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October 1964

The Big Hump

The Big Hump
Dr. Charlie Shedd
Minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Ponca City, Oklahoma, and a nonalcoholic with helpful experience in Fifth Step work.



October, 1964
Anniversary reprint From the January 1955 Grapevine



THERE is a mountain in one of our Western states which is not often climbed. Any old veteran of parts thereabouts will give this reason: "The first part goes easy. But about one third of the way up most of ’em turn around and come back. There’s sheer walls and jagged rocks, deep crevices and poor footing. Right there most folks quit. Odd thing, too. When you’ve passed that big hump you’ve got it made. The rest is a climb all right, but the worst is over."



The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are like that mountain. There’s a big hump on the way up--Step Five: "We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs." Right here some folks give up.



I must have a ’Fifth-Step face.’ As a counselor I have often been asked to be the other human being referred to in this Step. And my date book with its broken engagements is mute testimony that it is easy to approach this part of the mountain and then turn back.



In my work as a minister I have seen good Fifth Steps and bad ones; long Fifth Steps and short ones; Fifth Steps scribbled on brown wrapping paper and those neatly typed with a secretary’s perfection. In listening to men and women, young and old, some long in AA and some who tackled this part of the mountain before they were ready, I have noticed that there were always some things in common among those who were successful.



What are the secrets of a good Fifth Step? Let us take a look at the basic ingredients, then the mechanics, and finally the places where the going is roughest. The following is based entirely on my own experience and observations on the receiving end of the Fifth Step and is intended as a possible guide for those seeking suggestions as to how to go about taking the Fifth Step.



Three Basic Ingredients
1.  Belief in a forgiving God. Read the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 15, Verses 11 to 24. Let it sink deep into your heart until you are convinced that God will forgive anything; that He is like a father who goes out each night to the end of the road looking for a boy to come home. When the boy comes there will be no "I told you so," or "It’s about time." There will be only rejoicing because you have come. No matter where you have been or what you have done, from out of "riotous living" or from feeding with the swine, your Heavenly Father loves you and wants you home.



In my opinion, this concept of a forgiving God is needed for a thorough Fifth Step.



2.  One must want to take it. Just as deciding one is powerless over alcohol is necessary in taking the First Step, one must be personally ready for Step, Five. Do not take it because someone urges you. You must want it with a passion. That kind of desire is the only thing which will enable you to endure the anguish which goes with it. Only when you want it bad enough will you know the heaven which follows this particular hell.



Before going further, I want to explain that as a nonalcoholic I have taken this Step myself and I recommend it heartily for those who are not in AA. I have experienced the soul-struggle which it requires. I know the humiliation which accompanies it. I also know the deep peace which follows in its wake.



3.  Take the Forth Step. "We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves." This Step is a basic preliminary, and may be even rougher than Step Five.



Three Suggestions
1.  Determine to make it thorough. We had two rooms in the old farmhouse which were never heated in winter. Most of us have a section like that. Maybe it’s only a closet where we locked the door and threw the key away. But the monoxide fumes seep under the sill and poison our whole life. Until you want to find all the keys and open all the locked chambers, you’re not ready. Decide that you will make it complete.



2.  Take plenty of time. One day an enthusiastic new member of AA came rushing into my study and said, "I’ve just got twenty minutes before I’m due back at work. I’d like to take my Fifth Step." I did what you would have done. I explained that he had been twenty years getting into this and twenty minutes wasn’t adequate. It may take six weeks, six months, or longer--take your time.



3.  Write it out. Word for word, page for page, sentence after horrible sentence, put it all down. Experience has taught me that the best Fifth Steps are written down and many of us who are sought out by AAs as counselors make it a rule to wait until the member has done this. I once participated in this Step with a woman who had forty-seven pages, single spaced, on both sides of the paper. It is no coincidence, it seems to me, that she is today one of the most radiant women in our community. She got rid of all the blockages between herself and God.



Here are some reasons why the best results are obtained when it is written down: (a) More permanent effects. In my experience those who take the Fifth Step this way have not had a slip again. (b) It can be added to. Double or triple-space it. As you recall one old memory another will raise its head to shake its gory locks and say, "Boo! Remember me?" This can be written between the lines. (c) It can be read out loud with the person whom you have chosen. This saves time for both of you. More important, it makes your story orderly and not a hodge-podge. And most important, you actually feel that you are getting it out of your system. (d) It helps you to see in black and white what’s troubling you. The voice cannot be seen but the written word can be clearly viewed. (e) It helps you to organize your problem and attach your troubles to particular incidents. Suppose, for instance, you worry a lot about money. Maybe just seeing in black and white the fact that you never had enough as a child will help you to realize that you’re worrying about something in the past and not the present. (f) You can burn your paper or give it to your counselor for his disposal. Thus you feel that you get rid of your past and all the things which have been disturbing you.



Many people suppose that only those things they ever did wrong should enter into Fourth and Fifth Steps. This is a mistake, it seems to me, since myriad other factors go to make us what we are. Here are some general areas where you might find your number-one inner enemy.



1.  Your early home life. Did you love your parents and did they love you? (Is it only coincidence that a large percentage of the alcoholics I have known are crosswise with one or the other of their parents?) Were you rejected? Spoiled? Sheltered? Shoved out on your own too soon? Do you carry ill will toward a brother or sister? Were you laughed at? Unduly punished?



Put it all down in black and white. Your counselor will help you put the pieces together.



2.  Shock. Did you have a bad scare at a tender age? Do you recall vividly some incident where you were sure you would be killed? Your insecurity may date back to a distant day when you suddenly thought all your world was falling apart.



Write it out in great detail. The mere transfer from your harried soul to the paper will do you more good than you can imagine beforehand.



3.  Disappointment. This is close kin to shock. Did you want something with all your heart, and then not get it? Was somebody else elected captain of the team or president of the class? Did somebody else get someone you longed to make your own?



Perhaps this is the place where you decided the universe wasn’t friendly and God loved somebody else more than you. Maybe those I-feel-sorry-for-me hours go back to this experience, or others like it.



4.  Hatred, resentment, grudge. Make a list of those who have done you wrong and how you feel about them. Add to the list those whom you do not like, and why. Both religion and psychology stand by the view that you can’t have the love of God flowing into your heart until the pipes from you to others have been cleared of rust and rubbish. No one has ever proved the opposite.



5.  Guilt complex. Did you steal something back there in the long-gone years? Did you cheat in class? Did you hurt someone?



How about sex? Among non-alcoholics in my work as counselor I find that at least seventy-five per cent of those who suffer from guilt complex have either an imagined or real sex sin in their background. With alcoholics, in my experience, let me stress, it’s 100%. I have never participated in the Fifth Step with anyone who didn’t have some moral misdemeanors to relate.



You may attempt to laugh it off and treat it lightly. But we are all moral creatures, and there is something sacred in us which, when tampered with, comes back one day to beat a haunting tattoo on the deep-toned drums of the soul.



This may be the hardest thing you ever did: write it down. Don’t be afraid. God, having created us, knows our frailty. He gave us our instincts. It would be against His very nature to equip us with driving impulses and not forgive when we have used them wrongly.



Your counselor will help you here, and you will help yourself if you list them, one-two-three.



6.  Selfishness. Are you number one on your agenda? Oddly enough, it may be two opposite ends of the same pole which made you that way. You may have had too much when you were little. Thus you naturally thought that life was designed to please you and when you fared forth on your own you discovered that you were somebody special at home but just another struggler to everyone else. This made you bitter. You set out to please you and that always leads to bitterness.



Or maybe you didn’t have the things that all the other kids accepted as commonplace. Therefore you decided that one day you would put yourself in a spot where you could really be nice to you. Thus, without realizing it, you became selfish.



Life is for service, not self-service, and when you see yourself on paper you may discover a big flaw in your thinking.



There are many other areas of your background too, which will be revealing. Time and space will not permit listing them all. I have suggested a few of those most common. Take your time, be honest, write it all down in great detail.



When you have completed your inventory, make a date with the person you have chosen and have it over as soon as possible. It’s a good idea to call this person well ahead of time and ask him to save you plenty of time in his schedule.



Select a listener you can trust. Maybe it’s your doctor, your priest, your minister. Possibly it’s a prominent businessman or someone nobody notices. It may be a person in a distant city whom you will never see again. Maybe it’s just a good friend.



But whoever it is, believe in him completely. Have confidence that he can help you put the pieces together. You should also believe that he has enough of the love of God in his heart to share some of it with you. It also helps if your counselor has been over this part of the rocky pass ahead of you, although there are exceptions to this generalization.



Good climbing! It’s a tough mountain but the view is worth it from the top, once you get by The Hump.


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