Sane by Marya Hornbacher

Author:Marya Hornbacher
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59285-988-7
Publisher: Hazelden Publishing
Published: 2010-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

We have begun the process of being transformed. Now, in Step Eight, we go on to transform our relationship with the world.

STEP EIGHT

Responsibility

Made a list of all persons we had harmed,

and became willing to make amends to them all.

IN STEP SEVEN, WE TOOK AN ENORMOUS STEP out of ourselves and into the world. Step Eight now continues on our mission of becoming full and active participants in humanity. In this Step, we put the principles we’ve learned to practical use. As The Little Red Book tells us, members of Twelve Step programs “do not arrest alcoholism [or other addictions] or gain recovery by merely agreeing with the principles of AA philosophy—they recover only if they live them.”

Like a lot of people early in recovery, I thought Steps Eight and Nine were cruel and unusual punishment. I felt I’d done all the work I needed to do of facing my past in Steps Four and Five, by doing my inventory and sharing it with another person, and I had found it none too enjoyable. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why, if I was on my way to a new life, I had to spend more time looking at my past—couldn’t I just let it go? Forgive and forget and finally move on?

Not just yet. In truth, none of us can truly let go of the past until we have faced it and understood it, and that requires not just private consideration but action as well. Our past haunts us until we look at it squarely and allow it to teach us how to live—and how not to live—as we move on. When I got to Step Eight, I was in no mood to revisit my Fourth Step list—my resentments, grudges, fears, mistakes, and all the damage I had done—but I did hear loud and clear from other recovering people that this was not a Step I could afford to skip. If I did skip Steps Eight and Nine, I could look forward to yet more years rotting in my isolation, being eaten alive by my resentments, and, sooner or later, getting drunk and watching my mental illness spiral out of control once again. Instead of learning from the past, I would simply repeat it, as I’d done for so long. I’d repeat it till it killed me.

But if I worked these Steps thoroughly, if I looked at the past, took responsibility for my actions, and learned how to treat other people, then, people in recovery told me, I could find a place for myself in the world that I’d wanted to be a part of for so long.

The other night at a meeting, when someone was being particularly unhelpful to the group, a wise old-timer smiled and said, “AA is where we learn to play well with other children.” AA is, for many of us, the first place where we have a chance to feel a part of something, to feel that we belong. And as such, it’s the place where we get to practice participating responsibly in the larger world.

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