"Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves."

	Creation gave us instincts for a purpose.  Without them we wouldn't be complete
human beings.  If women and men didn't exert themselves to be secure in their persons,
made no effort to harvest food or construct shelter, there would be no survival.  If they
didn't reproduce, the earth wouldn't be populated.  If there were no social instinct, if
people cared nothing for the society of one another, there would be no society.  So these
desires -- for the sex relation, for material and emotional security, and for companionship
-- are perfectly necessary and right, and surely God-given.
	Yet these instincts, so necessary for our existence, often far exceed their proper
functions.  Powerfully, blindly, many times subtly, they drive us, dominate us, and insist
upon ruling our lives.  Our desires for sex, for material and emotional security, and for an
important place in society often tyrannize us.  When thus out of joint, our natural desires
cause us great trouble, practically all the trouble there is.  No human being, however good,
is exempt from these troubles.  Nearly every serious emotional problem can be seen as a
case of misdirected instinct.  When that happens, our great natural assets, the instincts,
have turned into physical and mental liabilities.
	Step Four is our vigorous and painstaking effort to discover what these liabilities in
each of us have been, and are.  We want to find exactly how, when, and where our natural
desires have warped us.  We wish to look squarely at the unhappiness this has caused
others and ourselves.,  By discovering what our emotional deformities are, we can move
toward their correction.  Without a willing and persistent effort to do this, there can be
little sobriety or contentment for us.  Without a searching and fearless moral inventory,
most of us have found that the faith which really works in daily living is still out of reach.
	Before tackling the inventory problem in detail, let's have a closer look at what the
basic problem is.  Simple examples like the following take on a world of meaning when we
think about them.  Suppose a person places sex desire ahead of everything else.  In such a
case, this imperious urge can destroy our chances for material and emotional security  as
well as our standing in the community.  Another may develop such an obsession for
financial security that they want to do nothing but hoard money.  Going to the extreme,
one can become a miser, or even a recluse, cut off from both family and friends.
	Nor is the quest for security always expressed in terms of money.  How frequently
we see a frightened human being determined to depend completely upon a stronger person
for guidance and protection.  This weak one, failing to meet life's responsibilities with their
own resources, never grows up.  Disillusionment and helplessness are the result.  In time
all our protectors either flee or die, and we are once more left alone and afraid.
	We have also seen women and men who go power-mad, who devote themselves to
attempting to rule their fellows.  These people often throw to the winds every chance for
legitimate security and a happy family life.  Whenever a human being becomes a
battleground for the instincts, there can be no peace.
	But that is not all of the danger.  Every time people impose their instincts
unreasonably upon others, unhappiness follows.  If the pursuit of wealth tramples upon
people who happen to be in the way, then anger, jealousy, and revenge are likely to be
aroused.  If sex runs riot, there is a similar uproar.  Demands made upon other people  for
too much attention, protection, and love can only invite domination or revulsion in the
protectors themselves -- two emotions quite as unhealthy as the demands which evoked
them.  When an individual's desire for prestige becomes uncontrollable, whether in the
sewing circle or at the international conference table, other people suffer and often revolt. 
This collision of instincts can produce anything from a cold snub to a blazing revolution. 
In these ways we are set in conflict not only with ourselves, but with other people who
have instincts, too.
	Alcoholics especially should be able to see that instinct run wild in themselves is
the underlying cause of their destructive drinking.  We have drunk to drown feelings of
fear, frustration, and depression.  We have drunk to escape the guilt of passions, and then
have drunk again to make more passions possible.  We have drunk for vainglory -- that we
might the more enjoy foolish dreams of pomp and power.  This perverse soul-sickness is
not pleasant to look upon.  Instincts on rampage balk at investigation.  The minute we
make a serious attempt to probe them, we are liable to suffer severe reactions.
	If temperamentally we are on the depressive side, we are apt to be swamped with
guilt and self-loathing.  We wallow in this messy bog, often getting a misshapen and
painful pleasure out of it.  As we morbidly pursue this melancholy activity, we may sink to
such a point of despair that nothing but oblivion looks possible as a solution.  Here, of
course, we have lost all perspective, and therefore all genuine humility.  For this is pride in
reverse.  This is not a moral inventory at all;  it is the very process by which the depressive
has so often been led to the bottle and extinction.
	If, however our natural disposition is inclined to self-righteousness or grandiosity,
our reaction will be just the opposite.  We will be offended at A.A.'s suggested inventory. 
No doubt we shall point with pride to the good lives we thought we led before the bottle
cut us down.  We shall claim that our serious character defects, if we think we have any at
all, have been caused chiefly by excessive drinking.  This being so, we think it logically
follows that sobriety -- first, last, and all the time -- is the only thing we need to work for. 
We believe that our one-time good characters will be revived the moment we quit alcohol. 
If we were pretty nice people all along, except for our drinking, what need is there for a
moral inventory now that we are sober?
	We also clutch at another wonderful excuse for avoiding an inventory.  Our
present anxieties and troubles, we cry, are caused by the behavior of other people --
people who really need a moral inventory.  We firmly believe that if only they'd treat us
better, we'd be all right.  Therefore we think our indignation is justified and reasonable --
that our resentments are the "right kind."  We aren't the guilty ones.  They are!
	At this stage of the inventory proceedings, our sponsors come to the rescue.  They
can do this, for they are the carriers of A.A.'s tested experience with Step Four.  They
comfort the melancholy ones by first showing them that their case is not strange or
different, that their character defects are probably not more numerous or worse than those
of anyone else in A.A.  This the sponsors promptly prove by talking freely and easily, and
without exhibitionism, about their own defects, past and present.  This calm, yet realistic,
stock-taking is immensely reassuring.  The sponsors probably point out that the
newcomers have some assets which can be noted along with their liabilities.  This tends to
clear away morbidity and encourage balance.  As soon as they begin to be more objective,
newcomers can fearlessly, rather than fearfully, look at their own defects.
	The sponsors of those who feel they need no inventory are confronted with quite
another problem.  This is because people who are driven by pride of self unconsciously
blind themselves to their liabilities.  These newcomers scarcely need comforting.  The
problem is to help them discover a chink in the walls their ego has built, through which the
light of reason can shine.
	First off, they can be told that the majority of A.A. members have suffered severely
from self-justification during their drinking days.  For most of us, self-justification was the
maker of excuses;  excuses, of course, for drinking, and for all kinds of crazy and
damaging conduct.  We had made the invention of alibis a fine art.  We had to drink
because times were hard or times were good.  We had to drink because at home we were
smothered with love or got none at all.  We had to drink because at work we were great
successes or dismal failures.  We had to drink because our nation had won a war or lost a
peace.  And so it went, ad infinitum.
	We thought "conditions" drove us to drink, and when we tried to correct these
conditions and found that we couldn't to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of
hand and we became alcoholics.  It never occurred to us that we needed to change
ourselves to meet conditions, whatever they were.
	But in A.A. we slowly learned that something had to be done about our vengeful
resentments, self-pity, and unwarranted pride.  We had to see that every time we played
the big shot, we turned people against us.  We had to see that when we harbored grudges
and planned revenge for such defeats, we were really beating ourselves with the club of
anger we had intended to use on others.  We learned that if we were seriously disturbed,
our first need was to quiet that disturbance, regardless of who or what we thought caused
it.  
	To see how erratic emotions victimized us often took a long time.  We could
perceive them quickly in others, but only slowly in ourselves.  First of all, we had to admit
that we had many of these defects, even though such disclosures were painful and
humiliating.  Where other people were concerned, we had to drop the word "blame" from
our speech and thought.  This required great willingness even to begin.  But once over the
first two or three high hurdles, the course ahead began to look easier.  For we had started
to get perspective on ourselves, which is another way of saying that we were gaining in
humility.  
	Of course the depressive and the power-driver are personality extremes, types with
which A.A. and the whole world abound.  Often these personalities are just as sharply
defined as the examples given.  But just as often some of us will fit more or less into both
classifications.  Human beings are never quite alike, so each of us, when making an
inventory, will need to determine what our individual character defects are.  Having found
the shoes that fit, we ought to step into them and walk with new confidence that we are at
last on the right track. 
	Now let's ponder the need for a list of the more glaring personality defects all of us
have in varying degrees.  To those having religious training, such a list would set forth
serious violations of moral principles.  Some others will think of this list as defects of
character.  Still others will call it an index of maladjustments.  Some will become quite
annoyed if there is talk about immorality, let alone sin.  But all who are in the least
reasonable will agree upon one point:  that there is plenty wrong with us alcoholics about
which plenty will have to be done if we are to expect sobriety, progress, and any real
ability to cope with life.
	To avoid falling into confusion over the names these defects should be called, let's
take a universally recognized list of major human failings -- the Seven Deadly Sins of
pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth.  It is not by accident that pride heads
the procession.  For pride, leading to self-justification, and always spurred by conscious or
unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most human difficulties, the chief block to true
progress.  Pride lures us into making demands upon ourselves or upon others which
cannot be met without perverting or misusing our God-given instincts.  When the
satisfaction of our instincts for sex, security, and society becomes the sole object of our
lives, then pride steps in to justify our excesses.
	All these failings generate fear, a soul-sickness in its own right.  then fear, in turn,
generates more character defects.  Unreasonable fear that our instincts will not be satisfied
drives us to covet the possessions of others, to lust for sex and power, to become angry
when our instinctive demands are threatened, to be envious when the ambitions of others
seem to be realized while ours are not.  We eat, drink, and grab for more of everything
than we need, fearing we shall never have enough.  And with genuine alarm at the
prospect of work, we stay lazy.  We loaf and procrastinate, or at best work grudgingly and
under half steam.  These fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the foundations of
whatever sort of life we try to build.
	So when A.A. suggests a fearless moral inventory, it must seem to every
newcomer that more is being asked of them than they can do.  Both our pride and our fear
beat us back every time we try to look within ourselves.  Pride says, "You need not pass
this way," and Fear says, "You dare not look!"  But the testimony of A.A.'s who have
really tried a moral inventory is that pride and fear of this sort turn out to be phantoms,
nothing else.  Once we have a complete willingness to take inventory, and exert ourselves
to do the job thoroughly, a wonderful light falls upon this foggy scene.  As we persist, a
brand-new kind of confidence is born, and the sense of relief at finally facing ourselves is
indescribable.  These are the first fruits of Step Four.
	By now newcomers have probably arrived at the following conclusions:  that their
character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of their
drinking and their failure at life;  that unless they are now willing to work hard at the
elimination of the worst of these defects, both sobriety and peace of mind will still elude
them;  that all the faulty foundation of their lives will have to be torn out and built anew on
bedrock.  Now willing to commence the search for their own defects, they will ask, "Just
how do I go about this?  How do I take inventory of myself?"
	Since Step Four is but the beginning of a lifetime practice, it can be suggested that
they first have a look at those personal flaws which are acutely troublesome and fairly
obvious.  Using their best judgment of what has been right and what has been wrong, they
might make a rough survey of their conduct with respect to their primary instincts for sex,
security, and society.  Looking back over their lives, they can readily get under way by
consideration of questions such as these:
	When, and how, and in just what instances did my selfish pursuit of the sex relation
damage other people and me?  What people were hurt, and how badly?  Did I spoil my
marriage or other relationship and injure my children?  Did I jeopardize my standing in the
community?  Just how did I react to these situations at the time?  Did I burn with a guilt
that nothing could extinguish?  Or did I insist that I was the pursued and not the pursuer,
and thus absolve myself?  How have I reacted to frustration in sexual matters?  When
denied, did I become vengeful or depressed?  Did I take it out on other people?  If there
was rejection or coldness at home, did I use this as a reason for promiscuity?
	Also of importance for most alcoholics are the questions they must ask about their
behavior respecting financial and emotional security.  In these areas fear, greed,
possessiveness, and pride have too often done their worst.  Surveying their business or
employment record, almost any alcoholic can ask questions like these:  In addition to my
drinking problem, what character defects contributed to my financial instability?  Did fear
and inferiority about my fitness for my job destroy my confidence and fill me with conflict? 
Did I try to cover up those feelings of inadequacy by bluffing, cheating, lying, or evading
responsibility?  Or by griping that others failed to recognize  my truly exceptional abilities? 
Did I overvalue myself and play the big shot?  Did I have such unprincipled ambition that I
double-crossed and undercut my associates?  Was I extravagant?  Did I recklessly borrow
money, caring little whether it was repaid or not?  Was I a pinchpenny, refusing to support
my family properly?  Did I cut corners financially?  What about the "quick money" deals,
the stock market, and the races?
	Businesspeople in A.A. will naturally find that many of these questions apply to
them.  But the alcoholic  who stays at home can also make the family financially insecure.
Charge accounts can be juggled, food budgets manipulated, afternoons spent gambling,
and the family can be run into debt by irresponsibility, waste, and extravagance.
	But all alcoholics who have drunk themselves out of jobs, family, and friends will
need to cross-examine themselves ruthlessly to determine how their own personality
defects have thus demolished their security.
	The most common symptoms of emotional insecurity are worry, anger, self-pity,
and depression.  These stem from causes which sometimes seem to be within us, and at
other times to come from without.  To take inventory in this respect we ought to consider
carefully all personal relationships which bring continuous or recurring trouble.  It should
be remembered that this kind of insecurity may arise in any area where instincts are
threatened.  Questioning directed to this end might run like this:  Looking at both past and
present, what sex situations have caused me anxiety, bitterness, frustration, or depression? 
Appraising each situation fairly, can I see where I have been at fault?  Did these
perplexities beset me because of selfishness or unreasonable demands?  Or, if my
disturbance was seemingly caused by the behavior of others, why do I lack the ability to
accept conditions I cannot change?  These are the sort of fundamental inquiries that can
disclose the source of my discomfort and indicate whether I may be able to alter my own
conduct and so adjust myself serenely to self-discipline.
	Suppose that financial insecurity constantly arouses these same feelings.  I can ask
myself to what extent have my own mistakes fed my gnawing anxieties.  And if the actions
of others are part of the cause, what can I do about that?  If I am unable to change the
present state of affairs, am I willing to take the measures necessary to shape my life to
conditions as they are?  Questions like these, more of which will come to mind easily in
each individual case, will help turn up the root causes.
	But it is from our twisted relations with family, friends, and society at large that
many of us have suffered the most.  We have been especially stupid and stubborn about
them.  The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true
partnership with another human being.  Our egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls.  Either
we insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend upon them far too much., 
If we lean too heavily on people, they will sooner or later fail us, for they are human, too,
and cannot possibly meet our incessant demands.  In this way our insecurity grows and
festers.  When we habitually try to manipulate others to our own willful desires, they
revolt, and resist us heavily.  Then we develop hurt feelings, a sense of persecution, and a
desire to retaliate.  As we redouble our efforts at control, and continue to fail, our
suffering becomes acute and constant.  We have not once sought to be one in a family, to
be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of
society.  Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it.  This
self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any one of those about us.  Of
true sister-and-brotherhood we had small comprehension.
	Some will object to many of the questions posed, because they think their own
character defects have not been so glaring.  To these it can be suggested that a
conscientious examination is likely to reveal the very defects the objectionable questions
are concerned with.  Because our surface record hasn't looked too bad, we have frequently
been abashed to find that this is so simply because we have buried these selfsame defects
deep down in us under thick layers of self-justification.  Whatever the defects, they have
finally ambushed us into alcoholism and misery.
	Therefore, thoroughness ought to be the watchword when taking inventory.  In
this connection, it is wise to write out our questions and answers.  It will be an aid to clear
thinking and honest appraisal.  It will be the first tangible  evidence of our complete
willingness to move forward.

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