Just like all other residential rehab, The Recovery House is proud to offer the well-tested 12-step therapy program, which is another option in our repertoire. It is a treatment with proven track record.
The 12-step program is a fellowship of people helping other people with an addiction or a compulsive behavior to obtain abstinence, which means no longer using a mood-altering substance such as drugs or alcohol, or compulsively doing a behavior such as gambling or sex.
The 12 Steps, created by AA are as follows:
- We admitted we were powerless over alcohol [addictive substance or behavior]—that our lives had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. (God can be substituted with a higher power or nature, whatever works best for each individual)
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- Admitted to God (can be referred to as a higher power/nature), to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have God (or a higher power/nature) remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked Him (or trust in a higher power/nature) to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God (or a higher power/nature), as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His (or a higher power/nature) will for us and the power to carry that out.
- 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.
Steps one through three deal with the individual’s acceptance of their inability to control their addiction alone and the need of support to remain abstinent. Steps four through nine teach the individual to take responsibility for their own actions and characteristics in order to create change in their life. Steps four, six and eight require self-reflection while steps five, seven and nine are the application of those reflections. The focus in steps 10 through 12 is on maintaining recovery. Each step builds upon the previous step in a progressive course of action.
Since the 1950s, alcohol addiction has been treated as a separate addiction from that of other illicit drugs under the AA program, meaning that drug abuse disorders are considered to be a different struggle, so a separate 12-step program is recommended. Chemical dependency is considered the most life-threatening addiction disorder and addicts are advised to address this addiction first and prior to other addictions such as gambling or sexual addiction, until abstinence is established and recovery has begun. Drug dependency is sometimes considered the root addiction, causing the individual to develop other addictive tendencies and therefore should be addressed first.