The Twelve Steps are the heart of the AA Program for they lay out for the new people and remind the rest of us that we must continue to work the Steps to maintain sobriety.

I’ve heard it said that Bill W dictated the Steps during the writing of the first edition of the Big Book when a comment was made that, “We need a summary, a short, clear page for what the Program is all about.”  The result, pages 71 and 72 of the Big Book, was a list of the steps and a program of recovery. These words were published in 1939 on these 2 pages and have dominated Alcoholics Anonymous all these years

The simplicity of the steps is wonderful. Each now serves as topics for discussion at meetings, the source for papers, publications, and more. Phrases of each Step stick in our minds.   

But you know all this. My purpose here is to pull specific phrases from the Steps which I see as marvelous, well written, something “always there” to help me maintain sobriety.  Often these phrases seem to pop up when I encounter a specific difficulty. I seem to switch my thought to that phrase which provides a starting point to resolve that difficulty. Maybe this doesn’t give me “the answer” but it does give me a process for working my way through it.  

I see the Steps as parallel to the essence of Christ’s teachings of the Beatitudes.

As I work the Program, the following seem to be always helpful to me:

Step 3. “Turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.” These words are the essence of the Program. It can be said that as practicing alcoholics, for years alcohol and its ready availability were the essence of our daily lives.  Those moments we “surrendered” were the key to our sobriety, “we gave up” and “turned our lives to the care of God as we understand Him.”

Steps 4 – 9. These are the heart of “how it works” —how we are to wash our minds and provide solace to others for the things we have laid on them by our drunkenness. We do it by making a list, yes, a written list, of the specific harms we have inflicted on others. Call it a “moral inventory.” We review it with our sponsor and find ways to make an amend for the harm we caused. We speak of making amends to them all “except when to do so would injure” a person. The beauty of it is that, usually in practice, we encountered positive responses.

Step 10 reminds us that we are to “continue to take a personal inventory” to identify new harms to others we have inflicted. Christ knew as humans we would sin again, but He forgives us if we admit our wrongdoing. So also, the Program. Some think that the time we took that first Step, that first confession if you will, that we are done with that aspect of the Program. But Bill and the others knew not only that demon rum was always pulling at us, but sometimes “we went back out.” If we aren’t aware of all this, if we don’t attend the meetings, we forget where we came from and we risk our return to those so-called “good old days.” Yes, all aspects of the Program are in a sense continuous. And as Step 11 tells us, reminds us, we are to “continue to improve our conscience contact with God.”

Step 12 calls us to carry these messages to alcoholics, but “What’s the message?” Is it simply that “help is available” to those suffering from their alcoholism? It is not an advertising plan, nor a secret society of former drunks who gather to talk about their lives as alcoholics. Yes. It’s simply that “help is available.”

The Twelve Steps. They call us to surrender our lives to our Higher Power, to make amends to those we have harmed, to continue following these Steps, and to carry this message to those confronted with their own alcoholism.

Jim A, St. X Noon, Cincinnati