“We stood at the turning point.” — Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
So we’re sitting here on our Fourth Steps. We’ve pulled the curtain back and seen what happens in our drinking natures. It didn’t start out that way. After all, this is a progressive illness. It developed over time. The lying got more hideous. The stealing went from small-time to big-time. The anger increased, sometimes into violence. Stuff we swore we’d never do somehow got added to the list.
And now we’re at a crossroads.
We can either get this stuff out and honestly talk with another person about it, or not. The Big Book gives all kinds of promises about doing this. Or don’t. But how exactly are we planning to stop these things on our own? How many times have we told ourselves “I learned my lesson this time!” before we’re right back in the same insanity again, wondering what happened?
This is what the bitter end looks like. Not usually one giant explosion all at once, but a slow march further into isolation, fear, and destruction. So where’s the stopping point? Jail? Locked up in some mental ward? Doing something desperate and ending our lives? Alcoholism doesn’t tend to tap us on the shoulder politely and say, “That’s probably far enough.”
The Fifth Step is where we stop dragging this thing deeper into the dark. We stop negotiating with it. We stop pretending we’re somehow going to outthink it this time.
We said we were willing to go to any lengths.
Are we still willing?
