Alcoholics Anonymous- A ray of hope for alcohol addicts

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is an international mutual aid movement founded in 1935 in Ohio, USA. It states that its primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety. With the early members, they developed a Twelve Step program of spiritual and character development. Its members and groups remain anonymous (hidden) in public media, altruistically help other alcoholics and include all who wish to stop drinking. The organization has a wide presence all over the world and proclaims that it has over 2 million members across the world.

            The scope of AA’s program is much broader than just abstinence from drinking alcohol. Its primary goal is to effect enough change in the alcoholic’s thinking “to bring about recovery from alcoholism” through a spiritual awakening. This spiritual awakening is achieved by following the Twelve Steps. This Twelve Step Program is a set of guiding principles outlining a course of action for recovery from addiction, compulsion, or other behavioral problems.

The original Twelve Steps published by Alcoholics Anonymous are :-

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - 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 alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

The rationale of this program is by using the suggested steps of the twelve-step program alcoholics can be guided toward happy and useful lives.  Each step of the program serves a different purpose.  The most important step is the first one, the admittance that you have a problem.  The following steps are personal and spiritual and require personal desire for change.

            The program does not dictate that all steps need to be followed or in any sequential manner.  A.A. encourages members to read them carefully, but it is not forced upon them.  It is something that each member should want to do.  When they want to do it their probability for recovery is higher because they have taken the first step on their own.  The rationale of the twelve-step program is that the alcoholic must consider what steps they want to take towards their own recovery.  The program works by providing a guideline and suggested steps toward this recovery.  In addition, by discussing these steps in A.A., alcoholics are encouraged (but not forced) to explore the different aspects of the A.A. philosophy. At Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, members are asked to speak one at a time about their own experience.  The Step meetings are a discussion about one particular step.  This “works” in helping achieve sobriety by having a member explore himself and his problem. 

            Alcoholics Anonymous now has a profound presence in India and has been organizing meetings in every major and other small cities all over India like Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata and smaller cities like Bhopal and Mysore too. Recently the famous TV talk show Satyamev Jayate anchored by Aamir Khan featured the Alcoholics Anonymous India praising it and also spreading the word upon what they actually do and how they have helped people get rid of alcoholism in India. A person need not pay anything for an AA membership as it is self-supporting through its own contributions. So anyone who has a desire to stop drinking may check up for the location and time for the AA meeting in your city and can help yourself get rid of your addiction towards alcohol.

Their website- http://www.aagsoindia.org has more information.