"Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make 
amends to them all."

	Steps Eight and Nine are concerned with personal relations.  First, we take a look
backward and try to discover where we have been at fault;  next we make a vigorous
attempt to repair the damage we have done;  and third, having thus cleaned away the
debris of the past, we consider how, with our newfound knowledge of ourselves, we may
develop the best possible relations with every human being we know.
	This is a very large order. It is a task which we may perform with increasing skill,
but never really finish.  Learning how to live in the greatest peace, partnership, and kinship
with all women and men, of whatever description, is a moving and fascinating adventure. 
Every A.A. has found that we can make little headway in this new adventure of living until
we first backtrack and really make an accurate and unsparing survey of the human
wreckage we have left in our wake.  To a degree we have already done this when taking
moral inventory, but now the time has come when we ought to redouble our efforts to see
how many people we have hurt, and in what ways.  This reopening of emotional wounds,
some old, some perhaps forgotten, and some still painfully festering, will at first look like a
purposeless and pointless piece of surgery.  But if a willing start is made, then the great
advantages of doing this will so quickly reveal themselves that the pain will be lessened as
one obstacle after another melts away.
	These obstacles, however, are very real.  The first, and one of the most difficult,
has to do with forgiveness.  The moment we ponder a twisted or broken relationship with
another person, our emotions go on the defensive.  To escape looking at the wrongs we
have done another, we resentfully focus on the wrong they have done us.  This is
especially true if they have, in fact, behaved badly at all.  Triumphantly we seize upon their
misbehavior as the perfect excuse for minimizing or forgetting our own.
	Right here we need to fetch ourselves up sharply.  It doesn't make much sense
when a real tosspot calls a kettle black.  Let's remember that alcoholics are not the only
ones bedeviled by sick emotions.  Moreover, it is usually a fact that our behavior when
drinking has aggravated the defects of others.  We've repeatedly strained the patience of
our best friends to a snapping point, and have brought out the very worst in those who
didn't think much of us to begin with.  In many instances we are really dealing with fellow
sufferers, people whose woes we have increased.  If we are now about to ask forgiveness
for ourselves, why shouldn't we start out by forgiving them, one and all?
	When listing the people we have harmed, most of us hit another solid obstacle. 
We got a pretty severe shock when we realized that we were preparing to make a
face-to-face admission of our wretched conduct to those we had hurt.  It had been
embarrassing enough when in confidence we had admitted these things to God, to
ourselves, and to another human being.  But the prospect of actually visiting or even
writing the people concerned now overwhelmed us, especially when we remembered in
what poor favor we stood with most of them.  There were cases, too, where we had
damaged others who were still happily unaware of being hurt.  Why, we cried, shouldn't
bygones be bygones?  Why do we have to think of these people at all?  These were some
of the ways in which fear conspired with pride to hinder our making a list of all the people
we had harmed.
	Some of us, though, tripped over a very different snag.  We clung to the claim that
when drinking we never hurt anybody but ourselves.  Our families didn't suffer, because
we always paid the bills and seldom drank at home.  Our business associates didn't suffer,
because we were usually on the job.  Our reputations hadn't suffered, because we were
certain few knew of our drinking.  Those who did would sometimes assure us that, after
all, a lively bender was only the minor flaw of a good natured person.  What real harm,
therefore, had we done?  No more, surely, than we could easily mend with a few casual
apologies.
	This attitude, of course, is the end result of purposeful forgetting.  It is an attitude
which can only be changed by a deep and honest search of our motives and actions.
	Though in some cases we cannot make restitution at all, and in some cases action
ought to be deferred, we should nevertheless make an accurate and really exhaustive
survey of our past life as it has affected other people.  In many instances we shall find that
though the harm done others has not been great, the emotional harm we have done
ourselves has.  Very deep, sometimes quite forgotten, damaging emotional conflicts
persist below the level of consciousness.  At the time of these occurrences, they may
actually have given our emotions violent twists which have since discolored our
personalities and altered our lives for the worse.
	While the purpose of making restitution to others is paramount, it is equally
necessary that we extricate from an examination of our personal relations every bit of
information about ourselves and our fundamental difficulties that we can.  Since defective
relations with other human beings have nearly always been the immediate cause of our
woes, including our alcoholism, no field of investigation could yield more satisfying and
valuable rewards than this one.  Calm, thoughtful reflection upon personal relations can
deepen our insight.  We can go far beyond those things which were superficially wrong
with us, to see those flaws which were basic, flaws which sometimes were responsible for
the whole pattern of our lives.  Thoroughness, we have found, will pay -- and pay
handsomely.
	We might next ask ourselves what we mean when we say that we have "harmed"
other people.  What kinds of "harm" do people do one another, anyway?  To define the
word "harm" in a practical way, we might call it the result of instincts in collision, which
cause physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual damage to people.  If our tempers are
consistently bad, we arouse anger in others.  If we lie or cheat, we deprive others not only
of their worldly goods, but of their emotional security and peace of mind.  We really issue
them an invitation to become contemptuous and vengeful.  If our sex conduct is selfish,
we may excite jealousy, misery, and a strong desire to retaliate in kind.
	Such gross misbehavior is not by any means a full catalogue of the harms we do. 
Let us think of some of the subtler ones which can sometimes be quite as damaging. 
Suppose that in our family lives we happen to be miserly, irresponsible, callous, or cold. 
Suppose that we are irritable, critical, impatient, and humorless.  Suppose we lavish
attention upon one member of the family and neglect the others.  What happens when we
try to dominate the whole family, either by a rule of iron or by a constant outpouring of
minute directions for just how their lives should be lived from hour to hour?  What 
happens when we wallow in depression, self-pity oozing from every pore, and inflict that
upon those about us?  Such a roster of harms done others -- the kind that make daily living
with us as practicing alcoholics difficult and often unbearable -- could be extended almost
indefinitely.  When we take such personality traits as these into shop, office, and the
society of our fellows, they can do damage almost as extensive as that we have caused at
home.
	Having carefully surveyed this whole area of human relations, and having decided
exactly what personality traits in us injured and disturbed others, we can now commence
to ransack memory for the people to whom we have given offense.  To put a finger on the
nearby and most deeply damaged ones shouldn't be hard to do.  Then, as year by year we
walk back through our lives as far as memory will reach, we shall be bound to construct a
long list of people who have, to some extent or other, been affected.  We should, of
course, ponder and weigh each instance carefully.  We shall want to hold ourselves to the
course of admitting the things we have done, meanwhile forgiving the wrongs done us,
real or fancied.  We should avoid extreme judgments, both of ourselves and of others
involved.  We must not exaggerate our defects or theirs.  A quiet, objective view will be
our steadfast aim.
	Whenever our pencil falters, we can fortify and cheer ourselves by remembering
what A.A. experience in this Step has meant to others.  It is the beginning of the end of
isolation from our fellows and from God.

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