Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

STEP FOUR

our resentments are the "right kind." We aren't the guilty
ones. They are!

At this stage of the inventory proceedings, our spon-
sors come to the rescue. They can do this, for they are the
carriers of A.A.'s tested experience with Step Four. They
comfort the melancholy one by first showing him that his
case is not strange or different, that his character defects
are probably not more numerous or worse than those of
anyone else in A.A. This the sponsor promptly proves by
talking freely and easily, and without exhibitionism, about
his own defects, past and present. This calm, yet realistic,
stocktaking is immensely reassuring. The sponsor probably
points out that the newcomer has some assets which can be
noted along with his liabilities. This tends to clear away
morbidity and encourage balance. As soon as he begins to
be more objective, the newcomer can fearlessly, rather than
fearfully, look at his own defects.

The sponsors of those who feel they need no inventory
are confronted with quite another problem. This is because
people who are driven by pride of self unconsciously blind
themselves to their liabilities. These newcomers scarcely
need comforting. The problem is to help them discover a
chink in the walls their ego has built, through which the
light of reason can shine.

First off, they can be told that the majority of A.A.
members have suffered severely from self-justification dur-
ing their drinking days. For most of us, self-justification
was the maker of excuses; excuses, of course, for drinking,
and for all kinds of crazy and damaging conduct. We had
made the invention of alibis a fine art. We had to drink