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Who Answers?How the 12 Steps of AA Give You Back the Power to Choose What You Want for Your Life
One of the most debilitating aspects of alcohol addiction lies in a person’s inability to choose NOT TO drink. After past humiliations and devastating consequences, the urge to drink still wins out over a person’s will to abstain.
This loss of control over one’s actions doesn’t just go away, even after successfully completing detox treatment. Instead, the damaging effects of alcohol on a person’s thinking and behaviors can persist for months or years into recovery.
The 12 Steps of AA are specifically designed to help you take back control of your life and your ability to choose sobriety.
For information on 12 Step alcohol rehab treatment, call our toll-free helpline at 800-781-0748 (Who Answers?) .
Breaking the Mind’s Dependence on Alcohol
The 12 Steps help to strengthen your faith in a Higher Power.
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism, alcohol addiction lives inside the way a person thinks and behaves. While cravings may seem physical in origin, they’re actually learned behaviors that result from the mind’s psychological dependence on alcohol’s effects.
In other words, the mind has reached a point where it “needs” alcohol to cope with daily life stressors and pressures. Herein lies the crux of addiction.
The primary goal of 12 Steps of AA works to break this psychological dependence on alcohol’s effects.
The Role of the 12 Steps of AA
Building Focus
Many who successfully complete alcohol detox come out feeling completely disoriented and vulnerable. After months or years of alcohol addiction, the brain has been left to pick up where alcohol’s effects leave off.
At this critical juncture, it’s important to have some type of plan in place, or else the addiction mindset will drive a person right back to the bottle. The 12 Steps of AA provide you with the degree of focus and guidance needed to stay engaged in the recovery process.
Tackling the Underlying Issues That Fuel Drinking
A good majority of alcoholics come from a background where they never learned how to process difficult emotions or handle conflicts in a constructive matter. In effect, alcohol becomes the coping “skill,” according to Columbia University.
Add to this the damaging effects of chronic alcohol abuse on brain functioning, and underlying issues get buried even deeper than they were before. The 12 Steps of AA enable a person to work through the core root issues that drive the addiction problem.
As these issues come to light, the motivations behind addiction-based behavior weaken over time.
Developing Faith
As elusive as the concept of faith may seem, the 12 Steps of AA views faith as a powerful force that’s able to strengthen a person’s resolve in the recovery process. Faith can be placed in a Higher Power, in the power of love or in one’s ability to become a good parent. Whatever inspires you to maintain sobriety can be an anchor for your faith.
The overall purpose for faith works to inspire a belief that recovery is possible.
Developing an Alcohol-Free Mindset
More than anything else, replacing the need for alcohol with a mindset that’s able to support a sober lifestyle is the overall goal of the 12 Steps of AA. Each step of the program works to strengthen your power to choose sobriety on a day-by-day basis.
If you need help finding alcohol rehab treatment, we can help. Call our helpline at 800-781-0748 (Who Answers?) to speak with one of our addiction counselors.