March 28

We addicts are negative by nature; this is a result of our self-destructive wills in action. We lived in the disease; our actions were a high risk act, with no safety net. When we fell, we fell hard.

Living in this insanity leaves no Hope for Solutions. We became alienated and demoralized.

When we took the Fourth Step, we were asked to take a Fearless and Moral Inventory. Many of us thought "There's nothing moral about my Inventory!" We reviewed our first Three Steps with our Sponsors. We Prayed and Meditated to our Higher Power.

The results were that our Faith Helped us separate ourselves from the disease. We did have morals and values that were instilled in us, when we were children. We were born with the Purity of Spirit; our quest now is to see how and why our Spirits closed and eventually went to sleep. We Face, Trace, Erase, Replace and Embrace in our Recovery Process.

The self-appraisal in the Fourth Step is the Erase Process. In Step One we Face it.

Steps Two and Three we Trace it. Step Four we Erase it. Steps Five though Seven we Replace it and Steps Eight through Twelve we Embrace it.

Each Step cannot work without the other, and none can work without the God Of Our Understanding and the Fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous. The defects were our survival skills in active addiction; they are no longer effective in our New Way Of Life. Pretty much like that grocer who separates the rotten fruit from the good fruit, we also separate what's useless in our New Lives. Step Four shows us our Assets, so we can develop them and use them to improve the Quality of our Relationships with God, Ourselves and Others. Remove and Replace are our tasks.

We gain Courage and Faith from taking the previous Steps.