The Twelve Steps are the recovery plan of All Addicts Anonymous. They are a series of spiritual action directions, hammered out in the late 1930s by the early members of Alcoholics Anonymous, at a time when that fellowship (which now numbers over Two million members worldwide) consisted of two small groups with a combined membership of about a hundred sober alcoholics. The Steps were the key to the Anonymous Fellowships' exponential growth and their enduring success.

       The following is a brief summary of how to work Steps One through Three of the AAA Program and is also a serialization of chapter five from the How to Get Going on the All Addicts Anonymous Way of Life book, the basic text of AAA. We will be covering Steps Four through Nine and Ten through Twelve in further issues of 24...

       Steps One through Three - the "surrender" steps...

       Step One says: "We admitted we were powerless over our addictions, that our lives had become unmanageable." The original wording, used in the earliest days of AA said: "We admitted that we were licked" - and that gives a good feel for what is involved at the very beginning: the swallowing of a big chunk of tough truth about ourselves - that we are whipped, beaten, defeated. Some of the oldtimers described the process as "ego deflation at depth." Many, many addicts die or wreck their lives irretrievably, doomed by their unwillingness or their inability to make the necessary practical personal concession here. AAA experience has proven thousands of times that when the admission of personal powerlessness remains unmade or only half made, no other effective work on the Program is possible - and no recovery is possible, either.

       Tom P., Sr., spent five years failing in AA before he was able to take the First Step. It wasn't that he was denying that he had a booze and drug problem. It was that he was admitting the problem in the wrong way, a common and deadly hang-up. The difference between a sufficient and an insufficient admission was spelled out with brilliant clarity by the psychiatrist Harry M. Tiebout, M.D. in a 1952 article entitled "Surrender Versus Compliance in Therapy":

       "Since becoming a sideline observer of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1939, my approach to alcoholism has undergone an almost total reorientation. For the first time I saw what peace of mind means in the achievement of sobriety and I began to consider the emotional factors involved from a very different viewpoint. In AA meetings, the role of resentments was a recurrent theme. This seemed significant. Continuing this line of observation, I found that another enemy of sobriety was defiance.

       "Another significant emphasis in AA was humility and hitting bottom, completely new points of emphasis for me. It was clear that if the individual remained stiff-necked he would continue to drink, but I could not see why. Finally the presence of an apparently unconquerable ego became evident. It was this ego which had to become humble. Then the role of hitting bottom, which means reaching a feeling of personal helplessness, began to be clear. It was this process that produced in the ego an awareness of vulnerability, initiating the positive phase. In hitting bottom the ego becomes tractable and is ready for humility. The conversion experience has started.

       "What happens in the unconscious at the time of hitting bottom remained a mystery. The first elucidation came from a patient. Through psychotherapy she was gradually losing the intractable ego structure and finally, for rather obscure reasons, she had a minor conversion experience which brought her relative peace and quiet. During this phase she began attending various churches in town. One Monday morning she entered the office, her eyes shining, and said at once, 'I know what happened to me. I heard it in a hymn yesterday. I surrendered when I had that experience.' Guided by this clue, I realized that 'hitting bottom' is ineffectual if not followed by a surrender. Hitting bottom must produce a result, and this result is surrender.

       "Most of my ideas along these lines were incorporated in an article on 'the act of surrender' in relation to the therapeutic process. . . . In the article on surrender, I said:

       "One fact must be kept in mind, namely, the need to distinguish between submission and surrender. In submission, an individual accepts reality consciously but not unconsciously. He accepts as a practical fact that he cannot at that moment conquer reality, but lurking in his unconscious is the feeling, 'there'll come a day' - which implies no real acceptance and demonstrates conclusively that the struggle is still going on. With submission, which at best is a superficial yielding, tension continues. When, on the other hand, the ability to accept reality functions on the unconscious level, there is no residual battle, and relaxation ensues with freedom from strain and conflict. In fact, it is perfectly possible to ascertain to what extent the acceptance of reality is on the unconscious level by the degree of relaxation which develops. The greater the relaxation, the greater is the inner acceptance of reality. . . .

       "After an act of surrender, the individual reports a sense of unity, of ended struggles, of no longer divided inner counsel. He knows the meaning of inner wholeness and, what is more, he knows from immediate experience the feeling of being wholehearted about anything. He recognizes for the first time how insincere his previous protestations actually were. If he is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, he travels around to meetings proclaiming the need for honesty - usually, at the start of his pilgrimage, with a certain amount of surprise and wonder in his voice. Quite frankly, before he was able to embrace the program, he had no idea he was a liar, dishonest in his thoughts; but now that AA is making sense - that is, he is accepting AA wholeheartedly and without reservations - he sees that previously he had never truly accepted anything. The AA speaker does not follow through to state that, formerly, all he had been doing was complying; but if asked, he nods his head in vigorous assent, saying, 'That's exactly what I was doing.' A more articulate individual, after a little thought, added; 'You know, when I think back on it, that was all I knew how to do. I supposed that was the way it was with everybody. I could not conceive of really giving up. The best I could do was to comply, which meant I never really wanted to quit drinking, down inside. I can see it all now but I certainly couldn't then.'

       "Obviously this speaker is reporting the loss of his compliant tendencies, occurring, let it be noted, when he gave up, surrendered, and thus was able wholeheartedly to follow the AA program. Let it further be noted that this new honesty arises automatically, spontaneously: the individual does not have the slightest inkling that this development is in prospect. It represents a deep unconscious shift in attitude and one certainly for the better."

       Step One is the admission of powerlessness and Step Two is coming to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. The actual taking of these Steps is surprisingly easy, almost automatic, once the addict stops lying, denying, defying, or complying. Tom P., Sr.'s description of the event in his AAA recovery story is as good as any:

       "And then, I don't know how it happened, but sometime in the fall of 1946 something turned over in me. I didn't see any lights flashing and I didn't have any emotional experience, but very quietly the Program thing began to make sense to me. The God thing began to make sense. On October 10, 1946, I had my last drink and my last drugs. I have been sober and free from drugs ever since.

       "The power of the Twelve Steps just wore down my insanity and my self-will. I reached a point where I couldn't argue against it anymore, because I didn't believe my own arguments anymore. I had heard too many people, too often, say that God was the answer. I began to believe it. And that was my salvation.

       "I had been around the Program and falling on my face all those years, and people kept saying to me, 'You are too arrogant. You have got to surrender.' I didn't know what in the hell they were talking about. I thought, 'What is this surrender business? I am as beat up as most people and more beat up than some that are doing all this smart talking about surrendering. What am I supposed to do, sign a treaty, or hand over my sword like Lee at Appomattox, or what?' Finally after months and months of repeated failure and disaster, I did begin to see that there was something in me that wouldn't give up, but I didn't know what to do about it.

       "I still don't know exactly what happened when the turn came. I just quit fighting, and at the same time, without any great excitement but quite clearly, I began to see that the Program was true. I don't know how, but I began to value the truth. I began to hope and believe in it. I saw that the truth and my sanity were somehow related to each other, and that without the truth I would stay crazy. It is a very practical thing. I don't know why I didn't see it for so long a time."

       Step Three says, "We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him." This is the completion of the personal surrender begun in the First Step with the admission of powerlessness over our addictions. The way you take a Third Step is you address God directly, you say a prayer of self-commitment to him. Bill Wilson's suggested version in chapter five of the AA Big Book reads, in part: "God, I offer myself to thee - to build with me and to do with me as thou will. . . . May I do thy will always." Tom P., Jr., in his first year in the Program, said a prayer every morning the first thing on arising that used the exact words of the Step as follows: "God, I renew my decision to turn my will and life over to thy care. Please hold me this day in thy will." The habit begun thirty-four years ago carries forward to the present time, with ongoing, sometimes amazing, good effects.

       As good a Third Step prayer as we have ever seen is one given by the eighteenth century French priest J.P. de Caussade in his book Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence (see page 100):

       "My Lord, I know thee to be a generous and magnificent Prince, as powerful as thou art good; I therefore give myself to thee without reserve; I wish to serve thee without knowing what I am to gain by it each day or year or even at the end of my career. I promise to think of nothing but your interests, and, as for my own, I abandon them entirely to your discretion or rather to your goodness and liberality."

       How will you know if you have taken an effective Third Step? The same way you know when you have taken a real First Step - by a feeling of relief and peace, followed by a positive change in the way your life goes. This is a relief and a change you can, and should, feel every day of your life on this Program. Here is how Dr. Harry Tiebout described the change in the AAs he knew after they had taken the Third Step:

       "The change in emotional state which follows the conversion experience is characterized primarily by altered response in which quiet and serenity predominate. . . . Associated with that altered response are other changes . . . (1) the loss of automatic hostility; (2) the disappearance of the perfectionistic drive; (3) the disappearance of the egocentric power drive; (4) the appearance of a better response to work demands; and finally, (5) the appearance of a much greater capacity for objectivity.

       "Other changes in attitude accompany the new state. . . . The new feelings which appear are distinctly spiritual in quality and alter the psychic picture in the direction of what it must be conceded are healthier reactions. Experience has furthermore demonstrated that these reactions furnish a substantial base for continued sobriety. . . .

       "The success of the AA program may be understood only in the light of a recognition of the religious practices it encourages and the consequent spiritual awakening. All the other parts of the AA program are valid and important, but I am convinced that a true understanding of its effectiveness depends upon insight into the source and nature of what has been called the X factor, or 'spiritual feeling.' "