The only step you can complete perfectly ...

The only step you can complete perfectly, is it said, is Step One.

I would question this statement.

Step One is an admission. What is a perfect admission? Presumably an admission without any caveat, proviso, or reservation. Certainly, the Big Book says that there must be no reservation whatsoever. So far, so good.

However, what we’re dealing with in Step One is an alcoholic mind. An idea that can be clear, and wholeheartedly accepted, at ten past eleven in the morning can be joined by other, conflicting ideas by four-thirty in the afternoon, and completely displaced by seven in the evening.

The perfect execution of Step One would be such an admission which, 24 hours a day, for the rest of one’s life, remains perfectly untainted by any contradictory or conflicting thought. Frankly, I seriously doubt that anyone in AA has managed to keep their minds clear of any thoughts that contradict or conflict with Step One, for the rest of their lives.

In fact, it’s axiomatic that AAs, even those who are well recovered and decades sober, will exhibit moments (at the very least), if not hours, days, weeks, months, or years, of self-will, thus back-tracking brazenly on the second part of Step One, the admission that ‘we’ (the ‘small s’ self) cannot (successfully) manage our own lives.

Pretty much everyone I have sponsored, when completing Step One, whilst confident to proceed on the basis that its two propositions are true, concedes the presence and allure of stray thoughts. In fact, the presence and allure of such thoughts is precisely the insanity that the remainder of the steps is designed to combat, so one could expect the elimination of such thoughts only in tandem with the completion of the remainder of the Steps. If their permanent and perfect elimination were secured by the mere taking of Step One, the remainder of the steps would not be necessary.

So, my view is that taking Step One perfectly is an ideal, not an attained state.

Can other steps be taken perfectly? Steps Two, Three, and Six are unmeasurable, and Steps Four, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve are open-ended, with almost unlimited possibilities for expansion in time and scope. Let’s cross those off the list of steps that might be taken perfectly.

That leaves us with Five, Seven, Eight, and Nine.

Seven is a good candidate for perfect step-working. It’s a pivot point in the Steps, a one-off moment, and either one has said the prayer sincerely or one has not. So, Step Seven can be worked perfectly (although one might rightly argue that ‘humbly’ has degrees, and that no one is perfectly humble).

Steps Five, Eight, and Nine, provided that we use what in auditing would be called a ‘materiality threshold’, can be completely perfectly, and a failure to do so will likely result in relapse.

When auditors audit a firm’s accounts, they are not looking for every single error; they are looking for errors that result in material misstatement of the accounts. A threshhold is applied, below which errors are ignored as immaterial.

Similarly, in Step Five, every single manifestation of every character defect (in thought, word, and deed) is not trotted out. To do so would be impossible (for reasons of memory alone) and counterproductive: the purpose of the steps is not to stay locked in self-examination but to clear a path to allow God’s power to flow through us into right action on His behalf for our fellows.

A perfect Step Five is one in which the individual conveys all of the character defects she or he has, and character defects, in enumeration, are finite. The St Augustine Prayer Book contains a great listing, and that’s comprehensive but reassuringly finite. Apart from ‘twists of character’, we are to convey ‘dark crannies’ of the past. I take this to be the shameful and difficult secrets. Again, these are finite. If one works down from the worst, one fairly soon arrives at a point where the remaining secrets are merely minor indiscretions, and there is essentially nothing left hiding in the closet that has not in substance been conveyed already.

In practice, therefore, it’s perfectly possible to effect a perfect Step Five.

Similarly, with the judicious application of a materiality threshold, Step Eight is finite, and that sets the bounds of Step Nine: either one has done one’s utmost to set right these wrongs or one has not. The result is measurable, and perfection is thus attainable. The perfection is not one of outcome but effort.

In my case, the threat of relapse did not subside until I had done a reasonably good job on Steps Five, Eight, and Nine, and in particular the entry into the world of the spirit did not occur until, some years later, I completed Steps Five, Eight, and Nine much more satisfactorily, in each case leaving nothing significant inside that was not conveyed and, where applicable, amended.