Step 5: Admitting Our Wrongs

Step 5 reads: 'Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs' (page 59). If Step 4 was writing the inventory, Step 5 is reading it out loud. We take the resentments, fears, and harms we put down on paper and we admit them three ways: to God, to ourselves, and to one other person. The Big Book gives this Step only a few pages, but it does not treat it as optional. It calls it vital, and it tells us plainly what tends to happen to those who skip it.

Where Step 5 Lives in the Big Book

The Step itself appears in the list of the Twelve Steps on page 59, in the chapter How It Works. The working instructions open Chapter 6, Into Action, and run from page 72 through page 75. The chapter begins with a question: having made our personal inventory, what shall we do about it? The answer is Step 5, and the book gives its best reason first: 'If we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking' (page 72). Time after time, it says, newcomers tried to keep certain facts about their lives to themselves. They looked for easier methods, and almost invariably they got drunk. 'They took inventory all right, but hung on to some of the worst items in stock' (page 73). The housecleaning was started but never finished, so the house never came clean.

How the Big Book Says to Work It

First we choose the person, and we choose carefully. Page 74 says that if we belong to a faith that requires confession, we go to the properly appointed authority. If not, we may talk with a minister, a doctor, a psychologist, or a close-mouthed, understanding friend. The person should be able to keep a confidence, understand what we are driving at, and not try to change our plan (page 74). One caution matters here: we cannot disclose anything that would hurt our wives or our parents, because we have no right to save our own skin at another person's expense. 'The rule is we must be hard on ourself, but always considerate of others' (page 74).

Then we act. Once we decide who is to hear our story, we waste no time (page 75). We bring the written inventory, we explain what we are doing and why, and then, in one of the book's most vivid lines, 'We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past' (page 75). Withholding nothing is the whole instruction. Afterward we return home, find a quiet hour, thank God that we know Him better, and carefully review the first five Steps, asking if we have omitted anything. The book says we are building 'an arch through which we shall walk a free man at last' (page 75), and it asks us to check our own stonework.

What Changes When We Take This Step

Page 75 describes the result in some of the warmest language in the book: 'We can look the world in the eye. We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. Our fears fall from us. We begin to feel the nearness of our Creator.' It goes on to say that we may have had certain spiritual beliefs before, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience, and the feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly (page 75). That is not a reward for being good. It is what happens when a person stops carrying secrets alone.

The Fear of Telling Another Person

Let us be honest about the objection almost everyone raises: I have admitted this to myself and to God, so why drag another human being into it? The book answers that a solitary self-appraisal is usually insufficient (page 72), and it explains why. 'More than most people, the alcoholic leads a double life' (page 73). We presented a stage character to the world while pushing the worst memories down inside, and that constant fear and tension made for more drinking. The dread we feel before a Fifth Step is really the dread of ending the double life, and that is exactly why it works. 'We must be entirely honest with somebody if we expect to live long or happily in this world' (page 73). In practice, the person we tell is almost never shocked. Page 75 says most people approached this way are glad to help and feel honored by our confidence.

When the review of our arch is done and the work feels solid, the book moves us straight ahead: 'If we can answer to our satisfaction, we then look at Step Six' (page 76). We have seen the exact nature of our wrongs and said them out loud. Step 6 asks whether we are entirely ready to have God remove them.