Twelve-Step Programs

History

On May 11, 1935, a failed, middle-aged New York City stockbroker, William Griffith Wilson, was in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel in Akron, Ohio, facing a decision of whether to drink or maintain his 5 months of sobriety. Drawing upon knowledge of what would later be called “12 stepping,” the recovering alcoholic decided to reach out and try to remain sober by working with another alcoholic. Through a series of telephone contacts, ending with Henrietta Siberling, he was put in touch with Robert Holbrook Smith, an alcoholic and a practicing surgeon. Although not immediately successful, Dr. Smith did achieve sobriety a month later, thus laying the cornerstone upon which an association of alcoholics premised their recovery on the concept that one alcoholic working with another was an effective method of becoming sober and maintaining sobriety.

The moral tone and fundamental traditions from which Alcoholics Anonymous evolved were prevalent in American and European religious and philosophical thought in the 1800s in organizational forerunners, including the Washingtonian Society and the Oxford Groups. Bill Wilson, in particular, was strongly influenced by the philosophy and theology of William James and by currents of popular psychoanalytic thought that led AA to combine a spiritual, scientific, and medical approach to the treatment of alcoholism.

Description

A brief description of AA is provided each month in the Grapevine, AAs international journal. Typically, this description is read at the beginning of AA meetings:

The core of the AA program and the basic dynamics of recovery are best conveyed through the organization's 12 steps:

• 1.
  We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
• 2.
  Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
• 3.
  Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.
• 4.
  Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
• 5.
  Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
• 6.
  Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
• 7.
  Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
• 8.
  Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
• 9.
  Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
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• 10.
  Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
• 11.
  Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
• 12.
  Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

The 12 steps provide a systematic and pragmatic regimen as well as a broad philosophy of life. Members of AA and other twelve-step programs use phrases like “working the steps” or “working the program.” Whatever the malady (alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling), the beginning of recovery starts with admission of the problem and the commitment to cease the behavior “one day at a time.” Group participants strive to “transcend” their problems and themselves by becoming other-centered rather than self-centered. Specifically, they come to trust and depend on others—whether it be God or a Higher Power, the group itself, a sponsor, or other addicts. In group jargon, “In order to keep it, you have to give it away.” Dependence on others and the belief that by helping others one helps oneself defines twelve-step programs as mutual-help rather than self-help groups.

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