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Withoug help it is too much for us.
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This is the foundation of the first and second steps: we are powerless over alcohol and help is available by turning to a Power greater than ourselves.
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Half measures availed us nothing.
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Once again the authors state that nothing short of a complete abandonment of our old way of life is required. Half measures do not yield half results. This is an all or nothing proposition (53:9-10). We can hold on to our old ideas and continue to suffer or we can cast them away and adopt a completely new set of ideas and attitudes. God makes this possible. Our old lives, based on the notion of self-sufficiency, did not work. To begin this new life, all we need to do is voluntarily ask for God's help.
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Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a Program of Recovery:
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This is a suggested program, not a program of suggestions. We can adopt this way of life if we want or reject it if we feel we know a better way. Adopting some parts of this program and ignoring or evading other parts is unlikely to allow us to experience an entire psychic change. This is not a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life. This is a program of action which if practiced in whole will bring about a vital spiritual awakening that will remake out fundamental natures in a way that is indeed miraculous.
59:8-60:1
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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 experience as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
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here the program of action is laid out for us to examine. If we have taken the first two steps toward recovery, we can now decided whether we want to continue. To go on as we have been, or to accept a way of life based on the conscious awareness of the existence of God, what is our choice to be?
Source:
The Annotated AA Handbook
Frank D