Food for Thought
Some people say that AA and NA is not for them because of the God concepts, but most people don't understand why it is so successful. It is because of how it was founded. Imagine if we went back to the first 12 Steps, imagine what the success rates would really look like.
The original twelve steps are as followed:
1. Honesty - [We] Admitted we were powerless over alcohol (drugs) — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Hope- Came to believe that God could restore us to sanity.
3. Faith - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care and direction of God.
4. Courage - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Integrity - Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Willingness - Were entirely willing that God remove all these defects of
character.
7. Humility - Humbly, on our knees, asked Him to remove our shortcomings —holding nothing back.
8. Brotherly Love - Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make complete amends to them all.
9. Justice - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Perseverance - Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Spiritual Awareness - Sought through prayer and meditation to improve ourcontact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the powerto carry that out.
12. Service - Having had a spiritual experience as the result of this course of action, we tried to carry this message to others, especially alcoholics (drugaddicts), and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
