While it’s pretty obvious I’m a huge 12 Step recovery proponent and often feel that the 12 Steps themselves can be applied to anyone’s life, regardless of whether they have any sort of addiction to recover from or not, there are parodies of the 12 Steps out there that actually fall in line with how most recovering addicts once were when deep in their addiction. Thanks to my buddy Tom, I received one such iteration of those parodies that frankly, is eerily close to how I once lived, when my life was a total self-will run riot.
Here is “The 12 Steps Of Insanity” that my buddy sent me:
- We admitted we were powerless over nothing – that we could manage our lives perfectly and those of anyone else who would allow me.
- Came to believe there was no power greater than ourselves, and the rest of the world was insane.
- Made a decision to have our loved ones and friends turn their wills and lives over to our care even though they couldn’t understand us at all.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of everyone we knew.
- Admitted to the whole world at large the exact nature of everyone else’s wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to make others straighten up and do right.
- Demanded others to either “shape up or ship out.”
- Made a list of all persons who had harmed us and became willing to go to any length to get even with them all.
- Got direct revenge on such people wherever possible except when to do so would cost us our own lives or, at the very least, a jail sentence.
- Continued to take the inventory of others, and when they were wrong, promptly and repeatedly told them about it.
- Sought through bitching and nagging to improve our relations with others as we couldn’t understand them at all, asking only that they knuckle under and do things our way.
- Having had a complete physical, emotional, spiritual breakdown as the result of these steps, we tried to blame it on others and to get sympathy and pity in all our affairs.
I’m sure most 12 Step-based recovering addicts of any kind can probably relate to this parody of the 12 Steps, because ultimately it’s how we all used to live. I had to laugh at Step 4 and 5 here, because that indeed is precisely the toxic behaviors I once exhibited with such voracity that I regularly pissed tons of people off because of it. Ironically, those behaviors seem to be happening quite a bit these days with plenty of non-addict-based individuals in this crazy COVID world we’re all living in presently. That’s why I continue to feel the 12 Steps can be applied to anyone.
Nevertheless, in regards to the final step in this parody, I had my own complete physical, emotional, and spiritual breakdown back in the 2011-2012 time frame when an unchecked sex and love addiction was completely ruling my life and a suicide attempt became the only rational option.
Thank God I do my best now to live the true 12 Steps in every area of my life and that all of my former severe addictions are in recovery mode. Thank God I really can’t relate anymore to The 12 Steps Of Insanity and am not living any of them out. And thank God I absolutely know now that taking my will back and using control to guide my life will only lead me straight back into those all those steps of insanity, which is most definitely not a place I ever want to return to ever again…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
