Pat Moore Foundation - A.A. The Recovery Program
The Pat Moore Foundation offers its residents access to on-site and off-site meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and 12-Step Programs. Following is additional information on these programs, courtesy of Alcoholics Anonymous. For more detailed information please contact Alcoholics Anonymous directly.
Click here to return to the first part in the series, "Introduction to the A.A. Recovery Program".
A.A. The Recovery Program
The relative success of the A.A. program seems to be due to the fact that an alcoholic
who no longer drinks has an exceptional faculty for “reaching” and helping an uncontrolled drinker.
In simplest form, the A.A. program operates when a recovered alcoholic passes
along the story of his or her own problem drinking, describes the sobriety he or she has found in A.A., and invites the
newcomer to join the informal Fellowship.
The heart of the suggested program of personal recovery is contained in Twelve
Steps describing the experience of the earliest members of the Society:
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.
Newcomers are not required to accept or follow these Twelve Steps in their entirety if they feel unwilling or unable to do so.
They will usually be asked to keep an open mind, to attend meetings at which recovered alcoholics describe their personal experiences in achieving sobriety, and to read A.A. literature describing and interpreting the A.A. program.
A.A. members will usually emphasize to newcomers that only problem drinkers themselves, individually, can determine whether or not they are in fact alcoholics.
At the same time, it will be pointed out that all available medical testimony indicates that alcoholism is a progressive illness, that it cannot be cured in the ordinary sense of the term, but that it can be arrested through total abstinence from alcohol in any form.
Click here to return to the first part in the series, "Introduction to the A.A. Recovery Program".
The above information is from "A.A. Fact File", prepared by General Service Office of Alcoholics Anonymous. This information is also available on G.S.O.'s A.A. Website: www.aa.org.
If you have any questions about Alcoholics Anonymous or alcohol treatment, please call us 24-hours at (888) 426-6086 or if you'd like us to contact you, send us a confidential e-mail by filling out our online form to the right. |
