A.A.’s Steps Eight and Nine: Acts of Integrity

After Steps One through Seven have brought their healing power to bear on a person’s character, recovery is well on its way. The reality of addiction has been acknowledged, faith in the availability of help has developed, honesty about one’s defects has been established, transparency and connection have been initiated, mindfulness of the impact of one’s defects’ is being practiced, and surrender to the advent of new behaviors is deepening. Steps Eight and Nine will now involve taking concrete action to increase a person’s integrity.

Throughout this series on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, I have stressed that I am not speaking on behalf of A.A. There are many ways to understand the meaning and implications of each step[i]. What follows is only one perspective on Steps Eight and Nine filtered through my experience as an addiction psychiatrist. My goal is to offer thoughts on the psychological depth contained in A.A.’s Twelve-Step approach to recovery from addiction (see A Meaningful Definition of Addiction Recovery).

Although this blog post covers both Steps Eight and Nine, they need to be worked through as very separate steps.

Step Eight reads as follows:

Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Simply taking pencil to paper and making this list is an act of self-honesty. It concretizes what A.A. calls the “wreckage of the past”. People have been hurt, both before addiction began and especially once alcohol or other drugs hijacked your brain. Making a list of those whom you have harmed and detailing how you harmed them stimulates regret, embarrassment, and shame. These painful feelings reveal the sense of morality developing at the core of one’s personality. This growing sense of morality is enhanced by Step Eight’s second portion — the call to become willing to make amends to them all. This is not always easy, as you may harbor resentments and anger toward those who have hurt you. Developing the willingness to amend your behavior toward everyone you have harmed is an important step in developing clear boundaries. One’s own behavior must be separated from others’ misbehavior. Attention needs to be paid only to “your side of the street.” Recovery encourages taking full responsibility for one’s behavior rather than blaming others for harming them. This difficult work is made easier by keeping Step Nine at bay.

Step Nine creates a good deal of anxiety, if not outright fear. It reads as follows:

Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Preparation for making direct amends requires first understanding that this means far more than a mere apology, although a sincere apology is often a portion of an amends. Step Nine calls for concrete changes in behavior, just as an amendment to a law changes that law. An apology without changing your harmful behavior is a hollow performance. In many instances, simply acknowledging your harmful behavior directly to another, face to face, is already a significant change in behavior. Every amends needs to be considered carefully and many people in A.A. rely on consultation with a sponsor who has completed the Ninth Step for guidance. This is particularly important in discerning when making amends could compound the harm done.

As vulnerable as it is to openly acknowledge harmful behavior to another, anxiety is further increased by the unpredictability of others’ reactions. While appreciation, and even admiration, are often the response to a Ninth Step amends, anger, disdain, rejection, and indifference may also be met. There is no way to control how another person might respond to your amends, and their response cannot be taken as a measure of your earnestness or sincerity. Again, boundaries are reinforced. You offer your amends and change your behavior to the best of your ability and leave the other free to receive the amends in whatever way they will. The standards for measuring your behavior need to be internal.

The reward for doing Ninth-Step amends is often immediate relief and a lightness that comes from the lifting of shame. The truth really can set you free, and openly telling the truth about yourself to those who have been harmed lifts the chains on your freedom. Many procrastinate in making their amends, but this leaves them still chained to their shame. The only path toward personal freedom is through becoming transparent to others, upright, honest, and willing to change.

I am reminded of a man who, in his mid-thirties, had spent half his life in prison, resentful and self-pitying. Then it struck him: He was in prison because he was a criminal! He began fully acknowledging his responsibility for the harm to others that rightfully led to his incarceration. He abandoned all illegal activity, showed respect for the proper use of authority, and has been a model citizen ever since, very happily free of those confining cement walls. There are many ways of making amends.

The Eighth and Ninth Steps build integrity through action. We say people have integrity when their lives are imbued with honesty and strong moral principles. People with integrity also have a whole and undivided quality. Beliefs, intentions, and actions are internally coherent. They have openness and transparency — what you see is what you get. They have a freedom that comes from acceptance of full responsibility for themselves and not playing the victim.

Now the goal is to maintain the gains that recovery through the first nine steps has produced, to deepen recovery even further, and to carry it out into the world, hopefully to the benefit of those still suffering from addiction. My next posts will look at how each of the final three steps accomplish this goal.