12_steps guitar_freak 1. We admitted we were powerless over _____ - that our lives had become unmanageable 2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god and WE UNDERSTOOD him 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves 5. Admitted to ourselves, and to other human beings the exact nature of our wrongs 6. Were entirely ready to remove all these defects of character 7. Removed our shortcomings 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admit it 11. Sought spirtuality in any form and improved our understanding of it. 12. Having had a spirtual awakening as the reslut of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs *my version. without god.* 010303 ... chiidi i took mine in reverse i yanked myself free of the fearsome grip of the higher power i willingly catapulted myself into the needle teeth of addiction amends? unto whom? my comrades in the gutters? my masters in their plush digs? the lovers and friends whose betrayals are prefigured by my desire to be "good" the marks i bear are my tokens the path that is best for some is not the path for all the calvinist god and his universe of predestination seem to decree that some of us will wend our way to the other side of the mirror in vino veritas 010303 ... guitar_freak I don't believe in god. i don't. I believe in spirtuality. Totally different. My spirtuality is how i don't belive in god or prayer, but i meditate and do yoga. You make amends to the people you have hurt along the way. Like I lost the best friend I ever had because of drugs. I lost some of my best friends and definatly hurt a lot of them and my family too. I also willingly did drugs and continued. I also willingly relapsed and never really stopped. I mean the only reason I'm acually in the program is cause i have to be. but fuck you learn shit and meet cool people. I have been clean for 2 months only because i have a drug test every week. so it isn't by choice. If you can do drugs and complain go ahead and quit. Withdrawl is a bitch. You see crazy shit. go and look at withdrawl. I will go write what happened if you're curious. It is harder to stop than to continue. worth it? who knows. all drugs ever gave me was a false reality, peace, comfort, dsylexia, and a terrible memory. 010305 ... birdmad withdrawal was a few days of hell i spent nearly ten years ago in a vacant apartment near the hospital where the results of a biopsy sealed ny mother's destiny for the remaining for years of her life boxing gloves taped to my hands so that i would not tear at my face like mittens on a sharp-nailed infant, the forced fast of three days to precede and preclude the involuntary evacuations cold turkey no methadone no doctor just a small cache of stolen compazine to ease the worst of the convulsions and prevent shock from setting in i used to want to be a priest a long long time ago half a lifetime past but marx was right and in the end i traded one opiate for another i wish you well in your endeavor i'm sure you've earned it my words are not crafted to diminish your achievment devil that i am byproduct of faith and betrayal as only a devil could be sobriety is just another phase for me in a cycle of endless lapses like dominos falling and the heavy unseen hand keeps me from slipping through His/its fingers the seemingly foolproof suicides of my youth ...backfired all ContraryMan 010305 ... guitar_freak you have to be miserable to seek a solution in drugs you have to be even more miserable to seek sobriety 011202 ... guitar_freak holy shit. I just read what I wrote over two years ago... how the time passes so quickly... If you told me back then that these 12 steps would become the most important thing in my life, that the people I met in meetings would become my surrogate family, and that I would be happy, love god, and be grateful to be alive I would have thought you were insane. Yet, here I am with all of those things thanks to the program of recovery, my sponser, and my higher power. thank god for AA 031202 ... guitar_freak hmm...stumbled upon this again. Yet another year has passed and I see what I wrote around this time last year. Interesting. Same feelings. i owe my very life to AA. I will always be grateful for that. 050103 ... guitar_freak haha I'm dumb. I edited the 12 steps when I wrote them so long ago. I seem to have taken anything pertaining to god and spirituality out of the 12 steps. shit man, I was a fuck up. To think that I knew better than the decades of millions who have gone before me. 050103 ... lotuseater glad i cannot afford addiction 050104 what's it to you? who go blather from