People who live the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are a busy lot, meeting others in self-help groups, reading books about recovery from addiction, attending lectures, listening to tapes, and more. The Twelve Step recovery community is a learning community, seeking an ever deeper understanding of the Twelve Steps.

The purpose of all this activity is to gain a better understanding of past thoughts, behaviors and feelings. Working the Twelve Steps is less like getting a PhD than it is like a spring housecleaning.

Many of the worlds great spiritual traditions work this way: "In the pursuit of learning, every day something is added," according to "Tao-te Ching," the basic scripture of Taoism. "But in the pursuit of the Tao, every day something is dropped."

Abraham Heschel, the Jewish theologian, made the same point. "The purpose of spiritual life," he said, "is not to gain new information but to see the world in a new way."

These are the aims of Step Four of AA, which asks us to conduct a "searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves."

There's nothing mysterious about this inventory. A personal inventory works much like a business inventory. "A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke," note the authors of "Alcoholics Anonymous" (AA General World Services, $6). An inventory is "an effort to discover the truth about the stock-in-trade. One object is to disclose damaged or unsalable goods, to get rid of them promptly and without regret.

Chemically dependent people find their minds dominated by resentment, fear and remorse. These thoughts become the primary "stock" in their mental trade and keep them miserable and prone to drinking or drugging. A business that tries to sell damaged goods goes broke. Likewise, a chemically dependent person who thrives on damaged thoughts also goes broke, that is, gets drunk or high.

We begin to release these thoughts by the simple act of making a list. Take resentment, for example. The Big Book of "Alcoholics Anonymous" advises us to list every person, institution or principle we resent, yes, every one. In addition, we list the events that triggered our resentment and the part of ourselves we feel was injured.

Step Four also asks us to shine a light on the ways we've harmed others, as well as our remorse over this fact. Especially important is the harm resulting from our sexual conduct. So we list the specific people involved, what we did to harm them, and our motivation for doing so. We may, for example, have an affair with a supervisor at work in order to get a promotion or bolster our self-esteem. This harms our marriage and hurts our spouse and may damage self-esteem.

As powerful as it is to make these lists, we don't stop there. Instead we go on to Step Five. Here we share our lists with our Higher Power and another human being. This confession often brings a vast sense of relief. In addition, Step Five refines the information gathered in Step Four. We ask our listener for an objective view of our inventory with others and asking for their feedback helps bring our self-image into clearer focus.

Steps six to nine also flow logically from our inventory. In Step Six, we admit that we are ready to have our resentments, fears and remorse removed. In Step Seven, we ask our Higher Power, however we care to define it, to remove these shortcomings. In Step Eight we become willing to make amends to these people, "except when to do so would injure them or others."

This is a lot of work, but the payoffs are magnificent. When our minds are emptied of resentment, fear and remorse, we taste that elusive mental state known as serenity. Eventually, even the obsession with drinking or drugging disappears. The Big Book describes this new state well: "Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves."

--Published June 7, 1999