Step 3 Alcoholics Anonymous: How to Get Started
Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the most important steps for any recovering victim of substance abuse. While rehab and therapy are also important, nothing can quite solve the unique problems that addiction poses like a support group like Alcoholics Anonymous.
AA is a 12 step program. It uses this high number of steps to slowly bring the person suffering from addiction to a sense of responsibility and eventually healing.
However, some people get stuck on Step 3 of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is "(we)' made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him."
How are you supposed to connect your struggle with addiction to your belief in God? And if you don't believe in God, how do you follow through this step?
This article will help you answer that question.
Understand the Nature of Addiction
Addiction has a quality to it as an affliction that makes it different from mental and physical illness. Unlike those other forms of illness, you feel good when you're actually using. Which other disease has symptoms that you enjoy feeling?
Addiction usually starts as an innocent and even fun hobby that winds up destroying your life. Because of this, it can be hard to understand. You might have you change your whole friend group and perspective on the world to overcome your addiction.
This is why addiction is often referred to as a "spiritual illness". However, you needn't view it as actually spiritual. Think of it as something that plays upon a combination of your thoughts, upbringing, experiences, genetics, etc., in a way that you can never quite understand.
Surrender Self-Will
Once you grasp that addiction is something you can't completely understand, you'll be closer to defeating it. Rather than exercising fortitude, surrender your self-will to a benevolent force that you can't understand. To some people, this force is God, but to others, it's more metaphorical.
At the end of the day, your sense of secular spirituality might have to come down to things within you that you don't understand.
If you do, in fact, believe in God, you need to reckon with the fact that God can love you even though you sometimes fail and you're sometimes imperfect. You need to stop waiting to improve for God's love and understand that he loves you no matter how you fail or what you do.
Check out this edition of the big book to learn more about step 3.
Understand Step 3 of Alcoholics Anonymous
As you can see, step 3 Alcoholics of Anonymous isn't just for those who believe in God. Anyone who's able to accept the mysterious and impossible-to-understand would benefit from step 3.
Understand the nature of addiction as a problem, so that you can better conquer it. It's a completely unique type of affliction, and you need unique ways of fighting it.
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