Part of the recovery program that AA suggests is set forth in the twelve steps listed below. Based on the experience of the AA’s earliest members, the steps are a record of the principles and practices they developed to maintain sobriety (after many other approaches had failed).
If the alcoholic in your life shrinks from the idea that a formal code of behaviour will be required, you can put his or her mind at ease. Each member uses the steps in an individual way. The steps are suggested as a problem of recovery.
Although experiences show that many AA members’ comfort in sobriety depends, to an extent, on their understanding and acceptance of the steps, no AA member is forced to accept or even read them. It is up to the individual to decide when and how the steps, will be used.
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, accept 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 practise these principals in all our affairs.
The AA Estcourt branch hosts meetings every Tuesday at Forderville Primary School from 7pm to 8pm. Contact Desigan on 082 849 3014.
