Regardless of what type of 12 step program you are involved with there’s a way the Anti-Steps can fit into and support your program and its efforts to reach resistant addicts.
Anti-12 Step Topics
Everyday we’re working to make the Anti-Steps more attuned to the various needs of addicts in all sorts of addictions.
As more programs, groups, and addicts hear of the Anti-Steps and their efforts are improved in reaching through resistance, the effectiveness of the Anti-Steps becomes more evident.
You’ll Find these steps apply to 12 step support version:
Yes, the book is now available!
Also available through Barnes & Noble for the Nook.
15 years of building, fine-tuning and testing have helped form a fully supportive book with chapters carefully organized to fit into the group structure you already have.
Each topic easily covered in an hour or less if combined with traditional 12 step work – or even faster if you’re working individual steps/traditions.
It’s all here – saving you the hassle and trial and error of figuring it out – all in an easy to use book!
The key to recovery, staring right at us the whole time: in our addiction.
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‘So this whole anti-12 step thing is a joke right? I mean, it can’t be real, it’s just a clever play on words or something?’
NO. It’s VERY real.
In fact, what you’ve come across is the most important and fundamental change to the 12 step process since their creation. It’s the update that’s been needed to bring the 12 steps from its roots of treating 40-year-old drunks to the modern need for treating millions of addicts of all types. No more stretching the steps and trying to twist and pull them to fit – with the Anti-12 Steps added to the process we can now reach addicts of all types. A fully working, perfect fit for the need the new world of addiction is facing.
Why? Why change “what works”?
Because it doesn’t work. The 12 steps is the best system we have and it’s failing. Failing because too many in the 12 step movement treat it as some sacred text never to be updated, never to be called out for its weak spots. But, if we can’t point out that the success rate is too low for the 12 steps, how do we ever get around to fixing the problem?
Well, it’s already fixed. Not completely. There’s still more to do. But with the Anti-12 Steps, we have a HUGE start.
Sure, we’ll have to drag much of the 12 step community kicking and screaming into this idea. They’ll fight having to learn something new since they are comfortable in their cocoon of being an expert with the current system.
People resisted using snake venom to treat snake bites. “That’s stupid, it will never work“.
People resisted using a disease to create immunization. “You’re not injecting me with that!“
And yet now – it’s the standard. It’s just how we do it. Because, while it sounds crazy, it works.
Using the Anti-steps – the actual steps in addiction is the key to breaking through resistance and reaching addicts to get them to the 12 steps a LOT faster than our current outdated methods.
But – you want to know what they are, right? Okay, instead of a long – complex and detailed explanation here’s the simple answer:
The anti-12 steps are the 12 steps reversed.
Yep, that’s the boiled down part of it. That’s how they started. A simple exercise for addicts to review the 12 steps turned out to be a HUGE discovery. One that answers a LOT of questions. But, it’s not until you start working with the Anti-Steps that you see how powerful a tool they are and how deep they can dig into the work of recovery and understanding.
And what kind of questions do the Anti-12 Steps answer?
Questions like:
1. Why 12 steps? Why not 6? Why not 18?
2. How did I become an addict?
3. What does any of the recovery stuff have to do with my addiction?
4. What do I do about this whole “higher power thing”?
5. Am I really powerless? That just doesn’t seem right.
6. Do I have to do all of the steps?
7. What if I just want to cut back on my use?
8. Do I have to learn a whole new way of living? Seems drastic, doesn’t it?
9. Why do I need meetings?
10. How am I supposed to like life without using when using made me happy?
11. What about the Traditions? Serenity prayer? 44 questions?
What if the way out, was the same way you came in to start with? And if it is, why didn’t we notice it before?
Every day millions of people gather in meeting halls, churches, boardrooms, back rooms, and even their own homes, to engage in meetings based on the traditional 12 Steps program. Addicts attend these 12 Step meetings to give them a chance to talk about themselves and learn a process that can help them recover. Every day lives are changed through the practice of this process, and millions have received a new chance because the 12 Steps program can work. The program works because it has universal appeal and when practiced, it gets results.
But some feel disconnected and have no interest in a bunch of people getting together to “whine about their problems”. They read the 12 Steps and don’t see how doing the things in the steps will make their lives better. They start out asking really good questions and end up just being quiet since the responses they get all assumed that they are just being resistant and that the questioning is just their addiction talking. In the past, that may have been true, but with the millions of teens and long-term users now needing support, it’s become evident that a few of the questions are actually genuine and need to be answered. The Anti-12 Steps gives answers to many of those questions.
The Anti-12 Steps program works best when you see the world with the eyes of an addict. It works for people who wish those “giving me a hard time” would understand “where I’m coming from”. The Anti-12 Steps program talks about exactly where the addict is coming from. We want to address what is actually going on in an addict’s head, not just what should be going on in there.
It is time to be honest about the reality of fighting addiction. By studying the past, it’s possible to learn more about the now and where the future lies. So, welcome to the present, the past, and hopefully, a new future. It’s time for some reality. You must be honest about yourself and about what you think, even if you don’t want to admit it to others. Read below and see how this sounds:
World (or God)…
you owe me,
Give me the substances to tolerate the things I cannot change.
The enablers to do for me what I would rather not do myself,
And the apathy not to care which happens.
The basic steps used as the foundation for all the various step systems.
This foundation lets us build the traditions and all our other efforts.
How it works and why it works
Most treatment approaches try to pull the addict along towards a goal of recovery and most addicts try to resist the pull. The Anti-Steps use the world the addict already knows to guide them towards recovery letting them get there through their own momentum and with the very actions that got them into addiction to guide them out.
The Anti-12 Steps:
1. I declared that I have total control over my drug use and that I can completely manage my life and still use drugs.
(We admitted we were powerless over our addiction and that our lives had become unmanageable.—AA/NA)
2. Came to know that I need no one and that drugs help me maintain my happiness and sanity.
(Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.—AA/NA)
3. Made a decision to harness the benefits (as I understand them) of any substance I chose to use.
(Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.—AA/NA)
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of all others.
(Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.—AA/NA)
5. Admitted to no one, including myself, any of my wrongs, no matter how evident.
(Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.—AA/NA)
6. I became entirely ready to defend, excuse, and justify my actions, using personal attacks on others (if necessary), and to minimize any mistake I make.
(Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.—AA/NA)
7. Boldly declare that I have no shortcomings (while secretly believing that anything bad I ever did could not be forgiven).
(Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.—AA/NA)
8. Made a list of all persons that had (or that I thought had) harmed me and searched for opportunities to collect on those debts.
(Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.—AA/NA)
9. Collected whatever I felt that I was owed whenever possible, regardless of the fact that doing so may cause injury or harm to someone else.
(Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.—AA/NA)
10. Continued to take an inventory of others’ wrongs against me and promptly collected on them when possible.
(Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.—AA/NA)
11. Sought through experimentation, expert opinions, partying, and the advice of my using friends, a better, stronger, and longer high. I search only for more knowledge of how and what to use, and the means to do so without consequences.
(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.—AA/NA)
12. Having an enjoyable experience from the use of drugs, I tried to carry this message to other suffering sober people to lead them to practice these principles in all their affairs with me.
(Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts and to practice these principles in all our affairs.—AA/NA)
It’s amazing that there is a consistent response to the Anti-12 Steps when addicts first read them: “Well, yeah, that sounds familiar”. And, that’s the hidden power of the Anti-12 Steps. Addicts pay attention. They let their walls down and open up because the concepts aren’t threatening, they are familiar and comfortable. They aren’t to be fought, they are what makes an addiction. And when looked at as a pathway, they are the process for addiction.
Now we have the answer in a simple approach to the questions addicts ask, “How did I get here?”. The Anti-12 Steps spells out how. Only now, it’s a tool that can have a powerful place in treating addiction.
I’ll show you how to use that tool effectively and how to apply it to all the variations we know are out there in the world of addiction treatment and support.
Join us. It will only take a minute
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