Step One states our willingness to recognize we have a problem and that it's hurting our life. I look at that in my story and how I am still using it to find and exchange non-supporting habits for healthy supporting ones.

Step 1 of AA reads "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol (read as all mind-altering substances) - that our lives had become unmanageable. As I grew into a teenager I had a lot of hurt that I needed to protect myself from.

AA teaches us that when we are able to gain a period of relief from our addictions that this doesn't reset our behavior. If we go back to using our mind-altering substance we will enter into the period of our addiction where we had left off and then co...

In AA I've learned to listen to others stories cause I'll be able to see that my situation really isn't all that bad. Or I can at least get out of my head and out of my problems if I take the time to care about someone else with problems. -

In my AA story today I continue to share my thoughts on my time in the children's shelter and a foster home.

Well after being away from the microphone and allowing one little event to become another and another I am back. I am grateful to a listener Matthew who e-mailed me. It acted as a reminder of why I began this project and why it's important to me...

Today I talk about how the influences worked to lead me down a bad path. I also show how I understand the importance of influences and how I use them now to follow a healthy path.

While introducing some more of my AA story I share the reasons why I am sharing it. I learned that in the 12 step program the only way I can help someone else is by sharing what it was like, what happened and what it's like now.

Today I continue my AA story of childhood talking about how the abuses began to shut me down emotionally and close me off so I could shelter myself from being hurt. I was still very young so it wasn't though drugs and alcohol yet that I masked my feeli...

Alcoholism wasn't what I planned on but I can see I was surrounded by it and I was led to or taught an attitude that drinking was part of life and soon became my only way of coping.