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Home > Twelve-step program

 Contents
1 Characteristics
2 The twelve steps
3 History
4 Relation to religion
A twelve-step program is a self-help group whose members attempt recovery from various addictions and compulsions through the use of a plan referred to as the "twelve steps".

1 Characteristics

All twelve-step programs follow some version of the twelve steps. They meet regularly to discuss their problems and share their victories.

One of the most widely-recognized characteristics of twelve-step groups is the requirement that members admit that they "have a problem". In this spirit, many members open their address to the group along the lines of, "Hi, I'm David, and I'm an alcoholic" -- a catchphrase now widely identified with support groups.

Visitors to group meetings share their experiences, challenge successes and failures, and provide peer support for each other. Many people who have joined these groups report they found success that previously eluded them, while others -- including some ex-members -- criticize their efficacy or universal applicability.

2 The twelve steps

The twelve steps for Alcoholics Anonymous are as follows.

  1. Admit that you are powerless over alcohol -- that your life has become unmanageable.
  2. Come to believe that a Power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity.
  3. Make a decision to turn your will and your life over to the care of God as you understand Him.
  4. Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself.
  5. Admit to God, to yourself and to another human being the exact nature of your wrongs.
  6. Be entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
  7. Humbly ask Him to remove your shortcomings.
  8. Make a list of all persons you have 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 you are wrong promptly admit it.
  11. Seek through prayer and meditation to improve your consciousConsciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. In common parlance, consciousness denotes bein contact with God, as you understand Him, praying only for knowledgeKnowledge is the awareness and understanding of facts, truths or information gained in the form of experience or learning. Knowledge is an appreciation of the possession of interconnected details which, in isolation, are of lesser value. Knowledge is a te of His willFor alternate uses, see will. Will in philosophy refers to the quality that produces conscious and intended actions. It was seen as the underlying reality of all perceptions by Arthur Schopenhauer in his main work, The World as Will and Representation and for you and the powerSociologists usually define power as the ability to impose one's will on others, even if those others resist in some way. By power is meant that opportunity existing within a social relationship which permits one to carry out one's own will even against r to carry that out.
  12. Having had a spiritual awakeningA spiritual awakening is an eventual or even sudden realization that one has a connection with an entity or entities beyond the immediate and physical world which our five senses detect. Typically, such an entity is considered a "God" or other likeness to as the result of these steps, try to carry this message to alcoholics, and practice these principles in all of your affairs.

(Source: Alcoholic's Anonymous)

Other twelve-step groups have modified these steps slightly to refer to problems other than alcoholism.



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Topics: Twelve-step Program, Characteristics, The Twelve Steps...

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