THE TWELVES STEPS OF NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS
If you want what we have to offer,
and are willing to make an effort to get it, then you are ready
to take certain steps. These are the principles that made our
recovery possible.
- We admitted that we were powerless over our
addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.
- We can to believe that a Power greater than
ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- We made a decision to turn our will and our
lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
- We made a searching a fearless moral inventory
of ourselves.
- We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to
another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- We were entirely ready to have God remove
all these defects of character.
- We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
- We made a list of all persons we had harmed
and became willing to make amends to them all.
- We made direct amends to such people wherever
possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- We continued to take personal inventory and
when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
- We sought through prayer and meditation to
improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him,
praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power
to carry that out.
- 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.
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 indispensible are honesty, open-mindedness and
willingness. With these we are well on our way.s
We feel that our approach to the
disease of addiction is completely realistic, for the theraputic
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 in 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 is 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.
Thinking of alcohol as different
from other drugs has caused a great many addicts to relapse. Before
coming to the fellowship of NA, many of us viewed alcohol separately,
but we can not afford to be confused about this. ALCOHOL IS A DRUG.
We are people with the disease of addiction and must abstain from
all drugs in order to recover.
