THE TWELVE TRADITIONS OF A.A.
- Our common welfare should come first; personal
recovery depends upon A.A. unity.
- For our group purpose there is but one ultimate
authority—a loving God as he may express Himself in
our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted
servants; they do not govern.
- The only requirement for A.A. membership is a
desire to stop drinking.
- Each group should be autonomous except in matters
affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.
- Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry its
message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
- An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance, or lend
the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise,
lest problems of money, property and prestige
divert us from our primary purpose.
- Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting,
declining outside contributions.
- Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever
non-professional; but our service centers may employ
special workers.
- A.A., as such, ought never be organized; but we may
create service boards or committees directly
responsible to those they serve.
- Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside
issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn
into public controversy.
- Our public relations policy is based on attraction
rather than promotion; we need always maintain
personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films.
- Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our
traditions, ever reminding us to place principles
before personalities.
Reprinted with permission of A.A. World Services
THE TWELVE STEPS
- We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that
our lives had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves
could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over
to the care of God as we understood Him.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of
ourselves.
- Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human
being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these
defects of character.
- Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became
willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible,
except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory, and when we
were wrong promptly admitted it.
- 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.
- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these
steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and
to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Reprinted with permission of A.A. World Services
God grant me the serenity to accept the
things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and widsdom to know the difference.