For reference, these are the established "12 steps" of overcoming alcoholism:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — 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 Him.
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. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him 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 Him, praying only for knowledge of His 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 alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
This, under some atheist/agnostic worldviews, is roughly equivalent to "you just need to control yourself".
For the record, the 12 steps were established by a group of long-term, hard-core alcoholics who were literally dying from their decades of excessive consumption and still could not stop. "Giving it up to God" helped that specific group.
And now we call every guy who goes on a bender an alcoholic and send them to AA though most people drink less as they get older without any intervention of any kind.
I have friends who work in the recovery field: The “12 steps” are from one program, but they’re not any sort of established treatment protocol.
That program works for some people, doesn’t work for others. It’s not any sort of standard that gets handed out universally by treatment programs, though.
First time I took medication for ADHD. It was absolutely shocking to experience focus on something I didn’t find highly interesting. I normally associate boring to being worse than almost all physical pain.
Maybe just below when I had a kidney stone.
Having that “pain” taken away was amazing. I can focus better without meds now that I know what it’s like. No where near as with meds. But still a big improvement.
These "12 steps" are established by definition of throwing out anyone that they don't work for. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of a process, all told.
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — 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 Him.
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. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him 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 Him, praying only for knowledge of His 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 alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
This, under some atheist/agnostic worldviews, is roughly equivalent to "you just need to control yourself".