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Welcome

“The joy of good living.”

This is the theme of AA's Twelfth Step, according to the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. But most AAs would probably agree that this is the theme of all of the Steps.

The Steps have been called inspired by God. “I doubt if the Twelve Steps that have changed the course of existence for so many thousands of lives could have been the mere product of human insight and observation. And they can and will bless anyone, alcoholic or not, who will follow them through and be obedient to them. They are morally and spiritually and psychologically and practically as sound as can be,” wrote Dr. Samuel Shoemaker, the Episcopal clergyman who helped in the founding of AA, in the Grapevine in 1964. “I often say and shall always say that the Twelve Steps are one of the very great summaries and organic collections of spiritual truth known to history. … Herein is spiritual wisdom and health. We have had to look deep within, probe, burrow, struggle, and in a sense this never stops.”

Initially, there were six Steps, which co-founder Bill W. expanded into 12 in the process of writing Chapter Five of the Big Book. He originally named God very liberally throughout the Steps, leading to heated discussion and the eventual compromise and the addition of “as we understand Him” and “Higher Power.”

“Those expressions, as we so well know today, have proved lifesavers for many an alcoholic,” Bill wrote in a 1953 Grapevine article. “They have enabled thousands of us to make a beginning where none could have been made had we left the steps just as I originally wrote them. … Little did we then guess that our Twelve Steps would soon be widely approved by clergymen of all denominations and even by our latter-day friends, the psychiatrists.”

Members sometimes view the Twelve Steps as therapy, perhaps the best therapy available for alcoholics. “Outward problems in our lives are produced by conditions within ourselves. Persistent use of the Steps removes the inward conditions that cause the problems,” a 1976 contributor to the Grapevine wrote. “As we experience changes in ourselves, we live our way into a new understanding, and we gradually stop creating difficulties in our lives. We find answers and solutions that we could never see before, and they all come from the program. It's so simple that it's sometimes tough to believe!

“Regardless of where we are in sobriety, you and I have a specific method of dealing with what happens to us each day—by simply renewing our work in the program. Unless I do this kind of continuing work, I'll never know what the AA message really is or how to help another person experience it.”

This book shows how AA members of all ages, from all lifestyles and from around the world, followers of mainstream religions and atheists, newcomers and old-timers, have recovered and found a new way of life by working the Twelve Steps. The Steps are a very popular submission topic, with a great deal of manuscripts on Step topics submitted each year. Every issue of the Grapevine since its redesign in 2007 has included a Step story. Here is a variety of experiences that AAs have written about the Steps and sent to the Grapevine over the course of its existence, from the 1940s to the present.