by B. Ann Patterson

Created on: June 14, 2010

AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, functions not as an organization but as a meeting of individuals who have the desire to stop drinking alcoholic beverages.  After an alcoholic attends one meeting, he or she has learned what to expect in every AA meeting in the future.  The difference in one AA meeting and another meeting are the words that they may hear and the individuals who attend.  Every meeting is predictable in terms of form, but is very different in terms of who attends and what might be said by the attending alcoholics.

AA is more than a meeting.  The heart of AA and its spiritual essence is found in "The Twelve Steps" which were written down by Bill W. and Dr. Bob almost a hundred years ago.  The two of them, intense alcoholics, found that when they were together and they talked about their addiction, they did not drink.  When they invited other alcoholic men to join them in their conversation, the others were also helped. 

 At some point in time as AA became a positive phenomenon in the lives of dozens of men, then hundreds, the two sober men analyzed the conversations they had had and pulled from them the key actions that they had taken on their road to sobriety.  Those key actions became "The Twelve Steps" which have been adapted to a variety of other addictions in the human condition:  narcotics, medications, emotions, sex, overeating and more.  The only change those groups have made is the name of their addictions.  At the first and every meeting an alcoholic attends, "The Twelve Steps" is read and is the basis of the subject matter discussed.

The first step that the alcoholic must take is to acknowledge that their life is unmanageable because of their powerlessness over alcohol.  Each alcoholic struggles with those words until finally admitting that it is true.  Only then can they begin to understand the path that they must take to apply each of "The Twelve Steps" and move toward sobriety.  That is when they understand what is meant when AA members say, "work the steps" and they comprehend what others in the meeting have been saying about their "one day at a time" path to sobriety.  "Working the steps" means that the individual alcoholic studies the few words of each step in order and finding, within their own spirit, how to apply it to their singular life.  

"Working the steps" is not a

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