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Key points
- Working all of A.A.'s 12 steps creates profound characterological change.
- Step 12 calls on people in recovery to share their experiences with those with substance use disorder.
- It also extends the principles of recovery into all aspects of your life.
The first eleven steps in the Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) approach to recovery focus on the individual answering questions about finding freedom from alcohol and other drugs. Even the eighth and ninth steps, which call for making amends to those one's addiction has harmed, are suggested to free recovering people from the burden of shame (A.A.'s Steps Eight and Nine: Acts of Integrity).
Spiritual Awakening
The final twelfth step now turns attention outward while also expanding the concept of recovery well beyond the problem of addiction.
In this series on the 12 steps, I want to stress that I am not speaking on behalf of A.A. There are many ways to understand the meaning and implications of each step[i]. What follows is only one perspective on step 12 filtered through my experience as an addiction psychiatrist. I aim to offer thoughts on the psychological depth of A.A.'s 12-step recovery approach (A Meaningful Definition of Addiction Recovery).
Step 12 reads:
Having had a spiritual awakening from these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
A brief review of A.A. literature, or conversations with people who achieve successful recovery, quickly establishes that few experience spiritual awakening in a momentous flash. Although a lucky few experience a sudden falling of the scales from their eyes, most describe a slow shift away from seeing themselves as isolated independent entities, analogous to solitary rocks circling through space, to experiencing themselves as legitimate manifestations of a larger interconnected world.
For some, this means seeing themselves as members of the recovering community that extends well beyond them, both through history and around the globe. For others, it means communion with nature, which sustains them throughout life, and must receive proper stewardship in return.
Still others find a connection to the divine, within and beyond. Spiritual awakening takes an infinite variety of forms but always contains an expansion of one's sense of self to include intimate connections to something greater.
Carrying the Message
The second portion of step 12, trying to "carry this message to alcoholics" and people with substance use disorder, naturally emerges from having had a spiritual awakening. All who have fallen into addiction share the common fate of never intending to hurt themselves or others.
They begin playing with chemicals to relieve whatever tension, fears, pain, ennui, or other discomfort disturbed them. As they wrestled with trying to control forces that none of us have control over, their brains, minds, and personalities changed; they became isolated inside their secrets and shame. Those who recover usually do so with help from others in recovery, and this recovering community remains connected to those who still suffer by remembering their dark times.
It is here that understanding one of A.A.'s Twelve Traditions becomes important. It is sometimes joked that the 12 steps can keep you from killing yourself, while the 12 traditions keep you from killing others. These traditions outline principles for promoting healthy group behavior.
"Tradition Eleven," which reads in part, "Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion," keeps A.A. from becoming a missionary organization. It prefers to work by modeling recovery, education, and not persuasion.
"Carrying the message" means sharing your recovery experience and how it was achieved with others seeking relief from addiction. The message should embody the same level of humility that is required to achieve recovery.
Practicing the Principle
Finally, the twelfth step expands integrity by calling on you to practice the principles supporting recovery from addiction throughout your life. This expansion has genuine practical importance for maintaining recovery.
Dishonesty in your relationships or work and secrets kept from others are like an area of rot happening deep in a healthy fruit basket. In time, the decay will spread and spoil the whole lot.
Once dishonesty and secrets are tolerated in any part of one's life, they will spread. The spread will eventually reach your ability, to be honest about any desire for alcohol and other drugs and their use. Secrets can even spread to the point of hiding the desire for chemicals, even from your awareness. It's a very slippery slope.
Practicing the principles of recovery fostered by the 12 steps—faith in humility, connection, honesty, transparency, and spirituality—throughout all parts of your life may sound like too much to expect of oneself. And it is if this is your starting point.
But if you start with step one and carefully work each step through step 12, such a practice begins coming naturally. The reason for this ease is that people generally seek pleasure, and there are few pleasures greater than living an entirely free, deeply connected, and meaningful life of integrity.
The 12 steps lead not only to recovery from addiction. They can also lead to profound characterological change. Such change occurs when people go beyond merely mouthing the steps and performatively acting them out.
It requires digging deeply, past your initial resistance and through your denial, to find the personal truths in each step.
References
[i] Readers interested in a deeper dive into AA and the Twelve Steps can find it in AA’s How It Works and the more academic work by Ernest Kurtz, Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, Hazelden, 1991.
