Drug Detoxification with 12 Step Programs
Beth on 15 Nov 2009
The best way to define a 12-step program is that it gives you a roadmap for recovery from addiction, compulsion, or other behavioral problems. The original 12-steps were first published in1939 in the book, Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered From Alcoholism.
These are the original Twelve Steps:
- We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
- 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.
- 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.
Alcoholics Anonymous (4th ed.)
Over the years many groups, wanting to address behaviors besides alcohol addiction, have reworded the language to fit their groups’ focus as well as any differentiating religious or cultural identity. The Steps have a chameleon like ability to become what a group needs them to become.
There are as many ideas about recovery as there are stars in the sky, but the Steps work. Over and over and over, the Steps show that they work. It’s not a painless way to get over your heroin addiction, but it has the best chance of working. Once you deal with just getting the drugs out of your system, once you detox and get your head clear, then you can begin to replace the hole in your soul. Because that’s really the question, right? Why did you start using in the first place? When you get to the 4th Step…. the moral inventory, that’s when healing can really begin.
So take some time to visit the AA website and see what I mean.