The 12 Steps of AA: What Each Step Asks

Maybe someone handed you a laminated card, or you heard "worked the steps" said like it was obvious, and you still do not know what you would actually be agreeing to. Here is the short answer: the 12 Steps are the recovery program at the center of Alcoholics Anonymous, first printed in the Big Book in 1939, and each one asks for something small and specific rather than a wholesale conversion on day one.

If stopping drinking or using could mean seizures or severe withdrawal, medical care comes first. Call 911 in an emergency, or call or text 988 in a crisis.

The steps as AA publishes them

AA lists the Twelve Steps on its own site. Read them slowly; most of them are shorter than the worry about them:

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.
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.

What the steps are actually asking

• Steps 1-3: honesty, then help. Step 1 is an admission, not a punishment: you could not control it, and things got unmanageable. Step 2 is hope with an open door - "came to believe," not "believed." Step 3 is a decision to stop running your recovery as a solo project.
• Steps 4-7: looking at yourself, with support. The fourth-step inventory is a written moral accounting, and the fifth step is saying it out loud to one other person. Steps 6 and 7 are about becoming willing rather than fixing yourself by force.
• Steps 8-9: cleaning up. Listing who was harmed, becoming willing, then making direct amends - with a built-in exception for anyone who would be injured by the contact.
• Steps 10-12: the daily practice. Ongoing self-checks, prayer or meditation, and carrying the message to the next person who walks in the way you did.

Where the steps came from matters less than how they move: AA began in 1935 in Akron, Ohio, and its own history notes it took four years for the first three groups to produce about 100 sober members. The Big Book - first published in 1939, now translated into more than 70 languages - lays out that program, most directly in "How It Works."

The belief question, in AA's own words

The most common reason people hesitate at the door is Step 2 or Step 3. AA anticipated that: the Big Book's chapter "We Agnostics" takes it on directly, and the phrase "as we understood Him" does a lot of quiet work. In meetings you will hear members describe a higher power as the group itself, the meeting, or something they decline to name. You are not asked to pass a theology check to sit down.

The same bones in other rooms

Narcotics Anonymous, which held its first meeting in Southern California in 1953, adapted the steps with AA's permission - the clearest change is Step 1, "we admitted that we were powerless over our addiction." Al-Anon, founded in 1951 for families and friends, adopted the steps with one word changed in Step 12, so the message gets carried to "others." The steps you would work in an NA or Al-Anon room are recognizably the same staircase.

How people actually start

Most people start by hearing the steps read at a meeting, not by working them. A step-study meeting takes one step at a time with discussion; a Big Book meeting reads the source text itself. You can go to a meeting for months before touching Step 4, and you can read one step tonight without committing to the other eleven. If you want a single next action, it is this: pick a meeting within walking distance of tomorrow, and go listen.

Meetings are free, but they are not medical care. If you need detox, medication, or a treatment program alongside the rooms, FindTreatment.gov lists real facilities, and you can call or text (800) 653-9376 to talk through options with a treatment specialist.

Additional Resources

Sources cited on this page:

• The Twelve Steps - Alcoholics Anonymous (aa.org)
• The Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed.) - aa.org
• The Start and Growth of A.A. - aa.org
• An Introductory Guide to Narcotics Anonymous - NA World Services
• Al-Anon timeline - Al-Anon Family Groups
• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline

Common Questions