It’s very rare for someone to completely commit to the A.A. program and still fail. People who do not recover are the ones who can’t or won’t follow this simple program. They are usually people who simply cannot be honest with themselves. We don’t meet a lot of people like this, but they do exist. It is not their fault. They seem to have been born that way. But because they cannot be honest with themselves, they are unlikely to succeed in their recovery.
There are also people who suffer from emotional and mental disorders, and join A.A. to address their alcoholism. Many of them do recover if they are able to be honest along their journey.
Many of the stories we share in this book describe experiences that we have had ourselves. We share stories about what we used to be like, what happened to us, and what our lives are like now. If you feel like we did and want to stop drinking, then you are ready to get started. You are ready to take these steps toward recovery.
When we started, some of those first steps scared us. We thought we could find an easier way. But we could not. Since we know this now from our own experiences, we’re asking you to be fearless and thorough from the start. Some of us tried to keep our old ideas, and they just held us back. Until we let go of those ideas, we were unable to make progress.
Remember that we are dealing with a disease. Alcoholism is a confusing and powerful condition that is unlike anything else in the world. Alcohol is extremely complicated, tricky, and difficult. It seems to control and punish people who are addicted to it. Without help, beating alcoholism is too much for one person to handle. We all need guidance from God, support from a Higher Power. And we need to ask for that support with full and open hearts. We stand at a turning point. We ask for God’s protection and care with all the honesty we have.
Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery:
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 alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
If this is your first time reading through these steps, they may seem difficult ... or even impossible. Do not be discouraged. No one has ever followed these principles perfectly. We are not saints. We are simply people who are trying to grow, both spiritually and personally. These ideas are here to guide our progress. And our goal is spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection.
In Chapter 4 we shared a description of alcoholics who do not believe in God. Combined with that, we believe the stories of our experiences as A.A. members all boil down to three simple ideas:
A. That we were alcoholics and could not manage our own lives.
B. That no human power could have stopped or changed our alcoholism.
C. That God could and would help us if we tried to find God.