The Twelve Steps of How Not to Recover

The 12 steps below seem to have been around a while.   I have received this list by email and hardcopy throughout my recovery. Unfortunately, I have not found the author to give credit.  When I read through these 12 steps I find myself not just chuckling but also tensing almost cringing at the outline of my life before recovery. This tongue-in-cheek list is a stark reminder of where we can end up, or return to, without recovery.  

These are the steps we took, which are suggested as a Program of Misery:

1. We admitted we were powerless over nothing, that we could manage our lives perfectly, and those of anyone who would allow us to.
2. We came to believe there was no power greater than ourselves, and the rest of the world was insane. 3. We made a decision to have our loved ones and friends turn their will and lives over to our care, even though they couldn’t understand us at all.
4. We made a searching and fearless moral and immoral inventory of everybody we knew.
5. We admitted to the whole world at large the exact nature of everybody else’s wrongs.
6. We were entirely ready to make them straighten up and do right.
7. We demanded others to either shape up or ship out.
8. We made a list of all persons who had harmed us, and became willing to get even with all of them.
9. We got direct revenge to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would cost our lives, or at least a jail sentence.
10. We continued to take the inventory of others, and when they were wrong, promptly and repeatedly told them about it.
11. We sought through bitching and nagging to improve our relations with others as we couldn’t understand them at all, asking only that they knuckle down and do things our way.
12. Having had a complete physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual breakdown as the result of these steps, we tried to blame it on others and get sympathy and pity in all our affairs.

Have a mindful day in recovery. Bonnie J.