Steps 4 and 5 of Alcoholics Anonymous can be the most difficult. After a higher power has been found, it's time to do some soul-searching. Step 4 of A, A. For many Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) participants, step 8 is the most difficult.
That's because it's the point in the Alcoholics Anonymous steps where you make a list of people you've caused harm to because of your alcohol consumption. The important thing to note about impotence is this: it means that it is impossible to drink or use drugs “safely”. It also means that sobriety is not a matter of “having more willpower or” trying harder. This works well with the disease addiction model.
That simply means “being a better person doesn't work. If someone gets the flu, it's not because they're not trying hard enough. It's because a force beyond their control gave them the flu. Don't feel like you're ready to quit AA just because you've gone through the 12 steps of AA once.
The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, one of America's leading advocacy agencies for recovering addicts, was founded in 1944 by Marty Mann, a wealthy and well-connected newcomer from Chicago, and the first female member of AA. A report published by Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly in 2000 analyzed AA membership surveys conducted from 1968 to 1996. It is true that the 12 steps have been drafted in such a way as to suggest a certain amount of freedom in which one ultimately surrenders to God (or “higher power”); but AA identifies itself as a Christian organization with an important part of its prayer-based methodology. And if the wider community persists in rejecting and shaming addicts, and AA is still the only door left ajar, then addicts will go to AA. Jellinek, author of several fundamental texts on alcoholism and an eventual WHO consultant on the condition, placed AA founder and author of the Big Book, Bill Wilson, on faculty, a man who claimed to have been cured of his own alcoholism not through the progress of scientific research, but through intervention divine.
Theoretically, since this type of thinking originates in the frontal cortex of the brain, efforts to follow this step effectively exercise the part of the brain responsible for willpower and can aid recovery for that reason alone. It explains how substance abuse treatment works, how family interventions can be a first step toward recovery, and how to help children in families affected by alcohol and drug abuse. And any suggestion that AA might be a flawed program, or not suitable for all addicts, is met with shocked looks and harsh aftershocks. In 1951, based on what Dodes calls “the force of self-reported success and popular articles” (The Saturday Evening Post was a major supporter), AA received a Lasker Award, which is “awarded by the American Public Health Association for outstanding achievements in medical research or public health administration.
. Step 4 forces us to look back and step 5 brings it to light, revealing everything. You'll find yourself repeating the 12 steps of AA over and over again as a means to safeguard your sobriety. Bill W was inspired to share his sobriety success with the world, and the first AA book came out in 1939. Even if the damage caused to the relationship was mutual, in this step you are preparing to correct your mistakes.
