Many people know of the 12 Steps because they’re so prevalently used nowadays in various programs of recovery from addiction. But what most probably don’t know is that there are completely polar opposites of them as well. What I mean by this is that while the 12 Steps are meant to guide a person into a spiritual life of recovery from whatever their addiction was, the polar opposites of them will only guide them entirely away from that and usually right back into their addiction.
I found many written versions of this on several Internet sites and decided to make one of my own because I needed to add a little humor in my life at the present moment. It’s my hope that they may bring a smile to your face as they did for me when writing them. Ironically, it wasn’t that long ago when I actually was living more like these than the ones Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith created. So I’m just grateful to my Higher Power today that I’m not living in these polar opposites of the 12 Steps anymore…
Step 1 – I admitted how powerful and in control I felt with each of my addictions, and my life is still completely manageable ok? So leave me the hell alone!
Step 2 – Came to believe there is no power greater than myself, nor any person more knowledgeable than I, and the only person who needs to be restored to sanity is all of you dammit!
Step 3 – Made a decision to turn my will and my life over to more and more people, places, and things, as I understood the only way to function in life was to be codependent on each of them.
Step 4 – Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of every one other than myself and continued to point as many fingers as I could at everyone else’s character defects, except my own, because I couldn’t think of any that were truly a problem.
Step 5 – Admitted to no one the exact nature of my wrongs, because frankly I don’t think I’m ever wrong.
Step 6 – Were entirely ready to have everyone else’s character defects be removed by someone or something, as all the problems in the world are totally because of them!
Step 7 – Arrogantly demanded everyone else’s character defects be removed over and over again to whomever would listen to me.
Step 8 – Made a list of all the persons that had harmed me and became willing to think about all the bad things I wanted to happen to each of them.
Step 9 – Made direct attempts to get even to such people in any way I could, especially when it would injure them quite deeply.
Step 10 – Continued to take everyone else’s personal inventory and when they were wrong promptly told them so.
Step 11 – Sought through my own fantasies and daydreams to improve my conscious contact with all the people I desperately wanted to have sex with, praying only for knowledge of how to make that happen and the power to carry that out.
Step 12 – Having had a complete spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical breakdown as the result of these steps, I tried to drag as many people down with me as I could so that I didn’t feel so bad about myself, and to practice these principles in all my affairs, especially my sexual ones.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson