An Inkling
Many of us have been helped along the way by a “12 Step
group.” The 12 Steps originated
with Alcoholics Anonymous, but their usefulness for recovery in general has led
many groups to adapt and use them, from Narcotics Anonymous to Sex Addicts Anonymous.
Just as the 12 Steps can guide us toward wholeness, so their
antitheses can jolt us with a vision of our crazy-making habits. These negative 12 Steps are borrowed from Steps, a magazine for 12 Step
groups. Enjoy a laugh with the “12 Steps
to Total Insanity”:
- We admitted we were powerless over nothing. We could manage our lives perfectly and we could manage those of anyone else that would allow it.
- Came to believe that there was no power greater than ourselves, and the rest of the world was insane.
- Made a decision to have our loved ones and friends turn their wills and their lives over to our care.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of everyone we knew.
- Admitted to the whole world at large the exact nature of their wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to make others straighten up and do right.
- Demanded others either “shape up or ship out.”
- Made a list of anyone who had ever harmed us and became willing to go to any lengths to get even with them all.
- Got direct revenge on such people whenever possible except when to do so would cost us our own lives, or at the very least, a jail sentence.
- Continued to take inventory of others, and when they were wrong promptly and repeatedly told them about it.
- Sought through nagging to improve our relations with others as we couldn’t understand them at all, asking only that they knuckle under and do things our way.
- Having had a complete physical, emotional and spiritual breakdown as a result of these steps, we tried to blame it on others and to get sympathy and pity in all our affairs.
As they say: one step
forward....
And 12 steps backward!
Keith
