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The 12 Steps to recovering from an addiction by PK
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
| THE TWELVE STEPS |
| A NIRVANAnet(tm) Infodose written by PK |
| Distributed via the NIRVANAnet(tm) text file distribution network |
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
JH> Willpower is also a mental tool.
JH> Choice is also a mental tool.
Some others are: building self-esteem (possibly the best way to
prevent addiction in the first place), digging up buried feelings so
that you can resolve the conflicts they generate with your concious
desires, or simply bringing something positive into your way of
living to make sobriety more worthwhile...
Other tools that some programs use include the use of outside
authority control, like army basic training: sort of a temporary
regression followed by a pseudo-reenactment of growing up into
responsibility, hopefully replacing some of the lessons of your
inadequate first maturation with new versions. This strikes me as
at best a way to produce an O'Keeffe-style disciplined person.
JH> What tools do 12 Step programs provide and how do they differ from
JH> these?
Well, there's the "higher power"... I think the concept here is,
more or less, that when in a cycle of addiction you build up a
surface personality structure that is oriented around maintaining
the addictive behavior and whatever other destructive stuff is going
along with it (denial, acting-out, abusiveness, you name it), and that
has to be torn down and replaced with something more authentic. The
authentic (often labeled God) will grow from within you if encouraged
to do so -- indeed, it will fight to grow if given any real chance.
Thus, the "you" that is choosing your behavior is now your best self.
JH> I am not an expert on the 12 Steps, and would love it if someone
JH> would post them here so we could stop arguing about "what" they
JH> are.
In short form: (I'm not sure this is completely correct; I'm
paraphrasing from one of the non-alcohol spinoff programs)
1) admit being helpless with alcohol/whatever and that life is out
of control.
2) believe that Higher Power can restore sanity
3) decide to turn life over to HP
4) make fearless moral inventory of self
5) admit wrongs to HP, self, and another person
6) be ready to let HP remove these defects
7) ask HP to remove them
8) make list of everyone you've harmed; be willing to make amends
9) make actual amends to as many of them as possible
10) continue to take moral inventory and admit wrongs
11) seek knowledge and improved contact with HP through prayer and
meditation, and do what it wants
12) carry the message to others and apply it to whole life
Note the absence of manly self-discipline. Many of the steps seem to
be just about getting out of denial.
Gloria Steinem said something interesting about this approach:
"Many such groups, especially for eating disorders, now have so
many women members that they have rewritten the twelve steps --
originally designed to break down the ego so the addict can admit
addiction -- to better suit the needs of women with too little
ego."
Speaking of eating disorders, she mentions that a very high
percentage of bulimics have a history of oral sexual abuse. Gorging
and vomiting can be a reenactment of forced fellatio.
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