The Addict's Response: Step Four

As the addict has experienced a debillitating relapse this week, he has also become aware of how little "step work" he has been engaged in. The most travelled road to recovery is the Twelve Steps. This road includes weekly meetings, working with a sponsor, and frequent contact with other addicts. This road also includes working each of the twelve steps. To work a step is to sit down and reflect on the step and prepare a written inventory of responses to the step.

D-Monk has not been doing any written step work as of late. And the addict is in remission.

So here now the addict commits himself to a deliberate, thoughtful, and honest working of the fourth step. To this end, the addict offers the following comments from the Big Book of SAA:

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THE FOURTH STEP - "MADE A SEARCHING AND FEARLESS MORAL INVENTORY OF OUSELVES"

In taking the Fourth Step, we begin to know ourselves for who we really are. Building on the foundation of the first three steps, we take stock of the feelings and patterns that have shaped our lives. We come to realize that our addiction is more than just unmanageable activities, but indicates an entire system of underlying thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. If we neglect this inventory, we risk being stuck in our old habits and mistaken beliefs, and our unexamined defects of character will eventually lead us to relapse. By looking honestly at our moral nature--the failings that kept us trapped in our addiction, as well as our virtues and aspirations--we start to move away from being self-centered and toward being God-centered.

A searching and fearless moral inventory is one of the means by which we open ourselves to the care and healing of our Higher Power.

A moral inventory can be described as a systematic examination of all the beliefs, feelings, attitudes, and actions that have shaped our lives from the earliest years. It is a careful survey of how we have responded to people, circumstances, and the world around us. An inventory allows us to go over our lives methodically and objectively, reevaluating assumptions, beliefs, and feelings that we have held onto for years but perhaps never examined or questioned. In making this inventory, we take special care to identify those aspects of our character that have caused harm to ourselves and others, so as to bring them forward for healing and change in later steps.

The Fourth Step inventory is a written inventory.

Our inventory is searching, because we try to examine ourselves as thoroughly and painstakingly as possible. It is fearless, because we don't let our fear stop us from digging deeper. It is moral, because it concerns our values and the consequences of our actions for ourselves and others.

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Prayers, please, for this lost and wayward addict.