When i parked my bike on the side of the road and cried : "God help me i can't keep doing this" I was, in essence, doing the first 3 steps .
Langkah may be handing out some tough love [but only listening to what I WANTED to hear was just one more symptom of my insanity] but the essence is still this: - the admission that i am powerless and , as a consequence, my life is unmanageable, was the absolute crux for me. Coming to grips with my insanities - whether the overt craziness of riding hard with a belly and a head full of chemicals or the subtle weirdness of running a future conversation thru my head- I had to BELIEVE the reality of my insanity.[not just set down some rational list]
and then I had to believe there was a transpersonal power capable of relieving my self induced insanity....
and then the faith- even if it was "merely" seeing all those folk who had done what i had been unable to do.... it was still: "god help me"
i often say that the "big" surrender then ,meant that i need only do "small" surrenders now- which I 've been doing daily for 16 yrs so far...