[MajestyJo]

Each morning I get up and check to make sure I have all my tools in “My Recovery Toolbox”.. I never know whether I’ll need them to change my perspective, my actions or maybe even my attitude . One thing's for sure I know at some point in my day, I’ll be reaching for them…..

The Big Book and/or Basic Text

The 12- Steps and Traditions

The Slogans

The Prayers - the Serenity, Third Step, Seventh Step and Eleventh Step

My Sponsor

Recovery Friends (meetings and the phone)

The Art of Detachment

My hotline to God through Prayer

My Recovery Books & literature

My Online Message Boards and chat rooms

It was important to pick up my tools in good times and bad times to get in the practice of getting out of myself and asking for help.

The literature was a God given gift. Not just the Big Book/Basic Text and 12 & 12, but the daily meditation books. I like the ones with all the emotions listed at the back so I could look up all the reading pertaining to a feeling. It was hard for me to label them and give them a name because I had stuffed for so many years. I often just picked up a book (AA, NA, Al-Anon, Hazelden, the Bible, etc, said the Serenity Prayer, and then just opened the book and read what was in front of me. It works.

I always liked the saying, "God answers knee-mail." In today, I use that for heavy duty stuff because I don't do getting down on the knees very well. Before it was lack of surrender, in today it is old age.

There were many gifts along with the detachment. Setting boundaries, the ability to be honest, the principles behind the Steps and the Traditions.

12 Steps and the 12 Principles

1. We admitted we were powerless over the effects of addiction — that our lives had become unmanageable.

1. Honesty, acceptance and surrender.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

2. Hope, Trust

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

3. Faith, willingness

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

4. Courage.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.

5. Integrity.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

6. Willingness, self-honesty

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

7. Humility.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

8. Justice and brotherly love.

9. Made direct amends to such people, wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

9. Self-discipline and good judgment.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

10. Perseverance and open mindedness.

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.

11. Awareness.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other codependents, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

12. Love and service.


These very depending on who you are talking to. Many say the only principle for Step One is Honesty, but I am a firm believer in all three as listed here. It says we are to do Step One 100% and in order to do that, we need to find surrender and acceptance to go with the self-honesty.

Please add any additional tools that help you in your recovery.

Something I found on a friend's site that I posted from an old site of mine.