by Earnie Larsen

“ADMITTED TO GOD, TO OURSELVES AND TO ANOTHER HUMAN BEING THE EXACT NATURE OF OUR WRONGS..”

If we get the problem wrong we’ll never get the solution right.For however long you have been in the Fellowship, when was the last time you heard a meeting given on the phrase, “... --the exact nature of our wrongs?” I’ve been going to meetings for well over 40 years. I don’t ever recall “the exact nature of our wrongs” being the topic of a meeting. I find that sad - and dangerous.

All the Steps are about getting the solution right. Which presumes that we also got the problem right. Which is why the 5th Step tells us to get to the “exact nature of our wrongs. It is in understanding that “exact nature” that the road and reason for all the work in recovery stretches out ahead of us - straight and clear.

As I stressed in Step One last January, in the program I teach at our Salvation Army, “The problem” is not alcohol or drugs. Not that an alcoholic/addict can ever be sloppy or take their eye off the ball that total abstinence from all mood altering chemicals is ground zero. We can never safely use again. Period.I teach it has to start with getting the problem right. And that, as the Big Book and all the early literature stress, is a matter of impaired spirituality. It is a matter of the famous hole in the soul. It is a matter of spiritual bankruptcy. A spiritual bankruptcy that leaves the addict/alcoholic isolated and held in the prison of self-contempt and self-hatred.

The question is never about the absolute necessity of abstinence. Clean and sober is the only answer for an addict. The question is how best does a recovering person gain and maintained uninterrupted sobriety?

I guess there are very few things “every addict must do in recovery.” Every addict is different. What works for one person may not work for another. And of course even the meaning of “recovery” is different for different people. Some consider they are in “recovery” if they go to meetings and stay sober. This is hard to argue with.

But for others the meaning of recovery has to include moving further into the life of the promises than just staying clean and sober. It is for these that the phrase, “The exact nature of our wrongs” is most important.

As I have outlined in the preceding steps - “the exact nature of our wrongs” is about: 1) getting the problem right 2) getting the solution right 3) working the Steps in the context of all the other behaviors that have been proven effective for many millions of people.

ZEKE

Zeke is a handsome, tall 19 year old client in our program. Anyone would be proud to have him as a son, grandson or friend. So far though, he can’t see that. He considers himself a failure, unwanted and of no value at all. “Just a piece of crap” he said. We were standing around after class one day, just fellowshipping, when he beckoned me over. He had a gleam in his eye like he had hit the lottery.

“I got it” he said. “I got the problem.”

“Good for you” I said. “What is it?”

Zeke said, “I’m scared to be loved. I push anyone away who gets close. Then I run to my drugs to blot out the pain of being so lonely.”

Zeke knows that addiction is a primary illness and needs no other cause than “just because it is.” But we weren’t talking about addiction. We were talking about recovery, high level recovery that went all the way to the hole in his soul. We were talking not just about “the exact nature of our wrongs” but the “exact nature of our recovery.”

So I asked Zeke where and how he learned that he was such a throw away person? He said his first memory was when he was 3. His parents were going through a nasty divorce. His memory was of his parents screaming at each other who “had to take the kid.”

Zeke said he clearly remember one screaming, “Well, I’m not going to take him.” Then the other parent would scream back, “Well, you sure as hell know I’m not taking him.” From such tortured places do character defects grow. And those character defects set into rock hard habits. And those habits gather around the hole in the soul and chase the solution of spirituality as far away as possible. And in the wreckage of such spiritual bankruptcy addictions flourish.

THE BOUNCE

Recovery demands honesty. Not just honesty as in not lying but honesty also in the sense of getting to the truth. As many readers will attest, getting to cause, getting to the “exact nature” of the wrongs that must be discovered (Step 4) that demands the surrender to the care of a higher power (Step 3) that alone frees us from insanity (Step 2) that causes the unmanageability and wreckage in our lives (Step 1) - is anything but easy. It takes enormous courage, literally the assistance of a Power not of this earth, to face him or herself “all the way down.” But once we get down to the level where the problem is (every active addict is afraid of love, just like Zeke) the bounce can happen.

The bounce is that point where the drunk-a-log stops and recovery begins. The bounce is what all the fuss and fury of recovery is about. The bounce is why we do all the work. Who cares to endlessly hear the mess addicts make of their lives? Who cares who has the “worst story?” The only thing that matters is “where we are now and how we got there.” A key moment in the bounce is when we “admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being....” The journey into freedom begins when we “admit.”

Nowhere does it say that a person in recovery only does their 4th and 5th Step once. It is a mistake to think so. As we reach different levels in recovery new spiritual awakenings occur. As we scrape away levels of guilt, shame, fear and self-contempt new insights and understandings emerge from deep within our lives. What was hidden before now becomes clear. Or at least more clear. As we move along the road straightens out.

For many people the first 4th and 5th step is all about dumping. It’s about getting rid of dreadful actions done under the influence. Or even before then. It’s about “cleaning house” as Doctor Bob said.

Subsequent 4 and 5th Steps are usually about gaining more clarity around the “exact nature of our wrongs” and how they are STILL affecting the decisions and “rules” we live by. (Zeke is never going to find much joy in life if he doesn’t learn to live by a rule other than he is just a “piece of crap” and deserves no better for himself.) And neither will anyone else caught in the “exact nature” of the trap of some other self-defeating self-definition.Most everyone who has ever done a 5th Step has experienced some degree of relief or freedom by admitting to God, self and others the wrongs we have done. There is power in sharing. Just as the two men who met at Henrietta Siberling’s gate house June 10, 1935 experienced the shared power of fellowship - that then went on to set millions of alcoholic/addicts free. A sorrow (or guilt) not shared is doubled. A joy not shared is cut in half. It’s just the way it is.

TRUST

Chasing away isolation and self-contempt - and thereby gaining the joy promised us in the program, which does wonder to shrink the hole in the soul - requires trust. The problem with trust of course is that it requires vulnerability. Protecting one’s self from being vulnerable and able to be hurt has been the active addict’s main concern through all their using years. That’s why active alcoholic/addicts lie. It’s why they sneak. It’s why they hit, hide and run. It’s why they flee what their spirits most want. It’s why the alcoholic “hopes to find God at the bottom of every bottle they empty.”

The remedy for all this running and hiding is trust. Trust enables a person to stand still and BE KNOWN. Trust drives down the pegs that a genuine, human life can be built on. Trust says, “I know you can hurt me but I’m betting you won’t. I can’t stop you if you do. But I’m gambling you won’t.” Nothing is more terrifying or beneficial to the human spirit than learning to trust.

That is why “Admitted to God, to self and to another human being” are in the steps. All the Steps are about practicing spiritual principles. Spiritual principles are about learning to trust. It’s about EXPERIENCING that we can say anything we need in our 5th Step, no matter how horrible in our eyes, and God and others will not run away, burst into flame or call the police. And the more we learn to trust God and others the more we become able to trust ourselves. As trust and self-confidence grows deeper so does the commitment and ability to live an honest, open life with no need to hit, hide or run.

Hitting bottom is a significant achievement. There is more than one hitting bottom in recovery though. One is getting to that point where “enough is enough” relative to alcohol/drug use. But another one is when our spirituality “pushes us out of our nest” and demands we take the next step toward health and wholeness. And that’s the step that pushes us over the line into trust. Trust demands risk. If there’s no risk there is no need of trust. That’s why the answer is “no” to people who ask, “Can’t I just work my program alone? Why do I need others?”

The answer is because only intimacy and love have the power to address a person’s spiritual bankruptcy. And intimacy and love exist only in relationships. And relationships require others to be in relationship with. And trust is the keystone of all relationships. Trust is the glue holding the Fellowship together. Without trust there is no anonymity. And without anonymity there is no Alcoholics Anonymous. (And then where would we all be!)So we are back to the question of “the exact nature of our wrongs” and the need to form the connections with God, self and others by “admitting to God, to self and to another human being” what blocks us from growing spiritually. Which character defects, like vicious attack dogs, have we placed around the hole in our soul? And how willing are we to tell on them? It’s a question of how far we are willing to go in our recovery?

And then it is the turn of the men in our program to get up and connect the dots by explaining the purpose of the 5th Step in all its parts in the process of recovery. If you were in our number, what would you have to say?