12 Step Programs for Troubled Young Adults
The 12 step program was created by alcoholics in recovery over 65 years ago to rehabilitate young men and women struggling with alcoholism. We know this group today as Alcoholics Anonymous, or more commonly known as "A.A." Since its humble beginnings, this curriculum has developed into a useful tool that most recovering young adults still use in terms of rehabilitation.
Does Soulegria Use the 12 Steps in Its Treatment?
Soulegria is not trying to reinvent the wheel. Instead, we assimilate an already-proven-to-be invaluable rehabilitative tool that is the 12 Steps, with our effective provenly therapies.
Above all, We appreciate "The Steps" core values and introduce them to struggling young adults between 18 and 25 who are battling addictions alone. Accompanying our implementation of the 12 Steps is our blend of life skills coaching, healthy living skills, and support, which is a highly personalized and nuanced treatment for our clientele.
Our treatment programs help develop healthy relationship skills among students, parents, and other members of the family. These skills are vital to forging a clear path of independence. It is essential for parents of struggling young adults to understand they are not alone.
We have an excellent track record with parents and troubled young adults and have assisted thousands in living an independent and successful lifestyle.
What are the 12 Steps?
The 12 Steps are a set of "guiding principles" developed for Alcoholics Anonymous. Of course, the renowned group, commonly known simply by its initials, A.A., is now a world-famous group therapy program that is used by millions of severely alcoholic men and women to achieve sobriety.
The Following is the Original List of The Twelve Steps as Bill W. and Dr. Bob Orginally Formulated
Step 1 - We admit we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives have become impossible to manage.
Step 2 - We believe in a higher power that is greater than ourselves can restore our sanity.
Step 3 - We decide to turn ourselves over to the care of our higher power as we understand it.
Step 4 - We will conduct a fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Step 5 - We admit to our higher power, ourselves, and others the exact nature of our wrongdoings.
Step 6 - We are fully ready to have our higher power remove all these defective characteristics.
Step 7 - We will humbly ask our higher power to remove our shortcomings.
Step 8 - We will make a list of all the people we have harmed and will be willing to make amends to all of them.
Step 9 - We will make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when it would hurt them in the process.
Step 10 - We will continue to exercise our personal inventory and promptly admit it when we are in the wrong.
Step 11 - We will seek out through prayer and meditation to improve our understanding with our higher power and pray only for knowledge of our higher power's will for us and the ability to accomplish it.
Step 12 - We will have a spiritual revival due to these steps; we will attempt to carry this message to other addicts and practice these principles in all our relationships and activities.
Are the 12 Steps Effective in Treating Addiction?
Since the system's conception over 80 years ago, the overall effectiveness of the 12 steps has been proven to be undeniable. To prove its revolutionary impact in rehabilitating addicts, one needs to look no further than its near-century-long pervasiveness.
"The Steps," as practitioners colloquially refer to them, are now more popular than ever and globally utilized by most clinically-accredited rehabilitation clinics. Said clinics have since adopted the program's guiding rules to rehabilitate all types of harmful addictions (rather than singularly treating life-threatening habits that stem from alcoholism).
Humble Beginnings
Despite being the uncontested authoritative guiding treatment in rehabs for over the last eight decades -- not to mention, helping millions of addicts achieve sobriety during that timespan -- the actual origin of "The Steps" is a surprisingly humble, if not slightly strange one.
The 12 Steps program was conceived in Akron, Ohio, by recovering alcoholics Bill W. (a New York stockbroker) and Dr. Bob (an Akron-based surgeon) in 1939.
The peculiar, albeit groundbreaking duo carefully created the 12 steps as a sort of agnostic concept to supplement and conduct their unknown group therapy program, Alcoholics Anonymous, which they had founded four years prior.
Almost prophetically psycho-and-behaviorally analytical for their time, Dr. Bob and Bill W. knew first hand how a severely addicted individual is virtually powerless to their compulsions if left to their own devices and decisions.
It was this notion -- the realization that a severely addicted individual is only able to achieve sobriety with the support, kinship, and accountability of fellow struggling addicts -- that sparked the ingenuity and eventual conceptualization of what we now know as the 12 Steps.