Chapter 6, titled “Into Action”, is in my experience a guide for the steps 5 through 11 in the program we call Alcoholics Anonymous.  This chapter, as its title suggests, is all about the recovering alcoholic physically reviewing his wrongdoings and setting them right.  In other words, getting into action.  While working the steps throughout this chapter with a sponsor I have experienced a freedom that, I believe, could not have been given me with any other means.  These 7 sequential steps are where, for me, the real recovery of this program lies.  It is about setting my past transgressions right and maintaining that standing.  My higher power, with which I call God, allows me the strength and willingness to follow through with the actions suggested in this chapter.  Step 5, admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs, allowed me to look at myself, with the help of another person, and see who I truly was inside.  After completing this step I moved to steps six, were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character, and step seven, humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings, which then allowed me to take the visual that I had learned of myself and change my character with the help of God.  With my sponsor I then moved to step eight, made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all, and nine, made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others, and set right the wrongs of my past emotionally and financially for those I had affected negatively.  And then I moved to the final two steps of this chapter which were steps ten, continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it, and step eleven, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.  These two allowed me then, and now, to help me keep my relationships free from harm that I am capable of causing.

—Alex J.