Workaholics Anonymous is a fellowship of individuals who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problems and help others to recover from workaholism.
The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop working compulsively. There are no dues or fees for WA membership; we are self-supporting through our own contributions. WA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy; neither endorses not opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stop working compulsively and to carry the message of recovery to workaholics who still suffer.
- Do you get more excited about your work than about family or anything else?
- Are there times when you can charge through your work and other times when you can’t?
- Do you take work with you to bed? on weekends? on vacation?
- Is work the activity you like to do best and talk about most?
- Do you work more than 40 hours a week?
- Do you turn your hobbies into money-making ventures?
- Do you take complete responsibility for the outcome of your work efforts?
- Have your family or friends given up expecting you on time?
- Do you take on extra work because you are concerned that it won’t otherwise get done?
- Do you underestimate how long a project will take and then rush to complete it?
- Do you believe that it is okay to work long hours if you love what you are doing?
- Do you get impatient with people who have other priorities besides work?
- Are you afraid that if you don’t work hard you will lose your job or be a failure?
- Is the future a constant worry for you even when things are going very well?
- Do you do things energetically and competitively including play?
- Do you get irritated when people ask you to stop doing your work in order to do something else?
- Have your long hours hurt your family or other relationships?
- Do you think about your work while driving, falling asleep or when others are talking?
- Do you work or read during meals?
- Do you believe that more money will solve the other problems in your life?
1. We admitted we were powerless over work — 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 God.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Became entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked God 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 God, praying only for knowledge of God’s 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 workaholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
The W.A. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions were adapted from the Twelve Steps and The Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. Reprinted by permission of the Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. Steps and Traditions copyright © 1939 by A.A. World Services.