Alanon’s members say they work on a lot of program steps that are almost the same as for Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) they just apply the principles to how alcoholism affects their lives.
Step 6 says: “They were fully prepared to have all these moral defects of the Ueus.” And this is about not imposing your will on others. For Alanons, this means abandoning control-freaks”>control-freaks”>control over the alcoholic. (Source: Southwest Group). Your whole focus and obsession throughout the day is no longer on the drink and you can actually have a conversation with your friends without it being about “what did he do to me today”.
Step 7 says “We beseech Him to remove our transgressions”. Alanon also has an essay that goes into extensive discussion on step programs. Some say that in this step Alanon acquires some members of the peace and is a remedy to “not try to run the world in our house.” In Alanon’s name the game is a deduction like in any online support groups that you find for the Program.
Step 8 reads “Information of all the persons he had harmed and became willing to make amends to all”. Many Alanon members are surprised to learn that the first person on their list is an alcoholic, according to alcoholism.about.com. Anger is common to the Alanons, who are properly called by the ancients in Alanon, as “the uncreated Alanons.” What does that term mean, that this is a man who has not followed Alanon’s footsteps and can only talk about problems instead of solutions.
Step 9 reveals “Direct such Amendments wherever possible unless doing so would harm others.” One Alanon member writes that this step is “Put your money where your mouth is” with no expectations. It has been said that living with an alcoholic is like living “half way around the world” and you can’t count on anything.
In Level 10 you “continue to take a personal inventory and when you make a mistake, it is immediately admitted.” Newcomers to Alanon usually see the saints first before ever getting a sponsor, hearing their first meeting or making an inventory, according to a few members of Alanon. But as they grow older, they begin to see where the ball starts rolling. Some might just come to Alanon and say that her husband just smokes pot, nothing major, and that he never bothered them until recently. One might say this is “kicking the bottom in Alanon” when you know you need help dealing with your feelings about your spouse’s addiction.
Step 11 says: “Through prayer and meditation we seek to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him, praying only for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to do it.” What this means is that you find that a higher power has a plan for you. A lot of the time a recovering alcoholic is in denial about what was going on when he was drinking – what he did to his family, his kids, his husband; etc.
Finally, in Level 12 Alanon members “Having Spiritual Excitement from these levels, we tried to bring the Message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs”. This is the only level of Alanon’s Grades 1-12 where the wording is different from AA. In AA the word “others” is substituted for “drinker who still works” in Grad.
All of Alanon’s steps result in a changed attitude toward alcohol. You see him or her as a patient on an emotional level, not just an intellectual one. (Source: Maggie Rowe).
