This was the step that separated the men from the boys, or so I was told.
Step Five:
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Admitting my wrongs to God and myself was easy: I knew we weren’t going to tell anyone. But to another human being? Ugh. Now, thankfully, none of my admissions were of the first-class felony type. They were much, much worse. They were embarrassing. And if any of those ever got out, I supposed I’d be ruined, run out on a rail, ostracized, shunned, excommunicated, laughed at.
In other words, I’d revert to my most vulnerable and honest self.
So it was with mild trepidation that I sat down with my sponsor and began reading off my list. He only interrupted to get clarification, and with each revelation he did… nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true; he nodded a couple of times. Turns out a number of my resentments hit a familiar chord with him as well.
By the time I was halfway through, I found myself wishing I could somehow spice it up a bit. Maybe I could throw in something that’d shake him up, or at least separate me from all the others, thereby verifying to myself that I was a special case, and possibly (hopefully?) beyond help.
But I wasn’t that different, or special. I was an average, run-of-the-mill drunk. Whatever uniqueness I was hanging onto “just in case” was lifted. Sure, I was still a special and unique individual; just not when it came to my alcoholism. Where my disease was concerned, it had all been seen before.
Which meant they had a program for dealing with it.
12 the hard way 