GET RID OF ADDICTIONS! THE TWELVE STEPS OF TRANSFORMATION

In the second half of the 1930s, a small group of alcoholics got together to confront a problem no one else had managed to solve: how to get rid of their own alcoholism.

What is the purpose of anonymity in Alcoholics Anonymous?

•    At the personal level, anonymity provides protection for all members from identification as alcoholics, a safeguard often of special importance to newcomers. 

•    At the public level of press, radio, TV, films and other media technologies such as the Internet, anonymity stresses the equality in the Fellowship of all members by putting the brake on those who might otherwise exploit their A.A. affiliation to achieve recognition, power, or personal gain. 

 

Since the Twelve Steps have been successfully adapted for use in situations other than alcoholism, there is an important possibility that they may have a yet more general use, and they can indeed be used by anyone who needs a boost to his or her spiritual life. Fellowships that focus on gambling, sex addiction, food-related problems and recovery from incest and other traumatic events have all profitably used the Twelve Steps to encourage their members to discover and follow a path to spiritual recovery.

Each of the Twelve Steps can be shown to share some element in the tought and experience, the Scripture and prayer life, of the Ortodox Church, it is quite possible for OrtodoxChristians to incorporate these Steps into their own lives in order to deepend their spiritual experience.

Step 1

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.

It is important at the beginning of his recovery the alcoholic come to terms with the fact that there is a power outside himself which is greater than he is. During the course of the Steps, denail will be replaced with acceptance: I am an alcholic. I admit I have a problem.

Step 2

Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us sanity.

Step 3

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

The individual is invited to dethrone his own ego and to put his entire life in God’s care.

Step 4

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

In dealing with resentments, we listed people, insititutions or priniples with whom we were angry and we asked ourselves why we were angry.

Here we are invited to look at the complete picture: not just what we did wrong, what mistakes we made, or what did not go right. Here we are invited to look even at the roots of our errors, and according to AA’s wisdom, the most dangerous root of all is resentment. Resentment is the number one offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem of all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick.

Step 5

Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Step 6

Were entirely ready to have God remove all the defects of character.

Step 7

Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

The Step says nothing about HOW God will do this or in what way He will acomplish it.

Step 8

Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step 9

Made direct amends to such people wherever possibile, exept when do to so would injure them or others.

Step 10

Continued to take personal inventoy and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Step four is now applied every day.

Step 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.

Step 12

Having had a spiritual awaking as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in our affairs

Bibliografie:

Archimandrite Meletios Webber, Steps of transformation: an orthodox priest explores the twelve steps

https://www.aa.org/pages/en_US/understanding-anonymity

https://anonpress.org/bb/Page_64.htm

https://www.nextsteprecovery.com/how-12-step-programs-work/

Article written by Alessandra Gemeș