The Sixth Step
daily gratitude list 3.29.23
I’m grateful for an excellent meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m grateful for the way we help each other. I’m grateful to see how fear ebbs and flows and starting to understand why. I’m grateful for accidentally-purchased oversized notebook paper. I’m grateful for pretty good coffee. I’m grateful to be sober today.
We had a great meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous last night! I think we had some new folks, the subject matter—Bill’s dinner with Ebby—is my favorite as you know, and I love seeing what different people take away from reading the Big Book. The good news is that we have plenty of room left—so don’t be shy. Or do be shy and come and leave your camera off and listen—-that’s completely cool, too. And, we have service positions available if you might be looking for such a thing. We don’t have coffee duty, but how about “Zoom Defense?” Also, I would very much like to create our own digital chips to mark different periods of sobriety.
I soon found that when all other measures failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day.
Big Book, p. 15
This definitely counts! Questions, a desire to get involved, ability to design a slightly pirate-y AA-type chip, other ideas, well, you know how to reach me.
One of the great benefits of the Sponsor/Sponsee relationship is that it basically leaves you in a position where you are constantly working the Steps. Another sneaky win for Bill W. He must have been an amazing salesman and sometimes the semi-sneaky salesmanship he uses makes me laugh. He carefully drifts that “go to any lengths” hook right up the lip on page 58:
If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it…
Then, he sets the hook pretty decisively (remember: It’s up, not back!) on page 76:
Remember it was agreed at the beginning we would go to any lengths for victory over alcohol.
Hahaha. Did you remember saying yes to that, at the beginning? No, he expressly told you that all you needed to do was to be willing to believe to get the ball rolling. Of course, in the sense that fish are party responsible for getting hooked, that’s how sobriety kind of worked for me. Was trickery involved? Like when they told me I should definitely bring my golf clubs to rehab?1 Bill W. understood, as an OG alcoholic, that it was roughly impossible to instruct alcoholics to get sober, or to get them to do anything they don't want to do--you have to trick them into thinking it's their idea. The real trick is keeping that illusion going long enough until it actually does becomes "their" idea. That's what happened to me.2
Of course, the marginalia is not expressing my view that this is one of the foundational building blocks of AA, kind of like the “ABC’s.” No, it’s an admiring reference to this:
Anyway, I digress. One of the Sponsees is starting on the Sixth Step and I think the great mystery of the Sixth Step is why is there a Sixth Step?
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
I remember first hearing about this and wondering why would you cling to defects of character? Once you’ve figured out they’re “defects,” why am I still holding on to them. That doesn’t seem very rational, does it? I guess that’s the point. As we worked through Steps 4 and 5, taking the inventory of strengths and weaknesses, assets and liabilities, we discovered a lot. For me, I was able to see how some thinking patterns had pervaded my life and produced false results. I think that’s roughly the process for everyone. So, once these traits, thinking patterns, character defects—whatever you’d like to call them—are identified, what to do?
I think that’s where the Sixth Step comes in. I have a couple of likely-inappropriate ways to think about this. First, if you think of life as a Jenga Tower and the process of Steps 1-5 as marking the pieces that need to get pulled out, one approach to “Step Six” would be to just pull all of those bad boys out and stand back and watch. I mean it could work.3 Or, maybe it's a beautifully set table and the character defects you've identified are represented by the tablecloth. Some folks try this:4
I’m actually coming to see that maybe Step Six involves a bit of a grieving process. See, I tried the Jenga approach, it didn’t work. I think my case of the disease, plus the length and intensity of my drinking career, required more wholesale changes than other people might need. But there is this point at the bottom: Alcohol wasn’t entirely a negative in my life. Part of the reason it’s so hard for alcoholics to stop drinking is that it’s a tool and it actually produces some benefits in the lives of alcoholics. For sure, drinking enabled, was a necessary part of my career as a trial lawyer. I don’t think I could have done all the stuff I did without drinking.
Maybe this is only my view, and if your view differs, that’s very cool, but I came to realize that the life I constructed and lived for the fifty-odd years of life couldn’t have happened without alcohol. Not that I was destined to be an alcoholic, or maybe I was, those kinds of questions are interesting but not so useful. The point was, I built a very flawed, but somewhat effective, life that ran on and generated a fair amount of chaos and dysfunction. It sometimes produced great results. It always required alcohol to keep running.
Bill recognizes the real magnitude of the operation that will be necessary. I think that’s the real point of Bill’s somewhat dire emphasis at the beginning of How it Works—when he talks about being fearless and thorough from the very start. He even uses the word “beg” to emphasize how strongly he feels about this:
We beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.
Big Book, p. 58
The easy, flim-flammy, chatty approach Bill details in the chapter instructively-titled “Working With Others,” is a bit at odds with this part. I don’t know if they had Jenga in the 1930’s, but Bill knew the whole House of Cards was going to have to come down, he realizes that needs to be your idea, your realization. So he set up a process that, if honestly approached, leads you pretty inevitably to this spot where you realize that things have to change. That’s why I think “Bill’s Story” is so masterful, as he revealed his own turning points and realizations, I began to see my own. Bill’s ultimately successful approach to sobriety might be characterized as both logical and irrational.
Irrational in the sense that the proposition can’t be proved, but logical in the sense the conclusion can’t be avoided.
Things are going to have to change. That’s traditionally how it was put to me, by therapists, loved ones, counselors, friends, strangers at AA meetings. But changing “things” didn’t move the needle. I had to change myself. The fortunate and sneaky part of this is that I didn’t realize it was happening until it had already gained a foothold. Bill realized that “willingness” was a bit of a Jedi Mind Trick, a philosophical Trojan Horse, but it seemed to start alcoholics and addicts down this road where they couldn’t help but start seeing the world differently.
All of that growth and all of that change, all of the sobriety it has produced for me, are unbelievable gifts, like the song says, “I scarce can take it in” sometimes. But change is not easy and it always comes at a cost. Bill identified the price that had to be paid near the end of his story in Chapter 1: the destruction of self-centeredness. The destruction of the life I “created,” in favor of the one that actually was. The one that I was meant to lead.
I think it’s notable this task requires two steps, getting entirely ready and then in Step 7, finally, asking for help to accomplish this monumental undertaking. Note: The trick here is in getting you to make the ask, acknowledging that this is not something you can accomplish as a function of your own will and self-propulsion. It requires help—and the good news is that you get to construct the perfect helper—but it’s help in saying goodbye to someone I was kind of fond of.
The me of the bad old days wasn’t all bad. Flawed, chaotic, hurtful, deceptive, lost, Yes. But he got a lot done and some of it was pretty good. But like the man says, the time comes when progress requires “letting go absolutely,” and I think that’s the process of the Sixth and Seventh Steps. Taking a good long, honest, last look back and then moving ahead, because that’s where freedom is.
Note—I was able to shame management into taking me out one afternoon and it was pretty lovely.
I feel a similar sort of trickery is involved in teaching a child to ride a bike, “No, I definitely did not let go!”
Probably in the same sense that if you are in a plunging elevator, believing you’ll be ok if you can just time the jump at the bottom.
This video was staged by a german tv show—no one was hurt.