12 Steps & 12 Traditions

This month’s Step and Tradition articles from the Digital Archive:

Vol. 12 No. 4

How to Make Amends

LET'S start with me.

Everybody's cashing in on the new craze for "How To" books which run the gamut from "How to Play the Zither" to "How To Pickle A Herring."

I fell for it, too. Last summer, while on my vacation, I bought one on "How To Become A Bird Watcher." And I used it--much to the consternation and amusement of my fine feathered friends.

It just goes to show what a few years of sobriety will do to some of us. Never in my DTs, did I ever imagine I would descend so low as to disturb defenseless little birds while they were playing, feeding, nesting or romancing.

You should have seen me in the heavy scrub and tangled undergrowth, book in hand and wearing bifocals, trying to tell a grosbeak from a hummingbird.

Brother, that's really living it up in AA!

It's a long way from a pastime like bird-watching to something so important to all of us as "How To Make Amends"--now that we're sober--but both have one thing in common. Each requires application and effort before results can be achieved or enjoyed.

One of the quickest and most inspiring examples of this subject is told by an AA friend of mine whose wife said to him after eight months of sobriety: "By your kindness, consideration and cooperation at home, you have more than made up to me for the year of heartaches I suffered during your alcoholism."

That generally doesn't happen so easily. And it didn't in my case, either at home or with relatives, friends or business people.

Donning my penitential garments (which didn't fit well at the beginning of my AA membership) and mounting my white Arabian charger, I galloped hither and yon to explain to all and sundry that I was heartily sorry for my previous alcoholic defects of character and personality which had harmed, offended, betrayed or defrauded them.

All my efforts were not successful. The hurt or damage I had inflicted was too painful--or too deep--for a few of them, and they received (or rejected) me frigidly.

Knowing the key word in the Eighth Step is the willingness to make amends, I accepted those unpleasant situations as well as I could. Later on, after quite a period of sobriety, I again offered my apologies and explanations to them and, in practically all cases, they were accepted.

From those experiences I have learned that some injured Individuals are "from Missouri." Sometimes actions speak louder than words and they had to be shown I was sincere by a continuation of my sobriety.

There are no hard-and-fast suggestions for everybody on "How To Make Amends." Circumstances and Individuals vary. But there should be, I think, one necessary requisite for all of us. The success of our efforts, with respect to ourselves or those we've harmed, or both, ought to be predicated on our absolute honesty and sincerity of purpose.

Making amends will not properly work for us if we use them merely as lip service to get off a hook, to placate someone whose good opinion we only want to cultivate, or who might be in a position to do us a good turn in the future.

Neither do we gain much, or anything, by discharging such a duty to ourselves and as an obligation to others if it's just a mechanical action resulting from another AA member telling us it is the thing to do.

We should want to make amends because we are sincerely convinced we were at fault and honestly desire to right a wrong. There is no substitute for this essential attitude or state of mind.

One of my difficulties in trying to put myself right with other people was how to know the difference between a real desire on my part to do the right thing and a phony attempt to ease my guilty conscience.

On the other hand, it is never advisable to try to make direct amends when to do so would injure those we've harmed, or others.

In my considered opinion, our home should be the first place to start. Our families bore the brunt of our alcoholism through the years and generally are the last to receive the benefits of our personal rehabilitation program.

Amends with the alcoholic, as well as charity, begin at home. If we put our own habitation in order first, we are better able, mentally and emotionally, to try to rectify conditions created in the outside world by our uncontrolled drinking.

This is also true when we want to make spiritual amends. There is a better chance of attaining that goal after we have straightened out our home life. Then the "decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him" will bear quicker fruit.

Making amends can, be a rich and rewarding experience in humility, tolerance and better understanding of the other fellow.

Ed. note: the author says--"This isn't an analysis of the Eighth and Ninth Steps on making amends. Rather, it suggests an attitude towards them that might help to make them work more easily."

Anonymous
New York

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