Alcoholism and the Tenth Step in Alanon - My Experience Admitting When I Was Wrong

By the time you have reached the Alanon Tenth Step, you have worked hard to clean up problems from your past, and improve your current relationships with the people you love. This includes the alcoholics and drug addicts in your life, as well as the people you may have lied to in order to cover up for them. You may have had other people you harmed, as well, such as children you mistreated because you were so stressed out over the actions of the alcoholic.

Does this mean that you are going to live a perfect life from now on? Of course not!

As a result, the Alanon Tenth Step says that we “continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.”

This step reminds us that we are never really finished working the Alanon steps. We must constantly take note of anything we may have done that is harmful to others, and remedy the situation as quickly as possible.

In my experience, it is amazing how much better I have felt when I "kept my side of the street clean!" We cannot control how other people will react when we apologize or make amends for something we have done in the past. They may not forgive us. However, we nearly always feel better for taking this action. I certainly have.

There is one rule about making our amends, however. We should not do it if it means hurting someone else. Making ourselves feel better at the expense of someone else is not what this step is about.

Admit it. Every once in a while you are going to have a slip. You are going to nag the alcoholic. You are going to count their drinks. You are going to make a comment that you immediately regret. You are going to argue with them. You are also going to get frustrated with the alcoholic and life in general, and lash out at other people. In fact, you are just going to have some bad days. We all need to constantly take a daily inventory, and think about how we could have handled these situations better.

As an Alamon member, I have often realized I had mistreated someone while doing my daily meditation. Like most other Alanon members, when I realize I have said something I regret, I try to apologize as quickly as possible to get it off my chest.

The longer you are in a 12 Step program, the easier it becomes to recognize when we are wrong and admit it. As mentioned before, we are not responsible for how other people react to our admission. We are only responsible for being willing to admit we were wrong. It is a simple step that keeps us humble and at peace.

Whenever we realize that we have been wrong, Alanon members use the Tenth Step to deal with these issues as soon as they come up. You know when you need to promptly admit that you were wrong.

Ouch! You thought you were finished with all these inventories and apologies. You did them once. Why do you need to keep examining your life? Unfortunately, we don’t stop dealing with problems after a few months of membership in Alanon. We will continue to have problems and issues for the rest of our lives. What will change is how we will deal with them.

Many Alanon members refer to the Ninth and Tenth Steps as “keeping our side of the street clean.” Even if someone else was equally to blame for the problem that arose, we can still apologize for the part we played in it. If they upset us, and we said something rude, we can apologize for our rudeness. We may feel that we were completely justified in our anger or resentment. However, the only person who is injured by these negative emotions is us. By apologizing, we can release these negative feelings and move on.

Once you learn how much better you feel, you will be glad that you “continued to take personal inventory and when you were wrong promptly admitted it!”