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Very shortly before his death, AA co-founder Dr. Bob made an extraordinary effort to attend the First International Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous, held in Cleveland. Despite his fragile health, he made it, and offered the historic first convention this wisdom:

“Our Twelve Steps, when simmered down to the last, resolve themselves into the words love and service.” Love and Service, two enormous concepts that alcoholics very often rediscover in the life-giving rooms of AA.

Throughout this chapter are stories validating the fact that the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, like everything else in the AA program, are meaningful only if they are incorporated into our sober lives.

As usual, our Grapevine contributors have their own unique insights on—and experiences with—the Steps and Traditions. The author of “The Birth of Spiritual Confidence” tells us how to avoid becoming “stark raving sober,” so dry that we dry up. In “Willingness to Grow,” we learn how to turn our character defects into assets, with the writer explaining that less guilt means more room for making amends. Here are stories by members who have successfully integrated the Twelve Steps into their lives and have found their lives transformed. After 20 years of active alcoholic unmanageability, for instance, an author’s carefully nurtured professional arrogance is softened in “The Whisper of Humility.”

The Traditions are to our program’s sane and healthy life what the Steps are to our day-to-day personal sobriety. One example is our Twelfth Tradition, which offers us the anonymity that enables us to place principles before personalities, an essential element in working the program, given the vast diversity of our membership. Dr. Bob was fond of saying there are two ways of breaking the anonymity Tradition: The first is obvious, the second is “being so anonymous that you can’t be reached by other drunks.” “A Deeper Understanding” addresses that very situation, when a physician craves the anonymity that may actually threaten someone else’s survival.

“When my misery became extremely painful,” writes the author of “Steps to Freedom,” “I called my first sponsor, a man who had worked with me years ago. When I told him how miserable I was, he got stern and said, ‘We need to start working the Steps.’” Then, later in the story, the author reports, “Peace and serenity are resurfacing inside me and my fellow inmates.”

If the Steps can have that effect, even behind prison bars, how can we doubt their effectiveness in a life of blessed freedom?