Embedded Files
12 Steps
12 Steps
1. We admitted we were powerless over our emotions, 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 thse 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 and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Effectiveness
Effectiveness
Alcoholics Anonymous is the largest of all of the twelve-step programs (from which all other twelve-step programs are derived),
followed by Narcotics Anonymous; the majority of twelve-step members are recovering from addiction to alcohol or other drugs.
The majority of twelve-step programs, however, address illnesses other than substance addiction.
For example, the third-largest twelve-step program, Al-Anon, assists family members and friends of people who have alcoholism and other addictions.
About twenty percent of twelve-step programs are for substance addiction recovery, the other eighty percent address a variety of problems from debt to depression.
It would be an error to assume the effectiveness of twelve-step methods at treating problems in one domain translates to all or to another domain.
Where other twelve-step groups have adapted the AA steps as guiding principles, step one is generally updated to reflect the focus of recovery.
For example, in Overeaters Anonymous, the first step reads,
"We admitted we were powerless over compulsive overeating—that our lives had become unmanageable."
The third step is also sometimes altered to remove gender-specific pronouns.
Effectiveness of AA 12 Steps vs clinical counseling
Effectiveness of AA 12 Steps vs clinical counseling
There are several ways one can determine whether AA works and numerous ways of measuring if AA is successful,
such as looking at abstinence, reduced drinking intensity, reduced alcohol-related consequences, alcohol addiction severity, and healthcare cost.
The effectiveness of AA (compared to other methods and treatments) has been challenged throughout the years,
but recent high quality clinical meta-studies using quasi-experiment studies show that AA costs less than other treatments and results in increased abstinence.
In longitudinal studies, AA appears to be about as effective as other abstinence-based support groups.
Because of the anonymous and voluntary nature of AA meetings, it has been difficult to perform random trials with them.
Environmental and quasi-experiment studies suggest that AA can help alcoholics make positive changes.
In the past, some medical professionals have criticized 12-step programs as pseudoscientific and "a cult that relies on God as the mechanism of action".
Until recently, ethical and operational issues had prevented robust randomized controlled trials from being conducted
comparing 12-step programs directly to other approaches.
Others, including addiction researcher Nicole Lee, have expressed concerns about the nature of many published AA studies,
given that many are conducted by the "fellowship" itself.
More recent studies employing randomized and blinded trials have shown 12-step programs provide similar benefit
compared to motivational enhancement therapy (MET) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT),
and were more effective in producing continuous abstinence and remission compared to these approaches.
Page cretaed 7/20/2023 2119
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