The 12 Steps

(the basis of the Anonymous Self-Help/Support Groups –AA, NA, CA, etc.)

  1.  Admit that we are powerless over our substance of choice –that our lives have become unmanageable.
  2. Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.
  3. Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.
  4. Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  5. Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
  6. Become entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
  7. Humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings.
  8. Make a list of all persons we had harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.
  9. Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
  10. Continue to take personal inventory, and when we are wrong, promptly admit it.
  11. Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand 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, try to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.