A.A.’s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole.
Reprinted from "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" page 15 with permission, Copyright © 1952, 1953, 1981 by A.A. World Services ®, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Twelve Steps
1. We admitted that 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 the 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 the 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.
Reprinted from "Alcoholics Anonymous ®", pages 59, 60 with permission, Copyright © 1939, 1955, 1976, 2001 by A.A. World Services ®, Inc. All rights reserved.
