12 Steps

The ninth step, “Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”

Amends – The AA Context

Reasonably straightforward. Harmed people? Well, AA says you make a list of them, then clean up the perceived harm. You either do it, or you don’t. Plus, the much-beloved “promises” are linked to this step. “Before you are halfway through,” all those great things will happen for you.

Step nine is an action step. And, it can be the most time consuming one with all the hunting down of folks and getting time with them to make amends.  So, a good idea to get started ASAP. Then, keep going until finished. Yet, many in AA never make it this far. Why?

I think this is because amends are hard. Amends is not a simple “hey sorry” exercise. Instead, for AAs (or those doing the steps), amends go well beyond that. An amend requires careful consideration and reflection (often with a sponsor) to actions that might have happened years ago in a cloudy past. And then, coming up with a proposed plan to trying to make the wrong right with people you haven’t seen for years. This whole step, when done well, can have deep ripples in families, friendships, and work relations.

Amends also provide a chance to make sure that when you finally make it right, your understanding of “it” is correct. Are your recollections accurate? Does your perception of the harm synch with the harmed? Was there anything left out? Memory, especially when charged with emotions like guilt and shame, often have a life of their own not empirically verifiable.

Hence when making the action of making amends, giving the amended party a chance to chime can make it more significant. The amends’ comments can add meaningful details that might be wrong or overwrought.  So, paying close attention to what they say and how they say it is essential. Get this right, and this may provide a once-in-a-lifetime chance to wipe the slate clean forever.

Profound – On Both Sides

My experience with the ninth step was a profound one. Making amends was the most profound activity I’ve done in AA or maybe in my life.

Every amends I made was memorable—each amends I can recall with vivid detail more than thirty years later. I think the vividness is because making direct amends was something I had never done before. I suspect this is true for most in AA.

Sure, I said, “I’m sorry” before. Mostly when saying it was convenient, comfortable, or to my advantage.  I have also offered up a few “hail marys” in my day after confession in the catholic church. That always seemed like a fantastic deal. Steal money from dad, say a few prayers. Then, I was free to do it again. AA amends was something different from all that.

So different that recently I spoke with a friend I had made amends to over thirty years ago. I asked him about it for the first time since that day. “Did you, by any chance, remember me making what AA calls amends to you?” He replied, “Remember? I’ll never forget,” adding, “Until the day I die!” Wow!

I share this not to point out a remarkable amend I made (it wasn’t). Instead, I want to highlight how unique I think this making AA amends business is to the world out there. Because it is so uncommon, amends have the potential to be transformative to both parties involved.

Restitution

In Dr. Bob’s original six-steps, the amends step was initially called “restitution.” Today, restitution is applied in legal jargon, as nearly all states have some element of restitution baked into their court verdicts for various crimes. It is not uncommon to sentence criminals with some form or direct payback to their victims.

What is different about the AA amends is vital to understand. First, it is voluntary. Making amends is done freely. A court does not mandate amends. Second, amends are direct and have a face-to-face element. The court sentences repayment, but often the payment is indirect (to a third party). Third, AAs make direct amends to people who have died in the form of letters (or another vehicle). Repayment (if money is involved) can be made to an organization. Finally, most legal restitution is limited by the “ability to pay.” In AA, the idea is to work out long-time payback, aka “living amends” that satisfy the damage that could have been emotional rather than financial. And financial amends, for AAs, it is the effort that is critical. Paying something is better than nothing.

Also, amends are self-directed and not court-directed. Underlying both restitution and amends is the principle of “making right,” aka “justice. All this is to say that amends is much more than the restitution the courts adjudicate.

For all these reasons, amends sit at the top of the AA action-mountain in terms of effort and impact. Making things right is no easy task, and making amends well requires courage. But, if you want to stop drinking digging deep and finding that inner strength to do them is well worth it.

My Experience

When I was drunk, I would lie in bed, thinking about some of the mistakes I had made in my life – the harm I had caused others. During my first AA meeting, I heard someone speak of “cleaning up the past,” and I immediately knew within my inner self that was something I must do. Making amends might calm the restlessness. So, when it came time to make amends, I was ready and eager to get on with them. Working closely with my sponsor, I rehearsed what I would say, what I would offer to make it right, and then I would listen to what the other party had to say. I stacked my calendar with many amends on my days off from work.

At first, these seemed awkward. But, soon, making amends became more comfortable, and I started feeling lighter deep down inside. I was feeling relief. Finding out I was getting free of the guilt I had carried for years was motivating to keep going. I honestly thought I could “start again” with people this time on the right foot. I didn’t need to lie in bed, feeling a failure for stealing quarters from my dad’s money jar for years anymore. All that baggage washed away once I sat across from him, admitted it, and offered to make it right.

Conclusion

If you want to be free from alcohol, AA suggests you do the steps, including this challenging ninth step. Yet, I often scratch my head, wondering why people either stop midway through the action or never even get to it in the first place.  On the other side of this step is freedom, sobriety, and I think a more significant potential for personal achievement and happiness. This lack of effort and follow-through is baffling.

So, if you haven’t’ done this step, do it!  If you’re in AA and not working any steps, start now by getting a sponsor? The steps are AA. If you’re in AA and don’t have a sponsor, you might want to rethink that strategy. There are many eager to help you on your road to a life without alcohol. It will be your best life!

AA, the steps, and all the hubris of meetings and personalities can be tricky – they are not for everyone. But, if sobriety is your goal, AA is still the best choice out there. Good luck.

Whenever I am in a meeting, sooner or later I always return to the same thought stream over and over again. That thought is, “Why isn’t AA more successful than it is?”

The Best and Only Way

I have to be cautious sharing this thought with others, as many in AA have very strong opinions about the efficacy of the program as it has been historically presented. These opinions can be summarized, “It’s the best solution there is for alcoholism!” Or, “It’s 100% effective for the people it works for!”

Then, there is the argument that ends all further discussion, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” And, it is true, that when AA is compared to all other treatments, AA is the most effective – at least according to a study by Kelly, Abry, Ferri, and Humphries, “Alcoholics Anonymous and 12-Step Facilitation Treatments for Alcohol Use Disorder: A Distillation of a 2020 Cochrane Review for Clinicians and Policy Makers.”

How Can We Help More Alcoholics?

I greatly appreciate how people whose lives have been changed working the AA program would not want to tinker with it. I get that. But, I think we all have to agree, despite all that do get sober, many don’t. Diagnosing why this is the case is difficult.  Commonly heard reasons such as, “They didn’t want it bad enough!’ Or, “I guess they just weren’t ready,” are both just blaming the victim as far I’m concerned.

Rather than blame, which leads to no solution, I suggest we look at ourselves to see where AA might be wrong then try to fix it. While the AA program has many wonderful details to it, I often wonder, is there a chance our program might benefit from making some changes to it?

How About Some Simple Updating?

After spending many decades in AA, hearing people talk all across the USA, taking folks through the steps, and reading most of the AA literature, I am of the opinion that the program needs serious updating. Honestly, it’s all bit of hodgepodge. The AA materials, good as they are, are not comprehensive or part purposeful whole. Often someone seeking simple direct answers has to read many publications, talk to many members, and in the end often lands on unclear or contradictory answers.

I know changing anything in AA is an unpopular position. But, I think if the goal is to help more people get sober, some very basic changes are necessary. One example would be a companion volume to the AA Big Book that explains alcoholism in light of advances in medicine and addiction studies. A lot of material on recovery has been gathered in the past twenty years that if presented in the right way might provide some additional context to newcomers of what to expect while encouraging them to hang in there.

Evidence from the referenced study above states that the combination of AA and psychotherapy is particularly effective in driving longer-term abstinence outcomes. Better than just AA. Good to know, right?

These types of changes are both additive and relatively easy to implement. So, why not do them? More people might get sober!

What About Bigger Changes?

Far more controversial than additive changes are making more broad ones that tamper with the twelve steps or the Big Book’s first 164 pages. Suggest this and you can quickly be run out of town, so to speak. People have a very deep fondness and connection for the program they remember and want to keep it intact.

For me, recovery is not a museum preserving favorite ways of doing things, but a collection of concepts that should be dynamic, that help people get and maintain sobriety. I also think given the age we live in, parts of the Big Book could stand some revision. I say this because as it stands, to a newcomer, the Big Book is confusing – unnecessarily so.

One Such Idea

I think the Steps are too complicated and anachronistic and do more, today, to alienate newcomers than bring them into the program. They need revising.

Change the Steps? Are you out of your mind?

The Steps came from Bill and Bob, and before them, God the Almighty! Many view the steps as timeless and eternal, “a gift from God!”

Again, “if it ain’t broke….”

This feeling of the program being sacrosanct is so strong that in recent years there have been movements to roll back the clock on the Program to reset to “how it was originally done!” As if that’s the better way to it. Why is this happening? Because many come to AA and don’t get sober the way it is today. But before we return to the glory days of the AA program, with cigarettes and a total lack of diversity in the rooms, maybe we should try to get AA moving forward instead of looking in the rearview mirror.

The Five Steps

One way of modernizing the AA Program is by simplifying the Twelve Steps to Five Steps. The Five Steps are simpler, more direct, and almost all action-oriented.  A sponsor could still refer to the original twelve when working with a new person doing them. In my experience, I have found these five steps, some amalgams of the original twelve and one new one, to be the most essential ones.

They are:

• Get a Sponsor.
• Inventory and Confession.
• Amends.
• Principled Living.
• Give Back to AA and Sponsor Others.

These five steps are the “action” part of the program, and in my experience where the power is. Most everyone I know who is sober a long time has done (or is doing) those five-steps. Because of this, I think they should be emphasized.  Let me elaborate a bit.

More Detail

The fact that sponsorship is not overtly discussed in the first 164 pages of the Big Big is an enormous oversight. Many, if not all, would agree that having a sponsor is THE game changer for staying sober. Yet to find a clear elaboration of sponsorship in AA literature, you need to find a pamphlet that very few read or even know of that was initially written in 1944. Because the idea of getting a sponsor is so critical to successful recovery it should be front and center in the steps –  Step One.

Writing an inventory as described in the Big Book, is typically the first real “action step” one takes. Once someone starts writing this inventory in earnest, if they finish and then share with their sponsor or other AA, they are well on their way to a sober life. In addition, an inventory without “giving it away” to someone, can actually do more harm than good. Hence these two steps should be combined into one – Step Two.

Amends for many is THE personally transformative step. Clearing up broken relationships and making proper restitution will reset one’s life like nothing else. This reset is critical to staying sober. I’ve seen many an AA make great progress toward sober living, then drink again. The reason, they either never made or didn’t finish making their amends.  Amends are just that important. Do them, and your life will never be the same – Step Three.

Having completed these three steps and having a desire to stay sober, it is time to live life in a new way – with principals. The selfish, self-centered, ego-driven and emotional ways of old need to recognized and tamed through the development of new approaches to life. These approaches are driven by principals that include empathy, conscientiousness, kindness, and love (to name a few). Principled Living – Step Four.

Finally, as my sponsor told me, “if you’re sober and not giving back to AA, you’re stealing!” He’s right. If AA changed your life, most likely it was changed, unbeknownst to you, by the people who were there when you go there. They were setting up and leading meetings, making coffee, and welcoming you. As someone who is transformed, now it’s your turn to give back. Most important, you need to give back directly through sponsorship, and you have to want to do this. Very few become sponsors by accident. Make it a goal and you will help transform another life. Give Back to AA and Sponsor Others – Step Five. 

Some Question to Ponder?

Would a simpler, more direct, and modern approach to the steps help more people get sober? I don’t know. Nor do I know if adding some new ideas in a companion Big Book volume (not written by Bill) is even possible.

Does a book written 80 years ago full of God-talk and very little about science alienate folks? I don’t know.

Would changing what we have, in any way, make us even less effective?  I don’t know that either.

What I do know is the way AA stands today, we’re not serving all those who need us. Too many are living in addiction rather than in recovery. I’d like to change this.

My Hope

We all have affection for the steps and Big Book, but, the world is different today and will continue to change. Can AA change with it?

My hope is that AA can.  The AA community should begin to approach the difficult job of taking a critical eye to the AA sacred cows. There are a few.

I say this because alcoholism is still killing people and making life tough for so many families and loved ones. Can’t we come together and discuss what we’ve learned? Then, we can work to create a simpler and more clear approach to recovery sober living?

I think we can. I present these thoughts as a starting point.

Whenever the topic of Step 11 comes up, invariably someone will share about how they meditate. Their description often includes sitting upright, closing their eyes and focusing on their breathing to quiet their mind.

While this sounds great and may be a great personal practice, it is not the type of meditation the Big Book writers were advocating when it was published April 10, 1939. What I hear folks talking about more closely resembles TM, Transcendental Meditation. TM was made famous by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1960s. The Beatles created a buzz about him (and TM) traveling to India to learn how to meditate themselves.

TM does involve reciting a mantra, sitting still, and quieting the mind. Apparently, there are benefits to this practice that have been documented scientifically. It is estimated that many millions of people today practice TM around the world.

But practicing a version of TM is hardly a requirement in AA and part of the steps. Many talk about this TM-type meditation as if it the same as Step 11. Well-intentioned as they are, these folks are showing some well-meaning ignorance.  Without the super old-timers straightening them out, this is the type of confusion that is becoming more and more common. Repeated over and over until it becomes accepted as “correct.”

Long before TM, the practice of meditation more closely resembled that of “conscious reflection” – often following a reading of something inspirational.

Here is what Bill says about in the 12 + 12;

“There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer. Taken separately, these practices can bring much relief and benefit. But when they are logically related and interwoven, the result is an unshakable foundation for life.” (p. 98 Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

The key point here is that this type of meditation involves deep thought. In contrast, thinking and thought are the what modern-day TM-like meditation seeks to arrest.

In the 12 + 12 passage on Step 11, Bill describes “how to meditate” by reading the St. Francis prayer and taking some time to think about it.  This is very different from what I hear in meetings today.

So if TM or some other version of quieting the mind through breathing is what you are after, that’s great. It’s just not the 11th step of AA.

The 11th step involves reflection and thought.

And thought, especially in today’s AA, does not get the respect it deserves.

Early in my sobriety, I was quick to pour out my heart at the group level
and experienced some unexpected push back from members. I thought
“honesty” was to permeate every area of my life, especially when
sharing at the group level.

My sponsor explained that yes, honesty was an
essential part of sobriety, but that discretion was to be practiced
with as much vigor as well.

With the speed and permanence of today’s electronic age, we as members
of Alcoholics Anonymous must always remember the importance of
discretion not only when sharing at meetings but also when posting on social networking sites.