Twelve Steps Quotes

“If I am this capable of loving an alcoholic so much, imagine how awesome I could be at loving myself.”
― Grace W. Wroldson, So You Love an... Alcoholic?: Lessons for a Codependent

“It wasn't so much about breaking free of him, as it was about breaking free of me.”
― Grace W. Wroldson, So You Love an... Alcoholic?: Lessons for a Codependent

“Christians who fail also avoid other Christians, especially when they are feeling bad and guilty in the midst of their failure. It's sad to see this dynamic of the law happen in the church and then see the opposite happen in Twelve Step groups. In these recovery groups, people are taught that the very first thing to do when you fail is to call someone in the group and get to a meeting. They are taught to "run to grace," as it were, to turn immediately to their higher power and their support system. The sad part is that this theology is more biblical than what is practices in many Christian environments, where people in failure run from instead of to God and the people they need.”
― Henry Cloud & John Townsend

“I was dating the same man over and over again, expecting a different relationship. Where's the sanity in that!?”
― Grace W. Wroldson, So You Love an . . . Alcoholic?: Lessons for a Codependent

“1. We admitted we were powerless over our emotions, that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. 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.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to emotionally and mentally ill persons and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”
― Jerry Hirschfield, The Twelve Steps for Everyone: Who Really Wants Them

“Often what we may consider to be sins against ourselves are actually sins against God. For instance, when we condemn ourselves we are playing god. When we worry and fret we are not trusting Him - and that is sinning against God, not against ourselves. Therefore, those are sins against God for Him to forgive.”
― Martin Bobgan, 12 Steps to Destruction: Codependecy/Recovery Heresies

“In 1935, when there were no other programs, the founders of AA, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, stepped up to the plate and took action to help a crippled population. All credit for the establishment of their wonderful, life-saving group goes to them and to those who came after them who have continued the tradition. However, there are hundreds of millions of people who still need help who are not among the estimated two or three million who attend twelve-step meetings.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“To take up the cross does not mean making some particular sacrifice, nor does it refer to some particular burden ("My husband is my cross"). Anyone in that day, reading those words, would know plainly that taking up the cross meant one and only one thing: putting to death an infamous criminal. Jesus, therefore, is saying, "You must treat yourself, with all your sinful ways, priorities, and desires, like a criminal, and put self to death every day." That says something about the self-image that Christ expects us to have!”
― Martin Bobgan, 12 Steps to Destruction: Codependecy/Recovery Heresies

“A major problem with many codependency/recovery books is the belief that going back to childhood to find the why's of present feelings and behavior and even to find where patterns developed will bring relief and transformation.”
― Martin Bobgan, 12 Steps to Destruction: Codependecy/Recovery Heresies

“Until he met the Lord Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, the Apostle Paul spent his entire life being willing to have God remove all the defects of his character.”
― Martin Bobgan, 12 Steps to Destruction: Codependecy/Recovery Heresies

“The Twelve Steps teach that the only way to be freed from addiction and restored to sanity is through total and constant reliance on a Higher Power. I guess this Higher Power is somehow supposed to replace drugs, pleasure, and whatever else we have placed at the epicenter of our existence and fill the gap that these things cannot. Since our Higher Power is independent from, separate from, and beyond us, a Higher Power can help us in ways we cannot help ourselves. If we cannot put our Higher Power at the center of our lives, then something else will be there, and it will not be so kind a ruler.”
― Michael J Heil

“At some point I got tired of justifying myself, finding beliefs that excused my actions, and doing the same things over and over. I decided it would make more sense to get advice from people who’d managed to overcome their dependence on substances, so I started opening up to friends who were in the Twelve Steps. They told me that addiction was not a moral or philosophical problem but a spiritual one. They told me I couldn’t think or work my way out of it; only God could free me from it.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“I discovered I had rejected my own masculinity, but not because I didn’t want to be a boy... I simply wasn’t very good at it.”
― Todd Norman Ringness, Not Like All the Other Boys: My Unplanned Journey Into Faith and Identity