What are the 12 steps?

by Anonymous
(Australia)

What are the first steps?

I am fine when I drink beer however, when I drink anything else, I drink till I fall over.

This has become progressively worse over the past year.


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These are the 12-Steps

Step 1 - We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable
Step 2 - Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
Step 3 - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God
Step 4 - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
Step 5 - Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
Step 6 - Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
Step 7 - Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings
Step 8 - Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
Step 9 - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
Step 10 - Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
Step 11 - Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out
Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

It's not enough to know the 12-Steps. You must do them in context of the AA program. You have to go to meetings, get a sponsor and work each step with him/her.

This takes time, but there's no rush. Maintaining sobriety is a life-long process.

Bev

This version of the 12 steps is an adaptation from the original 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and is intended for general use with any addictive or dysfunctional behavior.