Send us Fan Mail

Let’s begin by saying what step eight is:

I made a list of all persons I had harmed and became willing to make complete amends to them all.

Now, don’t forget that these are the original 12 steps from the first edition of the book Alcoholics Anonymous not to mention that I’ve written them in the first person because that is easier for me to work with.

I remember when I first read this step, I thought it was just a rehash of the fourth step inventory. It is not. The fourth step was really, primarily, about the things that I had 10 in my life that I considered to be either appropriate or inappropriate. These were things that affected primarily me, and not so much what I had done to cause others harm. I may have mentioned that in one particular year I went on a real bender. I may have wrecked my car, drank all night, and punched some guy in the nose when I was in the bar. All of these things were certainly things I had to look at my fourth step, primarily behavior issues. What I may have left out of my fourth step was that the car that I read was paid for with money that my family loaned me and I never paid back. When I punched the guy in the nose busted his glasses, and he was out of work for two days. Also, the reason I was able to drink all night in the bar was because they had money I borrowed from my cousin Willie, who I told I needed to buy new clothes.

My point is, that I couldn’t just pass off my fourth step from a step. Yes some of those things in the eight step would have been the fourth also, that I really needed to go over everything carefully so that I didn’t miss anything. And even though they may have overlapped, the reason for doing the fourth step was really to examine my defects of character and shortcomings, not so much how they affected others.

I really thought this eight step would be a piece of cake. Let’s face it, during my phony 12 step shenanigans, I never even made an attempt to think of those I had harmed, molest making any restitution’s. But now that I was on my serious attempt at sincerely trying to do these 12 steps the way they were written, well, it wasn’t a walk in the park. I not only listed exactly what it was that I had done to offend these people, I listed how I thought I heard their feelings, especially those that had put (unwarranted) trust in me. The first part of the Safe Step turned out to be a crucial step in my road to recovery.