Step One Misperceptions and Confusion

There are many sayings - some trite but true, others not - that one hears around the tables in Alcoholics Anonymous (and many of its sister organizations). One of these sayings is that: "Step One is the only Step we do 100%." But is this what our literature says? Is this truly our collective experience? My reading of our literature, and my own experience, says it is not.

This particular saying seems to originate in the essay on Step Six in The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, where (at page 68) we read: "Only Step One, where we made the 100 percent admission we were powerless over alcohol, can be practiced with absolute perfection. The remaining eleven Steps state perfect ideals. They are goals toward which we look, and the measuring sticks by which we estimate our progress."

Note that in this passage it is only "the 100 percent admission we were powerless over alcohol" which can be "practiced with absolute perfection." The alcoholic addict practices this first part of the First Step with perfection each day when he or she does not drink and/or drug. This says nothing about the second (and more difficult) half of the First Step, where we admit that our lives have become unmanageable. The two halves of the First Step are separate, but intricately interrelated concepts. They are not interchangeable.

Yet, in his essay on Step One in The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, even Bill seems to treat the two parts as being the same, or at least he muddies the distinction between them. At page 23 of the Twelve and Twelve, discussing those "who were scarcely more than potential alcoholics," Bill asks: "Since Step One requires an admission that our lives have become unmanageable, how could such as these take this Step?"

His answer is that we "raise the bottom the rest of us hit to the point where it would hit them." And, if this does not work, he suggests that to these "doubters" we might say: "Perhaps you are not an alcoholic after all. Why don't you try some more controlled drinking, bearing in mind meanwhile what we have told you about alcoholism."

WTF???? He suggests that a person who is struggling with the idea that his life has become unmanagaeable should go out and try more drinking? This does not make sense. In my experience it has been beneficial to suggest such a tactic to a person who is unclear whether or not he or she is powerless over alcohol, after all that is the crux of the matter and a proposition that we must accept 100 percent. By contrast, I both struggle myself (and see many many others struggle) with the idea that life is, in fact, unmanageable . . . and will remain so. After all, if life became manageable, we would just manage it by ourselves, and what need would we have for the remaining eleven Steps?

Remember, in the How It Works reading, we hear the following, over and over: "Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after [stopping drinking], make clear three pertinent ideas: (a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. (b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.  (c) That God could and would if He were sought."

I have practiced the first half of Step One with 100 percent effectiveness for the past 21 years, but day upon day I struggle with the second half of Step One - i.e., ceding control and management of my life to a Power greater than myself. Thus, whenever I have a problem toaday, I can recognize that it is, in effect, a problem with the second half of Step One. I can still be driven blindly by my small, egoic self, although thankfully (a) this does not happen as frequently as it once did, and (b) I have the tools to correct - and clean up after - such self-centered thinking and behaviour.

Not picking up a drink (and in my case a mind-altering drug) is the only part of the program that I have so-far managed to practice with 100 percent success, and it is likely to remain that way. Remember, on this spiritual path we strive for perfection, all the while knowing that we will inevitably fall short. Meanwhile, with the Grace of God, one day at a time we stay sober.

Step Six: Aiming at Perfection

"We aim at perfection," my sponsor often says, "knowing that we are going to fall short." This, of course, is the gist of the message in the Step Six essay in The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, which helps us examine if we are "entirely ready" to have all of our character defects removed by the God of our understanding.

Step Six, in essence, asks whether we are ready to lead a wholly spiritual life - a decision that is difficult for all of us.

"(I)t seems plain," we read, "that few of us can quickly or easily become ready to aim at spiritual and moral perfection; we want to settle for only as much perfection as will get us by in life, according, of course, to our various and sundry ideas of what will get us by."

 Accordingly, "the difference between striving for a self-determined objective and for the perfect objective which is of God," is a mark of whether we are "entirely ready" to have our character defects removed through our efforts and with the grace of God. "The key words "entirely ready" underline the fact that we want to aim at the very best we know or can learn," Bill notes.

The difficulty with Step Six, it seems, is that when we honestly look at ourselves, we see that we are almost wholly reliant upon our habitual attitudes to get by, and to "manage" our lives and our interactions with others. Is there much difference between the man who projects a surly and -ill-tempered persona to keep other people walking on eggshells, and the beautiful woman who is alternatively flirtatious and coy in order to get her way with others? And what about the person who projects the image of being meek, mild and deferential? All these, and so many other roles we play, are the stuff of the tragedies and comedies of all ages.

Taking Step Six means that we become ready to drop these false personae and, with faith, allow our true "selves" to emerge from the shadows cast by the false egos we have habitually presented to the world. It is when we becoming willing to take what seems to be a huge risk in presenting our real character, that we embrace the aid and assistance of a Power greater than our small, self-cenetered egos. "This," we read, "is the exact point at which we abandon limited objectives, and move toward God's will for us." But we do not do so alone.

"Draw near to God," we read in the Scriptures, "and God will draw near to you." (James 1:8) As the great American Transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson observed:

"This intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space and not subject to circumstance. Thus in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contradicted."

"If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice. If a man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out of acquaintance with his own being. A man in the view of absolute goodness, adores, with total humility. Every step so downward, is a step upward. The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.

"All things," Emerson observes, "proceed out of the same spirit, and all things conspire with it. Whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the whole strength of nature. In so far as he roves from these ends, he bereaves himself of power, or auxiliaries; his being shrinks out of all remote channels, he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death."

"The perception of this law of laws," Emerson suggests, "awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm and to command. It is mountain air."

["The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson," Modern Library Classics, pp. 64-65.]

"(A) blufffing of oneself will have to go the way of many another pleasant rationalization," we read in the Step Six essay. "At the very least, we shall have to come to grips with some of our worst character defects and take action toward their removal as quickly as we can." And it is Step Six which "is the exact point at which we abandon (such) limited objectives, and move toward God's will for us."