The 12 steps of Workaholics Anonymous

You’ve heard me call this thing a “Recovery Group” or reference “recovery” and the title of this group I’m part of (W.A.) sounds a lot like other recovery groups, like Alcoholics Anonymous. Of course, W.A. is modeled after A.A. and owes much of the wisdom of its literature and simple, balanced and thoughtful philosophy and principles to John Wilson and the founders of A.A.

W.A. was started by a New York corporate financial planner, his spouse, and a schoolteacher in April of 1983. They based it on the hoped-for success they knew in A.A. and Al-Anon.

Anyway, before we get too much further, it’d be good to list the “12 Steps of Workaholics Anonymous,” so here goes:

1. We admitted we were powerless over work — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Became entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.

The W.A. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions were adapted from the Twelve Steps and The Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. Reprinted by permission of the Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. Steps and Traditions copyright © 1939 by A.A. World Services.

Originally appears as page 17 in the W.A. Book of Recovery. This literature is also available as a downloadable PDF file

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