Staying Clean and Sober in The Everyday World

Twelve StepsThese are the original Twelve Steps as published by Alcoholics Anonymous.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our 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.

In some cases, where other twelve-step groups have adapted the AA steps as guiding principles, they have been altered to emphasize principles important to those particular fellowships, to remove gender-biased or specific religious language.

The 12 steps were first introduced to us in this form by a man named Bill W.  He and 2 others founded what is now known as Alcoholics Anonymous.  While AA itself does not participate in any other organization they were kind enough to allow others to adapt the 12 steps and 12 traditions for use in various other recovery groups.  Each group focuses on recovery from a specific addiction and the years have proven this to be best.

These 12 steps are based on a very simple principle.  I can control nothing.  The first 3 steps are many times broken down in their very simplest from as:

1.     I can’t

2.     He can.

3.     I think I’ll let Him.

While this sounds too simple to really work in actuality thes are truly the hardest three steps in the program.  Many of us refuse to believe that we have no control over our addiction.  For many more the very thought of some “Higher Power” that would care enough to help them is just ridiculous.  Many just have to use the 12 Step group itself as their “Higher Power”.  This works and in time they usually come to believe in a supernatural power, which most of us call God.  When we come to the 12 Step program we are usually angry with God and do not want to acknowledge Him in any way.  Admitting we can’t is harder.  He can is harder but the hardest part is to let Him.  Most of us have to begin each day going over these first 2 steps and when an urge to use comes over us we must go through these steps again and again.  These steps were taken from the Bible and there are many Christian based 12 Step programs which include the Biblical equivalent to these steps.  One of the most well known Christian based groups is Celebrate Recovery. (www.celebraterecovery.com/)

We will talk more about the steps tomorrow.  Just for today we will concentrate on the first three.  I can’t, He can, I think I’ll let Him.

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