“One Step at a Time” is a series of original essays we will be running monthly. We are excited to have writer and mom Patty N. share her fresh perspective as she embarks on the road to sobriety.
STEP FIVE
by Patty N.
When it comes to ego deflation, few Steps are harder to take than Five.
– A.A.’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
My sponsor was on vacation all summer. We had worked on the first three Steps before she left New York, and I was eager to keep plowing ahead while my kids were at sleep away camp. I emailed her asking if we could do Steps Four (moral inventory) and Five (admitting the nature of my wrongs) electronically.
“It’s best to do the Steps in person,” she said. “And it’s really important not to rush–some people don’t even think about the Fourth and Fifth Steps until they have at least a year of sobriety.”
Yeah, I thought, well those people didn’t launch two magazines in two years or have children 15 months apart or lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks or move to New York because California was too slow!
I’ve always been more of a sprinter than a marathoner. I move fast. I set goals. I really wanted to cross Step 5 off my list before the kids came home from camp. So, instead of taking my sponsor’s suggestion, I decided to do the Fifth Step on my own; I volunteered to speak at a detox facility where I would admit publicly the nature of my wrongs.
On a breezy Friday evening, I rode my bike along the West Side Highway to ACI, an addiction treatment center housed in a nondescript ten-story brick building on West 57th Street and 10th Avenue. Paul, an acquaintance from A.A. who runs a weekly meeting at ACI, met me in the lobby. As he signed us in, I took a swig of my bottled water and noticed that the label had a photograph of Donald Trump and that the water was called Trump Ice.
“Sounds like a high end malt liquor,” I said, immediately regretting making a booze joke at a detox gathering. Paul chuckled politely and then escorted me into an elevator up to the 6th floor.
Once we have taken this Step…we can look the world in the eye.
The meeting room was filled to capacity – about 25 men, mostly black and Latino, and two women. This was my first time speaking at an A.A. meeting and I could feel my heart pounding against my chest. Paul put some literature on a table and I took a seat in the front of the room. One of the women announced, “I have five days sober! And I haven’t been clean for this long in 60 years!” Everyone clapped. The other woman was a young mother who had almost died from a late-term abortion.
A man in the front row had a disfigured bottom lip, swollen and blistered like it had been burned. The man next to him had small thin scars — like slashes from a knife — all down his forearms. Another was on leave from prison; he had been selling cocaine since age 17 to support his parents who were IV drug users and had AIDS. I was told that most residents were on Methadone which explained their half-smiling/half-asleep expressions and their cloudy, bloodshot eyes. I had averted eyes like these so many times on the subways, buses and sidewalks of New York City. Now I would meet their gaze and, by relaying my story, do my part to help them stay clean.
But I didn’t tell my story. Instead of sharing my experience, strength and hope as I’d planned, I launched into an angry rant about my mother. For 25 minutes, I confessed my mother’s sins instead of acknowledging my own. I reviewed her moral inventory. I recited a list of her wrongs. I reported her objectionable behavior. I blamed her for my drinking.
By speaking to others, we hear ourselves more clearly.
Paul finally gave me a signal to wrap up and I stopped talking. I had been in such a dissociated state that I didn’t remember looking anyone in the eye or making any meaningful connections. I was shaking and felt as if I’d just woken up from a fitful nap. I looked around the room at these people who had been to Hell. I had felt so sorry for them when I first walked in the room. But after my performance, I wondered if they now felt sorry for me. Even through their Methadone haze, they might have been thinking, Why is she so consumed with anger? Why is she holding on to the past like a waterskiing towrope? I half expected them to rise up in their sock feet and shout at the top of their smoke-damaged lungs, LET IT GO, SISTER, LET IT GO! But they didn’t have to. I heard the message clearly.
My sponsor returns to New York next week, and I look forward to revisiting the Fourth and Fifth Steps with her…very slowly.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
“…And it’s really important not to rush–some people don’t even think about the Fourth and Fifth Steps until they have at least a year of sobriety…” Some people ? How about the founders of AA ? Do you know how much time they had when they did the steps ? Your sponsor doesn’t know what she is talking about, Bill W. did all of the steps within his first 6 months and Dr. Bob did all his steps in ONE NIGHT — he was still drunk when he went door to door to make amends to his neighbors the next day. I feel sorry that you have been mis-lead by some well meaning woman in the rooms of AA, who never did the steps thru the big book with her sponsor. It’s not her fault — I was sober for 5 years before someone cracked open the book and showed me the solution. — The big book says the third step does not take effect unless [you] AT ONCE begin step 4 — The big book uses language like AT ONCE and NOW and INTO ACTION — If your sponsor did do the steps thru the big book and she recovered, why would she make you wait a year? Your grace period may not be that long, you may go pick up a drink during that year, while you are waiting. If you had the cure for cancer, would you wait a year to take it? NO, you are right to want to do this work quickly and effectively and get well as soon as you can. I hope you find some one in the rooms of AA who can actually help you go thru the steps thru the big book like the founders and first 100 members did when AA was first organized. In the last 70 some years, AA has been watered down with OPINIONS and “talking about feelings” — that is not what the first 100 members did. They went thru the steps and then turned to help newcomers go thru the steps — that is it — not sitting around talking about how their day went, or their cat missing the litter box— that is not the answer. Check out http://xa-speakers.org/ and hear the original message of AA — Speakers like those on that website have changed my sobriety and my life…