A person has to admit there is a problem before recovery can truly begin. But the First Step of the 12 Steps of AA means more than this – it means finally rejecting the denial and self-deception that so often accompanies addiction.

In the First Step, the person afflicted with addiction has to accept the fact that their addiction is beyond their control. With that admission comes the realization that “their” way of doing things simply isn’t working. And once the suffering addict/alcoholic realizes THAT, they can be more receptive to the idea that they will need help to recover.

Powerless: This means that the person has lost control over their consumption of drugs and/or alcohol. They no longer can regulate when or how much they consume. The addiction is in charge. The important thing to consider about powerlessness is this – it means that it is impossible to drink or use drugs “safely”. It also means that sobriety is not a matter of “having more willpower” or “trying harder”.

Unmanageable: This means that the drinking/drug use is having a negative impact on the rest of the person’s life:

• Health problems

• Relationship issues

• Legal difficulties

• Feelings of guilt, shame, and remorse

What makes us addicts is the disease of addiction-not the drugs, not our behavior, but our disease. There is something within us that makes us unable to control our use of drugs. This same "something" also makes us prone to obsession and compulsion in other areas of our lives.

How can we tell when our disease is active?

When we become trapped in obsessive, compulsive, self-centered routines, endless loops that lead nowhere but to physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional decay.

Denial: This is the part of our disease that tells us we don't have a disease. When we are in denial, we are unable to see the reality of our addiction. We minimize its effect. We blame others, citing the too-high expectations of families, friends, and employers. We compare ourselves with other addicts whose addiction seems "worse" than our own. We may blame one particular drug. If we have been abstinent from drugs for some time, we might compare the current manifestation of our addiction with our drug use, rationalizing that nothing we do today could possibly be as bad as that was! One of the easiest ways to tell that we are in denial is when we find ourselves giving plausible but untrue reasons for our behavior.

Despair and Isolation: Our addiction finally brings us to a place where we can no longer deny the nature of our problem. All the lies, all the rationalizations, all the illusions fall away as we stand face to-face with what our lives have become. We realize we've been living without hope. We find we've become friendless or so completely disconnected that our relationships are a sham, a parody of love and intimacy. Though it may seem that all is lost when we find ourselves in this state, the truth is that we must pass through this place before we can embark upon our journey of recovery.

Reservations: These are places/spaces in our self that we have reserved for relapse. They may be built around the idea that we can retain a small measure of control, something like, "Okay, I accept that I can't control my using, but I can still sell drugs, can't I?" Or we may think we can remain friends with the people we used with or bought drugs from. We may think that certain parts of the program don't apply to us. We may think there's something we just can't face clean-a serious illness, for instance, or the death of a loved one and plan to use if it ever happens. We may think that after we've accomplished some goal, made a certain amount of money, or been clean (drug-free) for a certain number of years, then we'll be able to control our using. Reservations are usually tucked away in the back of our minds; we are not fully conscious of them. It is essential that we expose any reservations we may have and cancel them, right here, right now.

Surrender: There's a huge difference between resignation and surrender. Resignation is what we feel when we've realized we're addicts but haven't yet accepted recovery as the solution to our problem. Many of us found ourselves at this point long before coming to Narcotics

Anonymous: We may have thought that it was our destiny to be addicts, to live and die in our addiction. Surrender, on the other hand, is what happens after we've accepted the First Step as something that is true for us and have accepted that recovery is the solution. We don't want our lives to be the way they have been. We don't want to keep feeling the way we've been feeling.

Spiritual Principles

In the First Step, we will focus on honesty, open-mindedness, willingness, humility, and acceptance. The practice of the principle of honesty from the First Step starts with admitting the truth about our addiction, and continues with the practice of honesty on a daily basis. When we say "I'm an addict" in a meeting, it may be the first truly honest thing we've said in a long time. We begin to be able to be honest with ourselves and, consequently, with other people.

Practicing the principle of open-mindedness found in Step One mostly involves being ready to believe that there might be another way to live and being willing to try that way. It doesn't matter that we can't see every detail of what that way might be, or that it may be totally unlike anything we've heard about before; what matters is that we don't limit ourselves or our thinking. Sometimes we may hear NA/AA members saying things that sound totally crazy to us, things like suggestions to pray for someone we resent. We demonstrate open-mindedness when we don't reject these things without having tried them.

The principle of humility, so central to the First Step, is expressed most purely in our surrender. Humility is most easily identified as an acceptance of who we truly are neither worse nor better than we believed we were when we were using, just human.

To practice the principle of acceptance, we must do more than merely admit that we're persons afflicted with addiction (addicts). When we accept our addiction, we feel a profound inner change that is underscored by a rising sense of hope. We also begin to feel a sense of peace. We come to terms with our addiction, with our recovery, and with the meaning those two realities will come to have in our lives. We don't dread a future of meeting attendance, sponsor contact, and step work; instead, we begin to see recovery as a precious gift, and the work connected with it as no more trouble than other routines of life.