The 12 Steps

Can anyone please tell me what the 12 steps are?????
AA Steps


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 awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.


Thanks, Kat. I found them in the NA right after I posted. I have read them. I think I've said before that I have very little patience. That is an understatement. I pray for patience every day (especially when I'm behind the wheel and there are stupid drivers on the road with me!!!!!!). Anyway, I'm curious to know how long it took everyone to do the steps and start feeling better?
Everyone is different. First you have to go to a meeting, get a woman sponsor and she will take you thru them. We don't do the steps on our own although most of us think we are smart enough <G> What we do is find someone whose life we would like ours to be like. Someone who has worked the steps with their sponsor. We ask them to sponsor us and they will teach us the steps according to the NA or AA book.