The 12 Steps Program

Step Number 1

Admitted we were powerless over (what ever your affliction) and that our lives were unmanageable....

Step Number 2

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

Step Number 3

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God (as I understood him).

Step Number 4

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Step Number 5

Admitting to God, to ourselves and another human beings the exact nature of wrongs.

Step Number 6

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

Step Number 7

Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.

Step Number 8

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

Step Number 9

Made direct amends to such people except when to do so would injure others.

Step Number 10

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

Step Number 11

Sort through, pray and mediation, to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand him, praying only for knowledge of his will for use and the power to carry that out.

Step Number 12

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of this step.  We tried to carry this message to those that still suffer.  And to practice these principles in all our affairs.

The 12 Traditions of AA.

  1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon A.A. unity.
  2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
  3. The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.
  4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.
  5. Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
  6. An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
  7. Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
  8. Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
  9. A.A., as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
  10. Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
  11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.
  12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
THE A.A. PROMISES

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and selfpity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.


 
 
 
 
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