The Point

Understanding Steps Six and Seven

By Rick R.

Since the day I entered the A.A. program, I have had an insatiable appetite for learning all I could about the disease of alcoholism. Having completed very thoroughly the fourth and fifth steps,  and examining my motives for everything I did with steps six and seven, it occurred to me that most of my problems in life involved my interfacing with, “Those Other People.” As I got further into the steps and started to process every one of these interactions, it became apparent that the basic cause of my discontent was low self-esteem. Until I resolved that, there would be very little peace of mind. I had to get right with everyone.

They say understanding is the key to right living, and I read just about anything I could get my hands on about these issues to reinforce the principles we learn in the AA program. Books like:  Emmet Fox’s Sermon on The Mount, , Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled, Ernest Kurtz and Kathleen’s Ketchum’s The Spirituality of Imperfection, Max Ehrmann’s poem “Desiderata”, and the like. This kind of reference material helped me get a better perspective on how to reduce the obstacles standing in the way of my ability to solve these problems.

I should be willing to get right with “every human being I know” as suggested in step eight. (12 & 12) Scott Peck describes the word love as: “Caring for and nurturing another person’s soul.” Now I look at love as a verb and not a noun. You can love someone who doesn’t love you back when you use this definition. As a result, I truly wish the best for every human being I know and offer help and guidance when I can. I become their best advocate. If I want to heal, I must look deeper and try to understand the other person and be strong enough to rein in my ego; then to realize the other person may be reacting to my adversarial position.

Finding ways of removing my own judgmental attitudes opens the door to love and compassion. Today, I can love everyone by simply giving them the respect and acceptance I would want for myself. After doing my best to adopt this plan of action over the years, I can only say nothing  I have ever done, with respect to Those Other People, has been more rewarding than this approach. I have stopped, to the best of my understanding, judging others by their outside behavior and have the strength to look deeper. When I do, I usually find a person not too different from myself, trying to protect himself from his fears. I can’t bring myself to pile on and compound his pain. My heart goes out to him, and I don’t have to deal with regrets later. My ego is neutralized as I come to understand his troubles. The greatest gift I receive as I apply this to all Those Other People, is I seem to allow myself the same latitude without even expecting it because at one time, I was That Other Person. Self-forgiveness and peace of mind seem to be the natural result of my efforts. I can accept everyone just as they are and not mess with God’s work.

By Howard L.

To pay forward my debt of gratitude to Alcoholics Anonymous for 36 years of sobriety, I launched the “AA Recovery Interviews” podcast in December 2020. Since then, over 150 AA members from around the world have shared with me their stories of experience, strength, and hope to help other alcoholics achieve sobriety. Each hour-long interview focuses on what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now. Most importantly, my guests share what it’s been like during their years or decades in recovery. We discuss the challenges and gifts, as well as the tragedies and triumphs, experienced during sobriety. Each story is a beacon of hope and proof-positive that AA really works.

In creating the “AA Recovery Interviews” podcast, extraordinary care was taken to adhere to AA’s Twelve Traditions and all General Service Office guidelines for maintaining anonymity online. No videos or images are shown, and all names are anonymized using the initial of each guest’s last name. Further steps are taken to edit out the names of treatment centers, hospitals, sober living houses, and AA club and/or meeting names. Assurance that no guest can be identified by name, job, or other affiliation allows each AA member to speak frankly about their own journey in sobriety. What’s more, I pay all podcast production costs and no outside advertising is allowed so the show’s integrity is rock-solid. To date, no requests to withdraw a story have ever been received from interviewees.

The process of preparing each AA member’s story has been both gratifying and uplifting. While there are many similarities among them (e.g. the average age of the first drink/drunk seems to be 14), the differences between the stories still create a captivating listening experience. From the very first interview I conducted with Adam M., each succeeding story seemed richer than the last. To me, that’s a demonstration of a higher power present within each personal testimonial. After 150 interviews, I’m still amazed at the impact of every single story.

Since there is no online promotion of the “AA Recovery Interviews” podcast, growth in listenership has been largely organic and mostly word-of-mouth. Nevertheless, there have been over 300,000 downloads, a reasonable indication that the podcast is touching many lives around the world. While 5-star reviews and ratings are appreciated, it is those people I see in meetings whose comments mean the most to me. They tell me they regularly listen in their cars, on their walks, during their workouts, and whenever they want to be uplifted and inspired by their fellow AAs. 

Occasionally, I hear about someone who decided to try AA, or return to the Program after a relapse as the result of hearing the podcast. When I hear that this little weekly podcast has become an important part of anyone’s program, I am both humbled and gratefully reminded that service to others is a gift my higher power has given me to pass on to my fellow AA members.

By Christine R.

As a newcomer to the Program, commuting by bus into San Francisco to a stress-filled office, I would jealousy keep the last remains of the Cabin coffee in my cup. Certain that even the home group’s drops of coffee would keep me sober. In a way – they did and still do. Here’s how.

Looking into the one dark eye of my coffee cup, I could recall the Cabin. The knotty pine walls. Who said what. What the reading was. Who attended. “Maggie sat there. Barbara over here.” The entire session would replay in my mind’s eye. In a way, I had what you’d call an “Insta-Meeting.” Now playing in theaters and coffee cups near you. Savoring the good-luck-drops from my home group keeps me sober even now. Not just a travel-mug, a meeting-mug. Sobriety and love travels with me.  

Speaking of coffee comes the Coffee Commitment. You know the one where you have to arrive early? To keep a Coffee Commitment at a 7am meeting like mine, you have to get up and out the door by 6:30. Heaven help us if the coffee is not ready by 6:45am, fifteen minutes ahead of time, for a gathering of happy alcoholics. 

As a newcomer, I couldn’t understand how making coffee enhances sobriety. I wanted an easier, softer way than the early morning sprint. With time came the awareness of undiscovered benefits. First off, comes the enjoyment of my home group itself. A beautiful antique cabin by a running stream in the woods. Arriving early I enjoy the quiet morning hours. The hooting of the owls. The freshness of the trees.

From here, I learned to think of others. As one would do for guests at home, there’s creamer, sugar, and spoons. Table cloth, plates and cups make the place cheery and inviting. Arriving early I began to talk with people, the last thing I wanted to do when I was new. Got their numbers and shared mine. I learned where the great meetings are.  

Eventually, like the line we cross from being a problem drinker into an alcoholic, so comes the line we cross from being an outsider looking in to an insider looking out onto that “host of friends” they talk about in our literature. A “host” meaning more than one. 

“We can be the ones who take on the unspectacular but important tasks of good Twelfth Step work arranging for the coffee…where so many skeptical, suspicious newcomers have found confidence and comfort in the laughter and talk.”  Some of the best twelfth step work comes from get-togethers with a sponsor or sponsee before or after a meeting at the local coffee house.

In olden days they used to say, “All it takes to create a meeting is a Big Book, a resentment, and a pot of coffee.” There’s something about a warm beverage that keeps body and soul sober and sane. Admittedly there are times when the coffee smells better than it tastes. If that’s the case – take up the Coffee Commitment. Come learn how to make the best out of Maxwell House. 

The Coffee Commitment, the Clean Up Commitment, the Butt Can Commitment (mine for years) are among countless commitments to support sobriety. You may have heard, “We go out when we stop going to meetings, we stop going to meetings when we stop having commitments.” Meeting makers make it. Make some coffee and make it.

By Dede H.

Grounded in true core values
Alcoholics Anonymous was new
Among sick unprincipled drunks
Love, courage, and honesty?
We know how low they’d sunk
Sure, we come in crawling
On our knees—not dancing
Not laughing and not singing
Nasty bottoms horrible things
Nowhere to go but up?
No, we have a choice!
One is alive so yes we do
Not just noise we’re poised
To experience happiness too
Hot coffee and a ride or two
Joy, friendship, and laughter
People really learning to cope
Sisters sweet brothers sharing
Experience, strength, and hope
An inclusive path to recovery.

By John W.

It was difficult for me to see how that small untruth was hurting anyone, it was just helping me to keep peace around the homestead. The lie was after all only allowing me to enjoy a small repayment for why I was working so hard in the first place. I had seen “Dallas” as a kid growing up, the stars always had a drink in their hands. They would walk into a room and the first thing they did was go to a fancy looking table, get a nice looking crystal glass and put some brandy in it. Then they would talk of all manner of life and problems and solutions, always it seemed with a drink in hand. I figured if it was good enough for the stars on TV, it certainly would do me no harm.

So as a young married man, starting a family, when the question was posed: “Did you stop for a drink on the way home?” I always told just a little white lie, responding wholeheartedly: “No.”

Like Dover’s White Cliffs eroding over time, I was losing my Integrity little by little and there was nothing I could do about it. I could not stop the conduct which necessitated the lie, despite my best efforts to try. I had already learned the hard way that the trouble that came with my drinking lessons kept me locked in my hidden past. That’s why these little falsehoods were harmless. I could take a gentleman’s pleasure after a hard day at the office before returning to the home that hard work sustained. It was just another of life’s delicate ecosystems, one activity bolstered another, was sustained by a third, so that a fourth could persist, and so on, and so on.

But the erosion of my soul was occurring, just like those White Cliffs. The first time the Truth intervened, at that couple’s session with the ill-fated marriage counsel, when I volunteered out of the blue that I drank the way I did because I was an alcoholic, that was quite a show stopper.  Almost two decades later I still don’t know from where that nugget of Truth emerged. But the admission was a game changer, no doubt about it. It did not save the marriage and has not yet patched things up with the children, but it unlocked a Truth that had been hidden until that moment by the blanket of my denial for all of my waking life until then. So too it was the first time I admitted I was a Newcomer to the 7:00 am group I had been attending for months, each morning still bent from the night before. The lie not told, the lie of omission, had been just as damaging to my Integrity, as I was later to learn. After I embraced sobriety, I found that not only had these lies taken their toll, but the marks they had left on me became the signposts on the path I was to follow to become the man I always wanted to be, they were the signposts on my road called “Change.”

I had to be searching and fearless with my inventory, and my Decision had given me the courage to accomplish that. But then I had to “admit” this inventory. First an admission to my Higher Power, who I could not see any way, so that was no big whoop. Then to myself, but I had penned the inventory, so no surprises there. But the admission to another human being, this was raising the bar quite high indeed. I had to be honest with this guy, my sponsor it turned out, face to face, about everything. As if it was necessary to underscore the value and need for this, I heard the horror stories about how those who did not employ Integrity in this admission, that often a drink, a slip, was their dubious reward and for me, to drink was to die.

So here it was, put out all my cards face up, no tricks, nothing up my sleeve, nothing, nothing at all, held back. Otherwise, be prepared to pack it in and let my disease do what it wanted to do, take everything from me until I had nothing more to give, then take my last breath too. As I had lost my Integrity, one white lie at a time, so too I gained it back by the daily halting of that practice. Although it had been daunting and difficult, that first Fifth Step (there have been others over the years) gave me the tool I needed to speak the Truth.  As the challenges have come since, that tool of Integrity has been often used and it has served me well. I learned in its use, that it was the Willingness to try that put my Integrity into the space it needed to do its work, a space the Courage I had found in taking my inventory had made for that very purpose.  

By Judy R.

For J. L.

By day in a tower
with windows frozen shut
I breathe dry, canned air
preserved in steel and glass
where I ascend at high speed
for the boardroom to suffocate
while our heads untethered
from their suits pronounce
words like “objectify”
or “systematize.” In Human
Resources a sign says feelings
need not apply. Day’s end I leave
feeling less visible than dust.
By night in a basement
with doors swung open
to characters of my
own kind, we tell stories
of our broken ways, like
a tribe around a campfire–
a circle where love is breathed
not always spoken. I share
the day another boss said, “Go,
go right now.” We laugh, again.
Then someone gallant and intent
as Inspector Clousseau glides across
the room, takes my hand, kisses
me on one cheek, then the other
and without a spoken word
makes me feel seen and heard,
makes me feel…

We Failed Idealists Need Attention

By Rick R.

I came from a family riddled with alcoholic drinkers and many of them had the same problem as I did. I recall the first month or so, when I got sober, still hanging out with them at our favorite watering hole, drinking ginger ale. I would slip out every night at 8:00 p.m. and go to the AA meeting at 8:30 p.m. and return at 10:30 p.m. without telling anyone where I was going. I didn’t want anybody to know I was checking out the AA program. I didn’t want to face the ridicule at the time, and I wasn’t sure it was going to work for me. If it didn’t work, I wouldn’t have put up with them mocking me. You might say that I was protecting my anonymity at the time and didn’t even know it. 

After thirty days, I didn’t care who knew about it because I believed I found the answer, and I had. Soon, I was one of those guys who wanted to shout it from the rooftops and try to sober up everyone around me, and you know how that turned out. As I dragged each of my five brothers to AA meetings, it seemed they each learned just enough to be able to rationalize exactly why they were not alcoholics, and they ridiculed me anyway. Since then, one brother, a nephew, and a niece have committed suicide. 

That was among the experiences that gave me hard earned lessons to respect the principle of anonymity. Of the rest of my immediate family of ten siblings, only one sister saw something in me that she liked. She got sober in the program and hasn’t had a drink in over forty-eight years. 

We are exposed to the discussions in AA meetings as newer members complain about someone breaking their anonymity; or ones wanting to shout it from the rooftops, like my former self. Such will always be the case in AA as that is one of the symptoms of alcoholism. We are failed idealists who need attention. But as we get more experience, we learn the true value of the spirit of anonymity. We can always come up with some noble reason for tooting our own horn. We can dress it up in the altruistic motive of sacrificing one’s own anonymity to save someone’s life, which sometimes, in the long run, destroys the chance of being a good example. Often the result is just the opposite, which  I have personally witnessed. Tradition Twelve talks of Anonymity as” The spiritual foundation of all our Tradition ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.”

There is a difference between the” Spirit of the law”, and the” Letter of the law.” We who have been diligent with the program have been highly influenced by the Spirit of what the founders learned and introduced us to in the form of the 12 steps and the 12 traditions.  They all come in the form of unselfishness of the spirit. I have yet to find one prayer or principle in the two books we use as reference guides, that are of a material nature or of selfish motives. This tells me the things I do, as the result of practicing the principles of the program, should be done unselfishly and without fanfare. So long as I needed the attention I was always seeking when I was looking for the photo opp., I was still only following the letter of the law, so to speak. When I came to understand the Spirit of Anonymity, I was able to rein in my EGO and my selfish motives. I try to be a good role model and do so quietly. It seems to work better that way.   

By Dede H.

Courage calls me to be better than I am
To channel moral and mental strength
To face my fears, to persevere and withstand
I must face my ordeals going to any length
I am so glad I have you all to hold my hand
Courage may you be my Higher Power today
Carrying me through trials and tribulations
I see them on the horizon coming my way
I need not call upon ghosts and apparitions
Mighty Courage you are here to save the day
I carry you in my pocket and in my head
Round my neck in the emblem on my necklace
Courage, I think of you to avoid the purloin
I’ve achieved Courage with a smile on my face
Ask and I’ll show you my sobriety coin!