“This requires action on our part, which, when completed, will mean that we have admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our defects. This brings us to the Fifth Step in the program of recovery mentioned in the preceding chapter.” (Page 72, Big Book)
“We think we have done well enough in admitting these things to ourselves.” (Page 72, Big Book)
In Step Four, we admit our defects to ourselves, by simple virtue of writing them down.
In Step Five, by admitting our defects to another, we are automatically admitting them to God.
In Al-Anon, we say that we work the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is stated in the suggested opening. However, the Big Book is not conference-approved literature in Al-Anon. The only thing that is taken from AA (and adapted slightly) is the summary of the Twelve Steps taken from page 58.
These are not the Steps, however; the Steps are the contents of the book up to page 164.
Imagine a recipe book where the only page left is the contents page. Someone comes along and tries to reconstruct recipes merely based on their title, ‘bouillabaisse’ or ‘black forest gâteau’: they might come up with an approximation, but this will not be authentic.
In Al-Anon, we have taken the recipe title for each Step but then populated it with our own content.
Thus in Step Five, some of the literature refers to the admission to God and the admission to oneself as separate acts than the admission to another person. This means that the Fifth Step in Al-Anon really is a different Step than the Fifth Step in AA. It cannot really be said to be the same Step at all. It is not true to say that we work the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous in Al-Anon. We are doing something different. Except there is no settled system for going through the Steps in Al-Anon. There is merely a smörgåsbord of possibilities, and the individual guides in various books, supplemented with titbits scattered throughout the more discursive literature. Some elements are very good. But the individual is left with the task of assembling a programme for themselves, because of the fellowship failing to arrive at a settled position as a whole as to what the programme is. This is not ideal. Imagine a hospital where there are no treatment protocols but the patient, who is mentally ill, having to devise his own treatment programme based on the full range of possible interventions.
Hence, I use the Big Book to address the issues raised in Al-Anon, and I find the method perfectly adequate.