The 12-Steps | Addiction Treatment Therapies

What is 12 Step therapy?

12 Step therapy was first developed in the 1930s by Bill Wilson and Dr Bob Smith, the same men who started Alcoholics Anonymous. After their own personal struggles with alcoholism, Wilson and Smith believed that addiction was an illness and that recovery was possible with the right mix of self-honesty, accountability and shared support.

After proving effective for alcoholism, 12 Step addiction treatment has since been adapted to support recovery from all types of substance and behavioural dependencies. The programme is built around 12 core steps, each helping you reflect, take action and build a stronger connection with yourself and others. All of this is designed to stop addictive behaviours in the short term and create an unshakable foundation for long-term sobriety and personal growth.

How does 12 Step therapy work?

The 12 Steps were designed to be followed in order, each one building on the one before. They guide you through admitting the truth about your addiction, asking for help, making amends and finding a new way to live.

For many people, what makes 12 Step therapy so effective is the combination of personal reflection and group support. You work through the steps with the help of others and share your progress as you go. Early steps are often completed alongside other therapies in rehab, with later steps being worked on post-treatment.

Here are the original 12 Steps as created by Alcoholics Anonymous:

1. We admit that we are powerless over alcohol and that our lives have become unmanageable.
2. We have come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.
3. We make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.
4. We make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. We admit to God, ourselves, and other human beings the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. We are entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. We humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. We make a list of all persons we have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all.
9. We make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when doing so would injure them or others.
10. We continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong, we promptly admit it.
11. We seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand 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 try to carry this message to alcoholics and to practise these principles in all our affairs.

Crucially, while the original 12 Steps draw power and motivation from belief in God, you don’t need to be religious to follow them. Anything can be the higher power that motivates you, from a spiritual belief to the love you have for your family.