Key Things to Include in a Fourth Step

I once heard a guy (he later became one of my sponsors) say that what he felt was most important to include in a fourth step were those events in our past that made us “wince”. When he said the word “wince” he puckered up his face as though he had just bit into a lemon. I knew exactly the sorts of things he meant: those events in my past that brought high levels of shame and guilt to my consciousness.

I was probably a year and a half sober before I felt ready to do my fourth step. I’d been in no real rush, in large part because the compulsion/obsession to drink had completely left me the moment I awoke the morning following my last drink, two days before my first AA meeting. I never felt compelled or motivated to work the steps due to a desire to stop drinking because that desire had already left me. My only motivations to work the steps were that there was a part of me that suspected that if I didn’t, the desire/compulsion to drink might return; that if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be considered a “full member” of AA; that if I didn’t, the drinking dream might become a drinking reality and hell.

Those motivations got me to begin working the steps, but really, I became open to each step because in each case, I became convinced that the process would lead me to a better way of living, greater serenity and some sense of contentment. So I dove into the steps, one at a time. I’m sure that I did them differently than most, but doing things differently is something that comes naturally for me.

My first step sort of happened without my really knowing it and without my awareness of what was happening. It began in January 2001 when my 15 year old son began his own recovery---neither of us knew it at the time, but when he entered a drug treatment program, that was the moment in time when I was finally unable to stop drinking. Until then, I had always been able “to stop” --- that is, stop long enough to convince myself (or my wife) or others that I was really not an alcoholic. Inevitably, every stopping led to a moment where I became convinced that I apparently could stop drinking and if that were true, I was obviously not an alcoholic! With that awareness in hand, I could safely resume drinking: being as careful as I could not to have another “alcoholic incident”. The day would always come for such another alcoholic incident, to be followed by another display of control via stopping, becoming convinced that I’d really stopped, resuming, etc. What made that moment in January 2001 different from the others is that at that moment I knew, for the first time ever, that I couldn’t stop. No way. No fucking way. True, I loved my son more than life itself and clearly, he needed to stop! But I couldn’t. I needed it like oxygen.

My first step ended the morning of October 20, 2001 when I awoke and realized that I couldn’t stop drinking; that this inability to stop drinking is what they were calling “alcoholism”, that alcoholism was a disease and that I had it. On that morning, I realized or accepted that this simply was what it was and that, like my son, I had the ability to do something about it: I could begin a process of recovery along the lines of what he had been doing. Some months later and after many AA meetings (many of them Step Meetings) it dawned on me that my first step had already happened and all I needed to do was accept that fact. I did and the first step was done, fully cooked, as it were.

The second and third steps sort of blended together for me over the next year. Once I was able to understand that neither of these steps had anything at all to do with “God” as I understood God, but more to do with coming to a comfort level with the fact that in terms of my recovery, my “higher power” was really “Truth” (the truth I was an alcoholic and that I was not going to have to deal with that fact and with my recovery all by myself…) and that the so-called God issue was really not much of a concern for me in terms of my own recovery. That completed my second step.

The third step was a little more challenging in that everyone I heard talk about their 3rd step in meetings kept referring to the step involving kneeling down and praying the 3rd Step Prayer with their sponsor. Communal prayers in AA have always bothered me and for quite a few years now I’ve chosen not to participate in the act of communal prayer in an AA meeting. I remain silent during recitations of both the Serenity Prayer and Lord’s Prayer. And, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, I did my third step without ever kneeling down, with or without a sponsor or anyone else nearby. My third step was completed, I think, when I realized that much of my past life, drinking and sober, had been done with the unconscious conviction that I was God: if life wasn’t the way I wanted it, I took on the role of God by trying my best to make it the way it was supposed to be. If my feelings were not what I wanted (and they NEVER were!) then I took on the role of God (often with the assistance of alcohol) and tried my best to change those feelings.
My third step was a commitment to begin letting go of that conviction to be God and just remain content being me, just as I was at any particular moment in time. The third step, like the first two, are part of a daily practice for me.

Some time following the time I heard the guy talk about a fourth step involving listing things that made us “wince”, I sat down on a hill overlooking the ocean and took out my handheld computer (Blackberry) and started a note called “4th”. I then gave my self permission to begin to remember events in my past that qualified as “wincers” and each time one floated to the surface, I simply typed a short phrase that described that event. I didn't go into detail as they were already clear in my mind. I just wrote enough to remind me later which events in my past qualified as wincers.

I meditated on each incident and remembered as much as I could as to the circumstances around that event, what was going on, who was involved, why I did what I did. Always in the background of my consciousness was the idea I heard expressed by Maya Angelow, "We did then what we knew how to do, when we knew better, we did better." There was very little self-hatred in this process. In fact, looking back, there was no fear or shame at all. I was just remembering and noting. No judgment. After about an hour or so, I was done. Sure, over the next several weeks, I would sometime remember something else that qualified as a wincer, and I would just open up my 4th note, and add that event to the list.

To be totally honest, today I can't remember one single thing from that list. Oh, I'm sure several of them had something to do with sex (with or without others involved), but I really can't remember any of these shamefilled events that I carried with me for so long. Several had to do with situations involving my drinking and how that hurt me or others I loved. I'm sure that if I tried, I could recreate the list, but I really don't see much point in doing that. It would be like opening up a scab and causing the bleeding to resume --- the scab is a natural part of the healing process and if we just let the body do its work, the healing takes place. The trick with the 4th step for me, was to let the healing take place as a part of the natural process of recovery. It was really no big deal.

The other thing that helped me get through the 4th step as well as I did was that I took my grand-sponsor's advice and avoid the two main hurdles to any of the steps: (1) forgetting about the previous steps that had been completed...in this case, that meant not forgetting all that I'd learned through working the first three steps! and (2) thinking about the next step...in this case, worrying about the 5th step and sharing what was on my 4th step list. I didn't forget the first three steps and I really didn't pay much attention or worry about what was going to come after the 4th step. That would come when it was time. More about that some other day.

Take care!

Mike L.