Recovery worksheets, made beautiful.
The 12-step worksheets clinicians actually use — Step 1, Step 4 fearless inventory, Step 8/9 amends, Step 10 daily inventory — plus the clinical workhorses: HALT, trigger maps, craving logs, sobriety trackers, urge surfing, and the recovery vision and values work. Free, print-ready, and built for clinicians supporting clients in any recovery path.
Urge Surfing Worksheet
Ride the wave of a craving or urge without acting on it
A mindfulness-based urge regulation worksheet. Notice the wave, locate it in the body, rate it every five minutes, and watch it crest and fall — usually within twenty.
Chain Analysis Worksheet
DBT behavioral chain analysis for one problem behavior
Linehan's behavioral chain analysis on one page: vulnerability factors, prompting event, link-by-link chain, short and long-term consequences, where the chain could have broken, and repair.
Decisional Balance Worksheet
Pros and cons of changing — and of staying the same
A 2×2 decisional balance: pros and cons of changing AND of staying the same. Surfaces the hidden cost of the status quo, then asks which value each option honors before naming a smallest next step.
Relapse Prevention Worksheet
Catch the slide weeks before the behavior returns
Maps emotional, mental, and behavioral warning signs, high-risk people and times, HALT patterns, a 3-action interrupt plan, support contacts in order, and a lapse-not-relapse plan.
Craving Log
A weekly tracker for urges — when they hit, what helped, what passed
A printable weekly craving and urge log. Captures time, trigger, intensity 0–10, what the client did, and how long it lasted, plus a HALT check, a deep-dive on the strongest urge of the week, and space for patterns and what helped most. Use alongside the Urge Surfing tool and the Relapse Prevention Plan.
Step 1 Worksheet — Powerlessness & Unmanageability
The honest first inventory: where willpower stopped working and where life started to bend
A printable Step 1 worksheet for AA, NA, and other 12-step programs. Two evidence sections (powerlessness over the substance or behavior; unmanageability of the rest of life), an honesty self-rating, and a willingness commitment to share with one safe person.
Step 4 Worksheet — Fearless Moral Inventory
The classic AA 4-column inventory: resentments, fears, and harms
The traditional AA Step 4 format — resentments columned by person, cause, area of life affected, and your own part — plus a fears inventory and a harms list to carry into Step 8. Print as many copies as you need.
Step 8 & 9 Amends Worksheet
Make the list, sort the type, and plan the conversation without re-injuring anyone
Builds the Step 8 list of people harmed, then sorts each amend by type — direct, living, delayed, or not safe to make — with planning columns and a sponsor-review check. Distinguishes the apology from the lasting living amend.
Step 10 Daily Inventory Worksheet
The two-minute end-of-day check-in that keeps small things small
A printable weekly Step 10 grid. Each day: where I was selfish/dishonest/resentful/afraid, what I owe, what I did well, and a mood/craving/sleep/meeting line. The maintenance step that prevents the slow drift into relapse thinking.
Sponsor Check-In Worksheet
A printable page to bring to a sponsor or sponsee call
Structures a sponsor call so the important things actually come up instead of dissolving into chat: days clean, craving and honesty ratings, current step work, a moment of pride, a moment that wasn't, stuck thinking, and concrete action items for next call.
HALT Check Worksheet — Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired
Run the 10-minute HALT intervention before deciding an urge is really about the substance
The early-recovery shortcut: when an urge spikes, check Hungry / Angry / Lonely / Tired first. Rate each, address the loudest with a concrete 10-minute action, then re-rate the urge. Usually one of the four was doing most of the work.
Sobriety Cost-Benefit Worksheet
The decisional balance for staying sober — honest about all four boxes
Motivational-interviewing 2x2 adapted for recovery: pros and cons of using AND pros and cons of staying sober. Honest about what the substance does for you and what sobriety costs — naming both is what keeps ambivalence from running the show.
Trigger Map Worksheet — People, Places, Things, Emotions, Times
Map every lane of triggers and the concrete plan for each one
Walks the client through five lanes of triggers (people, places, things, emotions, times) with a heat rating and a concrete plan column per lane — avoid, prepare, or who to call. Closes with the single hottest trigger of the season.
90-Day Sobriety Tracker — Printable
One row per day for 90 days — sober, urge, mood, support, and what helped
A printable 30-day grid (print three pages for a full 90-day cycle) covering the early-recovery window where the nervous system recalibrates. One row per day: sober checkbox, urge 0–10, mood 0–10, meeting/support, and what helped. Ends with an end-of-month reflection.
Recovery Vision & Values Worksheet
Build the positive target — who you are becoming and the daily proof
Recovery isn't only 'not using' — it's a life worth being sober for. Sketches the future-self in plain language across relationships, work, and health, names three driving values, defines one observable daily proof per value, and lays out the rhythm of the first 30 days.
Adult Children of Alcoholics — Laundry List
Rate the 14 ACA traits and the family role you carried
The original Tony A. 'Laundry List' of 14 traits adult children of alcoholic or dysfunctional families tend to carry — rated 0–10 with space for one concrete example each — plus a section on family roles (hero, scapegoat, lost child, mascot, caretaker) and where they still run today.
Al-Anon Detachment & the Three C's
I didn't cause it, I can't control it, I can't cure it
A worksheet for the family and friends of someone who is drinking or using. Walks through the Three C's, names enabling behaviors, distinguishes detachment-with-love from cutoff, and helps the client put energy back into their own life.
CRAFT — Community Reinforcement & Family Training
The evidence-based alternative to detachment until they hit bottom
Meyers & Smith's CRAFT model on one page: reinforce sober/connected behavior, remove accidental rewards for using, build a personal safety plan, rebuild your own life, and prepare the right-moment treatment invitation.
Enabling vs. Helping Inventory
An honest 90-day audit of what protects them from consequences
A 12-item behavior checklist (money, lies, rides, bail, clean-up, called-in-sick-for-them) plus the story behind each one, a side-by-side helping-vs-enabling distinction, and one enabling behavior to stop this week with the natural consequence allowed to land.
Codependency Recovery — Beattie's Six Patterns
Caretaking, control, low self-worth, weak boundaries, denial, dependency
Built on Melody Beattie's framework. Self-rate the six codependent patterns 0–10, name what each looks like now, list what you gave up to manage the relationship, and identify one recovery-of-self experiment that's not measurable by whether they noticed.
Boundaries with an Addicted Loved One
What I will do — and whether I'll actually keep it
A 6-row boundary worksheet specifically for the addiction context: situation, what you'll no longer do or accept, your consequence, and an honest willingness check. Includes warm scripts, a prediction of how they'll respond, and how you'll hold the line anyway.
Ambiguous Loss — Grief for the Living
Pauline Boss's framework for losing someone who is still here
Names the specific grief of a loved one lost to addiction (or dementia, severe mental illness) — physically present, psychologically gone. Holds the both/and of who they were and who they are now, the losses no funeral marks, and a ritual that honors the grief without abandoning hope.
What recovery worksheets do
Recovery work happens on paper as much as in rooms. The 12-step program asks for a written inventory (Step 4), a written list of amends (Step 8), and a daily inventory (Step 10) for a reason — externalizing what's been carried in the head is where the charge starts to drop. Clinical recovery work runs in parallel: HALT checks for the in-the-moment cravings, trigger maps for the upstream planning, decisional-balance grids for the ambivalence that runs underneath, and tracking pages that make the 90-day window of nervous-system recalibration visible.
Every worksheet here is a single printable side, designed to be filled by hand and reviewed with a sponsor, therapist, or peer in recovery. The 12-step formats follow the Big Book and standard sponsorship; the clinical sheets pull from motivational interviewing, ACT values work, and DBT crisis skills.
Where to start
For a newcomer in early recovery, the HALT check and Trigger Map are the highest-leverage first pages — both make the next craving less mysterious. For step work, start with Step 1 (powerlessness and unmanageability) and move sequentially. For ambivalent clients still in the contemplation stage, the Sobriety Cost-Benefit Worksheet is usually the right first move; it works with the resistance rather than against it and surfaces the hidden payoffs that any successful recovery plan will need to address.
For clinicians supporting clients in 12-step recovery, the Sponsor Check-In Worksheet is useful as an artifact for sessions — bringing the weekly sponsor-call page into therapy gives a window into the parallel recovery work without requiring formal coordination.
A note on scope
These worksheets are tools, not treatment. Severe substance use disorders require comprehensive care — medical detox where indicated, medication-assisted treatment, mental health treatment for co-occurring conditions, and a fuller relapse-prevention plan than any single page can hold. The worksheets here support that work; they don't replace it.
We also include both 12-step worksheets (for clients in AA, NA, and other fellowships) and program-agnostic clinical sheets (for clients in SMART Recovery, LifeRing, secular recovery, harm reduction, or standard clinical treatment). Different recovery paths fit different clients; the library is meant to support all of them.
Frequently asked questions
What are recovery worksheets used for?+
Recovery worksheets give clients in addiction recovery — and the clinicians supporting them — structured pages for the specific work of getting and staying sober: 12-step inventory and amends, daily check-ins, trigger and craving tracking, ambivalence and cost-benefit work, and the vision and values that turn 'not using' into a life worth being sober for. They sit alongside meetings, sponsorship, and therapy as the written artifact of the work.
Are 12-step worksheets clinical?+
The 12 steps themselves are a peer-support program, not a clinical treatment. But many clinicians integrate 12-step worksheets — particularly Steps 1, 4, 8, 9, and 10 — into therapy with clients who are working a program, because the format is one the client is already engaging with and the material it surfaces (resentments, fears, harms, daily inventory) is directly clinically relevant. Outcome research on AA and other 12-step programs is mixed but generally favorable when used as an adjunct to other treatment.
Which recovery worksheet should I start with?+
For a newcomer, the HALT check and trigger map are the highest-leverage first pages — they make in-the-moment cravings less mysterious. For step work, Step 1 is the starting point. For ambivalent clients, the sobriety cost-benefit worksheet (the motivational interviewing decisional balance adapted for recovery) is often the most useful first move because it works with the resistance rather than against it.
Can I use these worksheets if my client isn't in AA?+
Yes. The 12-step worksheets are specifically formatted for AA / NA / SLAA / GA programs, but the rest of the library — HALT, trigger maps, cravings work, sobriety tracking, vision and values — is program-agnostic and works in SMART Recovery, LifeRing, secular recovery, harm reduction, and standard clinical addiction treatment.
Are these recovery worksheets free?+
Yes. Every worksheet is free to print and free to send to clients via secure link from a TherapistAssist account. No watermarks, no per-sheet limits.