STEP 1 …foundation

It meant destruction of self-centeredness. (14: 1) STEP 1 …foundation… (12: 4)

Like Bill, we are alcoholics, and we have to hit bottom. The problem is our mental that leads us to take a drink, and our resulting physical compulsion to drink to excess. Our minds and lives are unmanageable; we must surrender. Working Step 1 begins when we become abstinent. We have to stop our personal addictive alcoholic behaviors so that our continued acting out does not hinder our surrender. If we are not drinking today, then we must abstain from that particular addictive thought or behavior that robs us of peace of mind.

This is a disease of isolation and loneliness. We are prisoners of our self-sufficiency, isolated inside. We admit we need to grow and that we are not free. We are people who appear to be sure of themselves but are actually eaten alive with fear inside. (193: 2) If anxiety is the existential basis of our addiction, then we must alter our fear, remorse, shame and guilt in order to find happiness so that we do not have to go back to drinking.

[Shame: feeling disgrace for who we are in our essence.] [Guilt: feeling disgrace for how we have behaved.] As recovering alcoholics, we have to do something about being restless, irritable and discontented (xxviii: 4) or we will drink again. Our experience is that we do not become whole without a solution beyond ourselves.
 

The point is to experience a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery. (567: 1) Human nature, the ‘self’ and ‘instincts’ are not the problem. The problem is how we habitually react to people, places, and things in our instinctual and self-absorbed ways, such that we risk drinking or having an emotional dry bender. How may we come to have a profound alteration in [our] reaction to life? (567: 4) How may we be free?

Recovery is an individual alcoholic’s experience of the transformative power that comes from actually working the Steps – from actually practicing the principles of the program of action of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. Out of our discontent with the way we are, we study and practice the 12 Step principles as a daily discipline in order to achieve and maintain spiritual balance. Rather than argue with the various hypotheses of AA, we experiment by doing the Steps as written and see what the results are.
 

 A sponsor is our essential guide through the 12 Steps. It is not about us or our opinions; it is about our action of working and living the Steps on a daily basis. The spiritual power, which comes from the practice of the 12 Steps within the AA fellowship, can move us to be sober and live with serenity and peace of mind.