oderusurungus1: I know that you quoted it, but did you see the part about power outside of yourself, rather than power OVER yourself? I was in a garden years ago musing about how randomly the weeds grow. I had cleared the bed, laid out a line, planted all this stuff in a perfect row, come back a few days later and its all weedy. To my eyes, the randomness of nature was screwing up what I had done so perfectly.
But I had a lightbulb moment when I realized there was nothing random about where the weeds grew...it's just that I had never considered it. But there's a seed, and heat, and moisture, and potential energy, and some seeds grow and some seeds don't, and I was fascinated looking at this little bed of plants growing every which way, but not randomly. Just because I can't control something, or predict its outcome, doesn't mean that it's random. The grass is growing everywhere, whether I'm around for it or not.
So I look at nature now and say "wow, I don't control ANY of that!" Nature is a power outside of myself, I remind myself that it's there, and that there's nothing I can do about it, but that's ok because I don't want to. I hear a lot of people saying that the steps don't work for them because they don't fit the spiritual criteria. Being a psychological exercise and not a spiritual one (which is something not enough people talk about) you can take out the offending words and replace them with something that works.
I see nature not as a power in and of itself, but rather an emergent consequence of phyical laws, so that approach doesn't work for me. Also, step 2 explicitly says the power must be greater, and later steps reference it using a word that I am not comfortable with in that context.
Also, I think the power to recover from addiction really needs to come from within, though perhaps with the help of supportive friends and family (assuming a non-abusive family, of course; abusive family (possibly including parents and/or spouse) is another issue that needs to be dealt with, perhaps by moving away and going no contact).
Actually, that parenthetical comment made me realize one other issue; if one does accept there being a higher power, there's the idea that said power could, in itself, be an abuser and/or enabler, which is clearly *not* what you want when you are trying to recover. Would you want a family member trying to serve you alcohol when you are trying to recover from alcohol addiction?
tinyE: Thank god I'm an atheist.
Wait, why are you thanking something that doesn't exist?
(I am also an atheist.)