What are the Twelve Steps?
Many rehabilitation clinics are also known as ‘twelve step clinics’ which means they follow the twelve step programme of recovery. The twelve step programme was originally created when Alcoholics Anonymous came into being in the USA in the 1930’s. It was put together as a successful way for alcoholics to stop drinking and to stay stopped.
Many people say they are put off the Twelve Step Programme as they see it as religious and it is true the steps were devised in Bible Belt America (AA was founded in Akron, Ohio). It is also true that within the Twelve Step Programme there are the words ‘God of our understanding’. However, as explained below, the Twelve Step Programme is not religious. It does, however, involve us getting in touch with our inner spirit and it does advocate strongly that as individuals, we alcoholics and addicts cannot get well on our own. We need help and support – certainly of the human kind.
The Twelve Step Programme is as follows – rewritten to aid understanding.
- We are powerless over alcohol (or drugs/ prescription medication – whatever our addiction is). As a result of this our lives have become ‘unmanageable’. Alcoholics and addicts are not weak people but once they become addicted it is the alcohol or drugs that controls them, not the other way around. This is hard to dispute. Are our lives unmanageable? Show me an alcoholic or addict who is not chaotic and unreliable. If we are holding our lives together then it is because we are making a huge effort to keep all the balls in the air. It is unlikely that this can be sustained.
- The second step is about a power greater than ourselves restoring us to sanity. There are two parts to this step. The first is about ‘restoring us to sanity’ – implying that we must be insane. While we might not be candidates for being sectioned, it is true that most of us are behaving and thinking in an insane way – keeping on drinking or using drugs, thinking our lives will get better one day without us actually doing anything different. Or thinking that we can stop through using our willpower when all evidence from past attempts demonstrates that we cannot. So we need help to get us from being ‘insane’ to ‘sane’ – help from outside our own personal limited resources. You can call it a Power greater than ourselves (Higher Power) – many of us can accept that nature is a power greater than ourselves. Infinity is a concept that is difficult to understand – greater than ourselves. So we have to decide what our own higher power is – God, the universe, nature whatever. We also usually need human help: professional help, or a self help group (for example AA) or any other help you can get which helps you to stop on a permanent basis.
- The 3rd step is about turning our will over to the ‘care of God as we understand’ it. This step is not referring to a religious God (unless we choose it to be). It is about accepting that our stubborn determined self will is not going to get us well. We have to give up and accept that someone or something else is needed that is outside ourselves. Again this is where the ‘Higher Power’ or power greater than ourselves referred to in step 2 comes from.
- Steps 4 – 7 are about us recognising what is not great about our character and personality, what we have done wrong in the past, taking responsibility for it and owning up to it to another human being. We then ask our ‘Higher Power’ to help us become better people by ‘removing’ our character defects. Many of our defects will not be removed just like that. But by becoming aware of them, we can work on ourselves to stop them manifesting themselves so frequently or so obviously.
- Steps 8 and 9 are about us writing a list of people we have harmed in the past and saying sorry or making it up to them – so long as this does not cause anyone more harm than good.
- Step 10 is about living each day on an honest and principled basis, so that at the end of each day, if we have done something we should not have, we own it and put it right.
- Step 11 is about keeping in touch with our Higher Power and trying to think about what we should be doing (e.g. led by our conscience) so we do not become so self centred and selfish again, as we were in our days of drinking and using.
- Last but not least, Step 12 is about how, having got well, we tell other people about how we got well and offer the same help and support to them.
How Effective is The Twelve Step Programme?
The Twelve Step Programme has been proven to be the most effective way of alcoholics and addicts getting well and staying well. For that reason many treatment centres have adopted them as the basis of their treatment programme. Twelve Step Treatment Centres will take their patients through these Twelve steps, so they understand them, and then help the patients understand how to apply them in their everyday lives.
Twelve Step Treatment Centres will also usually offer other therapy such as cognitive behavioural therapy, workshops and one to one counselling sessions. They will all promote total abstinence from all mood altering substances – alcohol, illegal drugs and mood altering prescription medications (including opiates and benzodiazepines).
If you would like to learn more you can book a free assessment without any obligations to come and look around our clinic. Have a discussion with one of our addiction specialists, discuss the treatment programme, any concerns that you have and learn about what you can gain from treatment at our clinic.
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