THE TWELVE STEPS

1. ​We admitted we were powerless over narcotics and all other mind-altering substances - 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 drug addicts, and to practise these principles in all our affairs.

The Twelve Steps are adapted with permission from AA World Services, Inc. The permission to adapt AA's Steps does not imply an endorsement or affiliation with DAA.

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Many of us considered ourselves atheists, and felt alarmed or discouraged when we saw the word 'God' in the Steps. It is important to stress that Drug Addicts Anonymous is not a religious organization: we are never asked to agree with anyone else's concept of a 'Power greater than ourselves'. In DAA we like results, so we let the results of working the Steps speak for themselves. In the beginning, it isn't even necessary to believe that the programme will work for us. We just need to be willing to give it a try. Other DAA members help us by sharing their experience; it turns out that their stories are remarkably like our own. What has worked for them will therefore work for us. We begin to see that a new life is within reach. For the first time in a long time, there is hope. We start following the programme and begin to grow.

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