Step Eight

“Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and

became willing to make amends to them all.”

STEPS Eight and Nine are concerned with personal rela-

tions. First, we take a look backward and try to discover
where we have been at fault; next we make a vigorous at-
tempt to repair the damage we have done; and third, hav-
ing thus cleaned away the debris of the past, we consider
how, with our newfound knowledge of ourselves, we may
develop the best possible relations with every human being
we know.
This is a very large order. It is a task which we may per-
form with increasing skill, but never really finish. Learning
how to live in the greatest peace, partnership, and brother-
hood with all men and women, of whatever description, is
a moving and fascinating adventure. Every A.A. has found
that he can make little headway in this new adventure of
living until he first backtracks and really makes an accu-
rate and unsparing survey of the human wreckage he has
left in his wake. To a degree, he has already done this when
taking moral inventory, but now the time has come when
he ought to redouble his efforts to see how many people he
has hurt, and in what ways. This reopening of emotional
wounds, some old, some perhaps forgotten, and some still
painfully festering, will at first look like a purposeless and
pointless piece of surgery. But if a willing start is made,

77
78 STEP EIGHT

then the great advantages of doing this will so quickly re-

veal themselves that the pain will be lessened as one ob-
stacle after another melts away.
These obstacles, however, are very real. The first, and one
of the most difficult, has to do with forgiveness. The mo-
ment we ponder a twisted or broken relationship with an-
other person, our emotions go on the defensive. To escape
looking at the wrongs we have done another, we resentfully
focus on the wrong he has done us. This is especially true if
he has, in fact, behaved badly at all. Triumphantly we seize
upon his misbehavior as the perfect excuse for minimizing
or forgetting our own.
Right here we need to fetch ourselves up sharply. It
doesn’t make much sense when a real tosspot calls a kettle
black. Let’s remember that alcoholics are not the only ones
bedeviled by sick emotions. Moreover, it is usually a fact
that our behavior when drinking has aggravated the defects
of others. We’ve repeatedly strained the patience of our
best friends to a snapping point, and have brought out the
very worst in those who didn’t think much of us to begin
with. In many instances we are really dealing with fellow
sufferers, people whose woes we have increased. If we are
now about to ask forgiveness for ourselves, why shouldn’t
we start out by forgiving them, one and all?
When listing the people we have harmed, most of us hit
another solid obstacle. We got a pretty severe shock when
we realized that we were preparing to make a face-to-face
admission of our wretched conduct to those we had hurt. It
had been embarrassing enough when in confidence we had
admitted these things to God, to ourselves, and to another
 STEP EIGHT 79

human being. But the prospect of actually visiting or even

writing the people concerned now overwhelmed us, espe-
cially when we remembered in what poor favor we stood
with most of them. There were cases, too, where we had
damaged others who were still happily unaware of being
hurt. Why, we cried, shouldn’t bygones be bygones? Why
do we have to think of these people at all? These were some
of the ways in which fear conspired with pride to hinder
our making a list of all the people we had harmed.
Some of us, though, tripped over a very different snag.
We clung to the claim that when drinking we never hurt
anybody but ourselves. Our families didn’t suffer, because
we always paid the bills and seldom drank at home. Our
business associates didn’t suffer, because we were usually
on the job. Our reputations hadn’t suffered, because we
were certain few knew of our drinking. Those who did
would sometimes assure us that, after all, a lively bender
was only a good man’s fault. What real harm, therefore,
had we done? No more, surely, than we could easily mend
with a few casual apologies.
This attitude, of course, is the end result of purposeful
forgetting. It is an attitude which can only be changed by a
deep and honest search of our motives and actions.
Though in some cases we cannot make restitution at all,
and in some cases action ought to be deferred, we should
nevertheless make an accurate and really exhaustive survey
of our past life as it has affected other people. In many in-
stances we shall find that though the harm done others has
not been great, the emotional harm we have done ourselves
has. Very deep, sometimes quite forgotten, damaging emo-
80 STEP EIGHT

tional conflicts persist below the level of consciousness. At

the time of these occurrences, they may actually have given
our emotions violent twists which have since discolored
our personalities and altered our lives for the worse.
While the purpose of making restitution to others is
paramount, it is equally necessary that we extricate from
an examination of our personal relations every bit of in-
formation about ourselves and our fundamental difficul-
ties that we can. Since defective relations with other human
beings have nearly always been the immediate cause of our
woes, including our alcoholism, no field of investigation
could yield more satisfying and valuable rewards than this
one. Calm, thoughtful reflection upon personal relations
can deepen our insight. We can go far beyond those things
which were superficially wrong with us, to see those flaws
which were basic, flaws which sometimes were responsible
for the whole pattern of our lives. Thoroughness, we have
found, will pay—and pay handsomely.
We might next ask ourselves what we mean when we
say that we have “harmed” other people. What kinds of
“harm” do people do one another, anyway? To define the
word “harm” in a practical way, we might call it the re-
sult of instincts in collision, which cause physical, mental,
emotional, or spiritual damage to people. If our tempers
are consistently bad, we arouse anger in others. If we lie or
cheat, we deprive others not only of their worldly goods,
but of their emotional security and peace of mind. We re-
ally issue them an invitation to become contemptuous and
vengeful. If our sex conduct is selfish, we may excite jeal-
ousy, misery, and a strong desire to retaliate in kind.
 STEP EIGHT 81

Such gross misbehavior is not by any means a full cata-

logue of the harms we do. Let us think of some of the
subtler ones which can sometimes be quite as damaging.
Suppose that in our family lives we happen to be miserly,
irresponsible, callous, or cold. Suppose that we are irrita-
ble, critical, impatient, and humorless. Suppose we lavish
attention upon one member of the family and neglect the
others. What happens when we try to dominate the whole
family, either by a rule of iron or by a constant outpour-
ing of minute directions for just how their lives should be
lived from hour to hour? What happens when we wallow
in depression, self-pity oozing from every pore, and inflict
that upon those about us? Such a roster of harms done
others—the kind that make daily living with us as prac-
ticing alcoholics difficult and often unbearable—could be
extended almost indefinitely. When we take such personal-
ity traits as these into shop, office, and the society of our
fellows, they can do damage almost as extensive as that we
have caused at home.
Having carefully surveyed this whole area of human re-
lations, and having decided exactly what personality traits
in us injured and disturbed others, we can now commence
to ransack memory for the people to whom we have given
offense. To put a finger on the nearby and most deeply dam-
aged ones shouldn’t be hard to do. Then, as year by year we
walk back through our lives as far as memory will reach,
we shall be bound to construct a long list of people who
have, to some extent or other, been affected. We should,
of course, ponder and weigh each instance carefully. We
shall want to hold ourselves to the course of admitting the
82 STEP EIGHT

things we have done, meanwhile forgiving the wrongs done

us, real or fancied. We should avoid extreme judgments,
both of ourselves and of others involved. We must not ex-
aggerate our defects or theirs. A quiet, objective view will
be our steadfast aim.
Whenever our pencil falters, we can fortify and cheer
ourselves by remembering what A.A. experience in this
Step has meant to others. It is the beginning of the end of
isolation from our fellows and from God.