AA’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
with permission of A.A. World Services, Inc.
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable
Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
Made direct amends to such people, wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it
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
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 with permission of A.A. World Services, Inc.
