A.A.’s Step 12

VIDEO – NOW START OVER? –

Oct. 10, 2023 – 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).

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.