One of the Ten Commandments given to the prophet Moses is "Thou shalt have no other gods before me,". In our post-modern, "civilized" society, polytheism—the worship of such things as the spirits of trees, animals, rivers and mountains- seems to be primitive. For most of us, the worship of but one Higher Power, if we believe in one at all, is simply a given. We do not worship multiple Gods, or do we?

Traditional 12 Step literature suggests that our resentments are the issue to be resolved by the 4^th Step inventory. We addicted people resent our dependencies, probably more than anything else. We naturally deny our resentments and blame other things in order to protect our dependencies. After the high is gone for an alcoholic or drug addict and they are left with the aftermath of a terrible hangover they are a little closer to the truth of the addictive trap they are in. But still the alcoholic will lay in bed upon waking, even with their worst hangover yet, and blame the brand of whisky they drank or chastise themselves for drinking red instead of white wine.

Consciously or unconsciously we feel we have to protect our dependent behavior (addictions) because we think we cannot live without them. In truth we resent our dependencies for the limited and painful lives they trap us into while in the throes of addiction.

Our dependencies and resentments are like first cousins. Our dependencies create conflict which create resentments in everyone involved. We tend to resent the things and people we are dependent upon because these dependencies create conflict in our lives. But we cannot blame the things we think we need, so we point the blame for our troubles at other things. Use of our dependencies inevitably creates situations that form resentments. Gone unchecked, our resentments stay unresolved for years, even until we die. Drug addicts will point the blame at their family, friends and lovers for all the troubles that their addiction has caused them. In desperation they will fight and sometimes kill to keep the blame off their (precious) addiction in order to protect their own comfortable artificial world.

Our resentments build in a circular fashion encouraging us to engage in unhelpful behaviors that lead to us using our dependencies. We set ourselves up by playing clever games with our dependencies that create situations that feed our resentments, which in turn cause bad behavior and then back to using even more. We (sometimes ingeniously) create excuses to use our dependencies. In turn the behaviors, actions and situations of our lives are fed by how we are feeling at any given moment. Many of us will try and deny this, but it is out of our feelings that we make most of our daily decisions. Feelings are the products of our thought patterns, which are governed by our beliefs about ourselves. Often we tell ourselves to count to ten, breathe deeply, think about something else or take a break when our feelings get out of control. Our unmanageable behaviors happen first in our brains as unmanageable thinking. The more aware we become that our feelings are created in our heads, the more capable we become of keeping ourselves calm and our lives more manageable.

In the so-called "primitive" cultures of the ancient world, the veneration of a god came about out of fear and necessity. People feared the wrath of the gods that they perceived to be controlling their environment. They perceived these gods as doling out the bad and the good luck to whomever did or did not make sacrifices to them. The gods—they perceived—made the storms as well as good weather, could heal the sick and let them die. The gods were responsible for the give and take of essential things as well as desirable things.

A thing would be deified and venerated if it were believed to have salvific value or the power to save them from something—a savior. To assign salvific value to a thing is to believe that the thing, or person is capable of saving us from our pain and suffering, or to believe that the thing or person is capable of making us whole, sound, or happy. The absence of that person or thing would jeopardize our happiness and peace. As addicted people we must look at the fact that we have assigned salvific value to many people, things and situations. We call them "dependencies." Bill Wilson, in his commentary on the 4^th Step in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, describes these dependencies. Together they comprise for each of us our own private pantheon of gods. These are "idols" to which we give our veneration and our allegiance and which we believe will make us happy and at peace.

Once we have done a thorough Step 1-3 and the spiritual foundation of them has been laid, it will become apparent that our physical addictions are the symptoms of a disease and merely the tip of the iceberg. The disease of addiction manifests itself in what we call alcoholism, drug addiction, co-dependency etc. The disease has its foundation in our thoughts, beliefs, and resultant behaviors, which are the structural supports on which our disease rests and by which it is defended. Once we get rid of the most obvious symptom, the alcohol, drug or addictive relationship, we must then deal with (objectify) the diseased thoughts, beliefs and behaviors that caused the use of the drug in the first place. A 4^th Step exposes our thoughts, beliefs and behaviors where we can view them objectively. When we expose our thoughts, beliefs and behaviors we expose the disease that lives in and taints them, which weakens the disease and is the main purpose of support groups. We tell on ourselves by telling our personal stories thus exposing where the disease has affected our thoughts, beliefs and behaviors. It is by magnifying our thoughts, beliefs and behaviors that our disease protects itself from the light of sane reason and defends and protects itself. Gone unchecked, this progression allows our disease to dominate our entire self-awareness.

If we do not deal with the roots of our disease it will continue to grow and we will most likely relapse into active using. We also might "white-knuckle" it and become a miserable "dry drunk," a condition which usually leads us back to using. Abstinence alone is not true sobriety. When we adopt one belief system that enables us to remain abstinent, while harboring another mutually exclusive set of beliefs, we create opposite sets of feelings. We create an internal conflict which oftentimes makes us miserable (not to mention those around us). Step 4, "Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves." This is where we begin to identify the areas of our lives which promote the growth of our disease. We are taking an inventory (stock) of our spoiled goods (diagnosing the problems) that we can get rid of them and begin anew.

Diversion is the principal defense tactic that our disease uses to keep us from the healing process. When we convince ourselves that our happiness is dependent upon people, places and things, external to ourselves, our disease is safely hidden away from scrutiny. The diversionary tactic used is dependency. We set up an "if...only" orientation. How often have we all said or thought: "I would be happy if only I had a job promotion, a new home, a new car or a loving mate." The antithesis happens also: "I just know my anxiety and depression is all because of my mate, my boss, my business problems," etc.

Both of these kinds of statements reflect the same dynamic, that of assigning salvific value to people, places, things, or situations outside of ourselves. When we expect people, places and things to make us feel good or outright save us, we set ourselves up for victimhood. Unconsciously labeling oneself a victim provides one with a ready scapegoat for the times when we experience unmanageability. When trouble hits and we get all upset and emotional, we point fingers away from ourselves, blaming outside circumstances, denying that there are three fingers left pointing directly at us. We are the place where the trouble began. Blaming anything or anyone other than ourselves provides us with a seemingly justifiable motive for our attempts at control and manipulation of people and our outside environment in general. There is an ancient literary metaphor for this idea called idol worship. In ancient times and in cultures where animals were venerated as having salvific value, images such as calves and goats were made of gold and set on pedestals to receive the prayers of worshippers. Whenever we assign salvific value to anything or anyone outside of our Higher Power we erect an idol just as surely as if we had built the Golden Calf. We addicts add these "idols" to our own personal pantheon of gods. Relationships, food, sex, gambling, drugs and alcohol become our demigods. Unpredictable and volatile, gone unchecked, they eventually terrify and destroy our sobriety and peace of mind when we least expect it. These idols create our internal world of illusion. Until we bottom out and can no longer effectively deny that our wispy, foggy, comfortable world of illusion is a death sentence we usually will traipse on "blissfully" toward an unnecessary grave. This is only because the world of illusion, lies, and denial, is all we have known.

The phenomenon of toxic dependency can be seen as a set of symptoms occurring in a cyclical, self-perpetuating system. No matter how complicated and conflicted they may seem, all toxic dependencies occur as, essentially, the same dynamic. A simplified paradigm looks like this:

We each believe on some level that we are incomplete, sinful people and that if a Higher Power exists at all that Power must hate us. We believe that we were created defective, lacking in vital things which will complete and make us happy, fulfilled and at peace. We expend much energy in seeking the missing pieces of our puzzle. We use such things as people, careers, material possessions, drugs, ideological beliefs and alcohol to "complete" ourselves. These dependencies become the focus of our conscious awareness, and we sacrifice large amounts of money, any and all relationships, all our possessions and energy to protect our salvific idols. We will manipulate, steal, cheat and become violent criminals, all for our own cause of protecting our dependencies. We feel we must continue living in our known and "comfortable" worlds only because we don’t know that any thing else exists. We unconsciously believe things like: "Without these things I will cease to exist." And "Without them I will have a totally meaningless existence devoid of any peace of mind or true happiness."

When a dependency either goes away, or causes so much pain that we are forced to abandon it, we believe either: "I have been abandoned because I am bad and deserve to be abandoned." Or "My loved one caused me pain because I was bad and deserved punishment." In either case, we confirm our original belief that our diseased, thought system has been protected from scrutiny. The object of our pain is seen to be somewhere "out there," and we convince ourselves that "If I can find yet another dependency to fill the void that I feel inside, all will be better. Thus we search for another object of what we believe is "true love" and begin the cycle once again. We never question the reality of the "void" that we perceive inside of us. We merely accept (blindly) the belief that we are somehow incomplete and that the void actually exists. Perhaps that void is a longing, so ask yourself what you truly long for. Then ask your self how you are best to achieve that goal. You probably won’t accomplish this inner work while using such things as alcohol, people and drugs.

This diseased cycle is subtle, cunning, vicious and self-activating, and it makes completely logical sense to us given our underlying, subconscious or conscious beliefs. We cannot free ourselves without outside help. When caught in our disease’s trap we become like hamsters in our own self-made cages, runningendlessly within a circular wire hoop, with no visible means of escaping on our own. Someone, or some event (an act of our Higher Power) must open our cages, but it is up to us to step out.

The objectives of the 4th Step inventory are simple and direct. It is much like taking inventory of ones’ business. When we find out what is in stock we discover what is in store. Another interpretation is that the 4^th Step is a way to diagnose oneself. In any case the inventory is intended to identify our past and present dependencies, identify our feelings about those dependencies, identify our behaviors which we typically use to protect our dependencies. At the end of it all we will graphically demonstrate the real problem in an undeniable way. We will discover the underlying beliefs which support our whole, cyclical, diseased system.

With honesty, open-mindedness and willingness we will break through the denial of our helpless dependency on things, like alcohol and drugs. The achievement of long-term sobriety, peace of mind, and serenity is another story. Long term and continuous healing requires that we break through the denial of the rest of the supporting dependency system. The 4th Step inventory is how we do that. At this point it is clear that we have false beliefs about ourselves and our relationship to our Higher Power. These false beliefs underlie and create the dependency cycle which is in direct conflict with the spiritual foundation laid by the first three Steps. The 4^th Step will help resolve our conflicting beliefs. It is this conflict which will, if not resolved, destroy any chance of true sobriety and very likely will lead us back to active use. The 4th Step points ultimately to the heart of the disease, our spiritual belief, and it shows us where the real healing must take place.

It is important to remember that the behaviors we will be examining in the 4^th Step inventory are disease symptoms, and it is strongly recommended that they be viewed in a clinical way, not judged as personal goodness or badness. These are behaviors and feelings that point directly to what we truly believe about ourselves. Keeping a nonjudgmental attitude toward the inventory is very helpful.

The inventory should be as complete, thorough, and as honest as you can make it, and it can not be perfect, so don’t expect perfection. It will only hinder the process. There is no one correct way to do a 4^th Step inventory, and what follows is but a suggestion. It is important, however, that your inventory be written.

The inventory procedure requires that one be capable of logical thought. It is not recommended that it be used too early in recovery while still in physical or post acute withdrawal (emotional withdrawal). If the sponsor feels that a 4^th Step inventory should be done early in the recovery process, another format such as an autobiographical one might be more helpful and appropriate. We can always go back and do another, more disciplined, in-depth inventory at a later date.

To begin the fourth Step inventory let us go back to our earliest memory and list all the people, situations and things we felt were important to us. We should Include our painful as well as our happy memories. We might construct a table which looks like the one shown in the work page following this chapter. The following refers to that sample inventory.

The first column should include under the subheading "people" all members of the family of origin, current family members, "significant others," important professional, educational and social relationships and any other types of relationships that come to memory. After listing significant people, list significant situations like graduating from school, owning a business, buying a house, etc. Finally, include things you find extremely important for you like: vacation home, houseboat, car, etc. You may wonder how you can know for sure whether a person is a dependency for you or not. Typically, most, if not all of the significant people in our lives are dependencies for us. We come into recovery not knowing how to relate to anyone in any other way. However, it is possible that, for instance, a member of your family of origin may not turn out to be a significant dependency for you. They may later on be eliminated from the list, but in the beginning, list them all.

After completing the first column go back to the first person listed and write down in the second column all the painful incidents and situations that you can remember. Go back to the earliest memories you have of the relationship. For each instance ask yourself these questions: (1) What feeling prompted my behavior? (2) What belief about myself must have motivated my feeling? Write these in the next two columns. It may be helpful to fill in the blanks in the following sentence to help you get started:

The "action" is the situation or behavior listed in Column 2. Your feeling is the emotional perception that prompted the action. Your belief is what you thought must be true about yourself in order to have done the things in the situation, actions and behavior column.

As with our 1st Step table, it is important to understand that, much of the feeling and belief level material is derived by logical deduction, not memory. Especially while using drugs or alcohol, we rarely are aware of our motivating feelings and beliefs that are responsible for our actions. Once again, it is the principle of the smoke and the fire. We may not be able to see the fire, but we can see the smoke. It takes courage and willingness to search out the fires of our diseased beliefs, feelings and actions and extinguish them. Much of the time tears will do the trick. Stay close to your sponsor and support groups. This work is simple, but not easy. The rewards, however, are life-altering. Hang in there and don’t use or drink.

Once a table such as this is completed many confusing issues will be seen clearly. This form of inventory is based on the belief that all dependencies create protective behaviors. These barriers are in turn based upon feelings of which resentments are primary. These feelings are in turn based upon our spiritual belief about ourselves. Column 2, "Behaviors," is the same material we will use to derive our later catalog of character defects. Column 1 provides helpful information when we begin the process of constructing an amends list, so file this information away in a safe place where you can retrieve it at a later date.

It is Columns 3 and 4 which show us the foundations of our disease, and this is the information we use to achieve our healing. Staying clean and dry is only the beginning, it is called "behavior modification" and is the pre-requisite for healing. Quitting our dependency is the pre-surgery preparation before we go in and cut out the "cancer" the source creating the symptoms. The level represented by Column 3 is the feeling level. It is the level at which both program tools, especially the "amends" Steps, and therapeutic intervention can be of great help.

Healing on the level of spiritual belief, represented by Column 4, is accomplished by our Higher Power. Remember that we use the tools of the 12 Steps to remove the barriers that keep our wounds open. Cleaning up our "acts" will let the natural healing occur.

This 4th Step inventory is diagnostic by nature, and it is intended to graphically show the spiritual foundation of our disease. It brings to light the typical ways our diseased, spiritual beliefs express themselves in our feelings and behaviors. Our symptoms vary widely at the behavioral level. We recovering people share much on the emotional (feeling) level and even more on the spiritual (belief) level., but we all have the same spiritual disease that produces a common range of emotional symptoms. This produces a sometimes bewildering array of behavioral symptoms, and this is why we instruct newcomers at speaker meetings to identify with the feelings and not compare the behaviors and events.

When we come into recovery we are told that our addictions form a three-part disease of body, mind and spirit. This 4^th Step inventory reflects these three levels and shows their interrelationship as being cause-and-effect, much like the relationship between part A and part B of Step One. The three levels of our disease form an interlocking chain of causes-and effects, which are an extension of the principle that underlies the 1st Step. Where there's smoke, there's fire, and the way to stop the smoke is by putting out the fire, not by fanning away the smoke. At the beginners' level we are given behavior modification tools to deal with the disease at the behavioral, or physical level only. This is what the entire content of the book Living Sober published by AA World Services, Inc. is all about. The 4th Step tells us that staying clean and sober is not enough. We must deal with sickness of the emotions and the spirit, the foundation of the disease. We are ultimately healing our spirits. Anything less than spiritual healing is merely bandaging the symptoms. Emotional and spiritual healing is the objective of the 12 Steps. The ultimate healing is affected by our Higher Power as we use the 12 Steps to remove our own impediments to healing. It may also be observed that the data in the column "Behaviors, Actions and Situations " is the only information that is unique to addictive personalities. Only on this very peripheral level is there anything unique to recovering people to distinguish their pathology from that of other people who suffer from other forms of dependent personality disorders. To some extent and at some point all people suffer from some form of the disease. The only difference is that some people develop physically addictive behavioral symptoms and some do not. Some peoples’ addictions become life-threatening and must be treated as a primary, physiological pathology. Others as a secondary pathology to an emotional and spiritual disease. There is a large spectrum of addiction stemming from those who are hopelessly addicted to those who are only minimally addicted.

There are connections between what we do and what we feel. With what we perceive and what we believe. How we feel determines what we do. What we believe determines how we feel at any given moment. The inability or unwillingness to see that connection is denial. Our 1st Step work reveals our denial of the connection between our unmanageability and our presumption of control of our own lives. The 4th Step inventory is a tool to help us break through the lies that our disease is based upon and discover the connection between that illusory world and our perceptions. What we think and say we believe about our selves and our Higher Power is often very different from what we actually believe about ourselves and our Higher Power. The 4th Step inventory is also meant to destroy the belief that we are not responsible for our own feelings, for that is giving autonomy to feelings. How often have we said things like, "I couldn’t help getting drunk because I was so depressed." But is it true that we are required to act on our feelings" No. The truth is that we are responsible for our own feelings, we create them, we are the only ones who can stop creating them, and we do this by dealing with the underlying beliefs which generate them. We are not victims of anything outside of ourselves, and we are not victims unless we say we are.

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