Touching Base: Confession and the AA 12 Steps

The latest 'touching base' column is now online at the Wardman Wire (link should work now!). Here's a snippet:

As a spotty youth I worked in East London with alcoholics, and realised that the (Alcoholics Anonymous) 12 steps were more than a recovery programme. They made a great rule of life. If you lived by these principles, then there wasn’t a much better path to personal maturity and character.

It’s a tough path, with no short cuts, and requires a level of honesty and stickability that might look frighteningly high. But most alcoholics are desperate enough to have a go, and the 12 steps have yet to be bettered as a recovery programme.

And here’s the sticking point: though we’d all become better people if we followed the 12 Steps, most of us wouldn’t even think about it unless we became desperate. As with climate change, so with personal change - we need to be right on the brink before we’re motivated enough to do anything.

and for the rest go here.