Step Twelve

The joy of living is the theme of AA's Twelfth Step, and action is its key word. Here one turns outward toward fellow alcoholics who are still suffering. Here they experience the kind of giving that asks for nothing in return. Here they begin to practice all Twelve Steps of the program in their daily lives so that they and those around them may find emotional sobriety. When the Twelfth Step is seen in its full meaning, it's really talking about the kind of love that has no price tag on it.

The Twelfth Step also says that as a result of practicing all the Steps, each person has found something called a spiritual awakening. To new AA members, this often seems like a very questionable and unlikely condition. "What do you mean when you talk about a 'spiritual awakening'?" they ask.

Maybe there are as many definitions of spiritual awakening as there are people who've had them. But certainly each genuine one has something in common with all the others. And these shared elements aren't too hard to understand. When a person has a spiritual awakening, the most important meaning is that they've now become able to do, feel, and believe things they couldn't do before on their own strength and resources alone. They've been given a gift that amounts to a new state of consciousness and being. They've been set on a path that tells them they're really going somewhere, that life isn't a dead end or something to be endured or conquered. In a very real sense they've been transformed, because they've connected with a source of strength that, in one way or another, they had previously denied themselves. They find themselves possessing a degree of honesty, tolerance, unselfishness, peace of mind, and love that they had thought themselves quite incapable of. What they've received is a free gift, and yet usually, at least in some small part, they've made themselves ready to receive it.

The AA approach for getting ready to receive this gift lies in practicing the Twelve Steps in the program. So let's consider briefly what has been attempted up to this point:

Step One showed an amazing paradox: Many found that they were totally unable to get rid of their obsession with alcohol until they first admitted that they were powerless over it. In Step Two they saw that since they couldn't restore themselves to sanity, some Higher Power must necessarily do so if they were to survive. Consequently, in Step Three they turned their will and their lives over to the care of God as they understood God. For the time being, those who were atheist or agnostic discovered that their own group, or AA as a whole, would work as a higher power. Beginning with Step Four, we started to search out the things in ourselves that had brought us to physical, moral, and spiritual bankruptcy. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory. Looking at Step Five, we decided that an inventory, taken alone, wouldn't be enough. We knew we'd have to quit the deadly business of living alone with our conflicts, and in honesty confide these to God and another human being. At Step Six, many of us resisted—for the practical reason that we didn't want to have all our character defects removed, because we still loved some of them too much. Yet we knew we had to make peace with the fundamental principle of Step Six. So we decided that while we still had some character flaws we couldn't yet give up, we should nevertheless quit our stubborn, rebellious clinging to them. We said to ourselves, "This I cannot do today, perhaps, but I can stop shouting 'No, never!'" Then, in Step Seven, we humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings as God could or would under the conditions of the day we asked. In Step Eight, we continued our housecleaning, for we saw that we were not only in conflict with ourselves, but also with people and situations in the world where we lived. We had to begin to make our peace, and so we listed the people we'd harmed and became willing to set things right. We followed this up in Step Nine by making direct amends to those concerned, except when it would injure them or other people. By this time, at Step Ten, we'd begun to get a foundation for daily living, and we keenly realized that we'd need to continue taking personal inventory, and that when we were wrong we should admit it promptly. In Step Eleven we saw that if a Higher Power had restored us to sanity and had enabled us to live with some peace of mind in a deeply troubled world, then such a Higher Power was worth knowing better, through as direct contact as possible. The persistent use of meditation and prayer, we found, did open the channel so that where there had been a trickle, there now was a river that led to sure power and safe guidance from God as we became increasingly better able to understand God.

So, practicing these Steps, many had a spiritual awakening about which finally there was no question. Looking at those who were only beginning and still doubted themselves, others were able to see the change taking place. From great numbers of such experiences, it could be predicted that the doubter who still claimed they hadn't gotten the "spiritual angle," and who still considered their beloved AA group the higher power, would presently love God and call God by name.

Now, what about the rest of the Twelfth Step? The wonderful energy it releases and the eager action by which it carries the message to the next suffering alcoholic and which finally translates the Twelve Steps into action in all affairs is the payoff, the magnificent reality, of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Even the newest of newcomers finds undreamed rewards as they try to help their fellow alcoholic, the one who is even more confused than they are. This is indeed the kind of giving that actually demands nothing. They don't expect their fellow sufferer to pay them, or even to love them. And then they discover that by the divine paradox of this kind of giving they've found their own reward, whether their fellow alcoholic has yet received anything or not. Their own character may still be seriously flawed, but they somehow know that God has enabled them to make a mighty beginning, and they sense that they stand at the edge of new mysteries, joys, and experiences they had never even dreamed of.

Practically every AA member declares that no satisfaction has been deeper and no joy greater than in a Twelfth Step job well done. To watch the eyes of men and women open with wonder as they move from darkness into light, to see their lives quickly fill with new purpose and meaning, to see whole families reunited, to see the alcoholic outcast welcomed back into their community as a full citizen, and above all to watch these people awaken to the presence of a loving God in their lives—these things are the substance of what one receives as they carry AA's message to the next alcoholic.

Nor is this the only kind of Twelfth Step work. Many sit in AA meetings and listen, not only to receive something themselves, but to give the reassurance and support that their presence can bring. If their turn comes to speak at a meeting, they again try to carry AA's message. Whether the audience is one or many, it's still Twelfth Step work. There are many opportunities even for those who feel unable to speak at meetings or who are situated so that they can't do much face-to-face Twelfth Step work. They can be the ones who take on the unspectacular but important tasks that make good Twelfth Step work possible, perhaps arranging for the coffee and snacks after meetings, where so many skeptical, suspicious newcomers have found confidence and comfort in the laughter and conversation. This is Twelfth Step work in the very best sense of the word. "Freely you have received; freely give..." is the core of this part of Step Twelve.

Many may often go through Twelfth Step experiences where they'll seem to be temporarily off track. These will appear as big setbacks at the time, but will be seen later as stepping-stones to better things. For example, one may set their heart on getting a particular person sober, and after doing all they can for months, they see them relapse. Perhaps this will happen in a series of cases, and they may be deeply discouraged about their ability to carry AA's message. Or they may encounter the reverse situation, in which they're highly excited because they seem to have been successful. Here the temptation is to become rather possessive of these newcomers. Perhaps they try to give them advice about their affairs that they're not really qualified to give or shouldn't give at all. Then they're hurt and confused when the advice is rejected, or when it's accepted and brings still greater confusion. By doing a great deal of enthusiastic Twelfth Step work someone sometimes carries the message to so many alcoholics that they place them in a position of trust. They make them, let's say, the group's chairperson. Here again they're presented with the temptation to over-manage things, and sometimes this results in rebuffs and other consequences that are hard to take.

But in the long run one clearly realizes that these are only the pains of growing up, and nothing but good can come from them if they turn more and more to the entire Twelve Steps for the answers.

Now comes the biggest question yet. What about practicing these principles in all affairs? Can one love the whole pattern of living as eagerly as they do the small segment of it they discover when they try to help other alcoholics achieve sobriety? Can they bring the same spirit of love and tolerance into their sometimes chaotic family lives that they bring to their AA group? Can they have the same kind of confidence and faith in these people who have been affected and sometimes damaged by their own illness that they have in their sponsors? Can they actually carry the AA spirit into their daily work? Can they meet their newly recognized responsibilities to the world at large? And can they bring new purpose and devotion to the religion of their choice? Can they find a new joy of living in trying to do something about all these things?

Furthermore, how shall we come to terms with apparent failure or success? Can we now accept and adjust to either without despair or pride? Can we accept poverty, sickness, loneliness, and loss with courage and serenity? Can we steadfastly content ourselves with the humbler, yet sometimes more lasting, satisfactions when the brighter, more glittering achievements are denied us?

The AA answer to these questions about living is "Yes, all of these things are possible." This is known because many see monotony, pain, and even calamity turned to good use by those who keep on trying to practice AA's Twelve Steps. And if these are facts of life for the many alcoholics who have recovered in AA, they can become the facts of life for many more.

Of course all AA members, even the best, fall far short of such achievements as a consistent thing. Without necessarily taking that first drink, they often get quite far off track. Their troubles sometimes begin with indifference. They're sober and happy in their AA work. Things go well at home and at work. They naturally congratulate themselves on what later proves to be a far too easy and superficial point of view. They temporarily stop growing because they feel satisfied that they don't need all of AA's Twelve Steps. They're doing fine on a few of them. Maybe they're doing fine on only two of them, the First Step and that part of the Twelfth where they "carry the message." In AA slang, that blissful state is known as "two-stepping." And it can go on for years.

The best-intentioned people can fall for the "two-step" illusion. Sooner or later the honeymoon phase wears off and things go disappointingly dull. They begin to think that AA doesn't pay off after all. They become puzzled and discouraged.

Then perhaps life, as it has a way of doing, suddenly hands them a great big problem that they can't begin to handle, let alone solve. They fail to get a hoped-for promotion. They lose that good job. Maybe there are serious domestic or romantic difficulties, or perhaps that child they thought God was looking after becomes a military casualty.

What then? Do alcoholics in AA have, or can they get, the resources to meet these calamities that come to so many? These were problems of life they could never face up to. Can they now, with the help of God as they understand Him, handle them as well and as bravely as their non-alcoholic friends often do? Can they transform these calamities into assets, sources of growth and comfort to themselves and those around them? Well, they surely have a chance if they switch from "two-stepping" to "twelve-stepping," if they're willing to receive that grace of God which can sustain and strengthen them in any catastrophe.

The basic troubles are the same as everyone else's, but when an honest effort is made "to practice these principles in all affairs," well-grounded AA members seem to have the ability, by God's grace, to take these troubles in stride and turn them into demonstrations of faith. Many have seen AA members suffer lingering and terminal illness with little complaint, and often in good cheer. Some have seen families broken apart by misunderstanding, tensions, or actual infidelity, who are reunited by the AA way of life.

Though the earning power of most AA members is relatively high, there are some members who never seem to get on their feet financially, and still others who encounter heavy financial reverses. Ordinarily these situations are seen to be met with strength and faith.

Like most people, many have found that they can take their big problems as they come. But also like others, they often discover a greater challenge in the lesser and more continuous problems of life. The answer is still more spiritual development. Only by this means can they improve their chances for really happy and useful living. And as they grow spiritually, they find that their old attitudes toward their instincts need to undergo dramatic revisions. Their desires for emotional security and wealth, for personal prestige and power, for romance, and for family satisfactions—all these have to be tempered and redirected. Experience has shown that the satisfaction of instincts cannot be the sole end and aim of life. If instincts are placed first, the cart is before the horse; one will be pulled backward into disillusionment. But when they're willing to place spiritual growth first—then and only then do they have a real chance.

After we come into AA, if we go on growing, our attitudes and actions toward security—emotional security and financial security—begin to change profoundly. Our demand for emotional security, for our own way, had constantly thrown us into unworkable relations with other people. Though we were sometimes quite unconscious of this, the result always had been the same. Either we had tried to play God and dominate those around us, or we had insisted on being overly dependent on them. Where people had temporarily let us run their lives as though they were still children, we had felt very happy and secure ourselves. But when they finally resisted or ran away, we were bitterly hurt and disappointed. We blamed them, being quite unable to see that our unreasonable demands had been the cause.

When we had taken the opposite approach and had insisted, like infants ourselves, that people protect and take care of us or that the world owed us a living, then the result had been equally unfortunate. This often caused the people we had loved most to push us aside or perhaps abandon us entirely. Our disillusionment had been hard to bear. We couldn't imagine people acting that way toward us. We had failed to see that though adult in years we were still behaving childishly, trying to turn everybody—friends, spouses, even the world itself—into protective parents. We had refused to learn the very hard lesson that over-dependence on people is unsuccessful because all people are fallible, and even the best of them will sometimes let us down, especially when our demands for attention become unreasonable.

As we made spiritual progress, we saw through these fallacies. It became clear that if we ever were to feel emotionally secure among grown-up people, we would have to put our lives on a give-and-take basis; we would have to develop the sense of being in partnership or brotherhood with all those around us. We saw that we would need to give constantly of ourselves without demands for repayment. When we persistently did this we gradually found that people were attracted to us as never before. And even if they failed us, we could be understanding and not too seriously affected.

When we developed still more, we discovered the best possible source of emotional stability to be God. We found that dependence on God's perfect justice, forgiveness, and love was healthy, and that it would work where nothing else would. If we really depended on God, we couldn't very well play God to our fellows nor would we feel the urge wholly to rely on human protection and care. These were the new attitudes that finally brought many of us an inner strength and peace that could not be deeply shaken by the shortcomings of others or by any calamity not of our own making.

This new outlook was, we learned, something especially necessary to us alcoholics. For alcoholism had been a lonely business, even though we had been surrounded by people who loved us. But when self-will had driven everybody away and our isolation had become complete, it caused us to play the big shot in cheap bars and then go forth alone on the street to depend on the charity of strangers. We were still trying to find emotional security by being dominating or dependent on others. Even when our fortunes had not fallen that much and we nevertheless found ourselves alone in the world, we still vainly tried to be secure by some unhealthy kind of domination or dependence. For those of us who were like that, AA had a very special meaning. Through it we begin to learn right relations with people who understand us; we don't have to be alone anymore.

Most married folks in AA have very happy homes. To a surprising extent, AA has offset the damage to family life brought about by years of alcoholism. But just like all other societies, we do have relationship and marital problems, and sometimes they are distressingly acute. Permanent marriage breakups and separations, however, are unusual in AA. Our main problem is not how we are to stay married; it is how to be more happily married by eliminating the severe emotional distortions that have so often stemmed from alcoholism.

Nearly every healthy human being experiences, at some time in life, a compelling desire to find a partner with whom the fullest possible union can be made—spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical.* This mighty urge is the root of great human accomplishments, a creative energy that deeply influences our lives. God fashioned us that way. So our question will be this: How, by ignorance, compulsion, and self-will, do we misuse this gift for our own destruction? We in AA cannot pretend to offer full answers to age-old perplexities, but our own experience does provide certain answers that work for us.

When alcoholism strikes, very unnatural situations may develop which work against marriage partnership and compatible union. If the husband is affected, the wife must become the head of the house, often the breadwinner. As matters get worse, the husband becomes a sick and irresponsible child who needs to be looked after and rescued from endless scrapes and crises. Very gradually, and usually without any realization of the fact, the wife is forced to become the mother of an erring boy. And if she had a strong maternal instinct to begin with, the situation is aggravated. Obviously not much partnership can exist under these conditions. The wife usually goes on doing the best she knows how, but meanwhile the alcoholic alternately loves and hates her maternal care. A pattern is thereby established that may take a lot of undoing later on. Nevertheless, under the influence of AA's Twelve Steps, these situations are often set right.*

When the distortion has been great, however, a long period of patient effort may be necessary. After the husband joins AA, the wife may become discontented, even highly resentful that Alcoholics Anonymous has done the very thing that all her years of devotion had failed to do. Her husband may become so wrapped up in AA and his new friends that he is inconsiderately away from home more than when he drank. Seeing her unhappiness, he recommends AA's Twelve Steps and tries to teach her how to live. She naturally feels that for years she has made a far better job of living than he has. Both of them blame each other and ask when their marriage is ever going to be happy again. They may even begin to suspect it had never been any good in the first place.

Compatibility, of course, can be so impossibly damaged that a separation may be necessary. But those cases are the unusual ones. The alcoholic, realizing what his spouse has endured, and now fully understanding how much he himself did to damage her and his children, nearly always takes up his marriage responsibilities with a willingness to repair what he can and to accept what he can't. He persistently tries all of AA's Twelve Steps in his home, often with fine results. At this point he firmly but lovingly begins to behave like a partner instead of like a bad boy. And above all he is finally convinced that reckless romancing is not a way of life for him.

AA has many single alcoholics who wish to marry and are in a position to do so. Some marry fellow AA members. How do they come out? On the whole these marriages are very good ones. Their common suffering as drinkers, their common interest in AA and spiritual things, often enhance such unions. It is only where "boy meets girl on AA campus," and love follows at first sight, that difficulties may develop. The prospective partners need to be solid AA members and long enough acquainted to know that their compatibility at spiritual, mental, and emotional levels is a fact and not wishful thinking. They need to be as sure as possible that no deep-lying emotional handicap in either will be likely to rise up under later pressures to cripple them. The considerations are equally true and important for the AA members who marry "outside" AA. With clear understanding and right, grown-up attitudes, very happy results do follow.

And what can be said of many AA members who, for a variety of reasons, cannot have a family life? At first many of these feel lonely, hurt, and left out as they witness so much domestic happiness around them. If they cannot have this kind of happiness, can AA offer them satisfactions of similar worth and durability? Yes—whenever they try hard to seek them out. Surrounded by so many AA friends, these so-called loners tell us they no longer feel alone. In partnership with others—women and men—they can devote themselves to any number of ideas, people, and constructive projects. Free of marital responsibilities, they can participate in enterprises that would be denied to family men and women. We daily see such members render prodigies of service, and receive great joys in return.

Where the possession of money and material things was concerned, our outlook underwent the same revolutionary change. With a few exceptions, all of us had been spendthrifts. We threw money around in every direction with the purpose of pleasing ourselves and impressing other people. In our drinking time, we acted as if the money supply was inexhaustible, though between binges we'd sometimes go to the other extreme and become almost miserly. Without realizing it we were just accumulating funds for the next spree. Money was the symbol of pleasure and self-importance. When our drinking had become much worse, money was only an urgent requirement which could supply us with the next drink and the temporary comfort of oblivion it brought.

Upon entering AA, these attitudes were sharply reversed, often going much too far in the opposite direction. The spectacle of years of waste threw us into panic. There simply wouldn't be time, we thought, to rebuild our shattered fortunes. How could we ever take care of those awful debts, possess a decent home, educate the kids, and set something aside for old age? Financial importance was no longer our principal aim; we now clamored for material security. Even when we were well reestablished in our business, these terrible fears often continued to haunt us. This made us misers and penny pinchers all over again. Complete financial security we must have—or else. We forgot that most alcoholics in AA have an earning power considerably above average; we forgot the immense goodwill of our fellow AA members who were only too eager to help us to better jobs when we deserved them; we forgot the actual or potential financial insecurity of every human being in the world. And, worst of all, we forgot God. In money matters we had faith only in ourselves, and not too much of that.

This all meant, of course, that we were still far off balance. When a job still looked like a mere means of getting money rather than an opportunity for service, when the acquisition of money for financial independence looked more important than a right dependence on God, we were still the victims of unreasonable fears. And these were fears that would make a serene and useful existence, at any financial level, quite impossible.

But as time passed we found that with the help of AA's Twelve Steps we could lose those fears, no matter what our material prospects were. We could cheerfully perform humble labor without worrying about tomorrow. If our circumstances happened to be good, we no longer dreaded a change for the worse, for we had learned that these troubles could be turned into great values. It did not matter too much what our material condition was, but it did matter what our spiritual condition was. Money gradually became our servant and not our master. It became a means of exchanging love and service with those around us. When, with God's help, we calmly accepted our lot, then we found we could live at peace with ourselves and show others who still suffered the same fears that they could get over them, too. We found that freedom from fear was more important than freedom from want.

Let's here take note of our improved outlook on the problems of personal importance, power, ambition, and leadership. These were reefs on which many of us came to shipwreck during our drinking careers.

Practically every boy in the United States dreams of becoming our President. He wants to be his country's number one person. As he gets older and sees the impossibility of this, he can smile good-naturedly at his childhood dream. In later life he finds that real happiness is not to be found in just trying to be a number one person, or even a first-rater in the heartbreaking struggle for money, romance, or self-importance. He learns that he can be content as long as he plays well whatever cards life deals him. He's still ambitious, but not absurdly so, because he can now see and accept actual reality. He's willing to stay right-sized.

But not so with alcoholics. When AA was quite young, a number of eminent psychologists and doctors made an exhaustive study of a good-sized group of so-called problem drinkers. The doctors weren't trying to find how different they were from one another; they sought to find whatever personality traits, if any, this group of alcoholics had in common. They finally came up with a conclusion that shocked the AA members of that time. These distinguished professionals had the nerve to say that most of the alcoholics under investigation were still childish, emotionally sensitive, and grandiose.

How alcoholics did resent that verdict! They would not believe that their adult dreams were often truly childish. And considering the rough deal life had given them, they felt it perfectly natural that they were sensitive. As to their grandiose behavior, they insisted that they had been possessed of nothing but a high and legitimate ambition to win the battle of life.

In the years since, however, most have come to agree with those doctors. They've had a much keener look at themselves and those around them. They've seen that they were driven by unreasonable fears or anxieties into making a life business of winning fame, money, and what they thought was leadership. So false pride became the reverse side of that ruinous coin marked "Fear." They simply had to be number one people to cover up their deep-lying inferiorities. In fitful successes they boasted of greater feats to be done; in defeat they were bitter. If they didn't have much of any worldly success they became depressed and cowed. Then people said they were of the "inferior" type. But now they see themselves as chips off the same old block. At heart they had all been abnormally fearful. It mattered little whether they had sat on the shore of life drinking themselves into forgetfulness or had plunged in recklessly and willfully beyond their depth and ability. The result was the same—all had nearly perished in a sea of alcohol.

But today, in well-matured AA members, these distorted drives have been restored to something like their true purpose and direction. They no longer strive to dominate or rule those around them in order to gain self-importance. They no longer seek fame and honor in order to be praised. When by devoted service to family, friends, business, or community they attract widespread affection and are sometimes singled out for posts of greater responsibility and trust, they try to be humbly grateful and exert themselves the more in a spirit of love and service. True leadership, many find, depends on able example and not on vain displays of power or glory.

Still more wonderful is the feeling that one does not have to be specially distinguished among their fellows in order to be useful and profoundly happy. Not many can be leaders of prominence, nor do they wish to be. Service, gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved with God's help, the knowledge that at home or in the world outside they are partners in a common effort, the well-understood fact that in God's sight all human beings are important, the proof that love freely given surely brings a full return, the certainty that they are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, the surety that they need no longer be square pegs in round holes but can fit and belong in God's scheme of things—these are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes. True ambition is not what many thought it was. True ambition is the deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God.

These little studies of AA's Twelve Steps now come to a close. We've been considering so many problems that it may appear that AA consists mainly of wrestling with dilemmas and troubleshooting. To a certain extent, that is true. We've been talking about problems because we are problem people who have found a way up and out, and who wish to share our knowledge of that way with all who can use it. For it is only by accepting and solving our problems that we can begin to get right with ourselves and with the world around us, and with Him who presides over us all. Understanding is the key to right principles and attitudes, and right action is the key to good living; therefore the joy of good living is the theme of AA's Twelfth Step.

With each passing day of our lives, may every one of us sense more deeply the inner meaning of AA's simple prayer:

God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change,
Courage to change the things we can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

*This sentence has been updated from the original text to reflect the inclusivity of the Fellowship.

*In adapted form, the Steps are also used by Al-Anon Family Groups. Not a part of AA, this worldwide fellowship consists of spouses and other relatives or friends of alcoholics (in AA or still drinking). Its headquarters address is 1600 Corporate Landing Pkwy., Virginia Beach, VA 23454-5617. Website: www.al-anon.org.