Four

...as in four months of sobriety (yesterday) and Step Four (ongoing).

Oh, also four hundred dollars. I forgot to include A on the list of entities with whom I've been unprecedentedly assertive of late. A few weeks ago I asked him for that amount of money, which he owed me, and this week I received a check. I mention this not only by way of patting myself on the head (pat, pat, pat) but also to be fair to A. He behaved decently about it, and though very few of you have even met him, it seems important to give credit where it's due.

No chip for four months, alas. Apparently I am expected to have grown up enough by this point to be able to hold out until six months for my next shiny reward. Phooey.

As for the Fourth Step, I'm not quite inching along. I need to get back on that particular horse, who apparently wandered off somewhere to munch on some grass while I wasn't looking. The Big Book suggests taking moral inventory by making a list of people and institutions one resents, including the reason for the resentment. Then comes the fun: Identify your own part in the resentment, the ways your behavior has harmed the other person or otherwise worsened the situation. From such a list patterns will begin to emerge if you're honest. These patterns will help you identify what AA terms character defects.

I have to admit that some aspects of the Big Book, this one among them, remind me of no one more than Dr. Phil. I have no idea whether Dr. Phil has ever had anything to do with AA or the alcoholism-related sector of the recovery industry. It's more a similarity of theme and tone that strikes me; there's finger-wagging and a lot of harshness disguised as "telling it like it is."

(I kind of hate Dr. Phil. He scares me.)

AA has its share of fundamentalists, people who refer to the Big Book to solve every possible problem in life and can quote the thing backwards and forwards. They're often referred to as Big Book thumpers. I find fundamentalism as scary as I find Dr. Phil, so I've been suspicious of such folks from the start. Maybe that's why I've resisted the Big Book's approach to Step Four all this time. I have a couple of step books I've been working with, which I find useful. But I've talked with Ja about how she did this step, and guess what? She did what Ju (her sponsor) told her to do. And Ju, who is the antithesis of a fundamentalist, had her do it just like the Big Book describes.

Hmm. Well, then.

Tomorrow being Recovery Day, I've set a goal of starting my resentment list. In theory it could go on for quite a long time, as (for example) I have never really forgiven Joey Kotula for liking that girl Shawn better than me in the fourth grade. He even square danced with her in gym class, humph.

Apparently I possess the common alcoholic character defect of imagining myself as the emotional center of the universe.

In any case, I will try to focus on the key points. If any of you out there are fourth stepping with me, please give this a whirl too. It promises not to be uninteresting.