How My 5th Step Happened One Day...

All of my steps have happened to me. That isn't to say that I wasn't involved or working them, but in each instance, and sometimes almost in spite of all the things I was doing in terms of any particular step, the step eventually, and without fail, happened to me. My fifth step is a perfect example.

For a variety of reasons, I had never felt compelled to rush through the steps or to do a step just to say I had done it. I saw that others had that urgency, but I didn't feel it. I was sort of lucky in that way I suppose.

You see, the obsession to drink had left me two full days before I first stepped foot into an AA meeting, or any other 12 step meeting for that matter. So I didn't feel pushed to do the steps quickly, or at all really, at least in terms of them being some sort of method to get rid of the compulsion to drink again. That obsession had gone already.

Ultimately, I began working the steps because each of them afforded me the possibility of dealing with some sort of suffering/pain or the possibility of providing me some increased level of happiness, serenity, joy and/or contentment. So I tried to work them, even if slowly.

I'd been encouraged in this "slowbriety" strategy by Dr. Earle, especially in terms of the fourth and fifth steps: he was of the opinion that people walking in the doors of AA should not rush into the fourth step. He believed, and I readily agreed with him, that when most of us walked in the doors of AA we were pretty beaten up already and the last thing in the world we needed was to focus even more attention on whatever wrong we had done before coming to AA and trying to get sober. He tended to recommend that people hold off on working a 4th step until they'd gotten at least a year or so of sobriety. Sure, if there was something really nagging at you or making you feel like you needed "liquid relief", you could certainly talk about that with your sponsor or whoever else you felt safe with, but absent that, he recommended that people should just focus on getting your feet on the ground and getting settled in the fellowship. The first three steps were prescribed by the Dr. if one was so inclined....he never really seemed to push it on anyone.

I probably took Earle as his word a little too much: I had not really done much in terms of the fourth step until after Earle had died in January 2003. During the last five months of his life, spent mostly in the hospital, I'd sometimes thought about the possibility of doing my fourth step then so that I could do my fifth step with Earle before he died. I ended up never really considering that because it seemed awfully selfish of me. I opted for just being there with him during that time of his life. While I know he would have loved performing that service for me, I simply wasn't ready and it never seemed as important as what I was doing by just being with him, holding his hand, helping him pee into the bottle, brushing his teeth, or just plain sitting.

Some months after Earle's death, I did sit down and write what amounted to a fourth step. I've already talked about that in an earlier blog, but suffice it to say that it was very brief. I'd already done a long narrative "fourth step" 20 years before when I was in the Jesuits and that confession had already provided me an effective means of dealing with all my past prior to age 25. I really didn't see any point rehashing and digging up what had already been resolved. As for the post-25 issues, a man who later became one of my sponsors explained what it was he found important to include in a fourth step: He felt that it was important to include anything that "made us wince". Anything that brought your face into a "just bit into a lemon" scrunchiness. That's what needed to be written down and shared with another human being. What we were really "guilty" over --- what we felt true shame over.

Ernest Kurtz (author of "Not God: A History of AA" and "Spirituality of Imperfection") wrote somewhere (I think it was in another one of his books, less talked about, called "Shame and Guilt") that most alcoholics come into the rooms of AA with two great burdens: shame and guilt. He said that guilt was what we carried as a result of what we had done; shame was the burden we carried over "who we were". The greatest shame I felt in life was the shame of being an alcoholic. I'd felt for years that being or not being an alcoholic was something within my realm of control. When I crossed the line and lost the ability to stop drinking, I felt tremendous shame over that.

I was very aware of that shame from the very first few meetings of AA and this shame began to dissipate on a daily basis as I learned more and more about the dis-ease of alcoholism. As a result, this shame was really not something that made me "wince" anymore when I was ready to do my fourth step. There were a few items from my past that did, so I noted them down in a notepad document on my Blackberry handheld device/phone. It really only took me about 2 hours, sitting on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean one day, to complete my 4th step. But it took longer before I felt ready to do a fifth step with my sponsor, Dave.

Dave had talked about the fourth and fifth step in meetings and I always felt he was talking to me when he was doing so. One of the things that he said about the fifth step when he was listening to some one's 5th step, was that he always listened for a "sense of remorse". That it really meant something to the person sharing this information. That it wasn't just some bullshit exercise being done to check off a step and somehow become part of the AA Club or somehow "ensure" sobriety by doing some sort of formalistic ritual without really meaning it.

Well, I just wasn't going to do that! But to be honest, I just didn't feel anything when I looked at the items on my 4th step list. Part of that was because I actually had shared most of all of these things with others in the context of trying to help them deal with their past issues.... By doing that, I think I accomplished the intent of 5th step....but I never felt it was quite enough to say that I was done with this important step.

Then, my sponsor invited me to join him on an AA weekend retreat in August 2003. There were about a dozen of us who went. Most of us were looking forward to time away and time to play golf with our new found or old friends.... But part of the weekend involved a nightly AA meeting for all of us on the retreat. Other than that, it wasn't much of a AA retreat. My wife was correct when she accused me of just getting away for a weekend of golf and "calling it" an AA retreat. She's highly perceptive...but she let me go with her blessing anyway. Thank God she did, because my fifth step happened to me that weekend.

My 5th step "happened" in two parts.

The first part happened while playing golf with my sponsor on the way to the retreat location.... Dave's a great golfer and I'm really just a hack who can sometimes hit a great shot. About halfway through that game, we were playing a long par 5 hole and my first shot went left and off the fairway, behind a large hedge. When I stood by my ball, I could see the green about 200 yards ahead of me....only if I leaned way to my right. The hedge was pretty much in my way and the only way that I could possibly hit the green would be to either (a) kick my ball to the right or (b) hit the ball where it laid and try to do something like hit the ball to the right of the green and pray to God that it would curve to the left. Now, hitting a ball and having it curve to the left is actually something I do quite well! I mean, that's how I got behind this hedge in the first place! But doing it "on purpose" was not something I had ever done. Kicking the ball to the right seemed the more appropriate solution, but I just couldn't do it. Dave was always talking about "Golf" as though it was his Higher Power----it was the ultimate example of ethics and morality and provided meaning to life. Now, Dave couldn't see me at this point in time because he and the others were already up by the green looking for their balls.

I ended up choosing (b) and hitting the ball as best I could and I would just deal with it. I hit the ball and for the first time in my life it did what I intended it to do! It took off around the hedge, curved to the left and landed right in the middle of the green. Everyone cheered when they saw it land and I was on top of the world. I'd "done the right thing" and it worked out perfectly. I'd never felt so good about myself. I consider this event to represent all those other times in my life when I did the "right" or "good" thing. There are many such events and all of them needed to become part of my personal inventory.

The second and more dramatic part of my fifth step experience came on the second day of the retreat, again on the golf course with my sponsor. Again, a long par 5 hole on a different course. I'd been playing great until this hole and was loving the experience of being with these three other guys and being "part of". My sponsor and I both hit great shots off of the tee, both of our balls went over and beyond a hill, out-of-sight, but apparently about half way down the fairway. As we were walking toward our balls, enjoying each others success, we topped the hill and looked down the fairway: there was one ball sitting right in the middle of the fairway in line where I thought my ball had gone (Dave's ball had appeared to have gone somewhat right of mine...). Dave pointed to it, assuming it was mine, and said, "Great shot Mike!" and then began walking over to the right side of the fairway to find his ball. He quickly realized that his ball was not anywhere on the fairway and that it must have bounced somewhere into the rough. While he began searching for his ball, he called over to me and said to go ahead and hit, he may have to take a penalty if he couldn't find his ball soon.

I took out my 8 iron and hit the ball well... It landed up on the green not more than 7 feet from the hole! Unbelievable! As Dave continued looking for his ball, cussing like a sailor, I walked up to the green. Just before getting to the green I noticed another ball laying over to the right of the green and I went over to look at it closer: as soon as I saw it, I realized that it was the same kind of ball I had been hitting that day, a Pinnacle and the same number, 3. A Pinnacle 3! What a coincidence! Someone had lost their ball on this hole and it was the exact same kind of ball that I'd been hitting. Strange. I left the ball as it was and then proceeded to walk up to the green and mark my ball and wait for the others to catch up to the new Tiger Woods.

As I bent down to mark my ball and pick it up, I realized that it wasn't a Pinnacle 3, it was a Titleist and it had a red dot on it (good golfers, like my sponsor, always mark their ball with a unique symbol or marking so that they can distinguish their ball from other people's balls...). Strange. Dave was hitting a Titleist and his marking was a red dot. Oh my fucking God!!! What had I done? I'd apparently hit Dave's ball from the middle of the fairway... And the Pinnacle 3 that was laying out there not ten yards from the green (a shot, by the way, that Tiger would have been proud of!!!) was actually my ball. I then turned to look back down the fairway and I could see Dave giving up his search for his ball and taking a penalty drop and proceeding with play. In a split second, without any real thought, I marked my/Dave's ball and placed his ball in my pocket where I had another Pinnacle 3 ball. I didn't want to admit to mistakenly hitting Dave's ball, wasn't sure how we could possibly cure this mistake without delaying the game and making me the butt of many good hearted jokes that night. So I just decided to lie. I'd keep this innocent mistake to myself and just move forward. It would just have to be one of those mysterious ball disappearing stories that all great golfers love telling again and again.

Then, Rich, one of the other guys who was playing with us was now approaching the green when he looked down and noticed the Pinnacle 3 ball laying in the grass. He checked the ball and then called up to me saying that, "Hey, Mike, weren't you hitting a Pinnacle?" Trying not to turn red, I said Yes, but that mine was up here on the green and already marked... Even pulled out my second Pinnacle 3 to "prove" it --- not that he was really accusing me of anything. He let it go and just put the ball back on the ground. My ball.

I ended up making an Eagle (two under par) on that hole and everyone "High Fived" me and told me how great I played that hole. No one seemed to have any idea about what I had done. Dave was still a little pissed about losing his ball, but he seemed to let it go rather quickly as it was just a game and he was having fun. It should have been best time in my life, but it was really my lowest point ever. And my Hell was only just beginning. From that moment on, for the remainder of the day, it seemed that the underlying topic of every discussion or story-telling was something along the lines of Honesty, Integrity, and Truthfulness. On the way back to the retreat site that afternoon, Dave told several stories about why he loved golf so much: primarily because it placed the responsibility for judging the game on the individual player: while there were marshals and judges on the course during tournaments, they weren't there to make judgments or dole out punishments. The players themselves call the penalties on themselves. It was a game all based on integrity and truthfulness.

I'll never forget how I felt sitting in the back seat of Dave's car as he was going on and on about how much he loved golf and why.... I never felt so disconnected from him as I did then. In fact, I felt myself disconnected from everyone on that trip. It was me and my secret on one side and everyone else on the other side of life. It was horrible. The longer I kept my secret to myself, the more isolated and alone I felt. It actually reminded me of the isolation and loneliness I felt those last ten months of my drinking...when my son was in recovery and I couldn't stop drinking. Isolated and alone. No one knowing what was going on inside Mike. No one.

That night at the AA meeting that we held at the end of the day, a guy named Mick told his story and toward the end really got honest with how difficult his life had been over the last couple of years due to his wife's illness. Several of us were close to tears with empathy and compassion toward him. When he finished, he said that the topic was "Honesty." Crap!!! They then started going around the circle each man taking his shot at talking about how important Honesty had been in their recovery and how much this Honesty made their recovery possible. Was this some sort of conspiracy? Did they all know what I'd done? What was I going to talk about? Was this going to be the meeting where, for the first time ever, I raised my hand and identified as "Mike, alcoholic" and then said "I think I'm just going to pass..."?

I knew that there wasn't a way in hell that I was going to be able to say anything, other than the truth. I really don't remember much of what others talked about that night, I was last in the circle to talk and Dave was sitting to my left. He'd share first, before me. When he was done, I raised my hand and identified...and then said that I really really didn't want to talk tonight. But that I had to clear something up that had happened earlier that day. I then told them all what I had done from the moment of accidentally hitting a ball that I'd thought to be mine....to the moment when I bent down to mark what I'd thought to be my ball on the green only to discovery that it was Dave's. I was crying like a girl (sorry, girls!) during the whole confession. When I finally finished, it was quiet for a few moments. Then Rich, blurted out, "You mean you hit Dave's ball??? You hit his fucking ball?" I nodded and he and everyone, including me, started laughing so much that they were on the floor. It must have taken ten minutes before anyone could talk. As things were starting to calm down, I leaned over to Dave and said that what had bothered me so much about what I'd done was that he'd once said something along the lines that we recovering alcoholics are now going down a path where we "do the right thing." I clearly didn't do the right thing. His response was to smile and say, Well, there's another part to that, and that is "We do the right thing, except when we don't". And that's perfectly ok. We pick ourselves up and try again. It was ok.

I then leaned over one more time and told Dave that I wasn't going to give him back the Titleist ball with the red dot. That it was going on my bureau and would forever remind me of this day. He laughed and said, "Of course!!"

Some weeks later, I told Dave that I needed to meet and go over my 4th/5th step with him. Ultimately, my 5th step was something that happened to me that night when I shared with this group of men what I'd done, how I'd separated myself from them by my actions and what I needed to do to recover the connection I had with them.... A connection that I so desperately needed to have with them. It really didn't involve going down any list of wrongs from the past (I'd actually already done that in a variety of other ways). It involved a deep felt admission to myself and to another human being (actually, about 15 of them!) the exact nature of my wrongs.

And the exact nature of my wrongs was that I mistakenly thought that my actions, good or bad, separated me from others, from God and from my true self. Nothing has ever been farther from the truth. Nothing.

Take care!

Mike L.