12 steps

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-20-2009
12 steps
1
Wed, 04-28-2010 - 12:26pm

I'm still considering whether or not I belong at AA, but even if I'm not a bona fide alcoholic, I am gaining a lot of insight from reading the Big Book and going to a few meetings here and there. I think a lot of the tenants are the same we use here at EAS to end our affair addiction and move towards recovery.

I'm posting the 12 Steps to see if you see the same connections I see:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
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.
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.

I did two lists of 'amends' (#8 and #9) I would make to the xAP if I were to, but I won't: one list was serious and the other darkly amusing, including, "I'm sorry I flattened your tire that time." and "I'm sorry I jumped your fence and stole your 30lb mint plant out of its pot." oh, and "I'm sorry I peed in your bushes." In addition, I should probably also apologize to him, or rather _the world_ for setting that 1st edition Kafka biography on fire. Maybe I should change my moniker to "Former Psycho"!

Anyhoo, just some food for thought.
I hope everybody has a wonderful NC or LC Wednesday!
xo
Dee

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-25-2010
In reply to: deeulta
Wed, 04-28-2010 - 5:19pm

Hi Deeulta!

I am very new here but am 368 (!) days out of my A and wow I feel great since hitting one year! I am also coming up on my ninth anniversary of being clean and sober from alcohol.

Can the steps be used for love addiction? Of course! They work for any compulsive disorder I believe.

My A triggered vicious drinking in me that even shocked me! Anyone that is a marginal alcoholic (or who has any trouble with other substances, eg. food, drugs, etc.) can certainly go over 'the edge' in an A, (IMHO), because of the sheer emotional intensity of A's.

The abandonment and betrayal and lust and passion and rage are all at such a high intensity that I simply knew no other way to cope but to to drink and drink and drink........(all in secret and hidden from the MM of course). I would occasionally toss an empty beer can at his business however!

And I still went back to the MM sober, stupid me! But by then I had an AA sponsor who had been in an A herself and knew the ropes. She ruined the fantasy for me big time, even tho I couldnt let him go for a long, long time and even tho I lied to her about him! (sigh)

Now little by little I am trying to make away from ALL addictions, one addiction at a time, one day at a time. It's just a one day at a time process however, so usually people try to focus on one addiction at a time. Recovery is SLOW not fast but it works! It is "progress" not "perfection".

I don't know which addiction is harder to break in general, but I guess I would say that in my case it has been the love addiction that was harder than even stopping to drink! And that is saying a lot because stopping to drink was no walk in the park.

I was off and on and off and on again with my ex MM for a bit more than ten years, unfortunately. Although I was 1000 per cent sure I was in love, and that it was worth it, I laugh now at my dumb thinking and feel now the whole thing was a GIANT WASTE OF TIME. I guess I had to go through it as part of my "process". I will never go back however. Ever. It was pure torture as I look back now.