Usefully Whole

A.A.'s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole. ~ Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Alcoholics Anonymous, page 15

A group. Objects forming a design,
things close together, considered jointly.
Individual pieces making a whole, united.
Principles. Fundamental truths,
the foundation, natural law —
a chain of reasoning.
Practice. What gets you
to Carnegie Hall. Or to recovery.
A way of life. Not some sideline,
some hobby, some diversion.
The root of our being, of life.
Expelling obsession to drink,
to eat, to binge or purge,
to gorge when nobody's looking
and wishing we weren't either.
Expelling all that, tossing out,
ejecting, banishing, not just hiding.
Turning the sufferer —
who maybe just learned of the pain —
but enabling that person —
allowing, equipping, empowering
a transformation from victim,
from scum, from useless
to happily, usefully whole!

Bill W., author of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions