Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.” In step 7 of the 12×12 it says that ” humility, as a word, is often misunderstood”. When asked, what is the opposite of humility; my first guess would be Pride. Who could argue that? It was in my 22nd year of sobriety, when I had a phone call from my first wife’s […]

“Made a List of all people I had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.” MY BUCKET LIST I’ve heard the term “bucket list” and understand it to be a list of thing that I want to accomplish before I transion from this earthly body. The 8th step was my personal “bucket list”, which consisted of people, […]

“Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” The step that separates the sober man from the hopeless drunk… Having hit my absolute bottom after relapsing for the umpteenth time in early 2002, I finally sobered up for good in a tiny desert town with the priceless help of a […]

“Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.” My father was a great believer in the Socratic maxim that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” He was convinced that the quest for genuine self-knowledge, though it often reveals unpleasant truths, is still the only workable foundation for a valuable life. I never asked him […]

“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.” Step Eleven is, hands down, my favorite step. But it certainly has not always been that way! My sobriety date is April 12, 2009. As of this writing, […]

“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.” One of my favorite quotes from Chapter 7 in the Big Book is, “practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics” (pg. […]