Twelve-Steps to Recovery: Not a Cookie Cutter Solution

by Fiona Stockard | Jul 21, 2014 | Addiction Articles, 12 Steps

The Steps to Recovery Aren’t the Same for Everyone

Opinions on Taking Twelve-Steps to Recovery

Outside opinions on the inner-workings of twelve-step fellowships range from mild curiosity, to total disinterest, to insistence that they’re cults. At it’s very core, AA and other twelve-step recovery programs operate on the basis that if you want to recovery and remain anonymous, than you have a safe haven to do so. It’s on that foundation that you’re able to build a recovery program for yourself. You do this through sponsorship and the guidance of those that have come before you.

However, AA is in no way a one-size-fits-all program. Anyone who sees AA that way and represents it as such is operating from personal opinion. It’s hard for someone not in a recovery program to recognize the value of a support group. It’s probably even harder to understand the concept of anonymity. Hell, understanding those things is hard enough for people in recovery!

Twelve-step recovery is open to anyone with a desire to quit drinking or getting high (or a slew of other addictions). The truth is the actual journey of recovery looks different for each member.

Learn about the first step of twelve-step programs

The Twelve-Steps are a Process

The recovery process is exactly that, a process. It isn’t a thirty-day stay at an addiction treatment center for women. It isn’t a magic bullet that solves all of life’s problems.

Recovery, as a concept, goes way beyond the scope of the twelve-steps. It includes recovering from physical injuries, depression, emotional trauma, anxiety, and eating disorders. The list is endless – recovering from a break-up, from an ended friendship, from the death of someone you love. Recovering from these things doesn’t happen overnight. Some are easier to get through than others, but all pain demands attention. It doesn’t matter if that recovery is physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, or something else.

Why would an addict or alcoholic be any sort of exception to that rule? We don’t ask that someone “get over it” when they suffer an emotional loss (or at least we shouldn’t). Why would anyone expect that a lifestyle based on lies, fear, manipulation, denial, desperation, self-serving, and self-centeredness would heal without some intense and ongoing work?

In twelve-step recovery programs, the initial work of going through the steps with a sponsor is based on a set of suggestions. These suggestions clarify the nature of what we face (addiction and alcoholism). They advise we look at a lifetime of our thought and behavior patterns, which reveal how we’ve been running our lives (by fear and selfishness). Finally, they advise we try and make right some of the things we did. When this initial step-work process is complete, we show gratitude by taking new women through the same process. We keep our recovery alive by passing it onto others.

For those who believe AA and NA are cults, there are other options! Do your research, you’ll find plenty.

Learn about twelve-step meeting etiquette

No Requirement for “Membership”

None of the above are requirements for membership. Even within specific twelve-step programs, there are variants and adjustments each member can make. After getting through all twelve-steps of recovery, it becomes abundantly clear that recovery is exactly what you make it. You get to decide what it means to live differently, if living differently is what you want. Suggestions are made in the rooms of AA by sponsors and old timers, and anyone with a mouth really, but the reality is that you decide what rings true and speaks to your soul.

There’s No Right or Wrong Way

There isn’t a right or wrong way to start getting honest. There isn’t a right or wrong way to start learning who you really are. As time goes on, the spiritual principles you truly value will begin to develop and you decide how to nurture them. You choose how to pray. You choose how to meditate. You choose how to help another person – if you choose if you do those things at all! Recognizing that we’re all unique people, who happen to share a common bond, is meant to empower rather than subjugate. It’s up to you to own that power however you see fit.

Which AA Clichés Are Dead On?

by Sally Rosa | Jun 3, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Sobriety For Women

Written By: Katie Schipper

Clichés are those really annoying phrases we hear so often that they lose all meaning. We hear them often in twelve-step meetings. Clichés are repeated because they’re recognizable and often seem to be a go to for old-timers and sponsors.

AA has a lot of clichés! It’s easy to look at them as annoying, but in reality most of them have a lot of weight and meaning. Sometimes, we just have to hear them in the right context. When that happens, something clicks. What was once a played out cliché becomes something valuable. So, get over your resentment and start to learn why some clichés are important!

New to meetings? Read about some twelve-step meeting etiquette.

AA Clichés – Giving Them Back Their Meaning

Most of the go-to phrases in AA can be found posted on the wall of any clubhouse or meeting room. Let Go and Let God seems to be a good place to start. This cliché is an easy target because it’s an over-simplification of something that most alcoholics are miserably bad at doing – giving up control! So, the natural tendency is to hear this and sneer.

For us alcoholics, the fact is the truth is almost always simple. We don’t have a complicated solution. What we’ve found over and over again, and is shown in both our addiction stories and our sober transformations, is that we’re at our worst when we’re grabbing for control. So, this simple cliché, to let go of our desperate need to control not just what’s in front of us, but even our drive to control outcomes, turns out to be powerful. Let God take the wheel. That’s simple, but like everything else in AA, just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy.

So, next time you hear someone say Let Go and Let God in a meeting, think about what that really means. Think about how beautiful it is when that cliché works in our lives.

Need help picking a sponsor? Here’s a few pointers.

Another cliché that’s almost impossible for newcomers to make sense of is One Day at a Time. Like letting go, learning to make a home in the present moment is an endless gift.

One of the hurdles that frequently emerges in early-sobriety is the concept of not getting stuck in the future. To quote a wise Jedi Knight, one should always be mindful of the future, but never at the expense of the present moment. This idea is the crux of this cliché. One Day at a Time also goes beyond present moment awareness, to the ever-present and inescapable fact that every sober person has a daily reprieve. We’re only sober insofar as we put in the work to not pick up a drink or a drug, today. Tomorrow, we’ll get the chance to try all over again.

The list of clichés could go on and on (and on and on and on), but the bigger idea is to realize that even if a slogan’s annoying, or doesn’t have personal value to you, it comes from a meaningful place. As for those rare slogans that are just stupid? Well, we can ignore those!