I really relate this to step 5 because being a child is a drama despite the childhood.  Within addiction there is drama.  Within life in general there is drama.  Within media there is drama.  Within families there is drama.  Humans create drama because at the start of life as babies they were programmed to keep safe.  With the high level of consciousness, sensuality, dependence, need for others and sensitivity , it is not surprising that internal drama is constructed.  This is then manifested in our external life.  With step 4 of personal inventory and step 5 of looking at self in a real sense. Then sharing the dramas one has constructed within is powerfully healing.  Author Alice Miller wrote a book called “The drama of being a child” “The search for the real self”.  This book was about research into childhood and how this can be painful and traumatic.  Though the book related to difficult experiences I think it is relevant  to childhood “full stop”.  In one part there is a look at the “true self”  the search for this process.  That no-one can heal by maintaining and fostering illusion.  This is so relevant to addiction and the 12 steps.  The natural child and real self is the “paradise of pre-ambivalent harmony”.  We often hope and search for this thus, creating compensatory strategies and safety operations to self sooth because in fact we are fear based.  The experience of ones own truth and the post ambivalent knowledge of it can make it possible to return to ones own world of feelings at an adult level.  This is without paradise, fantasy and illusion.  People often create a “Never Never ” land to compensate for life.  This can take many forms and is very diverse and far ranging.  The step 5 sharing of what is real about us allows a sense of liberation and being grounded.  Releasing us from what we once believed we had to do and say and be.  We learn that we can live without illusion and paradise and have the ability to mourn without fear.  I see step 5 as giving us back our vitality. This powerful process challenges shame and humiliation through being honest and owning who we are.