More Members Share Their Ideas On The Twelve Steps 

Of the 12 Steps of NA, Step 3 involves another one of the most difficult things a human can do: Allowing our lives and will to be taken out of our hands. The exact step states: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

      Let's take a closer look at what this means. After acknowledging the problem, and accepting that we need help from a higher power, we now have to give up control to this higher power. And that's not the easiest thing for a person to do. Control is one thing that we have a lot of problems with when we don't have it. And willingly giving it up is something very few of us would normally consider. But erasing addiction comes with its own set of rules, and these rules are the only way out.

      Now how would someone go about giving their will up? They first need to understand that God isn't human, so we shouldn't have to worry about our typical distrustfulness with other humans. God is pure, and his guidance will lead you down the right path. Think of yourself as pencil. You have the ability to draw beautiful pictures, all you need is someone to pick you up and guide your movements. This is what God can and will do for you.

Step 4 states: We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. This step is a where we start looking beyond the addiction, and seeing the negativity in ourselves that allowed us to get to this point.

     Where do we start with this though? In truth, it is just as hard as admitting our problems in the first place. There may be things in us that we have buried deep down, and as hard as it may be to bring them to light, we have to. We have to hold ourselves up to a magnifying glass, and find out everything about us. We have to know who we are before we move on. Every mistake has to be understood, and as painful as it may be, we must dissect ourselves, and comprehend our wrong doings.

 This goes hand in hand with Step 5, which states: We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. This is where we take all the things we found in our moral inventory, and we admit them to God, and to someone close to us. The purpose of this is to bring all our sins and mistakes into the open, so they become real. By making the sins of our past real, it prepares us to be able to face them, and eventually move on.

Here is a message from one of our members and they wanted to share with everybody. Contact us and let us know what you think!

This is my interpretation of the twelve steps focusing on step 1 and step 2 

 The 12 Steps for Narcotics Anonymous are used to help a person find their way back into a steady, manageable life. Each step involves looking a problem in the eye, and working your way past it, by realizing that a higher power can help us find righteousness. The biggest part of these steps, of course, is step one.

 "We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable." This seems straightforward, but what does it mean, exactly? This first step allows our minds to paint a picture. We can imagine someone who's life is slipping away like grains of sand through their hands. Friends, family, a job, all lost because of addiction. Someone who is as close to the bottom as possible. For some, they never even get the chance to work with step one. Some don't realize that there is a way back, and merely become another statistic. But for those who are able to acknowledge their problem, and are able to realize that they need help, the first step is already completed. All it takes is a look in a metaphorical mirror, and seeing what has happened, and what could be, with the right help.

 Now powerlessness is not the easiest thing to come to grips with. It's very common for the human mind to try and pretend to have control, when in truth, we have very little control on anything in the physical world. It's so easy to tell yourself that you don't have a problem, but it becomes apparent to everyone else as it gets worse. But to admit that weakness, that powerlessness, well, I believe that shows that you are ready to become a wholesome person again.

 Step one and step two are very closely related, and both really set the ideas for the other ten steps. Step two states: "We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." This is why it is important to understand that we can not control our weaknesses, and that we need help managing our lives. Because at that point, you allow yourself to be open God. You allow yourself to realize that accepting the problem will allow you to get better, and that denying it can only make it worse. You allow yourself to realize that getting help isn't a bad thing.

 Addiction is a serious problem, and it is serious enough to completely devastate our lives, to a point where redemption seems like a flickering street light at the end of a long, lonesome street. But if you are willing to take those first steps, I can tell you that the light will grow stronger the closer you get to it.