The relative success of the E!holics program seems to be due to the fact that an Emergency! fan who no longer watches Emergency! has an exceptional faculty for "reaching" and helping an uncontrolled Emergency! fan. In simplest form, the E!holics Anonymous program operates when a recovered Emergency! fan passes along the story of his or her own problem watching, describes the serenity he or she has found in E!A., and invites the newcomer to join the informal user group.

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

1. Admitted we were powerless over Emergency! - that our budgets had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a day without Emergency! could restore a balanced lifestyle spent with family and friends.

3. Made a decision to turn our Emergency! toys over to the care of our children.

4. Burn all tapes we have of Emergency! -- If you don't have the heart to burn them, just mail them to me and I'll find good homes for them. Really.

5. Made a searching and fearless admittance of our addiction.

6. Admitted to the newsgroup, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

7. Sold our red Dodge truck and bought something else -- maybe a nice tan Volvo.

8. Got new desktop wallpaper -- perhaps something more harmless like fluffy kittens.

9. Made a list of all Ebay bidders we had outbid at the very last second for a coveted E! item, and became willing to make amends to them all.

10. Canceled our cable subscription.

11. Removed Columbia House’s number from our speed dial.

12. Having had a rational enlightenment as the result of these steps, we tried to email this message to Emergency! fans and to practice these principles on all our purchases.

New members are not asked to accept or follow these Twelve Steps in their entirety if they do not have the capacity to do so.

They will usually be asked to keep an open mind, to attend chat rooms in which recovered Emergency! fans describe their personal experiences in achieving platform agnosticism, and to read E!holics web pages describing and interpreting the E!holics Anonymous program.

E!holics Anonymous members will usually emphasize to new members that only problem Emergency! fans themselves, individually, can determine whether or not they are in fact E!holics.

At the same time, it will be pointed out that all available medical testimony indicates that E!holism 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 advocacy newsgroups and websites in any form.