Showing posts with label recovering alcoholic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recovering alcoholic. Show all posts

Monday, November 10, 2008

IT WOULD BE CARELESS OF ME NOT TO MENTION THE ORIGINAL 12 STEPS OF AA

Twelve Steps

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, 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 others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

ALCOHOL WANTS ME TO PRETEND I'M SOBER

'Be yourself'. 'Love yourself'. 'Need yourself'
I have met so many detached folk in recovery who repeat the above sentences over and over in order to remind themselves that they will never believe them. I have a hard enough time slowly becoming myself, hoping one day I will actually realize that I have a self, not to mind being so brazen and dishonest as to claim that I love myself. Years of 12 step groups, counselling and pain have gifted me with one asset that has saved my ass over and over - the ability to be somewhat honest with my 'devastating weaknesses and all its consequences'. It will more than likely take me the rest of my life to define my concept of love. Then it will take me another lifetime to connect it with the self I am supposed to be. Then and only then will I begin the process of connecting them both. In the meantime - I go to meetings.