12 Steps
AA's Twelve steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their nature,
which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink
and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole.
- From The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
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 short
comings.
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.