Our Approach

Our Shared Words

If you want what we have to offer and are willing to do what is necessary to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps. These are the steps that made our recovery possible:

1. We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction; that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that Higher Powers greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of our Higher Powers as we understood them.
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. We admitted to our Higher Powers, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. We were entirely ready to have our Higher Powers remove all these defects of character.
7. We humbly asked our Higher Powers to remove our shortcomings.
8. We made a list of all the persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our Higher Powers (as we understand them), praying only for the knowledge of their 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 others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Pagans in Recovery is a 12-step fellowship based on the example pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous. Our wish is to assure people seeking recovery that they can recover without having to accept anyone else's beliefs or to deny their own. We welcome those who worship or work with one or more Goddesses, Gods, Spirits, Energies, Powers, or Ancestors, and whose spirituality may include magical practices.

Pagans In Recovery does not engage in any conflict or controversy, and we are not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution. Our primary purpose is to help one another and ourselves to achieve and maintain recovery. We are not specific to any individual Twelve-Step program, nor do we wish to compete with or replace them. Rather, Pagans in Recovery is available to all who need it, to be used in conjunction with more targeted Twelve Step programs that address each person's specific issues.

Because of this diversity of our community, we define recovery in multiple ways. As such, the recovery language used in our meetings, for example “sobriety”, is left up to each individual.

1. Our common welfare should come first. Personal progress depends upon unity within Pagans In Recovery. Regardless of what we are recovering from, we recover together.

2. For our group purpose, there is a single authority, the collective loving Higher Power of the Group Conscience we form as a community allied in recovery. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.

3. The only requirement for membership is a desire to recover from addiction or other unmanageable patterns of behavior. We welcome people who follow alternative spiritual paths, including those who work with one or more Goddess, Gods, Spirits, Energies, Powers, or Ancestors, and whose spirituality may include magical and Nature-based practices and paths.

4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or P.I.R. as a whole.

5. Each group has but one primary purpose - to carry the message to those seeking recovery. We do this by practicing the 12 Steps of programs that address each person's individual issues. Our wish is to assure people seeking recovery that they can recover without having to accept anyone else's beliefs or to deny their own.

6. A P.I.R. group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the P.I.R. name to any related enterprise, lest problems of money, property, or prestige divert us from our primary purpose.

7. A P.I.R. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.

8. Pagans In Recovery should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers. This is to guide us in future development.

9. P.I.R., as such, ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.

10. Pagans In Recovery has no opinions on outside issues; hence the P.I.R. name ought never be drawn into public controversy.

11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, film, and other public media. We need guard with special care the anonymity of all P.I.R. members.

12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.