“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” I didn’t want to become an alcoholic. I became one after my first drink; that drink was the solution to all of my affairs up to that point, for seventeen years. At the age of thirty-eight, I was ordered to […]

“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” The following preface to this subject matter is a poem I wrote after the last fourth step I finished: The choices I made yesterday are no longer the redeemers of my destiny. I stand today a man not governed by his predisposition to self-doubt and misguided self-will, but as a man […]

“Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” The principle of Step 5 is integrity – an unimpaired condition; soundness; adherence to a code of moral, artistic, or other values; the quality or state of being complete or individual. What a principle! I don’t know about you, but this vocabulary was never […]

“Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” Am I entirely ready to have God remove all of my defects of character, not just a few? Not always. Some of them are like a security blanket. They are a smelly blanket of comfort and familiarity. The smell keeps people away, forcing me to put my blanket […]

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, […]