INTRODUCTION

Now we need more action on this step, without which we find “faith without action is dead” once you are sure you have completed steps one through seven honestly and thoroughly, you are ready now to put your changes into action. At this point, you’ll have a chance to set things right with fellow human beings.

The Fourth Step was about personal housecleaning, but the Eighth Step of the 12 Steps of AA is about social housecleaning. It is about recognizing the wreckage that you have left in your wake while you were actively addicted. In order to continue moving forward, you have to acknowledge the role you may have played in hurting others. When you become willing to repair the damage you have done, you again reduce the destructive pain, anger, hurt, and resentment that addiction causes. It is the willingness to make amends that is important, because as you will see in the Ninth Step, it is not always possible to make reparations.

We have a list of all persons we have harmed and to whom we are willing to make amends. We made it when we took inventory. We subjected ourselves to a drastic self-appraisal. Now we go out to our fellows and repair the damage done in the past. We attempt to sweep away the debris which has accumulated out of our effort to live on self-will and run the show ourselves. If we haven’t the will to do this, we ask until it comes. Remember it was agreed at the beginning we would go to any length for victory over alcohol.

MY NOW LIST

Here we write the names of people we are willing to make amends to right away. These are people who will be the easiest for you to contact put the information needed to get in touch with each person after his or her name. If you don’t know a person’s name, address, or phone number, write in the last column on the right the name of someone who could help you get that information.

N/B The information on the list, such as an address and phone number; is only to help you contact the person to set up a face – to – face meeting.

My Now List Activity

| Name |Phone| Who would help get the person|

|--- |--- |--- |

| | | |

| | | |

My Sooner Or Later List

Here you write the names of people you may not feel you can talk to now about the harms you have done, but you know you will talk to them sooner or later.

| Name |Phone| Who would help get the person|

|--- |--- |--- |

| | | |

| | | |

My Maybe List

These are people you are not sure you can ever make amends to the amends are maybe and maybe not.

| Name |Phone| Who would help get the person|

|--- |--- |--- |

| | | |

| | | |

My Never List

This is a list of people you will never make amends to on this last column – right hand side, you write the reason why you can never make amends to each person on the list.

| Name |Phone| Why I can never make amends|

|--- |--- |--- |

| | | |

| | | |

One may fall in this category because of the following reasons:

• You hate the person.

• You are divorced from the person.

• You think the person will call the cops.

• You owe him/her money.

• You would be embarrassed.

• You feel the person hurt you more that you don’t owe him/her anything.

• You don’t want to talk about your recovery program.

• You don’t want to get into an argument.

What holds us back from doing step eight?

• Hating the person.

• Thinking that the person will call the police.

• When you owed the person.

• When you feel the person hurt you so badly.

• You don’t want to get into argument.

Other four major reasons:

• Fear

• Procrastination

• Pride

• The feeling of being the victim not the victimizer

In the Eighth Step, we will focus on honesty, courage, willingness, and compassion.

To practice the principle of honesty in the Eighth Step, we need to draw on our experience in the previous steps. We've admitted the nature of our problem-addiction-and affirmed the solution to that problem. This was an act of honesty. We've taken a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves; doing so exercised our newfound honesty.

Extracting the nature of our wrongs from within the fabric of our personalities takes our honesty to an even deeper level. So we have some experience separating our part in things from what others may have done. That's the level of honesty we'll need to call on in Step Eight. We have to forget about resentments, blaming others, believing we were innocent victims, and any other justification for the harm we caused. We simply need to put it on the list!

To practice the principle of courage in the Eighth Step, we have to put ourselves in God's care. We can't restrict our list to only those amends that we think will turn out okay. We have to believe that our Higher Power will provide us with the fortitude, the humility, the inner strength, or whatever we need to get through any amends. Whether we need to face someone and we're afraid of how we'll feel, or we need to accept the consequences of a crime for which we are sought, we'll be able to handle it with the help of our Higher Power.

Without willingness our amends can become activities without meaning. Amends are much more than thinking apologies “Amends” means “to make better or improve.” We've already talked a great deal about willingness in this step, especially becoming willing to make amends. But we need a certain amount of willingness to work this step that has nothing to do with making amends. First of all, we need the willingness to make our list. No matter what we're feeling about adding a certain name to the list, we need to become willing to add it. We also need the willingness to practice the other spiritual principles connected to this step.

Developing a compassionate spirit becomes possible at this stage in our recovery. Before we did the work involved in the previous steps, we were too caught up in resentment, blame, and self-pity to think about others. Along with our ability to think of ourselves as ordinary human beings, we begin to see that others are doing the best they can with their humanness, too. We know we are subject to periodic doubts and insecurities about ourselves, and so are others. We know we are likely to speak before thinking, and so are others. We realize that they regret it as much as we do. We know we are prone to misreading situations and over or under reacting to them. As a result, when we see others act on a character defect today, we feel empathy rather than annoyance or anger, because we know what caused them to act as they did. Our hearts feel full when we think about how we share the same dreams, fears, passions, and faults as everyone else.

In conclusion, the result of doing step eight is a sense of relief –we now know what we need to do in order to bring back our relationships.