Step Five Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs So there we were…coffee in hand, sitting across from each other at the park. I was staring awkwardly off into the distance as my sponsor was waiting patiently for me to begin. The moment had come for me to clean out my … Read More
Big Book Club – Chapter 5: How it Works
The language on the first page of Chapter 5 is dire. It is filled with ominous worlds like ‘Will not completely, constitutionally incapable, naturally incapable, chances less than average, suffer, grave emotional disorder’. Whew! These grave phrases may seem melodramatic to a non-alcoholic but to me they described the final years of my drinking perfectly. I had been constitutionally incapable … Read More
My Story
Without it we have nothing! As I began to put together the words that would make up this piece, I didn’t know exactly what it was I was going to say or even how I would say it. However, after a plethora of prayer & a maelstrom of meditation, I began to believe that I would be able come up … Read More
The Non-Alcoholics Who Helped Us: Dr. Silkworth
A drunk is lying on a bed in a hospital. A doctor is sitting beside the bed. The drunk wails in earnest, “…a wave of depression came over me. I realized that I was powerless, hopeless, that I couldn’t help myself, and that nobody else could help me. I was in black despair. And in the midst of this, I … Read More
Tradition Four
“Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole” Because of Tradition Four, each group can be autonomous. This means that each group has the right to run a meeting in any format that they wish and because of this if you explore enough meetings I believe you can find one that is … Read More
Step Four
For me, the Fourth Step is not just a list between the pages of a well-hidden journal, but the Fourth Step is a continuous, yet imperfect practice of empathy. Although I completed an exhaustively detailed Fourth Step, one that extended back to childhood events that had occurred before I had acquired the language to articulate them, and extended forward to … Read More
Chapter 4: We Agnostics
Having been raised in a religious family, I was, like so many of us were, told what God was. After years of praying as I was educated to pray, of believing I should have visions and conversations with God, and failing to make that sort of contact with It (I’ll refrain from using gender related terms about God, as I … Read More