Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

Step Five

"Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another
human being the exact nature of our wrongs."

ALL of A.A.'s Twelve Steps ask us to go contrary to our
natural desires ... they all deflate our egos. When it comes
to ego deflation, few Steps are harder to take than Five.
But scarcely any Step is more necessary to longtime sobri-
ety and peace of mind than this one.

A.A. experience has taught us we cannot live alone with
our pressing problems and the character defects which
cause or aggravate them. If we have swept the searchlight
of Step Four back and forth over our careers, and it has
revealed in stark relief those experiences we'd rather not
remember, if we have come to know how wrong thinking
and action have hurt us and others, then the need to quit
living by ourselves with those tormenting ghosts of yester-
day gets more urgent than ever. We have to talk to some-
body about them.

So intense, though, is our fear and reluctance to do this,
that many A.A.'s at first try to bypass Step Five. We search
for an easier way—which usually consists of the general
and fairly painless admission that when drinking we were
sometimes bad actors. Then, for good measure, we add
dramatic descriptions of that part of our drinking behav-
ior which our friends probably know about anyhow.

But of the things which really bother and burn us, we