Spreadsheets for Sobriety

The 4th and 5th Step (Part II)

I’m grateful for a gorgeous morning on the balcony. I’m grateful for really excellent coffee. I’m grateful for knowing I don’t need to run anymore.I’m grateful for the strength that comes from knowing I only need to do my part. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Routines are very, very important to me, and always have been. Get alcoholics started on the topic of morning routines…No, actually, I love hearing about how people start their day, how they get themselves to the right mindset, how they package up the nonsense that built up yesterday and last night, clear it out and then start this next one day at a time thing.

Routines are shaped by lots of things—time demands, circadian rhythms, other people, jobs, inner turmoil, etc. I think some of my routines also reflect unconscious desires, fears and needs. If you mess with my morning routine, well, you really mess with me. I’ve come to understand that I’m an incredibly sensitive person. I’ve masqueraded in some pretty rough and tumble costumes for a super sensitive person—trial lawyer for one. ¹ I think some of my routines were subconsciously designed to give me the cognitive and emotional space to effect the big switch. Turn off the sensitive, fearful, too think-y persona and light up the alcoholic one with all of the nonsense bravado—the captain calling for more speed as they barrel towards the rocks.²

When you read the stories in the Big Book, the ones that come after the basic text (the first 164 pages), when you talk to alcoholics, they often describe their relapses like a boat being swamped. At the Anyone Anywhere Meeting³ last night, we were reading the story “Keys to the Kingdom,” and she described her early efforts to stop drinking this way:

I would hang on to sobriety for short intervals, but always there would come the tide of an overpowering necessity to drink…

Big Book, p. 270

That’s exactly how it worked for me, too. I’d manage a bit of sobriety and feel really great, but then something shitty at work, or something in the divorce, or whatever would create that condition of necessity. There was never much of a contest or debate; yes, I’d play the tape forward. I’d already decided about what was in the future, I needed to drink now. That was the result the old equation of me always, always, always produced.⁴

The reason early sobriety is so hard is because we’re alcoholics. We think differently than people who have the ability to control their drinking. It’s not our fault, it certainly wasn’t a choice or an aspiration. It happened the way a lot of things happen in this world, partly by design and partly by accident. I can fix the “design” part more easily than the “accident” part—so that’s where I started.

The reason this logical choice is hard for alcoholics is that part of our addiction is to those big emotional moments, the grand gestures and the self-righteous anger. The 5th Step produces a lot of that—but I think sometimes, the huge emotional release of the 5th Step can be enough to swamp the boat. That’s why the 4th and 5th Step are right there next to each other. The 4th Step is designed to uncover the things that drove the drinking, to see how thinking patterns developed over years put me in the same place over and over and over, no matter the external circumstances. The 4th Step is exactly what it says, an inventory, a description of what is. It sets the stage for the design work to come. the 5th Step is about release.

I always found the Big Book formulation of the 4th Step less than helpful and the examples Bill gives are pretty ridiculous. Accurate but ridiculous. Also, my list of resentments came very close to approaching those limits in a calculus problem—there were a lot of them. But they always produced the same results: It turns out I’m very fearful.

Assignment: Be less fearful

That never works. If I examine my fear, really let it take hold and sit with it, I usually come to an understanding of why I’m afraid. Understanding that “why” is something I can work with. I can acknowledge that fear makes sense, and there’s usually something concrete I can do that puts the previously unconstrained fear in a smaller box. Not that I’m hiding it away, I’m just letting the sunlight and some breathing “right-size” my fears.

So, I’m lucky to have Sponsees who are ok with being treated like lab rats a little. By that, I mostly mean we try some different exercises as we work through the Steps. Here’s how we’ve been approaching the Fourth Step. First, I ask them to come up with some lists of words that match how they would describe themselves—maybe 20. Then repeat the exercise, but this time the prompt is “How do you think other people would describe you?” Then we start talking about the discrepancies between the way we see ourselves and the way we think other people see us.

Usually, you start to see thinking patterns emerging. If you say that people would describe you as “shiftless” or “unreliable,” then you probably also share their view, understanding why you have that view of yourself is valuable. As I say over and over, this exercise is limited to changing only one person—so understanding why I saw the things about me that I do, is exactly what we’re going after.

Then, I like to approach the question a little abstractly. Before we start putting names and actual events down, let’s just start with big picture items. What do I most resent, what do I most fear? You can generate your own categories. I put together this as a template to make that easier:

You know how I am about numbers. So, I think putting a score next to each of those items is really useful and generates some interesting insights, also, it’s a pretty nifty way to track one’s progress over time. After working through this, then it’s on to specifics. Here’s a spreadsheet we used to collect all of the grievances:

Then we talked about each and every one. Figured out the stuff at the bottom of the resentments and fears and anger, and I think it will nicely form the outline of the stuff that needs to come out as part of the 5th Step.

You can customize your own categories, put in the feelings that you think are at the core of the drinking, the core of the unhappiness. The point is just to get them down, then as you talk through them, as you see the intensity score you blazed in on the keyboard, it’s hard not to see the connections and the patterns. I began to see that I ended up in the same place in every relationship—friends, work, family, everything. Was this because those people kept doing the same stupid stuff over and over and over? The stuff no self-disrespecting alcoholic could avoid drinking about? No, the problem was me. The problem was the way I thought. The problem was the equation for life that I had put together and was re-running every day in hopes of a different result.

Doing the 4th Step in a super analytical way was what worked for—and what continues to work for me. Your mileage will definitely vary. But that’s the point—-this isn’t a one size fits all thing. The Steps are more like going to a good tailor than buying something off the rack somewhere. It’s harder and way more involved, but there’s no mistaking who it belongs to.

The 4th Step finally let me see the person I had been and the person I had become. It also showed me how I got there. From there, it’s designing a new equation that will produce a new solution. A happy, sustainable life filled with purpose and meaning. And yes, I’m really saying that can come from a spreadsheet.

1. Figuring out why someone with my emotional make-up puts themselves in situations like that? Well, that’s an ongoing project.

2. Notice: I deliberately called this “bravado” as opposed to “swagger.” I think the two are very different.

3. It’s evolving into part AA meeting and part Alcoholic Book Club (my view), and yes, you’re invited.

4. Math is funny that way.