Understanding the 12-Step Program for Addiction Recovery
The 12-Step recovery program was developed by Bill Wilson for Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). This is a community-based, mutual support recovery program that stresses that the recovering addict is not alone. It involves both a practical and spiritual core that helps those in recovery uncover the underlying causes of their addiction, make amends for the damage caused by their addiction, and restructure their lives for life after addiction. Members of the program work through the 12 steps, typically with the help of a sponsor who acts as a coach, mentor, and source of moral and mental support.
At Thrive N’ Beat Addiction, we want you to find a treatment plan that works for you and will help you to get ahold of your addiction. If this is a 12-step program, that’s great! Let us work with you to find a facility and treatment program that will address your needs, in San Bernardino or elsewhere.
What Are the 12 Steps?
1. Honesty: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Hope: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Surrender: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Courage: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Integrity: Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Willingness: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humility: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Love: Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Responsibility: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Discipline: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Awareness: 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. Service: 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.
Fellowship and Understanding in Recovery
One of the biggest benefits of the 12 Step program is that it focuses on the idea of addicts helping addicts. There is a sense of equality and understanding that may not be fostered without a mutual understanding of the mind of addiction. Alcoholics helping alcoholics is what this started as, but now it can be applied in addiction recovery from other substance abuse such as narcotics, prescriptions, or even shopping or sex.
If you need help with your fight against addiction, we are here to help. At Thrive N’ Beat Addiction, you have access to San Bernardino’s addiction recovery resources as well as resource connections for all over the US. We can help you find the treatment facility and plan that is best for you. Don’t wait until it is too late. Save your life, your relationships, and your health by taking your addiction seriously and getting help.
Contact Thrive N’ Beat Addiction today and give yourself a fighting chance at a new, better life.