When I first got sober in AA, service was not an option; it came with the package. When we work through the Steps, we eventually get to Step Twelve, which states that “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry the message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” When I came to SA I was told that AA’s Twelve Steps were SA’s Twelve Steps.
We need all twelve of those Steps to stay sober! If we could stay sober on eleven, there would only be eleven. If we could get by on five, there would only be five. But there are twelve and we need every one of them if we are to have that long-term, contented sobriety our literature talks about.
When I finally got a sponsor who knew what this program was all about, he asked me if I was willing to go to any length to have a spiritual experience sufficient to bring about release from my disease, and I said Yes! (Desperation does wonders for willingness.) He then told me I was to come over to his house every Sunday for the next twelve weeks and to bring my Big Book and the Twelve & Twelve. (Sunday happened to be a day mutually available to both of us for the working of a Step.)
He had me read aloud, out of the Twelve & Twelve, the Step we were to cover that Sunday, and then he would show me what the Big Book had to say about that particular Step. We would stop from time to time during the reading and ask questions to more fully develop or elaborate on a particular principle. It is a simple program, if we simply work it!
In the span of twelve weeks my life was miraculously changed. My problems didn’t go away, but I now had a way to engage life on life’s terms without acting out in my disease. Since that time I have sponsored more than thirty men in both AA and SA. I know of no one I have sponsored who has thoroughly worked through the Twelve Steps in this manner, who has relapsed, nor have the people they, in turn, are sponsoring. The great gift is that sponsoring people in this way keeps me reworking the fundamentals of the program, and I am staying sober, making progress in my recovery.
I think Dr. Bob said it all so well on page 180 of the Big Book:
I spend a great deal of time passing on what I learned to others who want and need it badly. I do it for four reasons:
- Sense of duty.
- It is a pleasure.
- Because in so doing I am paying my debt to the man who took time to pass it on to me.
- Because every time I do it I take out a little more insurance for myself against a possible slip.
(Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 180)
R.M.
