Making Amends

HAVING put pen to paper as suggested by my sponsor and made my list, I arranged to visit him at his house to discuss Step Nine. The list of people’s names came out of me re-reading my Step Four. We met one morning, made coffee and settled down in the smallest bedroom of his modest terrace house - this room had been designed for this purpose as his wife was a member too.

I started to read through my list of names, and began to explain why I wished to make amends to each one. At this point my sponsor cried, "STOP”, which I promptly did. He continued, "You read the list of amends and I will be the one to tell you which ones you should do.” At this point he changed everything, He explained to me how what I had read out to him so far were examples of me just feeding my own EGO, I was going back into people’s lives uninvited and ‘showing off’ my new found sobriety. The criteria used to decide who I should contact was - how would I feel if I bumped into this person when walking along the seafront? To answer this question honestly, I had to dig deep to my self-honesty - another new experience for me. So, it turned out that my sponsor wanted me to make amends to the people whose names I had NOT read out originally. 

In my early days of sobriety I did make a phone call to a man whose life I had caused a lot of pain, the result of which was he asked me, with a thinly veiled threat, "Never to contact him again " So far I have kept this promise - for thirty-five years.

I wrote four letters to people explaining what I was trying to do and received two positive replies, I met up with these people and said my piece, I got one very good response and a fair one. There were others I could not contact at all without causing pain, so my sponsor asked me to pray for them. At this point he told I was doing this Step - not to make myself look good in the eyes of others or to make them feel better, but the point was to help me remain sober, to clear more debris from the past. When we finished our discussion on who I should contact and how, I left his house and walked back to my home (I did not drive or own a car in those days) but I felt better, lighter somehow. I had a future, a new Programme for living.

COLIN T