# Different viewpoints of the steps for addiction recovery

## The conventional view

These are [the original 12 steps](https://www.aa.org/the-twelve-steps) according to Alcoholics Anonymous in 1939:

1. Admit you have no power over your substance and can't manage your life anymore.
2. Come to believe God can restore your sanity.
3. Decide to give your will and life over to God's care.
4. Conduct a fearless, thorough personal moral inventory.
5. Admit to God, yourself, and another person the exact nature of your wrongs.
6. Become entirely ready for God to remove all those character defects.
7. Humbly ask God to remove your shortcomings.
8. Make a list of everyone you've harmed and become willing to make amends with all of them.
9. Make direct amends to them wherever possible, except when it would injure anyone.
10. Keep taking personal inventory and promptly admit when you're wrong.
11. Work to improve your conscious contact with God through [meditation](awareness-meditation.md) and praying, asking only for knowledge of God's will for you and for power to carry it out.
12. With the spiritual awakening from the first 11 steps, try to carry the message to other addicts and to practice its principles in everything.

## The parsed view

This is a representation of all the steps, articulated in excruciating step-by-step detail:

1. We admitted that a substance existed as an important part of our lives.
2. We admitted we were powerless over controlling that substance.
3. We admitted that our lives had become unmanageable.
4. Came to believe that a Power exists that is greater than ourselves.
5. Came to believe that we are having a break with sanity.
6. Came to believe that that Power could restore us to sanity.
7. Understood that Power as God.
8. Understood that God was capable to affect our will.
9. Understood that God was capable to affect our lives.
10. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.
11. Accepted we have moral failings.
12. Accepted our moral failings are things at least somewhat within our scope of control.
13. Accepted that we must start discovering our moral failings if we wish to make any decisions.
14. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
15. Parsed that moral inventory to find patterns.
16. Obsessed about that moral inventory until we were certain what the basis of our wrongdoings were.
17. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
18. Accepted the reality that our defects of character were the basis for the problems we were experiencing.
19. Became entirely ready for God to remove all these defects of character.
20. Humbly opened up a dialogue with Him to request that He remove our shortcomings.
21. Very specifically indicated our shortcomings to Him, with a full repentance of how we failed.
22. Made a list of all persons we had harmed.
23. Made a secondary list of all persons affected by our actions beyond the first list.
24. Became willing to make amends to them all.
25. Found ways to make direct amends to such people wherever possible.
26. Considered whether acting to make amends would injure them or others.
27. Made direct amends to the people who would not experience an adverse consequence of our amends.
28. Continued to routinely take personal inventory.
29. Later, upon finding when we are wrong, promptly admit it.
30. Through meditation and prayer, improve our conscious contact with God.
31. Focus our prayers to knowing His will for us.
32. Focus our prayers on receiving power to carry out His will for us.
33. Upon reflection of the above steps, slowly develop a spiritual awakening.
34. Carry this message to other [substance] abusers.
35. Practice these principles in all our affairs.

## The distilled view

The steps distill into several conditions necessary to break free:

1. Accept we have a problem we can't fix.
2. Place something else at the center of our lives instead of that substance. Many [religious](religion.md) leaders state that it's a product of our need to be [devoted to God](https://theologos.site/devotion-chaos/). The one advantage of trusting God is that obsession with God creates a secondary obsession with all [reality](reality.md) (i.e., God's [creative work](creations.md), which is the entire universe).
3. Find [friendship](people-4_friends.md) with supportive people who will *not* drag us back into the lifestyle we want to break from.
4. Maintain a sense of [meaning](meaning.md) in freeing ourselves in that substance: first by making amends, then [self-improvement](success-1_why.md), then provoking other people to do the same.

## The mechanical view

If we remove our human constraints and tendency to [build stories](stories.md) and [find meaning](meaning.md), the 12 steps are the motivational element for a very specific flow of [habitual](habits.md) shifts:

1. Subdivide the addiction into its component parts.
   - Break apart each ritual and routine into smaller, more malleable components.
   - In particular, differentiate any chemical dependency from the ritual (e.g., the nicotine chemical versus tobacco a tobacco product).
2. Use [self-awareness](awareness.md) to define what you enjoy.
    - Each part of our ritual is defined by how we derive pleasure.
    - If you dig deep enough, the pleasure will often have a broad-reaching [emotional](mind-feelings.md) connection from the past.
    - This is very emotionally draining, and often difficult to parse.
3. Find a replacement for the undesirable parts of the routine that maintains the original routine.
    - If you've sufficiently broken things apart, this is easy to find a [creative](mind-creativity.md) replacement.
      - For example, smoking cigarettes can be replaced with gum for the routine and nicotine patches for the vasoconstrictive experience.
      - Many times, that replacement is a much more constructive activity.
    - Often, given our social needs, we need some level of human connection when we engage in our substance.
      - To that end, most 12 step programs provide accountability partners.
4. Give the entire problem and plan to God.
    - God will grant the wisdom to see where you're missing something.
    - God will also grant the strength to carry out the plan.
5. if you relapse, you missed a part of your [habit](habits.md) you enjoy and need to find it.