“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. […]

“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” My name is Robert and I am an alcoholic. Step one is the admission of complete defeat to this disease, which has been a challenge for most of us, as I know it was for me. I went through 8 or 9 30-day relapses and eventually stayed sober […]

“Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” What if, at this present time, you still don’t believe in the “powerless” concept, or you can’t as yet accept the fatality of your illness? Yes, you can still feel and see the repercussions of your latest debauch, and you’re basically aware of your present location […]

“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” There are a lot of angles to this program,” the guy said after the meeting. That rang a bell with me. I knew he had been a professional thief while drinking, and I acknowledged the fact that I had probably […]

“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” I read somewhere that early AAs, Bill Wilson included, completed all 12 steps in a very short time sometimes mere hours. Perhaps times were simpler then; no cell phones, no internet, people often worked at one company their whole working life. No one talked about being “dual diagnosed,” there was no […]