Step Eight
"We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends
to them all."
To this point, the steps have focused mostly on repairing ourselves and our relationship
with a God of our understanding. Beginning with the Eighth Step, we bring other people
into the healing process - people we harmed in our addiction, people we harmed in our
recovery, people we meant to harm, people we hurt by accident, people who are no
longer in our lives, and people we expect to be close to for the rest of our lives.
The Eighth Step is about identifying the damage we caused. It doesn't matter whether we
caused it because we were overtaken by rage, carelessness, or because we were afraid. It
doesn't matter whether our actions were based in selfishness, arrogance, dishonesty, or
any other defect. It doesn't even matter that we didn't intend to cause someone harm. All
the damage we caused is material for the Eighth Step.
It may turn out that some of the harm we did can't be repaired. It may turn out that we,
ourselves, can't directly make the repair. It may even turn out that we're not responsible
for something we've placed on our Eighth Step list. Our sponsor will help us sort that out
before we go on to the Ninth Step. For now, our task is only to identify who we harmed,
what the harm was, and become willing to make amends.
It's natural to wonder about the Ninth Step and how we will make our amends while
we're working the Eighth Step. What we think about our amends is bound to influence
our work in this step. We may need to get some common misconceptions out of our way
before we can make our list.
It's wonderful that we've already begun repairing our relationships with some of the
people m our lives. Our families are probably delighted that we're no longer using drugs.
Some of the more overt damage we inflicted on others ceased as soon as we stopped
using drugs. If we managed to keep our jobs or stay in school, we're probably already
performing better in those places. We're no longer harming our co-workers or employers,
teachers or fellow students in certain ways. But is that enough?
We have probably heard people in meetings emphasizing that "amends" means to change,
not just to say "I'm sorry" -that what really counts is the way we're treating people now.
But this doesn't mean that formal apologies have gone out of fashion in NA. Direct, faceto-
face verbal amends are extremely powerful, both as a means of spiritual growth for us
and as a long-awaited comfort for the people to whom we make them. What our members
are emphasizing is that we can't just offer people lame apologies and then go right back
to doing what caused them harm in the first place.
Some of us may be feeling a bit weary at this point, especially if our sponsor had us do
extensive writing on the first seven steps. We inventoried our behavior in Step Four, and
we catalogued our character defects in Step Six; now we have to examine the same
situations from yet another angle! It may seem as if we've examined our lives and our
addiction in every possible way by the time we're done with these steps. Is all this really
necessary? Aren't we just punishing ourselves by going over and over the same thing?
No, we're not. The Eighth Step is the beginning of a process that lets us feel equal to
others. Instead of feeling shame and guilt, instead of feeling forever "less than," we
become able to look people in the eye. We won't have to avoid anyone. We won't have to
be afraid we'll be caught and punished for some neglected responsibility. We'll be free.
 Am I hesitating in any way about working the Eighth Step? Why?
Some of us go to the other extreme with this step: We can't wait to get right out there and
"make everything okay," unaware that we may cause more harm. We blunder forward,
confessing infidelities to our spouses and our friends. We sit our families down and make
them listen to every detail of our addiction, confirming some of their worst fears about
what we were doing out there and filling in some blanks that, until then, had been left
mercifully empty. In a state of excitement, we give our children a speech about how we
have a disease for which we're not responsible, how we love our recovery, and how
wonderful life is going to be from then on, forgetting all the times before when we had
made them so many empty promises. We stroll into our employer's office one day and
announce that we're addicts, that we've embezzled a great deal of money through
ingenious means, but that we're very sorry and we'll never ever do it again.
Though our own experiences with rushing out to make amends are probably not this
extreme, we can surely grasp the point: If we try to make amends without our sponsor 5
guidance and without a plan, we can end up causing even more harm.
 Do I realize the need to slow down and consult my sponsor before making amends? Have
I created more harm in any situation by rushing out to make amends before I was ready?
What was the situation?
Some of us may still believe that we're just basically nice people who have never truly
harmed anyone-except ourselves, that is. If we're truly stumped about who belongs on our
amends list, or we have a vague idea that our family belongs there but we're not sure
why, it could be that we're overlooking something or that our denial is still pretty thick.
Sometimes, we're just not able to see the truth about certain situations, even after many
years in recovery. A suggestion that many of us have followed is that if we think of
someone to whom we seem to owe amends, but we can't think of the situation that
resulted in our owing amends, we put the name on the list anyway. Sometimes we'll think
of the "why" later on. We should do the best we can with this step for now, contact our
sponsor, and keep working on our recovery. As the saying goes, "more will be revealed."
We just need to keep an open mind, so that when the knowledge comes we'll be prepared
to accept it.
Last but not least, many of us delay starting this step because we aren't willing to make
amends to certain people. We either resent them, or we feel too afraid to ever imagine
ourselves approaching them. We need to start this step and list these people even if we're
not sure we'll ever be able to make the amends. If it's truly unsafe to make the amends,
our sponsor will help us figure out how to handle the situation.
 List the resentments that are in the way of my willingness to make amends.
 Can I let these resentments go now? If not, can I muster the willingness to add these
names to my list anyway, and worry about becoming willing later?
 Are there any people to whom I owe amends that may be a threat to my safety or about
whom I'm truly concerned in some other way? What are my fears?
The People We Harmed and How We Harmed Them
Before we actually begin making our list, there's one final concept with which we must
familiarize ourselves: the meaning of "harm" in this step. We need to strive to understand
all the ways in which it is possible to cause harm so that our list can be thorough.
Certain types of harm are obvious. For instance, if we stole money or property from a
person or a business, that's quite obviously a form of harm. In addition, most of us have
no trouble recognizing physical or emotional abuse as a type of harm.
Then there are situations where we have no problem recognizing what we did as harmful,
but may have difficulty identifying who, in particular, we harmed. For instance, we
cheated on a test at school. Did this harm the instructor, we ask ourselves? Our fellow
students? Ourselves? The students who came after us and had to pay the price of our
instructor's mistrust because of our dishonesty? The answer to this example is that all of
these people were harmed, even if only indirectly. They belong on our Eighth Step list.
Finally, we get to the deeper types of harm. These types of harm may be the most
damaging, for they strike at the most vulnerable places in the human heart. For instance,
we had a friend. The friendship was perhaps an old one, spanning many years. Emotions,
trust, even personal identity - all these were engaged in the friendship we shared. This
relationship really mattered to our friend, and to us as well. Then, without explanation,
because of some real or imagined slight, we withdrew from the friendship and never tried
to renew it. Losing a friend is painful enough without the added burden of not knowing
why, but many of us inflicted just this type of harm on someone. We damaged that
person's sense of trust, and it may have taken many years to heal. A variation on this is
that we may have allowed someone to take the blame for a relationship ending, making
the person feel unlovable, when in reality we had just grown tired of the relationship and
were too lazy to maintain it.
There are many different ways we can inflict deep emotional harm: neglect, withdrawal,
exploitation, manipulation, and humiliation, to name but a few. The "victims" and "nice
people" among us may find that we made others feel inferior when we passed ourselves
off as better than everyone else, projecting an attitude of moral superiority. The
competent and self-sufficient among us may find names for the Eighth Step list by
thinking about the people whose offers of help and gestures of support we rejected.
An additional struggle that many of us face when we identify types of harm arises from
an automatic tendency to focus only on the time before we stopped using. It's a little
easier for us to be rigorously honest about the harm we caused in our active addiction.
We were using drugs, we were different people then. However, we have all caused harm
during our recovery. (Remember, whether we intended to or not doesn't matter.) In fact,
we've probably all caused harm to people with whom we share our recovery - other NA
members. We may have gossiped about them, withdrawn from them, responded with
insensitivity to their pain, interfered in a sponsorship relationship, tried to control a
sponsee's behavior, behaved like an ingrate with a sponsor, stolen Seventh Tradition
money, manipulated people by using our clean time as a source of credibility in a service
argument, or sexually exploited a newcomer, to name a few relatively common examples.
Most of us have an extremely hard time placing these situations on our Eighth Step list
because the thought of making the amends makes us so uncomfortable. We hold
ourselves accountable to a higher standard of behavior around NA, and we're sure that
others expect more from us, also. The fact is that our fellow NA members are likely to be
especially forgiving because they know what we're trying to do-but again, we should
avoid worrying about the Ninth Step now.
Making Our List
The first thing to know is that this is not a list that we can keep in our heads. We need to
put each name and what we did to harm the person down on paper. Once it's on paper, it's
hard to forget anyone or go back into denial about an amends we'd rather avoid. If for
some reason we can't use paper, we can use a tape recorder or any other method our
sponsor has agreed will help us get the most out of this step.
When we're ready to begin our list, we sit down, recall all we've learned about harm, and
start writing. Some names are going to spring to mind immediately. Others may come to
mind as we think about the types of harm we have caused. We absolutely need to go back
through our Fourth Step and search out any information we can extract from that.
We should include every name and situation we think of even if we're relatively, but not
entirely, sure that our sponsor is going to tell us we don't owe any amends in that
particular situation. It's almost always better to delete names than to try to recall names
we should have added, but didn't, when we're going over the list with our sponsor. In
addition, there may be times when we remember an incident in which we caused harm,
but not the names of the people involved. We can at least list the incident.
Putting ourselves on the list may seem awkward to some of us. We may have been
informed in our early recovery that making amends to ourselves was a self-centered idea,
that we needed to stop thinking about ourselves all the time and start thinking about the
people we had harmed. Then, the whole notion of making amends to ourselves may have
been confusing. Some of us probably thought that making amends should involve
"rewarding" ourselves for staying clean or some other accomplishment. We may have
tried to do this by buying ourselves things we couldn't afford, or by indulging other
compulsions. In reality, the way we make amends to ourselves is by stopping
irresponsible or destructive behavior. We need to identify the ways we ve created our
own problems - that is, harmed ourselves - through our inability to accept personal
responsibility. Then, when we add ourselves to the list, we can list the harm we caused to
our finances, our self-image, our health, etc.
There is also a delicate situation that many of us have faced: What if we've harmed our
sponsor, he or she doesn't know about the harm, and will likely find out when we go over
the list? In this situation, we should consult another member whose recovery we respect,
perhaps our sponsor's sponsor.
 List the people I've harmed and the specific ways I harmed each one.
Becoming Willing
Now that we have our list, or have added new names to the list we've been keeping since
our first time through the Eighth Step, it's time to get willing to make amends. In order to
become willing, we have to know at least a little about what "making amends" involves.
Earlier in this guide, we talked about the need to do more than just change our behavior,
but some of us may be afraid that we just aren't capable of changing. We're sincere. We
want to refrain from ever repeating the same behavior again, but we think about the times
when we've made promises before. Aren't we subject to doing the same thing again? This
is when we have to really believe in our recovery. No matter how long we've been clean
and the wrongs for which we're making amends, we have to have faith that the God of
our understanding will give us the strength and the ability to change.
 Why is saying "I'm sorry" alone not sufficient to repair the damage I've caused?
 Why is only changing my behavior not sufficient to repair the damage I've caused?
For some of the amends we owe, we'll find that we're willing as soon as we put the name
on our list. For others, the willingness may not come so easily.
It's very rare that we don't owe at least some financial amends, whether they're to people
from whom we stole, people who lent us money we never paid back, businesses, or
lending institutions. We know that making the amends is going to deprive us of money
we'd rather keep for ourselves. It may take time for us to appreciate the profound internal
freedom that comes from discharging such debts, and thus gain the willingness to make
these amends. It may help to ask our Higher Power to give us the willingness to make
these amends.
 Do I have financial amends that I don't want to make? What would my life be like if I had
already made these amends?
Some of our amends may be to people who also harmed us. These are usually the amends
we have the most difficulty becoming willing to make. It seems like every time we think
about these amends, we get so angry thinking about what they did to us that we forget all
about making amends. But our recovery calls on us to practice the spiritual principle of
forgiveness. Through prayer and any additional help we need to seek out, we can find it
within ourselves to forgive the people who have also harmed us.
 Do I owe amends to people who have also harmed me? What have I done to become
willing to make these amends?
Amends that we can't ever see ourselves making may also be on our list. Maybe we're so
unwilling that we don't even want to try praying for willingness; we can't imagine having
any compassion for the people to whom we owe these amends. In this case, we just need
to leave these amends on our list. We don't have to make all our amends in one day or in
any set amount of time. It may take some time to become willing to make some amends.
Every time we look at our Eighth Step list, we should ask ourselves if we've become
willing to make this amends yet. If not, we can keep checking periodically.
Spiritual Principles
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
took 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!
 How is determining the exact nature of my wrongs valuable in the Eighth Step? Why is it
so essential that I'm clear about my responsibility?
 What are some examples of my experience with honesty from the previous steps? How
will I translate that experience into this step?
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.
 What are some examples of my experience with courage from the previous steps? How
will I translate that experience into this step?
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.
 Are there any names I haven't yet added to my list? Am I willing to add them now? Have
I completed my list?
 What are some of the things I've done to increase my willingness? How do I feel about
having to pray for willingness?
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.
 Am I beginning to feel connected with others? Describe.
 Am I beginning to feel compassion and empathy for others? Describe.
Moving On
Discussing every single one of the amends on our list with our sponsor is essential. It
doesn't matter how long we've been clean or how much experience with making amends
we have. Every one of us is liable to misjudge a situation when working alone, but we
often find that we can see things more clearly when we look at situations from another
point of view. We need our sponsor's insight. We need our sponsor's encouragement. We
need our sponsor's vision and hope. It's amazing how much a simple discussion with our
sponsor can do to help us tap into the quiet strength that lives in each one of us. When
we've stripped away the distracting influences and have exposed that solid core of
serenity, humility, and forgiveness, we're ready for the Ninth Step.
Step Nine
"We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so
would injure them or others."
We hear over and over in NA that the steps are written in order for a reason: Each step
provides the spiritual preparation we'll need for the following steps. Nowhere is this more
apparent than in the Ninth Step. We would never in a million years have been able to sit
down with the people we've harmed and make direct amends without the spiritual
preparation we got from the previous steps. If we had not done the work of admitting our
own limitations, we wouldn't now have a foundation on which to stand while we make
our amends. If we had not developed a relationship with a God of our understanding, we
wouldn't now have the faith and trust we need to work Step Nine. If we had not done our
Fourth and Fifth Steps, we would probably still be so confused about our personal
responsibility, we might not even know for what we're making amends. If we hadn't
developed humility in the Sixth and Seventh Steps1 we'd probably approach our amends
with self-righteousness or anger and wind up doing more damage. The willingness we
gained through our acceptance of personal responsibility made it possible for us to make
our Eighth Step list. That list was our practical preparation for working the Ninth Step.
The final preparations we're about to do in this step, before we actually make our amends,
are mostly to strengthen what is afready a part of us. The level at which we are able to
practice the principle of forgiveness, the depth of insight we have, and the amount of selfawareness
we are able to maintain throughout the amends process will depend on our
previous experience with the steps and how much effort we're willing to put into our
recovery.
 How has my work on the previous eight steps prepared me to work the Ninth Step? How
does honesty help in working this step?
 How does humility help in working this step?
Amends
The Ninth Step is not a step that can be neatly contained within a particular time frame.
We don't write our Eighth Step list and then resolutely start making amends, crossing off
"completed" ones like we would items on a shopping list. In fact, many of our amends
will never be "finished"; our efforts will go on throughout our recovery. For instance, if
we owe our families amends, we will spend the rest of our lives practicing the spiritual
principles that will bring real change to the way we treat people. There may be one day
when we sit our families down and make a commitment to treat them differently than we
have in the past, but that won't be the end of our amends. Each day that we make an effort
to refrain from hurting our families and try to practice loving behavior with them is a day
when we've continued our amends to our families.
Even such relatively concrete amends as paying a past-due debt aren't likely to be done
once and for all when the debt is paid off. Living our Ninth Step requires that we try not
to incur new debts that we can't pay. On a deeper level, we may need to look at the
varieties of debt we incur-for instance, taking favor after favor from friends but never
reciprocating, or overextending the patience of people with whom we share
responsibilities by not assuming our fair share. Avoiding such liabilities in the future is
just as much a part of our amends process as making regular payments on past-due debts.
 What does "making amends" mean?
 Why does making amends mean that I have to do more than say "I'm sorry"?
 How is making amends a commitment to a continuous process of change?
Fears and Expectations
Making amends isn't always a nerve-wracking, joyless experience. Often, we will feel
excited about the prospect of healing a relationship. We may find that we're happily
anticipating the relief of having made an amends. For most of us, however, we will feel
fearful about at least some of our amends. We may be afraid that if we make financial
amends, we won't have enough for ourselves. We may be afraid of rejection, retaliation,
or something else.
If we've never had any experience with the Ninth Step before, we're really venturing into
the unknown. We're not sure how we're going to feel immediately before the amends,
during the amends, and after the amends. We may feel wildly overconfident at one
moment and then, the next moment, feel totally unable to go on with the Ninth Step. This
is a time when it's very important to understand that the ways things feel is not
necessarily the way things are. Just because we feel afraid doesn't mean there's truly
something to fear. On the other hand, feeling excited and happy won't necessarily reflect
the reality of making our amends. It's best to let go of all our expectations about how our
amends will be received.
 What fears do I have about making amends? Am I worried that someone will take
revenge or reject me?
 How does the Ninth Step require a new level of surrender to the program?
 What about financial amends? Do I have faith that the God of my understanding will
ensure I have what I need even though I am sacrificing to make amends?
No matter how long we've been clean or how many times we've been through the steps,
we're bound to have some fears and expectations as we begin a new step. This may be
especially true if we have previous experience with a step. The Ninth Step, in particular,
is likely to produce some ambivalence.
For instance, many of us may find ourselves thinking about our past experiences with
making amends at this point. Some have probably been very positive. If we made amends
to a loved one who was open to our gesture of conciliation, we probably came away with
a wonderful feeling of hope and gratitude. We were hopeful that the relationship would
keep on getting better, and we were grateful to be forgiven and have our amends
accepted.
Believe it or not, such experiences may work against us in later amends. They can set us
up to believe that all our amends should turn out so well, and then be crushed when they
don't. Or we may recognize that such amends aren't going to be the norm, and dread to
the point of delay making amends whose outcome we aren't sure will be so good. If we
find ourselves hung up on projecting how our amends will turn out, we need to re-focus
on the purpose of the Ninth Step.
The Ninth Step is meant to give a way to set right the damage we've caused in the past.
Some of us keep in mind that three primary concepts are associated with making amends:
resolution, restoration, and restitution. Resolution implies that to find an answer to the
problem; we must lay to rest what was previously plaguing or disturbing us in some way.
Restoration means to bring back to its former state something that had been damaged.
This can be a relationship or a quality that used to exist in a relationship, such as trust.
We can perhaps restore our reputations if they were good at some point in the past.
Restitution is very similar to restoration, but in relating it to the Ninth Step, we can think
of it as the act of returning something-material or more abstract-to its rightful owner. Our
sponsor can help us explore each of these concepts so that we can gain perspective on the
nature of making amends and stay focused on what we're supposed to be doing. It's only
through the process that we realize many of the benefits associated with the Ninth Step.
The ones that we may be aware of first are a sense of freedom, or an absence of guilt and
shame. It may take some time in recovery or experience with several amends for us to
appreciate some of the spiritual rewards of the Ninth Step: a more consistent awareness
of the feelings of others and the effect of our behavior on others, a sense of joy that we
were able to heal a long-standing hurt, an ability to be more loving and accepting of the
people around us.
 What other fears or expectations do I have about my amends?
 Why doesn't it matter how my amends are received? What does this have to do with the
spiritual purpose of the Ninth Step?
 How can I use other addicts, my sponsor, and my Higher Power as sources of strength in
this process?
Amends - Direct and Indirect
We in NA tend to think it's best to make direct, face-to4ace amends, and indeed, this step
says we should do so wherever possible. But direct amends are not the only way to make
amends, and in some cases, they may be the worst way.
Before we provide some examples, it is very important to note that these are only
examples. This guide is not meant to take the place of a sponsor in going over each
amends with a sponsee and working together to decide what's best.
Some situations are more complicated than they appear at first glance. We may think the
solution is obvious, but we should always take the time for further reflection. For
instance, there may be a situation where the person or people we've harmed are not aware
of what we did, and learning what we did might possibly harm them more. We may have
some friends, relatives, or an employer who were unaware of our addiction. To tell them
might harm them. Our sponsor will help us look at our motives for wanting to tell people
about our addiction. Do they need to know? What good purpose will be served by sharing
such information? What damage could such information do?
But what if this same situation was complicated by our theft of some money from our
friends? And what if someone else was accused of taking the money? Wouldn't we then
need to tell about our addiction, along with admitting the theft and paying the money
back? Possibly, but perhaps not. Each of these kinds of situations needs to be taken on an
individual basis. Again, our sponsor will help us decide how best to handle each one. In
our discussion with our sponsor, if we are open-minded, we're sure to think about these
kinds of situations in ways we haven't thought about them before. We may see how what
we first thought was the obvious method of making amends may not be right after all. It's
very helpful to prepare for this discussion by listing all the circumstances for these
difficult amends so that it will be right in front of us when we talk to our sponsor.
 Which names on my Eighth Step list are complicated by circumstances like the ones
above?
 What were the specific circumstances?
A problem that presents difficulty for many of us is that we owe amends that will likely
result in us losing our jobs, going to jail, or some other serious consequence. For
instance, if we turn ourselves in for a crime we committed, we may indeed go to jail. So
what effect would that have on our lives? Would we lose our job? Would that
compromise anyone’s security besides our own-say, our family's? On the other hand, if
we are a fugitive from justice, what effect might a sudden arrest have on our lives and our
families? It is probably best in such a situation to seek legal counsel and explore our
options. No matter what, we need to somehow accept the consequences of our behavior,
but we should bear in mind that our families might very well be represented in the part of
this step that says, "except when to do so would injure them or others." We'll have to
evaluate these situations very carefully. With our sponsor’s guidance, we'll explore how
to make amends.
 Do I owe any amends that might have serious consequences if I made them? What are
they?
Another circumstance when we wouldn't be able to make direct amends, although not
because of the possibility of further injury, would be when a person to whom we owe
amends is dead. This is very common around NA - so much so that our members have
developed a variety of creative ways of dealing with such situations. Our members have
even managed to make sure that amends of this nature do more than discharge our own
sense of shame. Some have made financial donations in the name of the person to whom
we owed amends. Some have taken on a task that was something that person cared about.
Some have made restitution to the person's children, who may have their own spot on our
Eighth Step list. The ways we might deal with such a situation are only limited by our
imagination and level of willingness. We might be surprised at how effective an
"indirect" amends can be in situations like this. Many of us strive to make the amends as
directly as possible by visiting the person's grave or other meaningful place and perhaps
reading a letter or simply speaking to the person's memory or spirit. Again, our response
to these situations will be determined by the nature of the harm we inflicted, our spiritual
beliefs, and of course, our sponsor's guidance.
 Do I owe amends to anyone who is dead? What was special about that person that I might
be able to use in planning my amends?
We've been emphasizing the need to check each and every amends with our sponsor
before proceeding. While important, there's no need for us to become mindless robots,
afraid to think for ourselves or act without asking our sponsor about it. Many of our
members have had the experience of running into a person from our past who we had not
put on our Eighth Step list, but might belong there. Sometimes the amends owed are so
clear, we would be foolish not to avail ourselves of such a lucky coincidence. Other
times, we may run into a person and experience very uncomfortable feelings but not
know what's causing them. If this happens, it's better to take the relationship through the
Fourth and Fifth Step process in order to gain more clarity about it. In any event, we
should never consider our Eighth Step list "closed." Chances are we'll be adding new
names to it throughout our lives.
What about people we can't find? Should we go ahead and make indirect amends to them,
too? Perhaps, although many of our members have had the experience of running across
someone we thought we'd never be able to find, usually in a location in which we'd never
expect to find them. We can certainly draw the conclusion that a Higher Power is at work
when such coincidences happen, but even if not, we certainly shouldn't ignore the
opportunity to make direct amends.
If we can't find someone on our amends list, we may want to wait. We should continue
making every effort to find the person, we should make an effort not to cause the same
type of harm to someone else, and we should remain willing. A spirit of willingness can
often serve the purpose of the amends when we cannot make the actual amends.
After considering the complications involved in making indirect amends, it may seem as
though making direct amends is easy, or at least more straightforward. We did something
that hurt someone. We need to apologize and repair the harm. That's it, right?
Not very often, if ever. As mentioned earlier, the amends process isn't one that has a
distinct beginning and end. We often begin making amends, in one sense, as soon as we
get clean. Most of the time, we immediately amend some of our behavior. This part of the
amends process - the one in which we change ourselves - goes on long after we've spoken
directly to someone we harmed.
 What behavior do I need to amend?
What about those direct amends, the ones we make when we sit someone down,
acknowledge and accept responsibility for the harm we caused, and accept whatever
response we get? These are the amends that may strike fear into our hearts. We imagine
ourselves sitting before one of the people on our amends list, humbly and sincerely
admitting our wrong, then just as humbly and sincerely offering to repair the wrong, only
to have the person respond, "It can never be repaired. What you did was too awful," or,
"Forget it. I'll never forgive you."
In truth, a situation like the above is exactly what we most fear, because we're afraid of
having our faith in the process destroyed. We've taken an incredible risk by allowing
ourselves to believe in a Higher Power, in ourselves, in the possibility of recovery. Our
worst nightmare is that the damage can't be repaired, that we're such horrible people that
we can't be forgiven. It may comfort us to know that many recovering addicts have
received a negative reaction from someone they were making amends to, and not only
have they not let it get them down, but they've received the same spiritual benefits from
making the amends as they would have if it had been received with love and forgiveness.
Sometimes, when our attempts at making amends are received so negatively, we do find
that we need to take additional steps so that we can feel we've attained some resolution.
Our Basic Text tells us that "contacting someone who is still hurting from the burn of our
misdeeds can be dangerous." It can also be unproductive, especially in the case of family
members and close friends. Contacting people we've harmed before they've had the
chance to cool off may cause them to respond very angrily to us, when after a bit more
time they would have reacted quite differently. If we've approached such a person too
soon, we may want to wait until some time has passed and try again.
Sometimes, however, no matter how well we've prepared or how sincere our amends, the
person simply won't accept our amends. If we encounter this situation, we need to realize
that there is a point at which our responsibility ends. If someone is determined to nurse a
grudge against us for the rest of their lives, it may be that the best we can do is wish the
person well and consider the amends made. If we have difficulty coping with feelings
that arise in the wake of such an amends, our sponsor will help us find a way of coming
to terms with the amends. Perhaps, in certain situations, we may be better off making
indirect amends, or it may feel that our amends are more "complete" if we take some
other action that restores or repairs a situation. For instance, we've tried to make amends
to a former employer from whom we stole money. He or she doesn't want to hear our
amends and doesn't want our money. We may find that we can resolve the situation and
make restitution by referring customers to the person's business or, if it's possible,
somehow anonymously pay back the money we stole.
We need to remember that making amends is part of our personal recovery program. It's
true that we make amends because we owe them, but we also need to recognize the
spiritual growth inherent in the process of making amends. First, we recognize and accept
the harm we caused. As it says in It Works: How and Why, this "shocks us out of our
self-obsession." Because self-obsession and self-centered fear are the parts of our disease
that most strongly affect our spirituality, alleviating and diminishing those parts of our
disease will surely cause our recovery to flourish. Second, approaching the person we
harmed directly and acknowledging the harm we caused is an enormous step on our
spiritual journey no matter how the amends are received. The fact that we went ahead
with something that required such a great deal of humility was proof, in fact, that we had
attained some measure of humility. Finally, after making our amends, we are left with a
sense of freedom. We are no longer burdened with the weight of unfinished business and
a sense of shame about the harm we caused. It is gone. Our spirits soar.
 Am I spiritually prepared for making any difficult amends and dealing with the results?
 What have I done to prepare myself?
Forgiveness
The spiritual growth we get from making direct amends often depends on how much we
put into our spiritual preparation. We start with getting rid of any beliefs we have that
may be causmg us to hesitate or might inhibit our ability to approach our amends with
humility, acceptance, and faith.
Something that seems to be a problem for many of us is that we often owe amends to
people who have also harmed us. This may be a parent or other relative who abused us, a
friend who let us down somehow, an employer who didn't treat us fairly, and so on.
We've done a lot of work in the previous steps to separate what they did to us from what
we did to them. We know exactly what our part in these situations was, and we know
why we are making amends. As we prepare to make direct, face-to-face amends, we need
to be perfectly clear that we are making amends for our part in these conflicts. We're not
making amends to coerce or manipulate a reciprocal amends. We're not responsible for
cleaning up anything not on our side of the street. Keeping this in mind throughout our
amends will help us keep focused on our purpose no matter how our amends are received
and whether or not we receive amends in return for harm done to us.
Sometimes, though, the wrong done to us was so extreme that it's better to postpone
making our amends until a later time. For instance, many of us were emotionally,
physically, or sexually abused as children by an older relative. Though we had no part in
that situation and owe no amends because of it, we may have stolen money or caused
physical or property damage to the relative at some other time. So we owe amends for the
theft, physical harm, or vandalism. The question that arises in this situation is not whether
to make amends, but when and how. It may take a long time before we are ready to make
an appropriate amends, and that's okay. We wait, and we work with our sponsor.
We need to try to forgive the people who have harmed us before we make amends to
them. We don't want to sit down with someone with whom we're furious and try to make
amends. Our attitude will be apparent, no matter how much we try to hide it. Amends are
a time when it's not usually very productive to "act as if."
There's a big difference between situations when we were harmed against our will and
situations in which our behavior contributed to the way we were treated. For many of our
amends, when we're angry at someone who treated us badly, we need to ask ourselves if
anything we did could have caused them to treat us as they did. For instance, we may be
enraged at our parents for not trusting us to go out on a weekend-to an NA dance! -but
when we think about how many times we lied before about where we were going and
always used drugs wherever we went, it may help us see that our parents can't help
treating us with mistrust and that we may have to spend more time earning their trust. Or
we may have been selfish and withdrawn with some of our friends day after day, week
after week; then when we needed them and they weren't available, we became angry and
resentful. Reminding ourselves that we engineered much of our own misery may help us
forgive those who hurt us.
Another way we may find forgiveness for those who hurt us is by getting out of ourselves
and thinking about what other people's lives are like. Maybe the people who hurt us did
so because they had problems that made them less sensitive to the needs of others. Maybe
our sponsor didn't return our phone calls for a week because his youngest child was in
jail. Maybe our best friend told us our relationship was unhealthy and we should get out
of it-immediately following her own divorce. Maybe our employer didn't praise our work
because he was worried about being able to meet payroll that week. We usually feel petty
and small when we find out that a person we resented had some painful problem. Maybe
we can be more forgiving and loving if we just assume from the start that most people's
intentions are good and that if someone is unkind to us, it may be because he or she is in
a lot of pain and very distracted by it.
First and foremost, preparing ourselves spiritually to make amends requires that we tap
into our Higher Power's strength and love. Contemplating a loving God's forgiveness of
the times when we hurt people will help us approach people with an attitude of love and
forgiveness. Using our Higher Power as a sort of protective force will ensure that
negative reactions to our amends don't cause us to lose hope. We can center ourselves by
praying and meditating before each amends.
 Do I owe amends to people who have also harmed me?
 Have I forgiven them all? Which ones have I not forgiven yet? Have I tried all of the
above ways of generating a spirit of forgiveness? What does my sponsor say about it?
Making Amends
Now we're ready to make our amends. We've discussed each person or institution on our
Eighth Step list with our sponsor and made a plan for how we would go about making
each amends. We've talked to the God of our understanding, and we've prayed for the
willingness, serenity, courage, and wisdom to go through with our amends.
Now we need to follow through with our amends. We need to continue amending our
behavior, and we need to keep whatever commitments we've made to the people on our
amends list.
This is where it can get difficult. When we first make an amends, we're usually feeling as
if we could float away on a cloud of freedom. We feel a heightened sense of self-respect
and the initial euphoria that comes along with the disappearance of a large chunk of
remorse. We feel like good people, like we're on equal footing with the rest of humanity.
This feeling is extremely powerful, and if it's our first time feeling it, it might seem like
more than we can handle.
We shouldn't worry. The feelings won't be so intense for long, though there will be some
permanent change in our feelings about ourselves. After the first glow of making amends
fades, we'll face the truly challenging part of making amends: the follow-through. For
instance, a year after we approach a lending institution to which we owe money and
promise to pay back a certain amount every month, we may not find it "spiritually
inspiring" to hand over a portion of every hard-earned paycheck, especially if we're going
to be making the same payment for several more years. Asking ourselves one simple
question should help us continue with our amends: How free do we want to be? To
continue with all aspects of our recovery, making amends included, makes our freedom
grow day by day.
 Are there amends with which I'm having trouble following through? What am I doing to
recommit myself to making these amends?
It is not necessarily a comforting and comfortable process to make amends. The steps
aren't designed to make us happy and comfortable without also making us grow. The
fear, the risk, and the feeling of vulnerability that come with making amends may be so
uncomfortable for us that the memory keeps us from repeating the behavior that led to us
having to make amends. We hear often around NA that "it gets better." "It" is us-we get
better. We become better people. We become less willing to engage in destructive
behavior because we are aware of the cost in human misery, both our own and those
around us. Our self-centeredness is replaced by an awareness of other people and concern
about their lives. Where we were indifferent, we begin to care. Where we were selfish,
we begin to be selfless. Where we were angry, we begin to be forgiving.
Our love and tolerance also extend to ourselves. We explored some of the issues
surrounding making amends to ourselves in Step Eight; now it's time to recognize how
we've already begun making amends to ourselves and perhaps make some plans to
continue or take on some new things. We began making amends to ourselves for our
addiction when we stopped using drugs and started working the steps. Just these two acts
will go a long way toward healing the damage we did to our own spirits. We may have to
do some other things to heal the damage we did to our bodies and minds. There are many
ways we can begin taking care of our physical health, from diet to exercise to medical
treatment. Whatever ways we choose will need to fit our personal needs and desires. The
damage we did to our minds may be healed in some measure by pursuing knowledge in
the future. A return to school, or just learning something new, will help us repair years of
mental neglect.
 What are my immediate plans for making amends to myself? Do I have any long-range
goals that might also fit as amends to myself? What are they? What can I do to follow
through?
Spiritual Principles
In the Ninth Step, we will focus on humility, love, and forgiveness.
The humility we've gained in this step has resulted from getting a good look at the
damage we did to others and accepting responsibility for it. We acknowledge to
ourselves, "Yes, this is what I've done. I'm responsible for the harm I caused and for
making it right." We may have been led to this awareness by the experience of having
someone tearfully tell us how much we hurt them. We may have found ourselves on the
receiving end of some hurt we had inflicted on someone else, and been so jarred by such
an experience that we were able to see on a deeper level how we hurt people. Then again,
it may have been only the process of the previous steps, coupled with the experience of
making amends that led us to experience increased humility.
 Have I accepted responsibility for the harm I caused and for repairing that harm?
 What experiences have I had that led me to see the harm I caused more clearly? How has
that contributed to an increase in my humility?
It becomes much easier to practice the spiritual principle of love in Step Nine, though
we've probably been working on practicing it throughout our recovery. By this time,
we've eliminated many of the destructive views and feelings we had, making room for
love in our lives. As we become filled with love, we find ourselves compelled to share it
by nurturing our relationships and building new ones and by selflessly sharing our
recovery, our time, our resources, and above all, ourselves with those in need.
 How am I giving of myself or being of service to others?
As we experience being forgiven, we begin to see the value in extending that to others.
This motivates us to practice the spiritual principle of forgiveness as much as possible.
Recognizing our own humanness gives us the capacity to forgive others and not be as
judgmental as we have been in the past. It becomes second nature for us to give other
people the benefit of the doubt. We no longer suspect vile motives and sneaky
conspiracies are at play in every situation over which we don't have full control. We're
aware that we usually mean well, and so extend that belief to others. When someone does
harm us, we’re aware that holding resentments only serves to rob our own peace and
serenity, so we tend to forgive sooner rather than later.
 What are the benefits to me of practicing the principle of forgiveness? What are some
situations in which I've been able to practice this principle?
 For what have I forgiven myself?
Moving On
Many of us find it helpful to reflect on our amends after making each one. Some of us do
this by writing about how it felt to make the amends and what we learned from the
experience.
 How did it feel to make this amends? What did I learn from it?
"Freedom" seems to be the word that most clearly describes the essence of Step Nine. It
seems to sum up the relief from guilt and shame, the lessening of our obsession with
ourselves, and the increased ability to appreciate what's going on around us as it's
happening. We start being less consumed with ourselves, more able to be fully present in
all our relationships. We begin to be able to just be in a roomful of people without trying
to control the room or dominate every conversation. We start thinking of our past,
specifically our addiction, as a gold mine of experience to share with people we're trying
to help in recovery, instead of as a period of darkness we want to forget about. We stop
thinking about our lives in terms of what we don't have and begin to appreciate the gifts
we receive every day. We know that to keep this feeling of freedom, we'll need to keep
applying what we've learned in the previous steps. Step Ten gives us the means to do
that.