They can’t help you break your addiction, and they feel stuck in uncomfortable positions while they make excuses for your drinking. By admitting that you are currently powerless, you make room to restore power by seeking assistance. At that point, you may discover it’s easy to move on to Step 2 of AA—and all the ones that follow. While admitting powerlessness over a substance may seem at odds with efforts to hold addicts responsible for their behaviors, the opposite is true. By accepting that you’re powerless over alcohol, drugs or addictive behavior, you’ve come to terms with your personal limitations. Acceptance of powerlessness can be liberating for many individuals.

How to Stop Sugar Addiction

Silver Pines and Steps to Recovery have provided addiction recovery programs in Pennsylvania for over a decade with detox, residential, outpatient, and sober living services. Last year, we expanded our services to include robust mental health treatment, a new outpatient location, and specialized programming for our nation’s veterans, with more to come this year! We are visually recognizing our growth with a unified look that better reflects who we are today and the passion we have for helping everyone with their addiction and mental health recovery journeys.

Taking the 1st Step Toward Managing Alcoholism

1. Admitting powerlessness helps individuals understand that addiction is not merely a character flaw but a disease that alters brain chemistry.
2. Other 12-step programs include Al-Anon, Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous, and others.
3. Constantly attempting to get your life under control when you are living in chaos is fruitless.
4. Further, groups with trained leaders, such as AA sponsors, can positively promote substance abuse recovery.
5. Step 1 is the first important step in recovery for many people because when you acknowledge that your alcohol use is no longer completely in your control, you can seek help.

Many 12-Step programs are well-known groups that use the concept of powerlessness to benefit recovery. The Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) Big Book says “powerless over alcohol” as its first principle. AA members believe they cannot control their drinking without the help of a higher power. The only way to break that vicious cycle is by getting honest about your relationship with alcohol. It’s about admitting that alcohol controls you, and not the other way around. The only way to heal an illness is to admit that it is a disease, which is exactly what you do when you embrace Step 1 of AA and admit that you’re powerless over alcohol.

You might have this thought if you come from a family background that was rigid, with strict rules and no tolerance for mistakes. It is linked to a shame-based identity or view of self as fundamentally flawed or bad at the core. Physical punishment, deprivation, social withdrawal, or any other way of punishing yourself increases feelings of despair and hopelessness.

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Admitting powerlessness is what reveals your true strength, and our committed staff is ready to help you find it. We offer peer-led recovery programs that are rooted in the 12-Step program of recovery from Alcoholics Anonymous. We believe that these steps are the foundation for building a healthy, sober life, and we have seen the good fruit of these teachings in the lives of our patients. To learn more about our vision and treatments, please contact us today. For many addicted to alcohol and drugs, it’s difficult to admit the way addiction has made their lives unmanageable.

What research has discovered is that acceptance of this step should be centered on the person and what they believe is problematic. Acknowledging that, for many, feelings of ambivalence are a part of the process. That anyone approaching the need to change can benefit from the 12 steps regardless of the stage of acceptance that they are in.

Worldwide, alcoholics, addicts and treatment professionals embraced the Twelve Steps, and more than 35 million copies of AA’s Big Book have been distributed in over 70 languages. Families can also find support in 12 step based self-help in groups such as Al-anon Can you drink alcohol on Vivitrol or will you get sick and Nar-Anon. Overcoming feelings of powerlessness is an essential part of the recovery process for individuals grappling with addiction.

Relying on your own independent attempts to control your behavior has likely led to more failure than success in the past. Believing you have enough power to stop on your own feeds isolation and pride, both of which are fuel for continuing in addiction. This belief assumes that you have enough power over your addictive behaviors to stop.

It involves realizing that your attempts at self-control are not cutting it, and that you need to rely on others to support you in gaining discipline and control. Cravings can become very strong for a person who has an addiction to alcohol. The brain’s function and the person’s physical health are affected.