The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

The famous '12 steps' of 'Alcoholics Anonymous' (commonly simply referred to as 'AA') have been the key for countless thousands of people who have gained control over their obsession for alcohol and have found recovery in their lives.

The first step for AA, and what characterizes their tactics from the sort of treatment practiced in many clinics, is the idea that alcoholism is in priciple a disease of the personality. People become addicts because they have addictive personalities. To handle alcoholism therefore requires an altogether different approach than would be given to a normal disease of the body.

The 12 steps of AA are a moral and spiritual reaction to the personality . The steps are as shown below:

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

2. We came to believe that a Power higher than ourselves could bring us to sanity.

3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.

4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. We confessed to God, to ourselves and to another human being the specific nature of our .

6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these faults of character.

7. We humbly request Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. We made a list of all persons we had burnt, and became willing to make amends to them all.

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

10. we continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly .

11. We aspire through prayer and meditation to enhance our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the means to .

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.

(ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, NEW YORK CITY, 1955)

The beginning of the 12 steps are distinctly Christian in nature, following the fundamental evangelical pattern of sin, confession, forgiveness and restoration. As in Christian theology too, the sinner always remains a sinner. No alcoholic is ever 'cured' of alcoholism. They will continue to an alcoholic till the day they die. The goal achieved through the 12 steps is simply to become a 'non-drinking alcoholic'.

AA has long lost touched with its Evangelical Christian . Indeed, an abundant amount of AA groups tend to be self-consiously distant from the church. One can only assume that this is because of the unhappy history of judgementalism and neglect that has been shown to many alcoholic persons by Christian congregations.

As conveyed above, not every alcohol treatment program encourages the 12 steps. Some in the medical profession are skeptical to a spiritual approach to treatment, while some more spiritual rehabilitation programs scrap one or two of the steps, as some reject the idea that the alcoholic can never be cured of alcoholism.

Even so, one is tempted to say, 'a million non-drinking alcoholics can't be wrong'. The millions of persons who have found healing and hope through the 12 steps certainly testifies to their significance.

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