THE TWELVE STEPS OF SUICIDE ANONYMOUS
Adapted from Alcoholics Anonymous Chapter Five
1. We admitted we were powerless over suicidal preoccupation and 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 Him.
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. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked him to remove all 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 of ourselves and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our consicious contact with God, as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to those who still suffer and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Many of us exclaimed, 'What an order! I can't go through with it.' Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.
Our description of the problem, the solution and our personal experiences before and after make clear three ideas:
a. That were were suicidal and could not manage our own lives.
b. That problably no human power could have relieved our suicidal preoccupation.
c. That God could and would if He were sought