Recovery Uncovered: Practical Application of 12-Step Recovery

By Al Demers

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Addiction and the 12 steps as a program are designed to help be a roadmap for a better tomorrow. We all struggle with hurts and pain because of broken trust which lead to broken relationships. It doesn’t matter if our hurts come from the workplace, community organizations, neighborhoods, friends, family, or former relationships; wounds leave scars.

In dealing with our hurts and pain, we develop behavior patterns designed to protect ourselves from any further hurt. Often times, these behaviors have devastating consequences for ourselves, our loved ones, and others.

Recovery Uncovered will guide you through the process of healing, restoration, and character development. The discovery and application portion will help you become the amazing human being you were destined to be.

Recovery Uncovered is a big picture approach to growth and healing which is designed to uncover this process so there is comprehensive practical application. Many people have benefitted from recovery programs worldwide. Recovery Uncovered is another tool to help people understand, grow, and become productive human beings who provide healing, help, and hope to those who are hurting. Let’s work to make restoring, repairing, and rebuilding relationships a priority. This will help our world be a better place, one day at a time, one relationship at a time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781648011702

Book preview

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Recovery Uncovered

Practical Application of 12-Step Recovery

Al Demers

Copyright © 2020 Al Demers

All rights reserved

First Edition

12 Steps taken from Celebrate Recovery Leader’s Guide, Newly Updated Edition Copyright ©1998, 2005, 2012 by John Baker. Used by permission of Zondervan.

www.zondervan.com

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2020

ISBN 978-1-64801-169-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64801-170-2 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Step 7

Step 8

Step 9

Step 10

Step 11

Step 12

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all those who struggle with addiction. My joy is to see you embrace and apply the steps and principles set forth in this book. When applied, they become the guardrails to assist on the road to your successful recovery journey.

You have what it takes, and the world needs your recovery story to inspire them to follow in the footsteps of those who go before them.

You make a difference! Keep coming back!

Acknowledgments

Al Demers has put together a fantastic resource to compliment any 12 step program. Al has put into words what we all say in a meeting but have yet to read it in a book. He has taken his own experience, strength and hope and put it into words that can help those in recovery navigate their own program. As a mental health and substance use disorder therapist and someone with over 10 years sobriety, I know first hand how intimidating and daunting the road to recovery can be. Having Al’s expertise available to me in written form to forward to my clients and sponsees will prove to be an extremely valuable tool in battling the disease of addiction.

—Ted Sammons,

MS, CAADC, Mental Health Clinician

This refreshing application of the trusted 12 step program to healing addiction, finding restoration and rebuilding character is going to be an inspiration to all who read it. The 12 steps have been broken down and explained in a way that the reader will find more personal and applicable to them. 12 steps for the real person! I will be proud and excited to refer all my clients to Recovery Uncovered not just those struggling with addiction. Thank you for this journey to recovery.

—Tisha Smith,

MA LPCMH

For those struggling with addiction, I recommend this book because of Al’s down-to-earth approach to the steps. The book reads not as a rote checklist of things you must do to achieve sobriety, but of practical applicable spiritual principals given in digestible chunks by someone who speaks from his own experience. In particular, Al’s guidance helped me through my struggle with Step Three. With Al’s teaching and reassurance that I needed not be party to the judgment and condemnation that can be associated with God and religion, I was able to come back to faith. Once that was achieved, I was able to begin earnestly letting go of my resentments and fears, and ask God to remove my defects—something that seemed impossible before.

—Greg D.

Educator, and Grateful Student of Al’s in Recovery

The principals outlined within Recovery Uncovered helped me to stop dinking when nothing else I had tried worked. For years I struggled to curb my drinking problems on my own and time and time again I was unsuccessful. Feeling hopeless and out of options, I felt like I was doomed to a life enslaved by alcoholism. It wasn’t until I discovered the life saving techniques and positive ways of thinking contained within this book that I found true salvation. It saved my life!

—Bill S.

Financier

As Al writes in his introduction, ‘we all need recovery!’ In wise, simple tones Al shares a time-tested program for life change that has miraculously changed both of our lives.

—John Eklund,

MSW, LCSW, Recovery Pastor Temple Church NC

Recovery Uncovered not only brings addiction treatment to the 21st-century it clearly and thoroughly breaks down the 12 steps into usable, understandable, implementable strategies in modern terms. Mr. Demers’ book is an all in one resource for clinicians and patients alike. As a psychotherapist specializing in working addiction, this book will be incorporated into my daily routine with enthusiasm.

—Michael Beckham,

LPC-MH

What I love about this book is that it breaks down the steps in a way that is manageable for both someone new to recovery or someone seeking to go deeper in their recovery journey by revisiting steps. This book makes the steps accessible and applicable. It is a vital resource for my work in the recovery community.

—Frank R. Bellanger III,

Certified Recovery Coach Trainer

This book is a practical guide for anyone who desperately wants to break free of destructive hurts, habits and hang-ups in their lives—such as porn/sexual addiction, anger, expectations, etc. By applying the steps that are outlined in this book in my own life, I have come to experience greater love and joy and peace in my life like never before. I am so grateful for Al introducing me to the 12 steps of recovery. It has forever changed my life!

—Mark G. Hitchcock,

AIA

One of the most profound things we can do for individuals struggling with the disease of addiction is to offer them compassion, connection, and kinship through the recovery process. Recovery Uncovered provides exactly that in an easy-to-read guided format. It’s just the thing