Rum Radio 12N24 Step Four Rewind

The Simplicity of The Twelve Steps- Step Four (Courage)    Of all the ways in which we have radically complicated this incredibly simple program, what’s happened to Steps 4 and 5 is probably the most egregious.  We have managed to take a process which was designed to be done in a single sitting, in as little as an hour, and turned it into the equivalent of a doctorate-level thesis.  New alcoholics find themselves saddled with endless pages replete with multiple columns and enough data to keep a forensic scientist percolating for days on end.  How does it make rational sense to send a fragile, confused alcoholic back to his isolationist domicile to sit alone, for months, marinating in the shame of the wreckage of his past?

Think about this logically.  It’s YOUR story; things that happened to YOU.  There’s no research necessary.  You don’t need to hunt down quotes.  There’s no citations or bibliography.  Who are you pissed at, what are you scared of and who did you hurt?  That’s the task?  If you meet the average alcoholic in a bar at one in the morning, they could roll those lists out for you in completion inside of seventeen minutes.  And you’d probably hear them whether you wanted to or not.