Many people new in recovery question whether a 12-Step program will work for them. I can certainly relate to that. The most difficult part for me was getting started. I struggled the most with Step One - being able to reach that place of admitting I was powerless over drugs and alcohol.

I'd been drinking and using drugs since I was 13. By age 21 my life was completely and totally unmanageable and I was suicidal. I didn't know that was because of drugs and alcohol; I honestly thought that drugs and alcohol were the solution and the only thing that made me feel 'okay'. The thought of not having them in my life was frightening.

After a failed suicide attempt, my family gave me an ultimatum to get help or they would cut me out of their lives. A psychologist with a specialty in addictions told me he could see in my eyes that I was dying from drugs and alcohol. Hearing that from him didn't sell me on the idea of getting help, but his colleague related her story and I completely identified with it. Fortunately that got me to a place where I was finally willing to admit I was powerless over drugs and alcohol. That was Step One for me and the beginning of an eight month, 12-Step treatment program.

I started out quite weary of working the steps because of all the talk about God and spirituality. When I looked at all the suffering in the world, and the suffering I had felt in my own life, I had a hard time with that. I thought if there was such a thing as God, God wouldn't let people suffer. So Step Two, believing that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, was a struggle for me. I knew I was insane so that part wasn't a stretch, but the idea of a 'Higher Power' restoring me - that was a different ballgame altogether.

Fortunately I was in a place where there were individuals working through the same process as me. It wasn't even the people who had been in the program for a long time who were the most helpful. It was the people who were a couple of months ahead of me and had just worked through those issues; their experience, strength, and hope was the most accessible to me. They would say things like: "Two months ago I was in that place and someone told me to fake it till I make, and just get on my knees and pray anyway." By that point I was absolutely sick and tired of being sick and tired so I was willing to do whatever people told me to do. I thought to myself, if it doesn't work, I can just go back to doing what I was doing before. I was willing to try and give it 110%, so when people told me I should get on my knees I got down on my knees.

Slowly but surely I started to feel some kind of a Presence in my life, and that blew me away. I could never have predicted that would happen.  At that point, Step Three (made a decision to turn our will and lives over to God as we understood him), came naturally for me. The decision, for me, was making a commitment to do the rest of the 12 Steps.

The next step I struggled with was number five, admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.  I had thought if anybody ever knew the things I'd said, felt, or done, they would hate me as much as I hated myself. Even to this day one of the most profound things for me is when I share my honesty and truth at that deep level and people love me anyway. It is an incredible experience. I believe doing Step Five the first time is when life really changed for me - I started to feel accepted and loved, and that was a new experience. People loved me for who I was and not the façade I presented to them.

Step 10, taking a personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it, was another profound step for me. It has become my way of staying on my game so I don't get pulled back into really dark places. If I make mistakes I clean them up right way - I no longer live in the guilt, shame, and remorse of not being perfect. Step 10 is an ongoing housekeeping process which keeps me in fit spiritual condition. I find if I'm working Step 10, then I'm working Step 11 and 12 as well. They go hand in hand for me. If I'm on my game then I'm typically giving back and I'm connected with my Higher Power.

Going through the 12 Steps in treatment was straight-forward, but when I left treatment I had moments when I got sick of working the program and stopped rigorously working the steps. I was back into my own will and stopped relying on a Higher Power. Even though I didn't use or drink, I was restless, irritable, and discontent. It took a lot to get back to that place of being entirely willing to do whatever it took to get back on track.

In hindsight, I am grateful for that experience because it taught me that alcoholism truly is a disease and if I'm not treating it on a regular basis then I will be just as sick as I was before. My experience is that a 12-Step program works, but only if you work it. I know that's a cliché, but it's been very true for me - if I don't work it, it doesn't work. When I'm going to meetings, phoning my sponsor, doing my reading, praying on a regular basis, sponsoring people, and working the steps, my life goes pretty well. I don't get to that desperate dark place I used to because I know that I'm going to be carried through every moment of my life.

The interesting thing is, at some point, recovery became a choice instead of something that I had to do.  My life is so much more fulfilling, rewarding, and exciting today than it ever was before, and I credit that to recovery.  The people I have in my life, the quality of my relationships, the achievements that I've made - none of it would have been possible without the 12 Steps.

 Janine Nowacka

Cedar's Counsellor