Topic 3. How It Works: The Twelve Steps Suggested as a Program of Recovery Supporting Info The Twelve Steps are a summary of actual past experience in recovery. The men and women responsible for the Steps realized that they could never reach in person many alcoholics who wanted their help. So they knew they had to be especially careful to use the words that would describe most honestly and completely the road they had taken. Newcomers are rarely helped by ponderous sermonizing about the Twelve Steps or by complicated interpretations. The steps speak plainly for themselves, and all new comers are, of course, free to interpret and use them as they individually choose. The Twelve Steps Suggested as a Program Of Recovery 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. Click Here 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Click Here 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. Click Here 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Click Here 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Click Here 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Click Here 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. Click Here 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Click Here 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Click Here 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Click Here 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. Click Here 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. Click Here