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December 1999

A Way of Life

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.

In Western Massachusetts we have the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions on display and that's what I saw at my first meeting. I was disgusted. To me it was just the Ten Commandments rearranged and sugar-coated. Then there was a blue banner that said "But For The Grace of God." My religious upbringing had produced shame and guilt in me, and I thought AA was going to require me to return to those dark days of shame and guilt. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

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