If a person needs recovery, the whole basis of life has failed. That means a lot needs changing, through the Steps. Once the first three Steps have been taken, the Steps split into two components:
- Steps Four through Nine to solve the historical and structural problems
- Steps Ten through Twelve to provide a daily structure
The daily programme is important: healthy people, to stay healthy, need a programme (although people who've never been in recovery and are healthy won't know they have one. It's just how they're programmed.) How much more is this going to be the case for people who need recovery?
If daily life 'stinks', the problem is going to lie chiefly in how I'm living daily life, and the solution is to diagnose and fix, day by day, the thousand little things I'm doing wrong to leave myself in a generalised state of distress. There is no big lever to pull. There are only a thousand little changes. As these start to change, my generalised experience of life starts to change, too.
If there's a terrible smell in the kitchen, there probably isn't a body buried under the floorboards. Most people start pulling up the floorboards as the first measure to solve the smell. How about doing the dishes, emptying the bin, cleaning the bin, pulling out and cleaning behind the cooker, checking for mouse droppings, clearing out the fridge, and opening the window, first?
Even if there is a body buried under the floorboards, if the other, easier-to-handle matters are not dealt with, the kitchen will still stink, so you might as well open the window etc. first.