The Twelve Steps 

1. We admitted we were powerless over work—that our lives had become unmanageable. 

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God. 

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 

6. Became entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 

7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings. 

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. 

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out. 

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to workaholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

(Workaholics Anonymous Book of Recovery, 1st ed., 2005, p. 18; 2nd ed., 2015, pp. 25–26)

The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous have been adapted by Workaholics Anonymous with the permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (“A.A.W.S.”).  Permission to adapt the Twelve Steps does not mean that Alcoholics Anonymous is affiliated with this program. A.A. is a program of recovery from alcoholism only—use of A.A.’s Steps or an adapted version in connection with programs and activities which are patterned after A.A., but which address other problems, or use in any other non-A.A. context, does not imply otherwise.

The original A.A. Twelve Steps are available at https://www.aa.org/the-twelve-steps.