Step Four Study

[MajestyJo]

The following was posted on four other sites, thought I would share it here, to go with the Step Four I just posted.

I copied each paragraph from the AA 12 Steps and 12 Traditions and shared my experience, strength, and hope.

It helped me to do it, and I hope it will help others if they struggle with the Step or if they get stuck, or refuse to start it because of fear.

I value your feed back and your own experience, strength, and hope from working this step in your life.

If you are not an alcoholic, substitute your addiction or any obsessive, compulsive disorder that is troubling you.

Step Four

"Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves."


Creation gave us instincts for a purpose. Without them we wouldn't be complete human beings. If men and women didn't exert themselves to be secure in their persons, made no effort to harvest food or construct shelter, there would be no survival. If they didn't reproduce, the earth wouldn't be populated. If there were no social instinct, if men cared nothing for the society of one another, there would be no society. So these desires--for the sex relation, for material and emotional security, and for companionship--are perfectly necessary and right, and surely God-given.

Yet these instincts, so necessary for our existence, often far exceed their proper functions. Powerfully, blindly, many times subtly, they drive us, dominate us, and insist upon ruling our lives. Our desires for sex, for material and emotional security, and for an important place in society often tyrannize us. When thus out of joint, man's natural desires cause him great trouble, practically all the trouble there is. No human being, however good, is exempt from these troubles. Nearly every serious emotional problem can be seen as a case of misdirected instinct. When that happens, our great natural assets, the instincts, have turned into physical and mental liabilities.

Step Four is our vigorous and painstaking effort to discover what these liabilities in each of us have been, and are. We want to find exactly how, when, and where our natural desires have warped us. We wish to look squarely at the unhappiness this has caused others and ourselves. By discovering what our emotional deformities are, we can move toward their correction. Without a willing and persistent effort to do this, there can be little sobriety or contentment for us. Without a searching and fearless moral inventory, most of us have found that the faith which really works in daily living is still out of reach.

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

Before tackling the inventory problem in detail, let's have a closer look at what the basic problem is. Simple examples like the following take on a world of meaning when we think about them. Suppose a person places sex desire ahead of everything else. In such a case, this imperious urge can destroy his chances for material and emotional security as well as his standing in the community.

Another may develop such an obsession for financial security that he wants to do nothing but hoard money. Going to the extreme, he can become a miser, or even a recluse who denies himself both family and friends. Nor is the quest for security always expressed in terms of money. How frequently we see a frightened human being determined to depend completely upon a stronger person for guidance and protection. This weak one, failing to meet life's responsibilities with his own resources, never grows up. Disillusionment and helplessness are his lot. In time all his protectors either flee or die, and he is once more left alone and afraid.

We have also seen men and women who go power-mad, who devote themselves to attempting to rule their fellows. These people often throw to the winds every chance for legitimate security and a happy family life. Whenever a human being becomes a battleground for the instincts, there can be no peace. But that is not all of the danger. Every time a person imposes his instincts unreasonably upon others, unhappiness follows. If the pursuit of wealth tramples upon people who happen to be in the way, then anger, jealousy, and revenge are likely to be aroused. If sex runs riot, there is a similar uproar.

Demands made upon other people for too much attention, protection, and love can only invite domination or revulsion in the protectors themselves--two emotions quite as unhealthy as the demands which evoked them. When an individual's desire for prestige becomes uncontrollable, whether in the sewing circle or at the international conference table, other people suffer and often revolt. This collision of instincts can produce anything from a cold snub to a blazing revolution. In these ways we are set in conflict not only with ourselves, but with other people who have instincts, too.

Alcoholics especially should be able to see that instinct run wild in themselves is the underlying cause of their destructive drinking. We have drunk to drown feelings of fear, frustration, and depression. We have drunk to escape the guilt of passions, and then have drunk again to make more passions possible. We have drunk for vain glory--that we might the more enjoy foolish dreams of pomp and power. This perverse soul-sickness is not pleasant to look upon. Instincts on rampage balk at investigation. The minute we make a serious attempt to probe them, we are liable to suffer severe reactions.

If temperamentally we are on the depressive side, we are apt to be swamped with guilt and self-loathing. We wallow in this messy bog, often getting a misshapen and painful pleasure out of it. As we morbidly pursue this melancholy activity, we may sink to such a point of despair that nothing but oblivion looks possible as a solution. Here, of course, we have lost all perspective, and therefore all genuine humility. For this is pride in reverse. This is not a moral inventory at all; it is the very process by which the depressive has so often been led to the bottle and extinction.

If, however, our natural disposition is inclined to self righteousness or grandiosity, our reaction will be just the opposite. We will be offended at A.A.'s suggested inventory. No doubt we shall point with pride to the good lives we thought we led before the bottle cut us down. We shall claim that our serious character defects, if we think we have any at all, have been caused chiefly by excessive drinking. This being so, we think it logically follows that sobriety-- first, last, and all the time--is the only thing we need to work for. We believe that our one-time good characters will be revived the moment we quit alcohol. If we were pretty nice people all along, except for our drinking, what need is there for a moral inventory now that we are sober? We also clutch at another wonderful excuse for avoiding an inventory. Our present anxieties and troubles, we cry, are caused by the behavior of other people--people who really need a moral inventory. We firmly believe that if only they'd treat us better, we'd be all right. Therefore we think our indignation is justified and reasonable--that our resentments are the "right kind." We aren't the guilty ones. They are! At this stage of the inventory proceedings, our sponsors come to the rescue.

They can do this, for they are the carriers of A.A.'s tested experience with Step Four. They comfort the melancholy one by first showing him that his case is not strange or different, that his character defects are probably not more numerous or worse than those of anyone else in A.A. This the sponsor promptly proves by talking freely and easily, and without exhibitionism, about his own defects, past and present. This calm, yet realistic, stocktaking is immensely reassuring. The sponsor probably points out that the newcomer has some assets which can be noted along with his liabilities. This tends to clear away morbidity and encourage balance. As soon as he begins to be more objective, the newcomer can fearlessly, rather than fearfully, look at his own defects.

continued...

[MajestyJo]

The sponsors of those who feel they need no inventory are confronted with quite another problem. This is because people who are driven by pride of self unconsciously blind themselves to their liabilities. These newcomers scarcely need comforting. The problem is to help them discover a chink in the walls their ego has built, through which the light of reason can shine. First off, they can be told that the majority of A.A. members have suffered severely from self-justification during their drinking days. For most of us, self-justification was the maker of excuses; excuses, of course, for drinking, and for all kinds of crazy and damaging conduct. We had made the invention of alibis a fine art. We had to drink because times were hard or times were good. We had to drink because at home we were smothered with love or got none at all.

We had to drink because at work we were great successes or dismal failures. We had to drink because our nation had won a war or lost a peace. And so it went, ad infinitum. We thought "conditions" drove us to drink, and when we tried to correct these conditions and found that we couldn't to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of hand and we became alcoholics. It never occurred to us that we needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever they were. But in A.A. we slowly learned that something had to be done about our vengeful resentments, self-pity, and unwarranted pride. We had to see that every time we played the big shot, we turned people against us. We had to see that when we harbored grudges and planned revenge for such defeats, we were really beating ourselves with the club of anger we had intended to use on others. We learned that if we were seriously disturbed, our first need was to quiet that disturbance, regardless of who or what we thought caused it.

To see how erratic emotions victimized us often took a long time. We could perceive them quickly in others, but only slowly in ourselves. First of all, we had to admit that we had many of these defects, even though such disclosures were painful and humiliating. Where other people were concerned, we had to drop the word "blame" from our speech and thought. This required great willingness even to begin. But once over the first two or three high hurdles, the course ahead began to look easier. For we had started to get perspective on ourselves, which is another way of saying that we were gaining in humility.

Of course the depressive and the power-driver are personality extremes, types with which A.A. and the whole world abound. Often these personalities are just as sharply defined as the examples given. But just as often some of us will fit more or less into both classifications. Human beings are never quite alike, so each of us, when making an inventory, will need to determine what his individual character defects are. Having found the shoes that fit, he ought to step into them and walk with new confidence that he is at last on the right track. Now let's ponder the need for a list of the more glaring personality defects all of us have in varying degrees. To those having religious training, such a list would set forth serious violations of moral principles. Some others will think of this list as defects of character. Still others will call it an index of maladjustments. Some will become quite annoyed if there is talk about immorality, let alone sin. But all who are in the least reasonable will agree upon one point: that there is plenty wrong with us alcoholics about which plenty will have to be done if we are to expect sobriety, progress, and any real ability to cope with life.
To avoid falling into confusion over the names these defects should be called, let's take a universally recognized list of major human failings--the Seven Deadly Sins of pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. It is not by accident that pride heads the procession. For pride, leading to self-justification, and always spurred by conscious or unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most human difficulties, the chief block to true progress. Pride lures us into making demands upon ourselves or upon others which cannot be met without perverting or misusing our God-given instincts. When the satisfaction of our instincts for sex, security, and society becomes the sole object of our lives, then pride steps in to justify our excesses. All these failings generate fear, a soul-sickness in its own right. Then fear, in turn, generates more character defects. Unreasonable fear that our instincts will not be satisfied drives us to covet the possessions of others, to lust for sex and power, to become angry when our instinctive demands are threatened, to be envious when the ambitions of others seem to be realized while ours are not.

We eat, drink, and grab for more of everything than we need, fearing we shall never have enough. And with genuine alarm at the prospect of work, we stay lazy. We loaf and procrastinate, or at best work grudgingly and under half steam. These fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the foundations of whatever sort of life we try to build. So when A.A. suggests a fearless moral inventory, it must seem to every newcomer that more is being asked of him than he can do. Both his pride and his fear beat him back every time he tries to look within himself. Pride says, "You need not pass this way," and Fear says, "You dare not look!" But the testimony of A.A.'s who have really tried a moral inventory is that pride and fear of this sort turn out to be bogeymen, nothing else. Once we have a complete willingness to take inventory, and exert ourselves to do the job thoroughly, a wonderful light falls upon this foggy scene. As we persist, a brand-new kind of confidence is born, and the sense of relief at finally facing ourselves is indescribable. These are the first fruits of Step Four.

continued...

[MajestyJo]

By now the newcomer has probably arrived at the following conclusions: that his character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of his drinking and his failure at life; that unless he is now willing to work hard at the elimination of the worst of these defects, both sobriety and peace of mind will still elude him; that all the faulty foundation of his life will have to be torn out and built anew on bedrock. Now willing to commence the search for his own defects, he will ask, "Just how do I go about this? how do I take inventory of myself?" Since Step Four is but the beginning of a lifetime practice, it can be suggested that he first have a look at those personal flaws which are acutely troublesome and fairly obvious. Using his best judgment of what has been right and what has been wrong, he might make a rough survey of his conduct with respect to his primary instincts for sex, security, and society. Looking back over his life, he can readily get under way by consideration of questions such as these: When, and how, and in just what instances did my selfish pursuit of the sex relation damage other people and me? What people were hurt, and how badly? Did I spoil my marriage and injure my children? Did I jeopardize my standing in the community? Just how did I react to these situations at the time? Did I burn with a guilt that nothing could extinguish? Or did I insist that I was the pursued and not the pursuer, and thus absolve myself? How have I reacted to frustration in sexual matters? When denied, did I become vengeful or depressed? Did I take it out on other people? If there was rejection or coldness at home, did I use this as a reason for promiscuity?

Also of importance for most alcoholics are the questions they must ask about their behavior respecting financial and emotional security. In these areas fear, greed, possessiveness, and pride have too often done their worst. Surveying his business or employment record, almost any alcoholic can ask questions like these: In addition to my drinking problem, what character defects contributed to my financial instability? Did fear and inferiority about my fitness for my job destroy my confidence and fill me with conflict? Did I try to cover up those feelings of inadequacy by bluffing, cheating, lying, or evading responsibility? Or by griping that others failed to recognize my truly exceptional abilities? Did I overvalue myself and play the big shot? Did I have such unprincipled ambition that I double-crossed and undercut I disagreeociates? Was I extravagant? Did I recklessly borrow money, caring little whether it was repaid or not? Was I a pinch penny, refusing to support my family properly? Did I cut corners financially? What about the "quick money" deals, the stock market, and the races? Businesswomen in A.A. will naturally find that many of these questions apply to them, too. But the alcoholic housewife can also make the family financially insecure. She can juggle charge accounts, manipulate the food budget, spend her afternoons gambling, and run her husband into debt by irresponsibility, waste, and extravagance. But all alcoholics who have drunk themselves out of jobs, family, and friends will need to cross-examine themselves ruthlessly to determine how their own personality defects have thus demolished their security. The most common symptoms of emotional insecurity are worry, anger, self-pity, and depression. These stem from causes which sometimes seem to be within us, and at other times to come from without. To take inventory in this respect we ought to consider carefully all personal relationships which bring continuous or recurring trouble. It should be remembered that this kind of insecurity may arise in any area where instincts are threatened. Questioning directed to this end might run like this: Looking at both past and present, what sex situations have caused me anxiety, bitterness, frustration, or depression? Appraising each situation fairly, can I see where I have been at fault? Did these perplexities beset me because of selfishness or unreasonable demands? Or, if my disturbance was seemingly caused by the behavior of others, why do I lack the ability to accept conditions I cannot change? These are the sort of fundamental inquiries that can disclose the source of my discomfort and indicate whether I may be able to alter my own conduct and so adjust myself serenely to self-discipline.

Suppose that financial insecurity constantly arouses these same feelings. I can ask myself to what extent have my own mistakes fed my gnawing anxieties. And if the actions of others are part of the cause, what can I do about that?

If I am unable to change the present state of affairs, am I willing to take the measures necessary to shape my life to conditions as they are? Questions like these, more of which will come to mind easily in each individual case, will help turn up the root causes. But it is from our twisted relations with family, friends, and society at large that many of us have suffered the most. We have been especially stupid and stubborn about them. The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being. Our egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls. Either we insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend upon them far too much. If we lean too heavily on people, they will sooner or later fail us, for they are human, too, and cannot possibly meet our incessant demands. In this way our insecurity grows and festers. When we habitually try to manipulate others to our own willful desires, they revolt, and resist us heavily. Then we develop hurt feelings, a sense of persecution, and a desire to retaliate. As we redouble our efforts at control, and continue to fail, our suffering becomes acute and constant. We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society. Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it. This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any one of those about us. Of true brotherhood we had small comprehension.

[MajestyJo]

Some will object to many of the questions posed, because they think their own character defects have not been so glaring. To these it can be suggested that a conscientious examination is likely to reveal the very defects the objectionable questions are concerned with. Because our surface record hasn't looked too bad, we have frequently been abashed to find that this is so simply because we have buried these self same defects deep down in us under thick layers of self-justification. Whatever the defects, they have finally ambushed us into alcoholism and misery.

Therefore, thoroughness ought to be the watchword when taking inventory. In this connection, it is wise to write out our questions and answers. It will be an aid to clear thinking and honest appraisal. It will be the first tangible evidence of our complete willingness to move forward.

AA does have it's own Fourth Step Guide. One that I saw, which was quite lengthy and very detailed in dealing with emotions was from Adult Children of Alcoholics.

When we come into recovery, most of what we feel is the negative ones and don't know what the good ones are. When we stuff the anger and the hurt, we don't have the luxury of keeping the love and kindness, everything disappears and we become spiritually, emotionally, and mentally bancrupt and well as the physical malady of this disease.

I remember when I was going through a recovery house and this girl would say to me, "But how do you feeeellllllll????" I always wanted to hit her, lash out because I didn't know. I use to respond with, "I don't know, if I did, I wouldn't be asking!"

What I heard most in AA was follow the questions as they are asked in the Big Book in How It Works in chapter five. I also heard a priest who has 50 years in recovery say, this is a today program, the inventory is about today. Things from your past which you are still carrying in today and need to let go of the excess baggage in order to grow and move on in your recovery.

[MajestyJo]

Step Four

"Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves."


Creation gave us instincts for a purpose. Without them we wouldn't be complete human beings. If men and women didn't exert themselves to be secure in their persons, made no effort to harvest food or construct shelter, there would be no survival. If they didn't reproduce, the earth wouldn't be populated. If there were no social instinct, if men cared nothing for the society of one another, there would be no society. So these desires--for the sex relation, for material and emotional security, and for companionship--are perfectly necessary and right, and surely God-given.

Yet these instincts, so necessary for our existence, often far exceed their proper functions. Powerfully, blindly, many times subtly, they drive us, dominate us, and insist upon ruling our lives. Our desires for sex, for material and emotional security, and for an important place in society often tyrannize us. When thus out of joint, man's natural desires cause him great trouble, practically all the trouble there is. No human being, however good, is exempt from these troubles. Nearly every serious emotional problem can be seen as a case of misdirected instinct. When that happens, our great natural assets, the instincts, have turned into physical and mental liabilities.

Step Four revealed my human qualities, some I wasn't too proud of and some I wished to ignore and certainly not admit to. At first I was very fearful. The main reason being the strict religious upbring I had which said I was a big sin and along the way, I had compounded interest and I was sure my inventory would ensure that I would burn in hell although I felt that I had already been there.

Step Four was to be an inventory of who I was in today. Not who I wished to be, not the person I perceived myself to be, not the person I tried to project onto other people into believing I was. It was about the real me and what I needed to change in my life to maintain my sobriety.

I had to identify old patterns and behaviors. I had to determine characteristic traits that were negative and positive, I had to look at where my addiction had taken me. Not inventory the girl who went to sunday school, the teenage who taught sunday school, not the woman who sang int he choir, not the young bridge, the mother, the divorcee, the alcoholic, the woman who married for security, the woman who was abused, the divorcee, the addict who ended up alone, who gave away a piece of herself everytime she picked up and had to look at who was left and what was needed to fill the empty void within her when she made the decision to give up the drug and alcohol. They had become her identiy. They had directed her life for a long time. Who was this person standing at the doorway to the road to recovery.

Instincts that had run riot. Instincts that where lost. I had become a walking 'It' and shut down with no feelings (good or bad), isolation of the spirit, and a person who had given up on life and thought there was no hope until she caught a glimmer at an AA meeting. I was emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritual bankrupt. No deposits in my bank account. There had only been withdrawals. I knew how to take but I didn't know how to give. Certainly, not to myself and didn't have a clue as to what did I needed to rebuild my life and regain my soul.


To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

All of my life, I want to belong. I wanted to be part of the in crowd. I wanted to fit in. I wanted you to love and accept me. The problem was I wasn't sure that you could accept me for who I was, because I couldn't accept me because I thought I was ugly, stupid, and because I felt less than, I role played and tried to become the person you wanted me to be.

I don't think I could be called shy, but I lacked self-confidence. I had trouble putting into words what I wanted to say. I wanted to say the words you wanted to hear. I wanted to win your approval and have you affirm my worth and as the old saying goes, "Are you trying to convince me or yourself!"

A girl I worked with told me at 17 that she was nervous and fearful of me. This was after she got to know me and realized that I wasn't this prim and proper miss who didn't smile, who dressed in black and put on this sophisticated face which hid a feeling of terror and insecurity. I started as a file clerk. I asked questions. I wanted to know. I didn't want to appear stupid. I wanted to be in the 'know' and have the answers. I wanted to be indispensible and set out to be Ms. Perfect. The woman who ended up working in every department in an office and becoming an office manager. Who tired to do the work of three people and wondered why she didn't measure up and felt less than. Never content to just be and to be 'average' and like other people. It was either rebel or mask who I was, and over the years, every time I picked up a person, place or thing, I lost a piece of me. When I found recovery, there was very little of me left. Who was I? What do I like? What makes me happy? I didn't know!

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

Step Four is our vigorous and painstaking effort to discover what these liabilities in each of us have been, and are. We want to find exactly how, when, and where our natural desires have warped us. We wish to look squarely at the unhappiness this has caused others and ourselves. By discovering what our emotional deformities are, we can move toward their correction. Without a willing and persistent effort to do this, there can be little sobriety or contentment for us. Without a searching and fearless moral inventory, most of us have found that the faith which really works in daily living is still out of reach.


My drug of choice was always more. It was only reasonable to be told that most things in my life had been in excess too. Some is good, more is better. I was one of those people who thought that now she stopped drinking and abusing her medication, she was just fine! We didn't want to hear the meaning of fine although they made a point in recovery to enlighten us. "F*cked up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional although someone said, "...and Enjoying it!" My friend proceeded to take my inventory for me, and I went home gave it some thought and added more to the list. My sponsor said, "Now go home and find a positive for every negative on your list. It is about bringing your life back into balance."

My life had been one big emotion. Someone said, "Just because you have an emotion, doesn't mean you have to act on it." I realized it was something that I had been doing wrong all of my life. Seldom I could get by the harm that was done to me and didn't want to look at the harm that I did to others. I could see it was act, react and often the abused becomes the abuser.

I had shut down my emotions. The whole idea of using was to supress these feelings. How can I recognize something that I hadn't acknowledge for many years? How can I change something that I had been in denial about feeling? How can I express something that I was not in touch with? Again, I was asked, "...but how do you feel?" If I knew what I was feeling, I wouldn't have been in a recovery house. I am recovering from not feeling, from shutting down, from acting out, from feelings that I had never expressed and allowed myself to feel. How can I change something I didn't know I had? In order to do that, I had to do an inventory and take stock of what was there or more importantly, what wasn't there to have a peaceful and contented life.

I didn't have much faith in myself. I had developed a faith in the program. I could see it working in others and I wanted what they had. How can I know what to change if I don't know who I am? Now that the drink and drugs were no longer there, I had no coping skills left. They had been my crutch, my best friend, and now they were gone, so what did I need to find this new way of life without picking them up again?

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

Before tackling the inventory problem in detail, let's have a closer look at what the basic problem is. Simple examples like the following take on a world of meaning when we think about them. Suppose a person places sex desire ahead of everything else. In such a case, this imperious urge can destroy his chances for material and emotional security as well as his standing in the community.


This was not hard to understand. I had been looking for love in all the wrong places for years. The worst offense was that I was looking outside of myself because I couldn't find it within. I tought I was in love with my husband. In hind sight, I am not too sure that I didn't marry him because my best friend got married, she was no longer in my life and I needed to fill the void. It seemed the thing to do. Everyone else was doing it. I was given many signs that the marriage should not happen. One being him coming to me the week before the wedding to say he wasn't sure he was ready to settle down. I said, "Well best you make up your mind now instead of later." He came back to say he loved me and wanted to marry me. Meanwhile, my mind is thinking of all the invitations sent out, all the things to be undone, the money spent, etc. The night before the wedding, the doctor had to be called. I was vomitting, sitting on the throne, and had a temperature of 104 deg. F. He gave me a shot in the posterior, too bad it wasn't a kick! He told me, "Lady if you walk down the aisle tomorrow it will be a miracle." I said, "I'm walking down the hall supposing I have to crawl!" I woke up the next morning with a temperature of 101 deg. and at the reception I hit a wall. I couldn't eat and had trouble just sitting there. We went on a honeymoon drive up the St. Lawrence. I would have to stop and ask him to stop by the side of the road so I could be sick. Really romantic! I would be hungry, starved and would inhale the food and then lose it. Not the kind of action you want on your honeymoon.

When I found out he was running around with another woman seven months after we were married I was devistated. The fact that he had the nerve to introduce me to her, hurt more. If I wasn't so ugly, it wouldn't happen. When he hit me for calling him as silly ass, I left and went to my aunt's. I thought he was going to kill me. I didn't find out later about the five scratch marks down his back which I left in a complete blackout of anger until long after the marriage ended. My father-in-law saw fit to tell me when he said that I never treated my husband with respect and made him feel like a man. I called him a silly ass because he had used a small silver tube with a prescription label on it for toothpaste. When he was watching TV I had told him that I had cut open the tube and he would have to scrape it out with his toothbrush. After he hit me I said, "Well anyone who would mistake that for toothpaste is a silly ass and he hit me again. I remember grabbing a broom and holding it in front of me to ward him off because if looks would kill, I would have been dead. I phoned my aunt to ask her to pick me up because I didn't want to be in the aprtment when he returned.

We seperated for a few weeks. His cousin came from Trinidad. He invited me to Carabana on Toronto Island. The very first one and we would be a part of history in the making. That sojourn ended up with us making out in my mother-in-law's bed. Hitting back. If you don't love me, I will find someone who will. We ended up driving to the drive-in-church service held by my aunt's church. My husband drove up beside us and got into the passenger side of the car. He apologized and asked me to go back with him. Out of guilt I am sure, I said I would. To me, with my background, I was a big SIN! God was going to strike me down. I was a bad person. I was a Soul In Need, looking to be loved because she couldn't love herself.

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

Another may develop such an obsession for financial security that he wants to do nothing but hoard money. Going to the extreme, he can become a miser, or even a recluse who denies himself both family and friends. Nor is the quest for security always expressed in terms of money. How frequently we see a frightened human being determined to depend completely upon a stronger person for guidance and protection. This weak one, failing to meet life's responsibilities with his own resources, never grows up. Disillusionment and helplessness are his lot. In time all his protectors either flee or die, and he is once more left alone and afraid.

We have also seen men and women who go power-mad, who devote themselves to attempting to rule their fellows. These people often throw to the winds every chance for legitimate security and a happy family life. Whenever a human being becomes a battleground for the instincts, there can be no peace. But that is not all of the danger. Every time a person imposes his instincts unreasonably upon others, unhappiness follows. If the pursuit of wealth tramples upon people who happen to be in the way, then anger, jealousy, and revenge are likely to be aroused. If sex runs riot, there is a similar uproar.

Alcoholics Anonymous 12 & 12


Had a lot of anger to deal with when it came to this part of my fourth step. I had bought furniture and household things as part of my trousseau (really dating myself). My husband sold it all to his family and friends and moved us into a furnished apartment. The furniture was ugly and it had twin beds. A sure sign your marriage is on the rocks. I was very pregnant. Sure not in a mood to argue.

He wanted to have a new paint job and repair work done on the fender of his 1957 Chevy. That in itself was an anger issue. He had invited a nurse he knew from work to go with us and as we were returning he sped up a ramp and I asked him to slow down. He only accelerated faster (macho-ism in front of the other woman) and the car fishtailed and hit the railing on the side. It took a long time to get rid of the fear of those ramps especially when someone didn't take them slow. He ended up trading that Chevy for a small car, not sure of the name now, think it was a mini Austin. What a joke? He finally got a job working at Ford and went out and bought a new VW. He lost it to the finance company. Guess who laughed! He later bought a Capri, remarried and the woman he married made him pay his alimony payments. When the divorce went through, he owed me $7, 777. I was so stressed after the legal separation my using of prescription drugs escalated. I had started using when he was running around with other women. Thought I was totally justified.

He left when our son was two months old to move in with the woman he had been seeing while I was pregnant. The landlady didn't want a single parent living in her home even though I had a job to go back to, she asked me to leave. I had no furniture. I got help from a mission. My sister stayed with me for a while and slept on a lounge chair that I had gotten as a prize for a Tupperware party for high sales or she would have been without a bed. She was going to hairdressing school. It seemed to be the story of my life. I would work, I would have, and then it would be taken away. I went back to work until my son was two, then went back up north to the farm that I couldn't wait to get off of at the age of 17.

When I went home to look after my dad at the request of my aunt and my sisters, I became very dependent on him. I abused that and allowed him to pay my way and spent my money on booze, clothes for my son and myself. I tried to give my son everything that I hadn't been given and I didn't help him to grow up. His allowances were small compared to his friends, but I gave him what I could. He got to resent it and expect it. I started my party years, what I call my teenage years, from 1968 to 1974 until I remarried in 1975.

When I remarried we lived with my dad, when we left we on our own, it was downhill from there. Living in a shack in the country with no doors on the bedrooms, no window pane just plastic in my son's window, and linoleum on a thin layer of cement just off of a dirt floor. During that time my husband and I went back to school. He had lost his job with CPR and we were living on $80. a week. That was back in the late '70s.

When my father passed away I inherited his car and had my own 1970 VW. At the end of that marriage I had no car. My husband wouldn't pay for upkeep on the cars because it was beer money. The VW was sold for $25. because the front seat was sitting on two hockey sticks to keep it from falling through the floor and it had no gas pedal, just a piece of metal sticking up through the floor. He traded my dad's car, a Plymouth Duster V8 for a Rambler. I just couldn't believe it! Who bought Ramblers? He did it without my permission and back then, just didn't have it within me to rebel and just submitted to what seemed like a done deal. The Rambler lasted about two months, had a leaky radiator and we had to carry bottles of water in the car because you couldn't travel more than 10 miles without a refill. Insanity or what? I sure picked some winners! They sure didn't have much car sense!

As a result of a lot of things like this, it was like I feared success. I sabotaged myself or didn't go for that something extra, because it would be taken away. It was also low self-worth and self-esteem.

My first husband ran around with other women. The second one, I couldn't give him away. I finally had to ask him to leave. I couldn't stand to be around him unless I was drinking too. I wanted to make changes in my life and become more responsible but by then, when I wanted to drink I couldn't. I tried the control thing and ended up substituting with pills.

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

Demands made upon other people for too much attention, protection, and love can only invite domination or revulsion in the protectors themselves--two emotions quite as unhealthy as the demands which evoked them. When an individual's desire for prestige becomes uncontrollable, whether in the sewing circle or at the international conference table, other people suffer and often revolt. This collision of instincts can produce anything from a cold snub to a blazing revolution. In these ways we are set in conflict not only with ourselves, but with other people who have instincts, too.

Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Steps & 12 Traditions

This is like looking into the mirror and remembering when I first started out working. I was forever asking questions and wanting to know why. That wanting to know led me to every department in an office. They use to call me odd job Jo. If something had to be done they would bring it to me and I would do that job and mine, often working many hours. It wasn't until I came into recovery that I realized it was about looking for approval, wanting to belong, indispensable and felt like I could only be validated if I did good work.

A lot of my relationships I ended if I wasn't getting the attention I wanted and it was about me and what you could do to make me happy. Mind you, my family and friends said I spoiled my husbands by getting up and making their lunch and seeing them off in the morning while my husbands thought it was their due. I am not so sure it was my thoughts of pleasing them as them thinking it was my job as 'wife' to do whatever they asked and I had no concept of boundaries and self care.

Have always got involved and when I was involved in the Legion I was a member of the Ladies Auxiliary, on the Ways & Means Committee, was Sports Officer for two years, was a kitchen convener for two years and worked on banquets for ten, sold poppies and went on parade and hosted a Senior Citizen Nite.

A big part of it was wanting to belong. To be a part of the crowd and wanting to hang with the people with the power. Again it was a self-esteem issue. I hated darts. I thought it was the dumbest game in the world, next to shuffleboard. It was because I didn't want to sit at the table alone and my husband got up and had fun that I made the decision to learn. I ended up playing all the time. When I beat people they would say, well look at all the time you practice, if I practiced like you do I ....

I didn't like shuffleboard. I remember one dart tournament I was asked to make up a fourth. My hubby was playing and he sent a woman to ask me because he knew I didn't like playing. I told her I didn't like the game and didn't play well. It ended up I couldn't do anything wrong. Years later when ever she saw me she would say, 'Oh the lady who doesn't know how to play shuffleboard.' I had nine trophies for the years I played darts and only one bridge trophy. That one was my proudest moment. Received it for the very first time I played Swiss Teams at a tournament for players under 200 master points.

The competitive spirit always seemed to be there. I feel that it was more of looking for validation and acceptance although there was some vainglory there when I beat people who thought they were the best. I had one woman who would never play me sober. On several occasions I would team with a woman who had grade 3 education, was 5'3" tall and weighed close to 300 lbs. She had a heart of gold and she loved to play and most people wouldn't play with her. When we won, people resented the fact, mainly because she was my partner. She was as fluky and they come. She would go for a 20 and would hit a triple 12 or a triple 18, which is a lot more than 20. She had such a beautiful spirit. I would get the doubles and she would get the scores and we made a great team.

My husband quit playing snooker with me the day I beat him. He said I ruined his dart game by teaching me and he wasn't going to let me spoil his snooker game. Since I got sober, I don't go into the places to play these games. As my arthritis got worse, I could no longer play the games. The dart wouldn't stick in the board. I was devastated. It was a big grieving issue I went through in early recovery. I lost the ability to do something that I had loved for years.

Grief isn't just about losing my best friend alcohol, it was about the loss of people, places and things that went along with it.

To be continued....

[MajestyJo]

Alcoholics especially should be able to see that instinct run wild in themselves is the underlying cause of their destructive drinking. We have drunk to drown feelings of fear, frustration, and depression. We have drunk to escape the guilt of passions, and then have drunk again to make more passions possible. We have drunk for vain glory--that we might the more enjoy foolish dreams of pomp and power. This perverse soul-sickness is not pleasant to look upon. Instincts on rampage balk at investigation. The minute we make a serious attempt to probe them, we are liable to suffer severe reactions.

AA 12 Steps & Traditions




The more I drank, the more it took to reach that feeling I was always searching for. When I found it, I couldn't stop there. I always had to have more. Friends stopped coming around. Family stopped visiting. It was my drunken husband. It was always his fault. Yet the screaming shrew and controlling wench that I had become was not a nice person to be around.

When I used it was generally to suppress a feeling. If I expressed it, I could be ridiculed, put down or hit. Prescription pills were like dried up alcohol for me. I had blackouts with them more so than with alcohol. I didn't think I had blackouts with alcohol. I remembered what I did the night before and often wished I didn't. I would have been nice to have it cloaked in the darkness of the unknown. The guilt and remorse often had me agonizing for days. Drank for that false courage that allowed you to be ten feet tall and bullet proof. It was my coping tool. It allowed me to get out of the way and let this new person out who could do what I couldn't do. It didn't replace the fear with faith, it just allowed me to pretend it wasn't there. The blanket of denial hides many things.

I remember going with my boyfriend of the time into the Skyline Hotel near Toronto Airport. We went into the lounge to have drink why we waited for his order to be placed at Chrysler. For this country bumpkin, this was the big time. Having a drink in the afternoon was such a big deal and made me feel like I was one of the 'in' people, the cat's meow, and I was so full of myself, it is wonder both feet stayed on the ground. I was 27. This is the same guy who drank two 26s before you knew he was drunk. When I started going with him, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to keep up because he drank so fast. The insanity of this disease!
This same boyfriend's boss told him I was too good for him. We went to a new opening of a bar in Alliston. We met up with Johnny Sombrero who was a leader of a motorcycle gang and were invited up to his suite to continue the party after the bar closed. Johnny only drank champagne. He touched me on my arm and said, "When Johnny is talking to you, you look at Johnny." I had dared to look over at my boyfriend while he was talking to me. At 4 p.m. my boyfriend offered to get a cab to take me home. It was about 40 miles. I said, "You always got me home before, I trust you." He said, "I don't know if I can trust myself." He drove about 100-120 miles an hour down the middle of the highway. In later years I often wondered how far away from my place he got before he blacked out or if he had been in a black out while he was driving. Many years later in recovery, I met a fellow and shared with him about drinking with Johnny. This guy knew him and said, "Anyone who was good enough to drink with Johnny, is someone I trust and we shared a lot together over the years." You never know when one of those old experiences will help you in today. it wasn't a moment I was proud of and yet I found myself sharing it, which turned out to be for the Higher Good of all.

This same man was a salesman. He ordered a new Fury III and I told him I didn't like the color he ordered it in. I didn't like blue. He changed the work order. He ordered it forest green with black interior. He called me to say it was in. It was sold before I got to ride in it. Vain glory! How important we like to think we are. When we broke up, he said, "You don't love me, you love what I can give you." Later to see he was right. I loved the attention, the trip down the fast lane, the little treats and surprises. He was a big man. He loved to dance. It was nothing to drive two hours to go someplace to party. When you are put on a pedestal, it is a long way down when you fall off.

To be conintued...

[MajestyJo]

If temperamentally we are on the depressive side, we are apt to be swamped with guilt and self-loathing. We wallow in this messy bog, often getting a misshapen and painful pleasure out of it. As we morbidly pursue this melancholy activity, we may sink to such a point of despair that nothing but oblivion looks possible as a solution. Here, of course, we have lost all perspective, and therefore all genuine humility. For this is pride in reverse. This is not a moral inventory at all; it is the very process by which the depressive has so often been led to the bottle and extinction.

AA 12 Steps & 12 Traditions


When I came into recovery, my thoughts were "Stop the world, I want to get off." When I came through the doors, I received a ray of hope. There was still a lot of look what happened to me, I am so hard done by and it was only by coming to the rooms and hearing others share, that I was not alone, others had gone through more traumatic stuff than I did, and whatever I needed to go through, I didn't have to do it alone.

What happened to me was my trauma but I didn't have to continue to live it. I had to give up the role of martyr, victim, scapegoat, and all the negativity and leave it in the past and just deal with it a day at a time. One days feelings, one day's thoughts, one day's action. I could look into the past as to how it affected me in today. My past made up part of who I am in today, but so much of it had been me acting out in my disease. I had to look for the real person, the person I lost along the way, and work toward being the kind of person my Higher Power would have me be.

Humility means to be teachable. To be open to other ideas than my own. To connect with a Higher Power, tap into the Power in the rooms, and connect in the here and now.

I had drank to too many people health in the past, it was time to look at my own. Don't tell me, watch me had to go. Instead I had to reach out and ask for help. Those old tapes of "Don't tell me what to do! and "If you can't do it right, don't do it at all," had to be replaced with new ones. I was reminded that I had the control of the 'play' button. If an old tape started running, I had the power to turn it off. When I surrendered in the first Step, I was empowered to do what I needed to do to stay clean and sober and live in today if I tapped into the Power that was available in the rooms. My Higher Power put great people in my path. I was truly blessed. Once I got here, I didn't have to go back out and do more research or go and drown my sorrow. I found what I need in the rooms of recovery.

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

If temperamentally we are on the depressive side, we are apt to be swamped with guilt and self-loathing. We wallow in this messy bog, often getting a misshapen and painful pleasure out of it. As we morbidly pursue this melancholy activity, we may sink to such a point of despair that nothing but oblivion looks possible as a solution. Here, of course, we have lost all perspective, and therefore all genuine humility. For this is pride in reverse. This is not a moral inventory at all; it is the very process by which the depressive has so often been led to the bottle and extinction.

AA 12 Steps & 12 Traditions


When I came into recovery, my thoughts were "Stop the world, I want to get off." When I came through the doors, I received a ray of hope. There was still a lot of look what happened to me, I am so hard done by and it was only by coming to the rooms and hearing others share, that I was not alone, others had gone through more traumatic stuff than I did, and whatever I needed to go through, I didn't have to do it alone.

What happened to me was my trauma but I didn't have to continue to live it. I had to give up the role of martyr, victim, scapegoat, and all the negativity and leave it in the past and just deal with it a day at a time. One days feelings, one day's thoughts, one day's action. I could look into the past as to how it affected me in today. My past made up part of who I am in today, but so much of it had been me acting out in my disease. I had to look for the real person, the person I lost along the way, and work toward being the kind of person my Higher Power would have me be.

Humility means to be teachable. To be open to other ideas than my own. To connect with a Higher Power, tap into the Power in the rooms, and connect in the here and now.

I had drank to too many people health in the past, it was time to look at my own. Don't tell me, watch me had to go. Instead I had to reach out and ask for help. Those old tapes of "Don't tell me what to do! and "If you can't do it right, don't do it at all," had to be replaced with new ones. I was reminded that I had the control of the 'play' button. If an old tape started running, I had the power to turn it off. When I surrendered in the first Step, I was empowered to do what I needed to do to stay clean and sober and live in today if I tapped into the Power that was available in the rooms. My Higher Power put great people in my path. I was truly blessed. Once I got here, I didn't have to go back out and do more research or go and drown my sorrow. I found what I need in the rooms of recovery.

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

Mirror, mirror on the walll who is the dummest of us all! Me! Me! Me!

I told my best friend who I went through recovery with that I didn't need a Fourth Step. She laughed! She then proceeded to take my inventory for me. With some further thought, by the time I got home from her place, I had several more items to add the list.

I too had trouble looking back what was done to me. I too was so hard done by. Had no thought about the fact that my choice often put me into the situations I got myself into. My own fears often kept me there.

Other times I was the victim of circumstances and other people's choices. I had to take a look at what was mine and what was not.

It seemed like I had to find the need to justify my existance for most of my life. I had to explain my reason for being. When you hear tapes like "Who asked you? What makes you think your opinion matters?" You tend to believe what you hear.

What I found was a lot of hipocrocey from the people who made the 'rules' in the first place. So many people didn't walk their talk.

In my own insanity because I could walk a straight line, could drive a car on my own side of the road, because people told me that they never saw me drunk, I believed that I wasn't. Yet how can you match your husband drink for drink while he is drinking beer and you are drinking rye and coke and be sober. Because he staggered and passed out and I walked a straight line and wanted more. He had a drinking problem, I had a thinking problem.

To be continued...