Step Study ~ Step One
It seems that it’s a good time for us to begin a step study here in the Friends and Family of Alcoholics Forum. Much of the information I will post here comes from the book Paths to Recovery: Al Anon’s Steps, Traditions and Concepts.
Each step will have its own thread. That way people can continue to come in, read the information and share his or her experience, strength and hope as it pertains to that step. After some discussion, we'll "sticky" each step so that people can find them easily.
Each of us works the steps in our time, and in our own manner. Most often, step work is done by those who attend face-to-face meetings and have a sponsor. That doesn’t mean that you MUST, it’s just a suggestion. Please don’t feel as though you must rush thru these steps… it took me a few years in the program before I began, and I found myself stuck on at least one of the steps for a year or more. The questions and postings here will be an outline, a framework from which you can begin your journey. If nothing else, the questions will provoke some thought and self-reflection, and some great discussions and dialogue.
Others who have worked the steps before will find that they wish to do the steps again. I know many people who work one step per month every year – 12 steps for 12 months. The more you learn about yourself, the more you know, and the more you wish to learn!
This is the suggested opening that is read at most Al Anon meetings:
We welcome you to this Al-Anon Family Group Meeting, and hope you will find in this fellowship the help and friendship we have been privileged to enjoy.
We who live, or have lived, with the problem of alcoholism understand as perhaps few others can.
We, too, were lonely and frustrated but in Al-Anon we discover that no situation is really hopeless and that it is possible for us to find contentment and even happiness, whether the alcoholic is still drinking or not.
We urge you to try our program. It has helped many of us find solutions that lead to serenity. So much depends on our own attitudes, and as we learn to place our problem in its true perspective, we find it loses its power to dominate our thoughts and our lives.
The family situation is bound to improve as we apply the Al-Anon ideas. Without such spiritual help living with an alcoholic is too much for most of us. Our thinking becomes distorted by trying to force solutions, and we become irritable and unreasonable without knowing it.
The Al-Anon program is based on the suggested Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, which we try, little by little, one day at a time, to apply to our lives along with our slogans and the Serenity Prayer.
The loving interchange of help among members and daily reading of Al-Anon literature thus make us ready to receive the priceless gift of serenity.
Al-Anon is an anonymous fellowship. Everything that is said here, in the group meeting and member-to-member, must be held in confidence. Only in this way can we feel free to say what is on our minds and in our hearts,for this is how we help one another in Al-Anon. The Al-Anon Family Groups are a fellowship of relatives and friends of alcoholics who share their experience, strength and hope in order to solve their common problems. We believe alcoholism is a family illness and that changed attitudes can aid recovery.
Al-Anon is not allied with any sect, denomination, political entity, organization or institution; does not engage in any controversy, neither endorses or opposes any cause. There are no dues for membership. Al Anon is self-supporting through its own voluntary contributions.
Al Anon has but one purpose: to help families of alcoholics. We do this by practicing the Twelve Steps, by welcoming and giving comfort to families of alcoholics, and by giving understanding and encouragement to the alcoholic.
Study of these steps is essential to progress in the Al Anon program. The principles they embody are universal, applicable to everyone, whatever his personal creed. In Al anon, we strive for an ever-deeper understanding of these steps, and pray for the wisdom to apply them to our lives.
Step 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
Step 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over the care of God as we understood Him
Step 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
Step 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
Step 6. Were entirely to have God remove all of these defects of character
Step 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings
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 where ever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
Step 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
Step 11. Sought thru 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 awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.