Austin 12 Step Recovery: Powerful Tools for Addiction Recovery
If you are struggling with a drug or alcohol addiction, our 12 step recovery program in Austin, TX can provide the support and tools for you to maintain your sobriety and reclaim a normal life. Here are three key ways in which our 12 step recovery program can help:
1. Support
Break your substance dependency with support of others going through the same addiction. We provide multiple opportunities with our programs for group and one-on-one support. You will be able to listen, understand, and relate with others in addiction recovery. Through our support system, you can build back your confidence and trust – with yourself and others.
2. Manage Your Trigger Points
Build a tool set to manage your triggers and utilize the twelve-step program for drug and alcohol addiction treatment. We provide tools and exercises that will help you to train your mind to reject your cravings. You will have time to analyze where your addiction is rooted and how to reduce the chance of relapse.
3. Follow-up Care
After completing the rehab program, continue to ask for help with relapse prevention and other problems associated with alcoholism in a post-treatment after-care program. We provide both personal therapy or peer group sessions for this.
Addiction recovery may save your life. It can certainly improve it. Contact us for more information about our effective 12-step program in Austin.
What Are the 12 Steps in the 12-Step Program?
The 12 steps were created by the founders of Alcoholic Anonymous to establish a guideline for an optimal method to overcome addiction to drugs and alcohol. Although the 12-Steps put heavy emphasis on spirituality, many non-religious people have found the program to work for them and be immensely helpful. The language in the 12-Steps emphasizes the presence of God as each individual may understand their own conception of their higher power.
Here are the 12-Steps as defined by Alcoholics Anonymous:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives have become unmanageable.
The beginning of the 12 step recovery process is step 1 in AA. To take your first step, you need to admit that you have a problem with addiction. This is where your journey towards sobriety begins. Although it may be intimidating, our team is here to help support you along your path toward honesty, healing, and lifelong sobriety.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Now in step 2 in AA, you will come to believe that there is a Power that is greater than yourself. Coming to understand this can restore you to sanity. As a result, you will assess the insanity of some of the decisions you made under the influence of your addiction. Being willing to let go of your ego and surrendering control of the situation can be difficult, but it will help you along the 12 step recovery process.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
In step 3 in AA, we are going to make a conscious decision to turn our will and lives over to God. You will ask yourself a series of questions like “what actions can I take to turn over control (to God)?” We then will walk you through how not to rely on willpower alone, but how to turn your trust over to a higher power for support. It can be difficult to give up control, but it is an important step to the recovery process.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
In step 4 in AA, we are going to search deep within ourselves to examine the negative thoughts and beliefs which have contributed to your actions. It is difficult to face your flaws, and many times embarrassing, shameful, or painful. Here at Any Length Retreat, we understand this. We are here to support you through your recovery process, and want you to experience a better, more effective lifelong recovery.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Although it isn’t easy to do, in step 5 in AA, we are going to admit to God, to ourselves, and to others the exact nature of our wrongs. The 12 steps recovery process was designed specifically to make the recovering addict uncomfortable. To help you identify the exact nature of your wrongs will help in the long run.
6. We are entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
We are now at step 6 in AA. By this point, you have searched and conducted a fearless moral inventory of yourself. Once you have identified the character flaws that play a role in your drug or alcohol addiction, you are ready to move on to step 7. At this point in your recovery process, we are now preparing ourselves to ask God to remove these shortcomings.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Now that you have reached step 7 in AA, you will humbly ask God to remove your shortcomings. In this step, we want to focus on creating space for positive energy. Overcoming your shortcomings is a process; they don’t automatically go away. In step 7, you must actively make choices that help you overcome your shortcomings. During this step, we will also help you understand humility and how it plays a role in overcoming your addiction.
8. Made a list of persons who we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
By this point in your recovery process, you have spent some time evaluating your character flaws and admitting them. In step 8 in AA, you will now turn your focus outward, and create a list of people who you have harmed. Then, your next step will be to make amends with those people, with genuine change and restoration as the goal.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do would injure them or others.
Step 9 in AA is about making amends with the people in your life. During this step of the 12 steps of recovery, you will focus on restoration, resolution, and restitution, otherwise known as the Three Rs. You will consider what is holding you back from making amends with the friends and family in your life.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
You have come a long ways in your journey to sobriety. In step 10 in AA, we now focus on the present. We want to encourage you to be honest with yourself. In this step, you will learn to live in the present, practicing mindfulness. You will also learn to admit when you’ve been wrong and how to take personal inventory for your actions.
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.
When you walked through step 10, you turned your attention from the past to the present. Now, in step 11 in AA, you will begin to think about your future. At Any Length Retreat, our caring staff members help you connect to God and focus on habits of prayer and meditation. Step 11 builds upon this foundational habit so that you may continue grow spiritually for the rest of your life.
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 of our affairs.
By this point, you or your loved one has reached step 12 in AA. When you first embarked on your journey towards sobriety, you may have thought that reaching this step was impossible. But here you are! However, just because you have reached this step doesn’t mean you are done. The journey of sobriety is a life long process.
12 Step Program
Why is the 12 Step program effective? According to a study from the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, cognitive restructuring — or the ability to change the thought patterns in ways that also change behavior, is an important element of substance abuse treatment. This study shows that the 12 step program can enable cognitive restructuring around substance abuse and similar behaviors. This type of work makes it possible for individuals to change their behavioral patterns and thought processes concerning their substance abuse.
Once an individual has gone through all 12 steps, it’s likely that they may need to go through them again. It’s possible that there were some issues that they needed to work out in their life but didn’t. An addict might need more time to further process the 12 steps and gain a new perspective through working each step over again. In fact, the 10th step is all about taking a continued moral inventory which means that a person must be honest with themselves. If that person isn’t ready to move on, then they should consider working the steps again.
12 Steps of AA at Any Length
Why choose Any Length Retreat? By working the 12 steps of AA, there are a number of reasons as to why this program is effective for treating addiction. There is an abundance of AA groups and meetings making it easy to find a group near someone suffering from addiction. With that, comes a large and well structured social network as AA has been around for so long and is so widely instituted. This network of people plays a crucial role in recovery as it’s important to practice unity with other alcoholics and addicts. Combined with that is the emphasis the 12-Step program places on having a sponsor that shares their experience, strength and hope in recovery or to provide encouragement and motivation as well as attending group meetings and finding strength through peers.
Ultimately, the fact of it is that a treatment program, even one that fits an individual’s exact needs, is only going to be as effective as the effort that is put into it. Any Length Retreat is an all-men treatment center that utilizes the 12-step program in order to stay sober and treat addiction with an optimal method of recovery. We believe that working a solid 12-Step program is the solution to recovery and fundamental to living a life of sobriety.