Growing List

The 12 Steps Of Humor Anonymous

1. We admitted we were grateful for the role humor plays in our recovery, and our laughter had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, and a little laughter now and then couldn't hurt.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him, and laughed about how if we measured what we understood about God on a scale of one to ten, the needle on the gauge would probably point to minus one, and we don't need to tell you which end of the scale is which, which makes us laugh, because we are desperate, aren't we?

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, and when appropriate, laughed at ourselves and the foibles of addiction.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs, and didn't laugh too much here, because this step involves some serious ****.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character, and laughed out loud when we realized how great life could be with out these defects.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings, and imagined God stripping us down to our shorts in front of our home group, to keep us humble and to provide a few laughs for the other drunks, junkies, and misfits.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and realized there was nothing funny about the length of this list. Became willing to make amends to all of them, but realized it was going to take a lot of thinking and head scratching just to figure out what "amends" were, and then to actually make them, whew!

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Made indirect amends when we didn't want to get caught or feel guilty.

10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when wrong, promptly admitted it. When our behavior was funny, ironic or ludicrous, we laughed at it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out, and sought through laughter to understand that God has a sense of humor, because after all, He created the likes of us.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others in recovery and to practice these principles in all our affairs. And we remembered humor also has the power to heal.