The twelve steps:

Admit you have a [problem].
Admit you need help from a [higher power]. This need not be the [Judeo-Christian] [God].
Make a decision to [turn your life around] through help from the above higher power.
Make a [detailed] personal [moral] [inventory]. As in [write it down], and actually [analyze yourself], item by item.
Admit to yourself and to another human being the exact nature of your wrong.
Become entirely ready to have your higher power remove your shortcomings.
[Humbly] ask your higher power to remove said shortcomings.
Make a list of every person you have [harmed], and become willing to [make amends] to them.
Make direct amends to the people on the aforementioned list.
Continue to take a detailed personal inventory to root out your shortcomings.
Seek through [prayer] and/or [meditation] to [improve your relationship] with your higher power as you understand it, asking only for knowledge of its [will] and the power to [realize] it.
Carry the message to other [sufferers] of your [affliction], and live out the spirit of the 12 steps.

People criticize 12-step programs as being a kind of [psychological] [cult], and they do make some valid points, but the program is a [proven method] for many people to get off and stay off alcohol and drugs, and generally change their lives for the better.

I see it as a kind of [prosthesis] for the [soul]: Through the abuse of [drugs], the [addict] has burned out their soul and lost control over their own life, becoming a machine for the consumption of more drugs. Like getting a [synthetic heart], attending a 12-step program replaces the [lost soul] with an inferior model that doesn't do everything the original did and requires [constant maintenance] to keep in working order.

12-step program (idea)