Steps By The Big Book

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The 12 STEPS of ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS [Spiritual Principles]

Step 1 We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable. [Honesty]


Step 2 Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. [Hope]


Step 3 Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him. [Trust]


Step 4 Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
[Courage]


Step 5 Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. [Integrity]


Step 6 Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. [Willingness]


Step 7 Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. [Humility]


Step 8 Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. [Compassion]


Step 9 Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. [Justice]


Step 10 Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. [Perseverance]


Step 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. [Spiritual awareness]


Step 12 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. [Service]


http://www.stepsbybigbook.net/

To Be Continued

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INTRODUCTION

Study and Practice
How can we alcoholics in recovery live happy, joyous, and free? (Alcoholics Anonymous, 133: 0)
Alcoholics Anonymous is the life changing program formed by two desperate alcoholics in 1935. In the Big Book, as the text Alcoholics Anonymous is known, we read the written words of the first 100 men and women of AA as they were put in the way of a spiritual awakening. Where did their words come from? What were their practices of the day by day disciplines that became the 12 Steps? How did they do it?
The Steps are suggested guides for recovery. There is no rule that says anyone has to do them, and there is no regulation about how they should be done. This Steps by the Big Book workbook is for those who are willingto grow along spiritual lines (60: 1) by studying the first 103 pages of the Big Book while actually doing the Steps. Our goal is to study the Steps as a friendly, focused group, and work them as the authors of the Big Book described. We wish to make the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous part of our lives by collaborating with a power greater than ourselves – an inner knowing, our own best and highest nature. To this end we ask ourselves two primary questions:
-What do the Big Book authors say about the Steps?
-What does the Big Book say to each one of us about our own real practice of the Steps?
Some of us in the recovering community in the Brattleboro, Vermont, area found that we did better studying the Big Book as a group rather than on our own. It is our belief that the only wrong way to work the Steps is alone. Together we can do it! The work of this group study supports the pass-it-on process of one alcoholic talking with another. This manual is for those in recovery who want to go through the Steps again; or freshen up on their Steps prior to working with a sponsee; or for sponsors and sponsees who want to progress through the Steps together. The only requirements are to show up, study the Big Book, and do each Step. This guide comes from these experiences. This is an introduction to the spiritual riches of the Big Book’s directions to the 12 Steps. We hope this guide is useful throughout recovery, whether one is working the Steps for the
first time, or has followed the Steps for many years. Perhaps your group may craft its own manual, the better to reflect the warmth and strength of the safe haven found in the 12 Steps. If appropriate, simply say your own addiction in place of alcohol.




To Be Continued

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Your Group
Please be aware that everything in this workbook comes from our experience, strength, and hope. Every process and suggestion in this workbook is optional.


Our Steps by the Big Book group sessions are not official AA meetings because we limit enrollment to a specific number of participants.

• Your group can be of any size or composition. An even number of participants, perhaps from 2 to 16, allows members of the group to work in pairs as “buddies.” A group may be simply one sponsor and one sponsee.
• Agree on a purpose, plan and session format of the Steps by the Big Book group, and that in general the group will stick to the schedule.
• Agree that each member attends every session if possible, commits to read the text and respond to the session questions, and in fact DOES each Step as it is encountered. (Fifth Steps are not shared at the sessions.)
• Agree that each member of the group contacts one or more members (buddies) and/or a sponsor regularly between sessions.
• Agree that group members can expect to spend at least as much time on reading, writing and contact with buddies between sessions as in group time.
• Agree on a date by which participants may leave or new members may join the group after it begins.
• Agree that group members will not drink or use during the course.

Group Norms
While there are no rules in AA, there are written Traditions and unwritten norms (i.e. identifying oneself as an alcoholic in meetings). In order to ensure that your group runs smoothly, we suggest considering these questions:

• Will start and end times for the sessions be honored?
• Will one group member chair the entire process, or will group members take turns chairing the sessions?
• Will absolute confidentiality about the group be practiced?
• Will readings be read at the sessions, or should the readings be completed in advance?
• Is each group member expected to speak and share personal writings at group sessions? (It is suggested that members do their Fifth Step outside of the sessions with a sponsor or buddy.)

• Will group members consider not speaking a second time until all have had a chance to share first?
• Will someone serve as a friendly timekeeper?

To Be Continued

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Working with a Sponsor or Buddy
Our group experience has shown that it is useful for group members to work closely with one or more members of the group (“buddies”), in a manner that compliments working with a sponsor.
The support and stimulus of working the Steps with a buddy, a sponsor, or both, leads to personal growth and change. We read the Big Book chapters or selections together. Together, we work on our reflections and writings about the focus questions and inventories. Together we get and give support for this process of working the Steps, and for sharing our discoveries, doubts and experiences in the group.


How a Session May Go
Typically we read the session material on our own and write our responses.
This is a team effort. We meet as a committed group of equals once or twice a week, or as the group sees fit. We open with a time of quiet, followed by a very brief check-in as to how each member is doing with studying and working the Steps. We read selections from the Big Book on a particular Step, and then for 10 minutes or so one group member speaks of her or his personal experience doing this Step by the Big Book. Every member then shares their writings or reflections on that session’s Step work. Discussion is encouraged, as long as we speak out of our own experience. Some groups choose to expand or contract the session material, or take a short break after working Step 4. We may close with reciting the Step and a meditation or prayer.


http://www.stepsbybigbook.net/


To Be Continued

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Guide to This Guide
Our reference for this study of the 12 Steps is the first 103 pages of Alcoholics Anonymous, fourth edition, the basic text (xi: 2) for the program and fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. The notations are to page and paragraph, as in (64: 0, 1), i.e. (64) page 64; (: 0) the partial paragraph at the top of the page; (1) the first full paragraph on that page; etc. Quotes from the Big Book are in italics.


Please ignore anything in the group sessions or this handbook that you feel contradicts what you find in the Big Book.


As a study group we will cover:
Preface and Forewords
“Doctor’s Opinion” Step 1.
Chapter 1. Bill's Story Step 1
Chapter 2. There Is a Solution Steps 1 and 2
Chapter 3. More About Alcoholism Steps 1 and 2
Chapter 4. We Agnostics Step 2
Chapter 5. How It Works Steps 3 and 4
Chapter 6. Into Action Steps 5 through 11
Chapter 7. Working With Others Step 12




In the Steps by the Big Book sessions, we read paragraph by paragraph. We pause at commas and stop at periods. We turn the declarative statements of the Big Book into questions to ourselves. We constantly ask: “What does this mean for me in my life?” These inquiries become prompts to questions we may explore with others.
In essence, this manual is a cut and paste scrapbook of pithy suggestions – concise and helpful insights that can have an immediate effect on how we study and work the Steps. The session material is drawn from the Big Book, and AA literature, such as Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (12&12), with focus questions and comments borrowed verbatim without attribution from meetings, others in recovery, and from several published and recorded recovery sources. Any errors that appear in this guide belong to those of us who compiled it.
This workbook is divided into three parts: Part I covers Steps 1, 2 and 3; Part II examines Step 4; Part III looks into Steps 5 through 12. Each part begins with notes on aspects of the Steps in question. Outlined points of reflection follow. Optional material and sample definitions are in brackets […]. Finally, there are worksheets that are intended to help you focus your writing on each Step. On the following pages you will find the basic workbook session outline and an optional group session format.

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Steps by the Big Book typical session outline


I ON YOUR OWN: STUDY – What did the Big Book authors say?

• READ - Individually, and with your sponsor or other group members, study the suggested readings for the Step you are working on.

• WRITE - We suggest one or two 15-20 minute writing sessions per day.
  • • Write of your own experience working the Step under consideration. Respond to the issues the readings raise for you.
    • Reflect on the focus points in each session and think about writing on three or four, or all of them, as you see fit.
    • Cross off the bulleted focus and reflection comments as you come to them. Try reading them out loud to help make them stick.
    • Consider completing the worksheets intended to build on what the Big Book says about the practice of each Step.

• TALK - Meet with one or more other members of the group or with your sponsor or both to discuss the readings and your written reflections on them.

• PRACTICE DAILY MEDITATION / PRAYER - Strive to develop a daily practice of quiet centering before reading and writing. Use whatever meditations or prayers are meaningful to you. [See p.13: 4 and Step 11, pp. 85-88]

II WITH THE GROUP: PRACTICE – What does the Big Book say to me about my own practice of this Step?

• Reflect together in depth about your own life practices of really doing the Step in question as illuminated by the Big Book.
• Share what you have written.

III DAILY PRACTICE OF 12 STEP PRINCIPLES


Consider your personal daily practice of the principles of the relevant Step.


IV TAKE THE STEP


Since the way people take the Steps in AA is highly personal, we leave it to individual members to decide when they have taken each Step. The Big Book has us consider, Is our [Step] work solid so far? Can we answerto our satisfaction? (75: 03-76: 1)
For group purposes, some observe completing each Step by joining hands and reciting the Step, along with selected meditations or prayers.

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Example of Steps by the Big Book Group Session Format

(This optional schedule is for a 1½ hour session once a week, or as the group sees fit. You may adjust the length of the session to 2 or more hours, add breaks, etc.)

• Open on time with from 1 to 5 minutes or more of centering silence, with focus meditation or prayer such as the Third Step prayer.

• First 2 min. Review agenda for this session.

• Approximate group study and practice times:

• 1. • 10 min.: 30 second check-ins around the group.
     • 15 min.: Review selections from the reading.
     • 15 min.: Chairperson or a designated group member each session may share their experience with this reading and this Step according to the Big Book.
     • 40 min. Discussion. (40 min. per 1½ hour session. 70 min. per 2 hour session, etc.): Group may share writings and talk about questions and worksheets on actually working this Step by the Big Book.

• Last 3 min. Review next session's agenda.
  1. • Encourage reading and writing between sessions.
     • Urge meeting with one’s buddy and/or sponsor.

• Close on time with meditation or prayer such as the Seventh Step prayer.

………………………………………………………………………………………..


Groups often hold one session each week through five or six months.


Optional schedule for two sessions +/- done at each weekly gathering over three months:

• Week 1: Introduction & Step 1 (Sessions 1 & 2)
• Week 2: Step 1 (Sessions 3, 4 & 5)
• Week 3: Step 2 (Session 6)
• Week 4: Step 3 (Session 7)
• Week 5: Step 4 Resentments (Sessions 8 & 9)
• Week 6: Step 4 Fears & Relationships/Sex (Sessions 10 & 11)
• Week 7: Step 4 Review & Step 5 (Sessions 12 & 13)
• Week 8: Step 6 & Step 7 (Sessions 14 & 15)
• Week 9: Step 8 & Step 9 (Sessions 16 & 17)
• Week 10: Step 10 & Step 11 (Sessions 18 & 19)
• Week 11: Step 12 (Session 20)

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PART I

SESSION 1 THROUGH SESSION 7

STEPS 1 – 2 – 3

FOCUS MEDITATIONS / PRAYERS

3RD STEP MEDITATION / PRAYER
God[of our understanding], I offer myself to Thee – to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always. (63: 2)






7TH STEP MEDITATION / PRAYER
My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad.
I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. (76: 2)






11TH STEP MEDITATION / PRAYER
We ask God [of our understanding] to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self seeking motives. (86: 2)
Thy will be done. (88: 0)






SERENITY PRAYER
God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change,
Courage to change the things we can,
And wisdom to know the difference. (12&12, p. 125: 2)

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ONE GROUP MEMBER’S DAILY DISCIPLINES:

• Upon awakening, I read Daily Reflections (for example) and mediate / pray on practices to stay sober.
• Call my sponsor, contact another member of fellowship.
• Read from the Big Book.
• Concentrate on one of the Steps.
• Attend a meeting.
• Complete a daily inventory. (Step 1; Step 4; Step 10)
• Meditation and prayer.

ONE GROUP MEMBER’S FOCUS–CENTERING PRACTICE


1. I sit comfortably with my eyes closed.


2. Pay attention to my breathing, and repeat a word or phrase or prayer silently to myself as I exhale.


3. When I notice my mind wandering (It will!) just notice it and passively bring my attention back to my breathing.




Practice for approximately 20 minutes every day (or at least 3-4 times per week).

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NOTES ON STEPS 1 – 2 – 3

It meant destruction of self-centeredness. (14: 1)

STEP 1

No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. … I had met my match. I had been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master. (Bill’s Story, 8: 1)


Like Bill, we are alcoholics, and we have hit bottom. The problem is our mental obsession that leads us to take a drink, and our resulting physical compulsion to drink to excess. Our lives are unmanageable; we must surrender. Working Step 1 begins when we become abstinent. We have to stop our particular addictive alcoholic behaviors so that our continued acting out does not hinder our surrender. Our experience is that we do not become whole without a solution beyond ourselves.
This is a disease of isolation and loneliness. We are prisoners of our self-sufficiency, isolated inside. We admit we need to grow and that we are not free. We are people who appear to be sure of themselves but are actually eaten alive with fear inside. (193: 2) If anxiety is the existential basis of our addiction, then we must alter our fear, remorse, shame and guilt in order to find happiness so that we do not have to go back to drinking. [Shame: feeling disgrace for who we are in our essence.] [Guilt: feeling disgrace for how we have behaved.] As recovering alcoholics, we have to do something about being restless, irritableanddiscontented (xxviii: 4) or we will drink again.
The point is to experience a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery. (567: 1) Human nature, the ‘self’ and ‘instincts’ are not the problem. The problem is how we habitually react to people, places, and things in our instinctual and self-absorbed ways, such that we risk drinking or having an emotional dry bender. How may we come to have a profound alteration in [our] reaction to life? (567: 4) How may we be free?
Recovery is an individual alcoholic’s experience of the transformative power that comes from actually working the Steps, the program of action of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. Out of our discontent with the way we are, we study and practice the 12 Steps as a daily discipline in order to achieve and maintain spiritual balance.
Rather than argue with the various hypotheses of AA, we experiment by doing the Steps as written and see what the results are. A sponsor is our essential guide through the 12 Steps. It is not about us or our opinions; it is about our action of working and living the Steps on a daily basis. The spiritual power, which comes from the practice of the 12 Steps within the AA fellowship, can move us to be sober and live with serenity and peace of mind.


http://www.stepsbybigbook.net/

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STEP 2

Why don’t you choose your own conception of God? … It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning. (Bill’s Story, 12: 2, 12: 4)


If our problem is that we have a body which will die if we drink, and we have a mind which compels us to take that drink, then we are powerless indeed. We are without power. Yet the fact that we and others like us are not drinking or using, one day at a time, is proof of the action in our own lives of a solution – a power greater than any one of us. Step 2 reminds us we are crazy to think that we need to be in control or that we can do it alone. We no longer need to live solo with the pain and insanity that have been our nature. Insanity is when we lack perspective and things are out of proportion, and when we repeat the same mistakes over and over expecting different results. In AA we find hope that we can be restored to sanity, we can become whole. The hope of Step 2 follows the desperation of Step 1 as the dawn follows the dark.
AA is a spiritual, not a religious, program. Spirituality is what happens to us when we work the Steps within the AA fellowship community. Step 2 does not say: We came to believe IN a power that WOULD restore us. Step 2 describes the solution as we came to believe THAT a power greater than ourselves COULD restore us to sanity. (59: 2) The emphasis is not on who or what this power is, but on what this power can do for us. We begin to turn inward to find a higher power that works and feels safe. A group itself qualifies as a power greater than us, so do the spiritual principles contained in the practice of the 12 Steps. So does the understanding any one of us has of a higher power.

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STEP 3

I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would. I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction. I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing; that without Him I was lost. (Bill’s Story, 13: 2)


Heard in a meeting: “The problem is Me! The solution is Beyond Me! And the program of action is Let It!”
"Is the stone heavy? Put it down and rest."


The central affirmative action in Step 3 is a decision. We become willing to take action to do something different. We stop exhausting ourselves as if we were in charge of making things happen in this world. We loosen our grip on our fearful sense of self. We were never meant to do it alone.
We are asked to turn our will and lives over to the care of what we do not understand. Yet we may define our own conception of this power, as we may for our own understandings of other spiritual expressions and spiritual terms. (47: 1) By working Step 3 we are allowing an unsuspected inner resource (567-568) to care for us, not control us or conduct our lives for us. We are not giving anything away; we are not struggling to become something we are not. We are learning to cooperate with what we always were. We are complete and whole as we are; the stuff we mixed in was to survive.
We may discover that we are very sure what God is not for us, but not what God is, and that is fine. Working Step 3 will help us discover what works best for us. We are aligning ourselves with a Spirit of the Universe (46: 2) – one with our own best and highest nature. Spirituality is our tool based on personal experience, which gets better the more we experiment with it and use it. Step 3 reflects a spiritual progression through practice from hope to faith to trust. We begin to experience the distinction between self-sufficiency and “God-sufficiency.” (52: 4-53: 0) The decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of a higher power of our own understanding is one we may make each day, one day at a time.
The authors of the Big Book call Step 3 the keystone (62: 3) to the wonderfully effective spiritual structure (47: 2) of a spiritual awakening that is being built by the discipline of the practice of the 12 Steps within the fellowship. How do we work Step 3? We do it by working Steps 4 – 12.


http://www.stepsbybigbook.net/

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SESSION 1

Preface and Forewords

A wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built. (47: 2)

ION YOUR OWN: STUDY – What did the Big Book authors say?

• READ Read the Table of Contents, Preface, and the Forewords to the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Editions of the Big Book. Many will read the Foreword to Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (12&12) as well.

• WRITE Consider the focus questions relating to the readings, and write reflective answers to them, as you see fit. Cross off the bulleted comments as you take them in. Include your own questions and observations, and explore your doubts as well as your certainties in detail and in depth.

• TALK Talk with your sponsor and/or buddy about the process you are about to undertake.

II WITH THE GROUP: PRACTICE – What does the Big Book say to me
about my practice of the 12 Steps.

• Discuss the purpose, plan and session format of this Steps by the Big Book group course. Consider that each member is expected to not only talk about but to do each of the Steps and, if possible, to attend every session with the team.
• This is a commitment, a team effort. Together we can do it!
• Discuss how the Big Book readings influence your own recovery process.

Points of Focus and Reflection
1.) Contents -A repeating mighty purpose and rhythm (10: 3) of the Steps and of the Big Book can be seen even on the Contents page (Consider page v).

• ‘The Problem’ is set out in Doctor’s Opinion and Chapter 1. [See 17: 1; 19: 3]
• ‘The Solution’ is introduced in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. [See also 17: 3; 25: 1]
• ‘The Program of Action’ is described in Chapters 5, 6 and 7. [See also 9:6; 42: 2]

2.) 1955 Foreword to Second Edition (Consider pp. xv: 3-xvii: 2; xix: 1; xxi: 0)

• What do the Big Book authors mean when they say that, This is but a beginning, only the augury of a much larger future ahead? (xv: 2)
• How am I part of that future? What do I know about the story of AA?
• What were the tenets of the Oxford Groups? (xvi: 0) [See also 263: 0]
• What is the message of AA? (xvii: 3; xviii: 0; xxi: 0) [See also xvi: 2; 17: 3; 45: 2; 60: 0; 77: 0; 89 :1]
• What are the principles by which the individual alcoholic could live? (xix: 1)
• What are the principles by which AA groups and AA as a whole could survive and function? (xix: 1)
• What is the alternative to the high road? (xxi: 0)

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SESSION 2

STEP 1 The Doctor’s Opinion

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
…Physical craving for liquor. (xxvii: 1 - xxviii: 0)
They cannot…differentiate the true from the false. (xxviii: 4)


ION YOUR OWN:STUDY – What did the Big Book authors say?

• READ Read The Doctor’s Opinion.Many will read Step 1 in the 12&12.

• WRITE As part of your Step 1 written inventory begin to write about:

• 1. • Your own definition of each word in this Step, and every Step. Then look up each word individually in the dictionary.
     • Write what each part means to you: We admit that we are powerless over our alcoholism-addiction and that our lives have been and are unmanageable.
     • “How am I powerless over alcohol? Even if I have been sober for a significant length of time, how am I powerless?”
     • “How is my life unmanageable today?”

• TALK Talk with your sponsor and other members of the group about the readings and your reflections on them.

• PRACTICE DAILY MEDITATION / PRAYER The Big Book and 12&12 offer many suggestions for meditation and prayer. You may follow these suggestions, or choose a practice that is in line with your own belief system. The goal is to set aside some quiet reflection time, perhaps 15-20 minutes twice a day.

II WITH THE GROUP: PRACTICE – What does the Big Book say to me about my practice of Step 1?
As you go about your daily activities, think about the people, places, and things that are unmanageable, or over which you are powerless. Complete this sentence as often as necessary for any one day: “I cannot control / have no power over___________.”
Also list what you can control and what you do have power over. Share your lists with the group. Avoid 'yes' and 'no' rote answers. Instead, respond fully in detail and in depth.


Points of Focus and Reflection (Consider pp. xxvi: 3-xxix: 3) Try them out loud.
The Problem as understood by Dr. Silkworth in the Doctor’s Opinion.
1.) The mental obsession (xxviii: 4)
2.) The physical compulsion [physical craving or allergy (xxx: 5)]
3.) The using to excess [abuse: spree (xxix: 0)], and the need to control our
drinking.
4.) The need for a psychic change.


http://www.stepsbybigbook.net/

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1.) Mental Obsession

• How am I affected by Dr. Silkworth’s definition of alcoholism as a medical problem? [Disease: (L- To lack ease.) Involuntary disability. See 64: 3]
• Did I drink essentially because [I] like the effect produced by alcohol? (xxviii: 4)
• Have I been restless, irritable, and discontented (xxviii: 4)
• Have I sought the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks? (xxix: 0)
• Describe in detail how I succumbed to the desire again? (xxix: 0)
• In what ways did I reach the point where I could not differentiate the true from the false? (xxviii: 4)
• When did I first experience an abnormal mental obsession with alcohol? Describe.

2.) Physical Compulsion

• How did I develop the physical…phenomenon of craving [allergy]? (xxvii: 7 -xxviii: 0,1; xxix: 0; xxix: 4; xxx: 1, 5)

• How do I describe my pathological physical reaction to alcohol?
• In what ways has my alcoholic body become as sick as my alcoholic mind? (xxvi: 3)
• What is my understanding of the concept of alcoholism as the manifestation of an allergy? (xxviii: 1) [Allergy: An abnormal reaction.]
• How do I feel about the idea of hospitalization? (xxviii: 0)
• When did I first experience a physical compulsion or craving for alcohol? Describe.

3.) Drinking to Excess:

• In what ways did I pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again? (xxix: 0)
• In what ways did I repeat this over and over? (xxix: 0)
• What are my reflections on the ideas that alcoholism has never been…permanently eradicated; and that the only relief…is entire abstinence? (xxx: 5)
• When did I first experience the loss of control of my drinking? Describe.

4.) Psychic Change

• What is my understanding of a psychic change? (xxix: 1, 3)
• What is meant by being required to follow a few simple rules? (xxix: 1)
• Am I aware that, if I have been abstinent from alcohol a while, Step 1 is about my powerlessness over some other behavior that reflects the unmanageability of my life?
• Am I aware that I need to find a way to stop that behavior so that my surrender is not blocked by continued acting out?
• What is of significance to me in this chapter? What do I not agree with?

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