12 Steps To Recovery

The Online Test Takers Anonymous (O.T.T.A.) 12 Step Program

The relative success of the O.T.T.A. program seems to be due to the fact that an online Tester who no longer takes tests has an exceptional faculty for “reaching out” and helping a fellow uncontrolled Tester.

In simplest form, the O.T.T.A. program operates when a recovered Online Tester passes along the story of his or her own problem Online Testing, describes the sanity he or she has found in O.T.T.A., and invites the newcomer to join the informal Fellowship.

The heart of the suggested program of personal recovery is contained in Twelve Steps describing the experience of the earliest members of the Fellowship:

1. We admitted we were 100% powerless over Online Tests – that our lives had become 93% unmanageable and 89% similar to the careers of Milli Vanilli.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than Online Tests could restore to us a 77% healthier offline life and over 90% of our sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn 80% of our will and 97% of our lives over to the Higher Power of Online Blogging.
4. Created our own personal Blog for the purpose of admitting to ourselves and to our Readership the exact nature of our Online Test Taking addiction.
5. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves based on past Online Test results and posted it online for the world to read and ridicule.
6. Were entirely ready to have our Readership shame and ridicule us in our Comments until we became absolved of all the defects of character our Online Tests had exposed.
7. Humbly asked another Blogger for help recovering from our addiction to Online Tests, and also in helping with our Blogs redesign to remove our obvious HTML and artistic shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all Bloggers we had harmed with our Online Test Taking addiction, and became willing to make amends to them all by showing them linky-love on our Main Blog Page.
9. Left comments on the Blogs of said people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them emotionally or adversely affect our own visitor count.
10. Continued to write and post daily about our lives, whenever possible multiple times a day, and should we succumb to taking an Online Test we would promptly admit it and post the results.
11. Sought through prayer, horribly inappropriate linkage and stupid one-line posts to improve our pathetic visitor count, praying only for acknowledgement by an A-Lister and just a small percentage of their daily visitors.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other Online Test addicts and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Newcomers are not asked to accept or follow these Twelve Steps in their entirety if they feel unwilling or unable to do so. But they must Blog them.

They will usually be asked to keep an open mind, to attend meetings at which recovered Online Testers describe their personal experiences in achieving 85% sobriety, and to read O.T.T.A. literature describing and interpreting the O.T.T.A. program.

They are also asked to Blog.

O.T.T.A. members will usually emphasize to newcomers that only problem Testers themselves, individually, can determine whether or not they are in fact addicts.

At the same time, it will be pointed out that all available medical testimony indicates that Online Test addiction is a progressive illness, that it cannot be cured in the ordinary sense of the term, but that it can be arrested through total abstinence from Online Tests in any form.

After completing our 12 Step program, some of our members felt the need to seek help for what they called “Blog Addiction” (B.A.). Please be aware that we, being the experts in the field of REAL addictions, do not feel excessive Blogging is a real addiction.

We repeat, there is no such illness as Obsessive/Compulsive Blogging. Do not be fooled into believing this hokey, snake-oil, made-up medical balderdash created by these lunatics who call themselves ‘Doctors’. Just because they graduated from medical school doesn’t mean they’re right. Based on several scientifically accurate Online Tests, we believe there are no adverse short- or long-term effects associated with Blogging and we feel we can stop doing it any time we wanted.

We just don’t want to, that’s all.