How Recovery Works

If you want what we have to offer, and are willing to make the effort to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps. Doing the 12 steps is a strategy. It is a way though addiction. It teaches a simple philosophy of living that many, may people would benefit from for an array of life issues. The 12 steps get people unstuck. These steps break down how recovery works and why.

NA stated that we feel that our approach to the disease of addiction is completely realistic, for the therapeutic value of one addict helping another is without parallel. We feel that our way is practical, for one addict can best understand and help another addict. We believe that the sooner we face our problems within our society, in everyday living, just that much faster do we become acceptable, responsible, and productive members of that society. The only way to keep from returning to active addiction is not to take that first drug. If you are like us you know that one is too many and a thousand never enough. We put great emphasis on this, for we know that when we use drugs in any form, or substitute one for another, we release our addiction all over again. Removing the denial of this is what step one is all about.

Importantly when it comes to AA and NA, thinking of alcohol as different from other drugs has caused a great many addicts to relapse. Before we came to NA, many of us viewed alcohol separately, but we cannot afford to be confused about this. Alcohol is a drug. We are people with the disease of addiction who must abstain from all drugs and substances in order to recover. This is how recovery works!

These are the principles of how recovery works:

1. We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that
our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves
could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the
care of God as we understood Him.
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of
ourselves.
5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human
being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects
of character.
7. We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became
willing to make amends to them all.
9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible,
except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were
wrong promptly admitted it.
11. We 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 a result of these steps,
we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice
these principles in all our affairs.

This sounds like a big order, and we can’t do it all at once. We didn’t become addicted in one day, so remember—easy does it. Addiction recovery takes time.

There is one thing more than anything else that will defeat us in our recovery; this is an attitude of indifference or
intolerance toward spiritual principles. Three of these that are indispensable are honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness. With these we are well on our way to understanding how recovery works.

Adapted and reproduced from the Little White Booklet, Narcotics Anonymous. For more help with how recovery works contact Pathways Plett rehab. info@pathwaysplettrehab.co.za