Close Topic Options

12 Steps Help

This is to the millions of you suffering from the disease of addiction. It can take many forms: alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addiction, work-aholic, or any other ism you can think of. It is all caused by incorrect thinking. The normal person will not understand you and they will ostracize you, but you can recover. In my opinion you can not recover by yourself no matter how strong your willpower is. You can only recover with the help of a higher power and doing the 12 steps:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that or lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

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

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Message Edited! Persephone: Changed title to reflect content.

Help Steps

Pocketttape, thanks for sharing these steps. Out of curiosity, are these steps from a religious perspective or it was taken from Alcoholic Anonymous?

12 Steps Help Health & Special Psychology

Hello LDS, always nice to see your pretty face.

Sorry it took so long to respond I have been working the 12 steps and going to meetings every night so I don't have as much time as I used too to chat.

These steps are out of the "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous. These steps might seem religious but they are not. A.A. is neither for or against any religion, sect, or political cause for that matter. In the "Big Book" there is even a chapter for the agnostic.

Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

In step 1 we already admitted we were powerless over alcohol, if just saying no were possible we would have been sober long ago. We alcoholics and drug addicts suffer from the deadly sin of pride. We run our lives like we were the directors of a play and when the actors don't obey our direction we become resentful. We are incapable of managing our lives, we need God to do it for us. We must believe there is a Power greater than ourselves because when we make the decisions everything goes down the tubes. The main purpose of A.A. is not to stop people from drinking but it is to show us alcoholics a way, through spiritual growth, that we can manage our lives with the help of our higher power as we understand Him.

This is my personal opinion only. I believe the "Big Book" is divinely inspired. My Higher Power is Jesus Christ, who I believe is God.

The agnostic may start the program believing the A.A. group or the "Big Book" or a doorknob is his Higher Power. He must accept there is a power greater than him though, this is essential. Because morality alone will not work for most alcoholics. We must surrender our will.

One final note. I am only on step 5. I am not an expert on the A.A. program. I am very grateful for what I have learned so far and I am thirsting for more. You can read my earlier posts when I am in earlier stages of my spiritual growth and you can see that I am changing. From week to week I feel more in touch with God and I feal like a better person. I cringe when I look at some of my early writings. Who the heck did I think I was. I know now that I was and am an alcoholic, but with God's help I will recover. This is not to say I expect my recovery to be a straight line of progress. I will continue to be prideful and argumentative on occasion, but I will do it less and less by the grace of God.

Thank you, LDS, for giving me the opportunity to talk about my life in a real and honest way. This helps me immensely. God bless you, pockettape.

To other alcoholics and addicts: I know your out there, please chat with me you will feel better. I promise.

Edited: pockettape on 26th Apr, 2006 - 5:21am

Help Steps

Thanks for sharing Pockettape, now how these 12 steps work? You have to work one step at that time I suppose? and who decides you can move to step #2 for instance?

Help Steps

You work the steps with a sponsor. This is a person with a decade or more of sobriety who is familiar with the program. These steps are designed to be worked with someone with a lot of knowledge concerning alcoholism. Without a sponsor to guide you, you might put yourself in prison doing step 9.

The steps must be taken in order one at a time.

Well I completed step 5 tonight with my sponsor. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. It was a real humbling experience. I just ate a pint of chocolate ice cream, which I am not supposed to do, it is part of my addictive behavior. I feel like I've been rode hard and put away wet. Anyway enough self pity. My sponsor told me I wasn't ready for step six and that I have to start again at step 1. Yeah, I get to do step five again. Anyway feeling depressed but looking at step 2 and hoping my higher power can restore me to sanity. Restore me? Was I ever sane?