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12 Steps
The 12 Steps for Those Who Love an Alcoholic
1. We admitted we were powerless over the lives of our loved ones.

2. We came to believe that Christ could change our way of thinking.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and lives over to Christ, COMPLETELY.
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of OURSELVES.
5. We admitted to Christ, ourselves, and to another person the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. We were entirely ready to have Christ remove all these defects
of character.
7. We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Alcoholics Victorious Local Meetings

Founded in 1948, Alcoholics Victorious (AV) support groups offer a safe environment where recovering people who recognize Jesus Christ as their "Higher Power" gather together and share their experience, strength and hope. AV meetings use both the 12 Steps and the Alcoholics Victorious Creed. AV is a program of Christians in Recovery. (see video below)
The Four Absolutes: Honesty, Purity, Unselfishness, and Love
What are these "Four Absolutes?"
You have to be around A.A. for quite a while before you hear much about the "Four Absolutes."
Your Own Online Journal
Members of CIR have access to their own private and secure Online Journal (see below). All members have the option of sharing it with other members or keeping it completely private (the choice is yours).
If you want something with more features we suggest Journaling Software For those of you who are low tech, you may get a blank paper journal from your local office supply store.
Step One Bible Study
Complete 12 Step Bible Studies are available on CD
by Bengt Olaf Thor
STEP 1
We admitted we were powerless over our dependencies that our lives had become unmanageable
Matthew 9:36
But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd.
Step 1 asks us to confront the chaos and the unmanageability of our dependent life-styles. The paradox of every addiction is that the more we try to compulsively control ourselves and others through the practice of the addiction, more out of control our lives spin.
Additional Resources
These books are excellent:

Christians in Recovery Workbook & Meeting Guide

Heart of Addiction Book & Workbook
The following programs are very helpful:
I Saw Religion Remake a Drunkard
The following article is from "Your Faith" magazine September 1939 and was provided by DickB who wrote: "It is an article which A.A. literature had said was lost. AAs speculated that Dr. Bob wrote the article. He didn't. He was interviewed by D. J. Defoe in September 1939 for "Your Faith" Magazine. And the interview disappeared from view for years and years as far as AAs were concerned. Yet in the interview, Dr. Bob told how he read the Bible with patients. He told how they came to trust God. He told how he had been cured by prayer. He spoke about the healings of Jesus Christ. And he was talking about the many drunkards whom he had been able to help once he himself prayed, turned to God for help, and was cured--a priceless article free of the editing and revision of others who might have doubted!"
D. J. Defoe, "C," in Your Faith magazine, September 1939, 84-88
http://silkworth.net/aahistory/drbob/drbob_interview_fm_0939.html
Through Liquor, this physician had lost his practice, his reputation and his self-respect. Then one night in a gathering in a private home, he found the way of escape.

WHEN a doctor starts drinking, he's usually on the skids for keeps. His profession gives him so much privacy, so great exposure to temptation both from liquor and from drugs, and his need of a stimulant to lift him from depression becomes so extreme, that many a good doctor has dropped into oblivion for no cause other than his own thirst for drink.
Moving from Being "in Recovery" to Having "Recovered"
Would you like to recover from alcoholism and addiction? Do you believe that God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, can relieve you of those problems? According to the fourth edition of Alcoholics Anonymous--known affectionately within A.A. as the "Big Book"--an effective way to recover from alcoholism is to establish a relationship with God.
Taking, Believing, and Understanding the Twelve Steps
Why Take Them Before You Know What the A.A. Cofounders Said about Them?
Both Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, the cofounders of A.A., spoke explicitly on where the 12 Steps came from. In sum, they stated that the basic ideas came from: (1) the Bible; (2) Dr. William D. Silkworth; (3) Professor William James; and (4) Reverend Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr.

As we will see in this article, that is not the whole story. But here's what A.A.'s cofounders said:
In his last major address to AAs, delivered in Detroit in 1948, A.A. cofounder Dr. Bob stated:
When we started in on Bill D., we had no Twelve Steps . . . we had no Traditions. But we were convinced that the answer to our problems was in the Good Book. To some of us older ones, the parts that we found absolutely essential were the Sermon on the Mount, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, and the Book of James. [The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches: Their Last Major Talks (NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1972, 1975), 13.]















