In the beginning, when Bill Wilson finally found a solution to his alcohol problem, he was carrying around six little steps he had pulled from a spiritual group. They were simple, direct, and apparently effective as hell: admit we were licked, take a moral inventory, confess our defects to another person, make restitution, help others without thought of reward, and pray for the power to live this way.
That’s interesting, because right after figuring out what the problem actually is, and finally seeing what the solution might be, the move wasn’t to sit around and think about it for six months. The move was to inspect ourselves, then immediately go talk to somebody. Bill found that when the deep dark stuff got dragged into the light, it got smaller. Manageable. Less powerful. The things that looked like monsters in the dark started looking more like what they actually were: defects, fears, ego, shame, old survival tactics. And when that stuff became manageable, people stopped needing to drink over it.
That brings us here. A lot of us have done the inventory. We’ve looked at the wreckage. We’ve seen patterns we probably wish we hadn’t. And now comes the part our alcoholic ego absolutely hates: honesty, exposure, and another human being. Because ego loves secrecy. Ego loves isolation. Ego loves whispering, you can fix this yourself, just manage it better, keep this one tucked away. That voice has probably never helped us once.
So this is where we go against our own will. Against our own broken instincts. We find the right closed-mouth human being, and we get honest. Because staying sick in secret has already been tested. How’d that plan work out?
What’s harder for you, admitting you were to blame or letting another person hear it?
