

you know,

that's really not that bad. Like, like every single thing, you know, that really was not that bad. And I wanna tell you something. I believe that you were an alcoholic before you put alcohol in your body. You were like a campfire with the coals just just red. And when you started drinking, it was like throwing gasoline on that campfire and it flared up and it burnt you and everybody around you. And and now, you know, you're doing something about this. You're one of the very, very few. There's a small percentage of people

who recognized this problem and really work toward the solution. So you should lighten up on yourself a little bit. And I started for that exact moment, I started to feel like I might be part of this human condition, part of humanity. I felt, I felt outside of I, I felt

smaller than, you know, I had the, I had the, the big ego with the lack of self esteem that a lot of us have. And I just felt apart from, and after finishing that botched up fist up, I started to feel like I was part of the human race again. Now my second time doing a fist step, I actually had some instructions on how to do the 4th step. So I went to my sponsor with A4 column resentment inventory. You know,

an expanded 2 column fear inventory,

the harm to the harms to others, emphasis on sex with the nine questions answered and all that. And I went to him and he looked at and he goes, what the hell is all this? Where's your story? You know, I mean, I mean, it was the first time him or probably anybody else saw it the way the book asks you to do. And I said, I said let me just let me just read this. You know, I tried to do it from the book Alcoholics Anonymous and let me just read it. So he goes, fine, go ahead and read it now.

Now, this was a whole different experience for me.

I had discovered the exact nature of my defects by doing the four step inventory and by sharing that that was a different experience than my first fist step. My first fist step was confessional. I wrote down everything that I already knew. There wasn't any discovering any truth about, you know,

my stock in trade. I wrote down the stuff that I already thought. So it was confessional. It was like going to to confession if you were a Catholic. It wasn't the same experience as a fist step, and I learned that by doing doing both of these. When I did the first step as using the right

inventories I got, I got really clear on what was going on in my life and what I needed to do, the actions I needed to take to be able to truly recover from alcoholism and move forward with my life.

I

This brings us to the fifth step and the program of recovery mentioned in the preceding chapters. This is this is perhaps difficult, especially discussing our defects with another person. We think we have done well enough and admitting these things to ourselves. There is doubt about that In actual practice we usually find a solitary self appraisal appraisal insufficient.

So if we've come to all these conclusions and we're not ready or willing to share this, holding nothing back,

what they found their experience was it was insufficient and you didn't stay sober. Insufficiency means you're going to go back to drinking usually. But even if you don't go back to drinking, you're going to have untreated alcoholism out the wazoo. That's usually that's usually what happens

thought it necessary to go much further. We will be more reconciled to discussing ourselves with another person when we see good reasons why we should do so. The best reason first. If we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking. That's the first time they say about They give you about 8 warnings in here.

If you don't do this, you're not going to going to stay sober and you're certainly not going to recover. It's like 8 places in here. You think they're they're serious about this. If they give us like 8 warnings right in a row and I'll show you them. Time after time, newcomers have tried to keep to themselves certain facts about their life. Trying to avoid this humbling experience, they've turned to easier methods.

Almost invariably, they got drunk. Having persevered with the rest of the program, they wondered why they felt. We think the reason is that they never completed their house cleaning. They took inventory all right, but hung on to some of the worst items in stock. The only thought they had lost their egotism and fear. They only thought they had humbled themselves. They had not learned enough of humility, fearlessness and honesty in the sense we find it necessary. And until they told someone else all their life story.

I heard I heard a fist step the other day

and in it the individual came over with his resentment inventory, came over with a sphere inventory, came over with a sex harms inventory. And we read all that and in the middle of hearing all of these things, I got background. You know how that happens. Somebody will go, well, I'm I'm about to read you a resentment and let me just tell you a little bit about this situation and there'll be some background OK, that painted the whole life story picture. So this individual

read me the inventories and along with it gave me enough background to get an accurate picture of what his life was like, his life story. And it was an alcoholic life story. Let me tell you. And you know that there's a lot of pain and suffering in the past, but there's a lot of hope.

There's a lot of positive things in the future as we go through this. I, I deal a lot with the, the, the, the medical and the treatment world out there for addiction and alcoholism treatment. I'm involved with it today. I, I interviewed an addiction psychiatrist down in New Orleans

and you know, we talked for about an hour on all, all the current topics. And I can hold my own with, with these, these kind of guys. I can't, I've learned enough, I've learned enough about the treatment processes to be able to hold my own. And and you know, the one thing, the one thing that's made very, very clear

from statistical studies is that nothing is more efficacious for recovery from addiction than the 12 step process. I'll give you a statistic treatment, regular 28 day rehab treatment, you know, the run-of-the-mill kind of treatment. There's good treatment centers, there's bad treatment centers, and there's there's, you know, average treatment centers.

Aggregate all of these statistics together and you'll find that

5% of the people that go through treatment are sober five years down the road.

There's other studies that have been done within Alcoholics Anonymous where

for people who have done the 4th and the 5th step, 60% of them are sober five years out

now, that's pretty significant. That means that it's something like 6 times more powerful to do a fourth and a fifth step than it is to go to treatment for 28 days. This stuff is powerful. Why aren't the other 40% sober out of that 60%? Because they didn't finish their amends

and then they weren't praying and meditating on a daily basis and they weren't working with others. That's usually the reason. Rarely have we seen a person fail who is thoroughly followed our path. And that's still true today. The problem is very few people thoroughly follow the path. That's why when somebody says a statistics are only 5 to 10%, a lot of times those statistics are based on people who walk through that door. We all know that everybody that walks through that door does not get

through all the 12 steps. If they did, our statistics would we would be way better. But a lot of times they just come in, take up a chair, you know, weasel around for a while and you know, they don't find enough power to stay because they're not doing anything. And they leave and they get drunk and they tell everybody today it doesn't work.

And we get it. We got one more black eye from some moron that you know the 12 steps doesn't doesn't take those seriously.

More than most people, the alcoholic leads a double life. He is very much the actor

to the outer world. He presents his stage character. We went over this when we were looking at the third step. This is the one he likes his fellows to see. He wants to enjoy a certain reputation but knows in his heart he doesn't deserve it. Does anybody ever seen the movie Zelig? It's a Woody Allen movie. This guys a human chameleon. And if he's with Hasidic Jews, he grows a beard and he looks like a Hasidic Jew. If he's with Nazis, all of a sudden, you know, he's, he's like saluting like a Nazi. This guy's a human chameleon.

Well, when I saw that movie, it, it touched me a little bit because that's what I did. I tried to fit in so much that if I was over with the Republicans, I was talking Republican stuff. If I was over with the Democrats, I was talking Democratic stuff. You know I want, I needed, I needed so desperately to be accepted and, and to fit in.

So I have a stage character that I've been using. The inconsistencies made worse by the things he does on his sprees. Coming to his senses, he is revolted. At certain episodes he vaguely remembers these memories are a nightmare. He trembles to think someone might have observed him. As fast as he can he pushes these memories far inside himself. He hopes they will never see the light of day. He's under constant fear intention and that makes for more drinking.

You know, sometimes I've got to say thank God for blackouts,

you know, you know, there are there, I'm sure things that that were unbelievably disturbing that I did during blackouts, because some of the things that I remember were, were pretty horrific.

I was, I suffered from such shame and such remorse because of the way I acted when I was drinking that I would have to get drunk again to get past it. Does that make any sense? You know what I'm talking about, right? Like you wake up in the morning and you, you vaguely remember some hot, you know, you, you, you, you were grabbing the bosses wife's ass, you know, at the party really drunk. And, you know, you're like, Oh my God, you know, I I've got to go into work

today, you know, you know, and I think I'll take the day off and and get drunk. I mean, because you just, you just can't face yourself. You can't face what you've done. And, you know, this makes for more drinking. And we get caught in a cycle. Psychologists are inclined to agree with us. We've since thousands of dollars for examining

how many people in here paid $100.00 an hour to a psychiatrist or a psychologist and then lied to him.

Let the record show 200 of the 600 hands.

How insane is that? And and then you complain that they're not doing anything for you

don't even know you drink because when you when they ask you, she said, yeah, I have a couple. I just have a couple. You know, you don't tell them you're you're you're sucking down 4 gallons a Gallo every day. You know, it's had a couple. So they're wondering, they're thinking you're you're a you're a psycho or you got split personality

what to do with you.

We have seldom told them the whole truth, nor we have have we followed their advice. Unwilling to be honest with these sympathetic men. We were honest with no one else. Small wonder many in the medical profession have a low opinion of Alcoholics and their chances for recovery. They still have a low opinion of us folks. There was a study done

and it was basically a study showing how much compassion the medical doctors have for us. And they, they did this study from first year interns all the way through third year residents for doctors, okay. And they found the first year intern had a whole lot of compassion for us.

And by this time, their third year residents in a hospital, they can't stand this and want to avoid treating the alcoholic like the plague. And it's because they see us at our most horrific. We come in there and we're begging for help. You know, we're completely out of our minds. And you know, we get some Librium or something, we start to calm down

and the first thing we think of is they ain't running things right around here. You know, this is unfair.

These two other people are unfair. And we run out of the place with a resentment, you know, and we don't pay our bill and then two weeks later, we're back. Help me, Help me, help me. You know, it's hard. Of course they can't stand us.

Here's another warning. It says we must be entirely honest with somebody if we expect to live long or happily in this world. Do you think they mean we have to be completely honest with somebody if we want to live long or happily in this world? Do you think that's what they mean? Rightly and naturally, we think well before we choose the person or persons with whom to take this intimate and confidential step. Now here's where the book shows a little of its dating.

Remember, this book was written to be a mail order recovery process for alcoholism.

That's really one of the main points of writing this book. They wanted to mail this out across the country to as many doctors as they could find. The doctors who were alcoholic would do this stuff. They'd get sober and they'd start Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. That was really the point. So when they talk about who we should, who we should look for,

there are some really good descriptions in here that we should pay, pay mine to. But you got to also understand that they're expecting this book to land in somebody's hands where there is no Alcoholics Anonymous, there is no sponsors, there are no people who understand what a fist step is. So nowadays, you can't shake a stick without hitting somebody qualified to listen to a fist at.

But back when this book was written, there were really only two groups, Akron in New York City.

Those of us belonging to a religious denomination which requires confession must and of course, will want to go to the properly appointed authority whose duty is to receive it. OK. This is this is if you're Catholic, you're really, they're really saying in this book that it's your obligation to do this with a priest,

but it also says person or persons with whom you're going to take this confidential step. So if you are Catholic, I would recommend doing it with a priest and doing it with a sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous, because you're going to get something different from the sponsor and Alcoholics Anonymous. Very rarely are you are you sharing inventory with a priest and the priest says something like, oh, you play with yourself like that. I do that too. You know, it's, it's just not going to happen. You know what I mean?

No, no. In Alcoholics Anonymous, you know you're going to get some identification probably,

so it's a different experience.

Though we have no religious connection, we may still do well to talk with someone ordained by an established religion.

You know, do with the sponsor and then then go do it with the priest. Many of the people that I've sponsored have done these, these with priests, You know, you know, it's, it's a good experience. I, I think the more of this stuff that you share, the freer you get. See, while we got this stuff all bottled up inside us and you know, it's, it's taken, it's taken hold in US and it, you know, negative emotions are coming out of us holding the stuff.

When we share it, we can let it go. This is about freedom, freedom from the bondage of self. So I, I believe, I believe in, I believe in doing inventory like it says in this book. And, and sometimes going further, I have experience doing multiple fist steps. In other words, it says

we think well before we, before we decide the person or persons with whom to share this confidential step. So this one time I picked three guys. I, I picked one of my sponsors. I picked, I picked a really good friend of mine and one of his sponsors. And I did a fifth step in front of three people reading it to three people. Now, I'm not recommending this, you know, I'm just saying that this was my personal experience. I had an unbelievable experience with this.

My ego was stomped down like you wouldn't believe I was. I was so right sized,

you know, you could have put me on a mantle after, after this, this step. I mean, I walked, I walked out of there humble, you know, like sometimes, sometimes we can fool one person, but when three people are looking at you, you know, it was it was a different story for me. Now, do I do that all the time? No, it was. It was an experience I wanted to have.

We also find such a person quick to see and understand our problem. Of course we will want. We sometimes encounter people who do not understand Alcoholics. If we cannot or would rather not do this, we search our acquaintance. If we don't want to go to a priest, we search out our acquaintance or a closed mouth understanding friend. Perhaps our doctor or psychologist will be the person. It may be one of our own family, but we cannot disclose anything to our wives or parents which will hurt them or make them unhappy. I would recommend against doing a fist step with your parents,

you know and and and and. Be very careful about doing one with your spouse too. You know,

we're trying to get free. We're we're not trying to alienate. We have no right to save our own skin in another persons expense. So if the information that we share is going to harm them, that's that's not part of what this is supposed to be about. Such parts of our story would tell us someone who will understand yet be unaffected. All right, if you've got, if you got a murder or something, OK, tell that. Tell that to a priest.

You know,

you know, sometimes, sometimes you, you have to have some tact and you have to have some common sense. There was a lawsuit. There was an, there was a, a law action that happened up around our area in New Jersey. It was basically this individual, you know, shared something with, with, with, with somebody about, about a murder. And it was found that it was found in this one case. There's a couple of cases that went either way. It was found in this one case that you don't have

the same rights as a priest if you're a sponsor, you don't have the same rights of, of confidentiality. If you're called into court and asked to testify under subpoena, you know, a priest can say, you know, priestly confidentiality and, and that's cool. As a sponsor, you may or may not, depending on what court system you're in,

have that. So sometimes you just, you need to be, you need to be smart about, about this stuff. You know, you might be, you might be dragging somebody into something that they may not want to be dragged into the rules that we must be hard on ourselves, but always considerate of others,

notwithstanding the great necessity for discussing ourselves with someone. It may be that someone is so situated that there's no suitable person available. And this can happen, you know, if you're a lighthouse keeper in Greenland or something. I mean, you know, listen, listen, anybody that's been to the International Convention has seen

tables for the loners, OK? You ever heard of loners in a, A they stay sober by writing letters back and forth to each other. There are no meetings where they are. They cannot get to meetings because there aren't any. There's like 10,000 of them that show up every five years at the International Convention and that's their first meeting in five years.

You know you, you know you can, you can be in a position where where you're not going to have an AA member available. It says if that is so, the step must may be postponed only, however, if we hold ourselves in complete readiness to go through with it at the first opportunity. We say this because we are very anxious that we talk to the right person. It is important that he be able to keep a confidence that he fully understand and approve what we're driving at and then he will not try to change our plan. Those are three specifics that the other person that's going to be listening

to your footstep needs to understand. And it's OK to tell that person it's OK to, if you're doing a fist step with somebody, go. You know, you, you do understand that this is confidential. You know, you do understand that you're not going to, you're not going to be trying to change my plan. And you know what I'm doing here, right? This is a life and death errand. You understand that, right? It's okay to ask somebody that,

umm, but we must not use this as a mere excuse to postpone.

Now, here's our instructions. When we decide who is to hear our story, we waste no time. We have a written inventory and we're prepared for a long talk. We explained to our partner what we were about to do and why we have to do it. He should realize that we are engaged upon a life and death errant. Most people approached in this way, we'll be glad to help. They would be honored by our confidence.

Notice that it says we are prepared for a long talk. One of the things that I've seen a lot of my contemporaries do is try to edit down your fist step. In other words, they see you coming over with a stack of papers like this and they go, Oh my God, this is going to be 10 hours.

And, and what they try to do is they just read the first few. You know, I get it, I get it. It says in here that they need to be prepared for a long talk. So if they're going to try to edit you down, you may be picking the wrong person. Find somebody who's going to going to give you enough time.

Now, on some occasions I've had to do this on multiple days. You know, the, the longest inventory ever I ever heard was 22 hours. Now that's not normal, but that's the longest one I heard. And that had to be done on multiple days. I couldn't stay awake that long. And you know, people get really, you know, they get real

attitude when you fall asleep on them, when they're doing their fist stuff with you.

That has happened

to me. I'll share. I'll share a really good one. There was a period of time in the late 90s where it was just step, people go through the steps at the Schroeder house, like, you know, in and out all weekend long, you know, two or three nights a week, step work going on. And and I thought to myself, there's this guy, this guy Gene.

And I know I gave him, I gave him the instruction to be ready for the first step. I'm gonna call him up. So I call him up and I say, Gee, get over here. We we gotta do your first step, but we're gonna do it tonight. The guy comes over, he's got his, he's got his inventory. And he sits down and he starts to read. And by the 4th or 5th resentment, I start to, I start to get a feeling it's deja vu. OK. I start to realize that I've already heard all this. I'd forgotten he did a fist up with me two weeks earlier,

dragged him over and made him do it again. So he's sitting there and he's doing this whole thing again. Now. You know, I'm, I'm always honest. I'm always up front. So basically what I told him was, you know, Gene, in cases like yours, I like to go over this stuff twice just in case. We don't, we don't, we don't miss anything. You know, you know, they didn't want to look stupid.

Well, I am not kidding. I'm not kidding you when I say this. He moved to Florida and he's known as as as as two fifth step Gene because he makes everybody do it.

Oh God,

I saw no real harm in it. So

and he's going to hear this tape and want to kill me. All right, here's some more instructions for us. This is what we need to do. We pocket our pride and go to it. Okay, Forget about your ego, forget about your pride. This is read what's down on the paper. Just read, you know, ask God for the strength and the courage to read this stuff and do not edit. We need to illuminate every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past.

Now here are some of the 5th step promises. You know, we're always and forever hearing about the promises of AA and and when you hear somebody say the promises of AA, what they mean is the night step promises. If you've been painstaking about the 9th step, you know, you'll know a new freedom and a new happiness, et cetera, et cetera.

They leave out the part that you have to get halfway through the night. You know, the the first nine steps, you got to be halfway through the 9th step before those promises are guaranteed to start to materialize. Well, every single one of these action steps has promises. And here's some of the 5th step promises and they're awesome. Once we have taken this step, withholding nothing, we are delighted.

We can look the world in the eye. We don't have to hang our heads anymore walking up the street or walking through the mall because we're afraid we're going to, you know, bump into somebody. We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. That's an incredible promise. Back when I was drinking, I would have a big bottle of bourbon in front of me. I'd have the TV on. I have the stereo plane. I'd have a guitar in my lap and I'd be reading a magazine and I'd be talking on the phone. I mean, you know, I couldn't be alone at perfect peace and ease. I was out of my mind.

Our fears fall from us.

We begin to feel the nearness of our Creator. We start to feel the presence of God.

We may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience. The feeling that the drink problem is disappearable often comes strongly. Now understand that the feeling that the drink problem is disappeared will come strongly. It doesn't disappear until step 10. We feel we're on the broad highway, walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe.