Alcoholics Anonymous is a 12-step program where members work the twelve steps as outlined in the AA big book. A worksheet simplifies these important steps and lets people consider as much detail as possible for their step work.
We provide several worksheets (PDF files) to help people on the path to sobriety and the spiritual awakening necessary to continue to stay sober. These can be a great resource as we move through this recovery program.
The steps of Alcoholics Anonymous can be divided into four phases, each containing three steps.
Phase 1: Accepting Our Condition
This first phase brings us from acknowledging we have a problem with alcohol abuse to the point where we come to understand that there is only one to deal with it.
Step 1 We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
This step is critical in moving toward a better life. It is the first time we have faced the fact that we can’t manage our lives. This worksheet explores how we came to this admission and examines what shows that our lives are unmanageable.
Step 2 Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
This worksheet aims to examine three things and, in doing so, initiates our conscious contact with God. The following questions are asked:
- What would our higher power be like, or what would it be like if we were agnostic or atheist?
- What is our understanding of sanity, and what is our perception of its value?
- Why is relying on a higher power necessary to achieve sanity?
Step 3 Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
In step 2, we become aware of a Higher Power and now reach out to that Higher Power. This is the beginning of our spiritual experience. The worksheet for this step is a simple invitation to reflection that culminates in confirming the decision we have just made.
Phase 2: Reviewing Our Past
Critical to staying sober is the achievement of emotional sobriety. This phase can be terrifying, but the end results are catharsis and freedom from your former self.
Step 4 Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
The fourth step takes time, and we often need to conquer hesitation. The worksheet contains multiple sections for the fourth step inventory.
4th Step Inventory Worksheet Sections
- Resentment
- Fear
- Harm
- Sexual Conduct
There is often an overlap between 2 or more of the sections.
Step 5 Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
This is intimidating. We sit down with someone, typically our sponsor, and review what we revealed about ourselves in step 4.
This worksheet is simple. It is a list of what we admitted and a space for notes we can make based on any discussions arising from the conversation.
Step 6 Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
The worksheet for this step helps us list our character defects and the effects that these character flaws have and provides the details of the change we expect to happen as we allow God to remove them. The intent of this worksheet is to provide encouragement by letting us glimpse the future as we consign these things to the past.
Phase 3: Correcting Our Ways
Now that we have reviewed our past and the problems that affected our drinking and were in turn affected by our alcohol abuse., we move, in this phase, to dealing with these issues.
Step 7 Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
This is similar to the step 5 worksheet. It is a list of each shortcoming we ask our Higher Power, in faith, to remove.
Step 8 Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
We can draw on some of the information in the step four worksheet. We list the person and the harm we have done them. People may well appear several times.
Step 9 Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
This sheet expands on the 8th step worksheet. We name the person and give details of the event we must make amends for. It is critical that we understand our feelings and what motivated us to do what we did. It helps us understand ourselves and enables us to answer the question, “Why?” if the person we are making amends to asks that. The step imposes a condition on making direct amends – except when doing so would injure them or others, and we need to decide whether to make direct amends to them based on this possibility. The comments portion of this worksheet allows us to comment on anything, such as why they would be harmed by direct amends or things we should say when talking to such people. It is possible that we can use this condition to avoid dealing with the persons we have harmed. For this reason, we need to show this to our sponsor and have our sponsor call us out in possible avoidance.
Phase 4: Maintaining Our Sobriety
We have done it, and through the difficult last two phases, we have made gigantic strides towards emotional sobriety. Remember the 9th step promises begin and end with a contract
- If we are painstaking about this development phase, we will be amazed before we are halfway through.
- They will materialize if we work for them.
But now we deal with the issue of maintaining the victory that we have achieved over alcohol with the help of our higher power. This takes place through daily reflection and constant self-evaluation, which is the hallmark of the worksheets of this phase.
Step 10 Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
This worksheet contains two tables to help us reflect on the fears, emotions, and defects of the day.
Step 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.
This is a simple journal, really. It provides space to record the thoughts and feelings that come to us in prayer and meditation.
Step 12 Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
This, too, is a journey. How have we carried the message, and to whom? How can we carry the message?
Using The Sheets
The key to each step of this simple program is being completely honest. The Big Book places honesty as the most important part of our ability to achieve and sustain recovery. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. It reinforces this when it saysThere are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.
As a result, there can be no evasion of any fact for each step. In practical terms, any time we try and duck the reality of how we were when we were drinking is a lie to ourselves and a barrier to a better life. At the end of the day, we are the historians of our own personal experience. If these steps do not reflect that experience accurately or completely, no matter how hard it may be, we do ourselves a disservice. This means that each step should not be rushed. The finish line is getting to the 12th step as well as you can. There is no prize for speed, incompleteness, or evasion.
We have printable worksheets (pdf files) on the Step Worksheets tab on this website. These sheets are excellent learning tools because one of their purposes is to help us learn about ourselves and what needs to change to become and stay sober happily. They are provided to help people achieve what they intended when they first started coming to A.A. meetings.
Having a Sponsor While Working the Steps
The sponsor’s role is crucial here. When working on a step, pull up your sponsor’s phone number on your phone. They have been through the process and are veterans. Better than us, as new entrants to the quest for sobriety, they know the pitfalls that we can encounter at each step and the results of these steps.
Good friends call us out, and sometimes, we need our sponsor to do that. By recording everything in writing, we give our sponsor insight into what we are thinking and feeling. If we share these sheets with our sponsors, we make their roles easier and their advice better. That only helps us achieve better outcomes.
Conclusion
Here’s a final thought: Once you have completed a worksheet, keep it. Sometimes, going back over them can remind us how far we have come. They are also a record of our journey.
Note: Except where specified, all quotes are from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous