Posts
6668
Joined
12/7/2009
Location
Long Beach, CA
US
Edited Date/Time
5/8/2014 11:30am
I saw a South Park episode last night that was about Alcoholics Anonymous. They showed the 12 steps and I thought it was just SP satire. I looked it up this morning and it was the real deal. I had no idea that it was all about God and his powers and not yours. Am I reading this wrong?
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—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 as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove 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 admitted it.
11. 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 the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—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 as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove 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 admitted it.
11. 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 the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
I have a friend from high school that had to enter an Alcoholics Anonymous type program and live in a halfway house for awhile. He came out super religious. Like almost creationism religious, but don't try to reseason with him, He's happy. His beliefs offer him a sense of hope and strength and even a strong sense of community with like-minded people. I'm not particularly religious myself, but I certainly respect the positive effect it has on some people though I still believe the same result can be achieved with secular worldview.
I'm not an advocate of AA but , I do see that it does help many people.
it's all about giving your troubles to a higher power.
I decided it was best for me to take control of my situation and stop forever, that was 9 years ago.
The Shop
Free shipping: VITALMX
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
most come out of aa a complete nutcase.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholics_Anonymous
"AA sprang from The Oxford Group, a non-denominational movement modeled after first-century Christianity.[18] Some members found the Group to help in maintaining sobriety. One such "Grouper", as they were called, was Ebby Thacher, Wilson's former drinking buddy and his acknowledged sponsor. Following the evangelical bent of the Group, Thacher told Wilson that he had "got religion" and was sober, and that Wilson could do the same if he set aside objections to religion and instead formed a personal idea of God, "another power" or "higher power"."
It's designed to break you down into nothing so they can build you back up with their ideals.
There's a growing movement of humanist AA chapters that have removed god from the equation. I think that it's a great idea.
Every day's cruise agenda had a meeting scheduled for "friends of Bill W". I figured he must be a pretty popular guy- until I finally asked someone with the cruise line what that was all about.
Pit Row
Did the step work. But I will say I was about two weeks clean, having decided on my own to quit, before I went to my first meeting. It was a way to keep focused on the goal. Lots of fucked up shit and people, but some cool ones as well.
Never forget the dude who came in sipping on a plastic Mountain Dew bottle, filled with beer. Or another guy that rolled his own cigarettes, who whipped about an ounce size baggie of tobacco, and started spinning one up as he sat in his chair right before the meeting. That probably triggered a relapse or two.
It is kind of sad though, when you watch people go back out. Have attended more than a few services for people I grew to know.
What was really cool was to run into a few people from my teen years at meetings, who I had not seen in 20-30- years, trying to get their lives back.
Cigs are the deadliest by far.
like the fat bitch that washes down 2 tubs of ice cream each night with a 2 liter bottle of diet coke and sits on her ass watching jerry springer.
I never started drinking alcohol. I saw what it was doing to some of the older people in my life and decided not to drink alcohol.
My mom's new boyfriend has been sober for 20 years. I really doubt he has been sober the whole time but he goes to the meetings a few times a week at, 'the club' down the street. Like the Friends of Bill W on the cruise, I often wondered why he went to this club so often
Has it done some good ? = Absolutely!
Post a reply to: Alcoholics Anonymous