Episode 250 -- December 8, 2022

The Rich Rewards of Step Twelve

Who helped you find the path of recovery you're on today? Who helps you stay on it, or guides you back when you've lost your way? Whether it's a sponsor, a sister, or a group of trusted friends, most of us can name the people we can count on to have our backs. As we grow in recovery, we also start to realize that we have gifts to offer as well, and support for those who are just beginning their journey.

In his book Twelve Step Sponsorship: How It Works, author and sponsor Hamilton B. writes for both sponsors and sponsees, helping people at any stage of recovery understand and apply the guidance of the Twelve Steps and make the most of the sponsor relationship. In this excerpt, he highlights the relational power that undergirds Twelve Step recovery and is the focus of Step Twelve: we find recovery with the help of others, and then we get to pay it forward through service. This life-saving work helps others, of course, but being useful in this way also helps deepen and stabilize our own sobriety.

Whether you're working the Twelve Steps or navigating recovery by another path, chances are you've got a circle of support in which you get and give the kind of help that keeps you going and provides you strength to face every aspect of your life. Take a moment today to celebrate the fact that you've got love to give and wisdom to share.

This excerpt has been edited for brevity.

The AA Big Book says, "Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail."

Alcoholics Anonymous was founded because Bill Wilson realized that he needed to work with another alcoholic in order to stay sober. That realization led him to a meeting with Dr. Bob in Akron, Ohio, in 1935 and to AA's cofounding. This need to work with other alcoholics is basic to the AA program and the reason that the Fellowship was cofounded. It took two alcoholics to stay sober, so it took two alcoholics to start AA.

Working with another alcoholic is called Twelfth Step work. Since all the other Twelve Step Fellowships have evolved from AA, they are all based on working with other individuals suffering from the same addiction or compulsion. Twelfth Step work is as central to each of them as it is to the AA Fellowship.

Twelfth Step work means to carry the message of recovery to other addicted or compulsive people like ourselves.

Twelfth Step work in AA began the day after AA's official founding, before there even was a Twelfth Step. On June 11, 1935, the morning after Dr. Bob took his last drink, he told Bill Wilson that the two of them would be "much safer" if they "got active" working with other alcoholics. Dr. Bob called a nurse he knew at City Hospital to find a drunk they could call on. Two days later, they met with Bill D. who got sober and became AA's third member.

Speaking at AA's twentieth anniversary convention in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1955, Bill Wilson told the assembled members, "A.A.'s Twelfth Step, carrying the message, is the basic service that our fellowship gives; it is our principal aim and the main reason for our existence. A.A. is more than a set of principles; it is a society of recovered alcoholics in action. We must carry A.A.'s message; otherwise we ourselves may fall into decay and those who have not yet been given the truth may die. This is why we so often say that action is the magic word. Action to carry A.A.'s message is therefore the heart of our Third Legacy of Service." The truth of these words also applies to other Twelve Step Fellowships.

The AA Big Book spends a substantial portion of chapter 7 on how to work with other alcoholics, particularly those who are brand new to recovery. The suggestions it offers are based on the experience of Bill Wilson, Dr. Bob, and other AA pioneers. This chapter is still the most authoritative work on how to Twelve-Step someone. The paragraphs on "Twelve Stepping" are important to read. Times have changed in the last sixty years, but the basic principles have not.

Practicing these principles in all our affairs
"These principles" are the principles embodied in the Twelve Steps and supported by program tradition and slogans. Having learned to practice them in our dealings with other program members, we faced the big question that Bill Wilson posed: "What about the practice of these principles in all our affairs? Can we love the whole pattern of living as eagerly as we do the small segment of it we discover when we try to help other alcoholics achieve sobriety? ... Can we actually carry the A.A. spirit into our daily work?"

Whatever our addiction or compulsion, the challenge we meet in the Twelfth Step is to transfer our practice of the program's great principles into the whole of life. It is our call to honesty with self and others, to humility, to prayer and meditation, to self- examination, and to service. It means seeking to know the will of our Higher Power, acknowledging our character defects, admitting our mistakes and making amends for them, taking responsibility for that which we can change in life and accepting the things we cannot change. Practicing these principles, in the final analysis, is living life on life's terms. It is embracing reality.

In "Chapter Twelve" of the AA Twelve and Twelve, Bill Wilson describes the new life we can enjoy as recovering individuals working the Twelfth Step (in other words, all the Steps). It is a life characterized by remarkable transformation. From our days as "childish, emotionally sensitive, and grandiose" people, we emerge as mature men and women with lives that are "useful and profoundly happy."

Applying Step Twelve
Step Twelve includes the principles of all the other Steps. It is to be applied daily in our lives. In fact, it becomes the design of our lives. Therefore, Step Twelve is never worked in the past tense. It is always being worked in the present tense, in the forever "now" of our lives.

With the formal "completion" of Step Twelve, we enter a new phase of recovery. The compulsion is gone, whatever it was; a spiritual awakening has occurred; and the Twelve Promises are coming true in greater depth. Armed with a set of spiritual tools in the form of the Twelve Steps, we can now face and effectively handle the challenges of life that had once overwhelmed us. More than that, we can achieve serenity and enjoy a rich and rewarding life. The kind of person we had dreamed of being some day, we have at last become. We have been restored to sanity.

In all this, we find the greatest of ironies. By admitting powerlessness, we have been given power; by surrendering, we have won. God has truly done for us what we could not do for ourselves. He has taken our greatest weakness and transformed it into our greatest strength in the Twelve Step Fellowship. He has taken our pain and suffering and turned them into healing for others. He has made it possible for us to be of service. He has given us meaning and direction, purpose and accomplishment. He has taken emptiness and filled it up. All these things, He has done though Twelve simple Steps worked with love, discipline, and courage—and a Power greater than ourselves.

About the Author:
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© 1996 by Hamilton B.
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