The 12 Steps and Promises of AA

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These are the suggest 12 Steps from ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS The Story of How many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism NEW AND REVISED EDITION (Second Edition) ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS PUBLISHING, INC. NEW YORK CITY 1955 pp. 59-60. The 12 Promises from The Big Book page 83 are inserted so you can see what will happen as you work these steps.

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

Promise - If we are painstaking about this phase of our development we will be amazed before we are halfway through.

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

Promise - We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.

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

Promise - We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Promise - We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.

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

Promise - No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.

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

Promise - That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Promise - We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.

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

Promise - Self-seeking will slip away.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Promise - Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.

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

Promise - Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.

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.

Promise - We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the resul t of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Promise - We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.