THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

One of the first things that is read out at all Alcoholics Anonymous meetings is, "Alcoholics Anonymous will never be organized."

Boy, is that ever true! I also think that is one reason it WORKS. If you have followed the dialogue between me and Joe, it is often hard to imagine that we were in the same program. No one in AA would DARE refer to new people as "pigeons." Anyone who says that has forgotten that this is HIS first day, too.

But different people in different places in recovery are like me and Joe, we each have our own version of the program, our own experience of it.

The piece I just wrote said that you let me TALK, so your estimate of me is very important. I spill my guts here, and you are the people hwo can tell me if I swallowed something poisonous.

Everything I say, if it is to do you any good, has to INTERRELATE. What I just said relates to interrogation -- let the person TALK -- but it relates to just about everything else that has to do with human basic, too. One of the first things it made me think of was the AA or Twelve Step program.

We have all heard of Twelve Step programs but very few of us, like me and Joe, have actually DONE those steps. One of the most dreaded is the Fifth Step. In the Fifth Step you find a person, usually your sponsor, and tell them ALL about yourself, all the way down to your sexual hangups and most dreaded weaknesses. But you don't do it off the top of your head.

The fifth step follows the very long fourth step, in wich you write down everything you don't like about yourself, everything you have done wrong. You have to do the fourth step over and over and over because your mind really doesn't want to do it.

Your sponsor makes you do it over and over because he if he is a good sponsor he has been where you are and he is an excellent, REAL, interrogator. He won't let you quit until your insides are on the table. This is tricky, because theoretically he can't know ALL you wrote down, though he does.

Theoretically only the person you do the fifth step with gets it all. Actually, he is the one who gets it all AT ONCE.

I am so deep into the practice that I forgot to mention WHY you do this. The concept of the fifth step is that someone hears everything about you and STILL LIKES YOU. It assumes a de[pendency that no one in The Greatest Generation is supposed to feel. He likes you so you can like yourself.

Joe? Any objection?

I have done a LOT of fifth steps on both ends. People like me go into the fifth step FOR THE FIRST TIME dreading it enormously. But in the end the thing goes on for HOURS, and the LISTENER is the one who has to shut you up.

This is because of a basic. The stuff you have been most ashamed of, the stuff you have been keeping inside you all your

life, makes YOU sick. But we all have our OWN hangups. What makes YOU sick almost never is the hot button in someone ELSE'S soul. So you go in terrified about it. You finally confess and wait for astonished and horrified reaction YOU have to it. The person you are talking to is not that impressed.

Then -- and this is hilarious if you get the picture -- your EGO switches on. Here you are spilling out the filthiest things in your life and this guy obviously isn't even LISTENING. You just confessed a horror that has been haunting you all your life and he doesn't seem to GET it.

If you are listening to fifth step, you find yourself competing with the person doing the confessing. Invariably something is going to come up like, "Well, you did that, but what really bothered me was when I ..." The first-timer simply cannot believe that you take THAT as seriously as what HE just said.

Then it gets fascinating. Remember, if you are doing the fifth step for the first time you are talking about the most interesting subject in the world, yourself. Here are things you have not talked to with anybody else, things you have been holding in for years. You have been thinking about them for years. Now you have achance to talk out things about the most fascinating subject on earth -- you -- that you have never talked about before.

As I say, I have only been in one type of fifth step out of the dozens where the LISTENER was not the one who had to stop it. The only time I have not been the one to call a halt was when I was the "talker" rather the "listener."

I put the words in quotes because if you LISTEN to a fifth step you also end up DOING one.

I have done my OWN fifth step several times, and each time I wanted it to go on.

So here I am telling you exactly who I am. Your opinion of me, both good and bad, takes a lot of effort on my part.

Emotionally dependent? OF COURSE it is emotionally dependent. How can my genes have evolved for millions of years as a social animal and I were emotinally independent.

An emotionally independent person is a sociopath. If that were a good thing we would all have been sociopaths for at least a million years.

Writing this, I just thought of something. Jews are known for having very, very few alcoholics.

I wonder how many sociopaths become alcoholics? My first guess is "Very few."

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