Step 12: Carrying the Message

Step 12 reads: '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' (page 60). This is the harvest step. The first eleven Steps grew something in us, and this one tells us what to do with the crop. There are three parts: an awakening we received, a message we carry, and a set of principles we practice everywhere.

What Step 12 Says and Means

Notice the wording. The Step does not tell us to go find a spiritual awakening. It says we have had one, as the result of these steps. The awakening is not an entrance requirement; it is the natural outcome of work already done. Many of us worried that nothing dramatic had happened to us. The book answers that worry in Appendix II, explaining that most of our spiritual experiences are of the 'educational variety' that develops slowly over time (page 567). The real test is a personality change deep enough to bring about recovery, and it arrives in many forms (page 567). If we can stay sober today and honestly care about another human being, something real has happened to us. Page 25 describes the change as being lifted into a dimension of living we had never dreamed of.

Where Step 12 Lives in the Big Book

The Step itself is listed on page 60, but its home is Chapter 7, 'Working With Others,' which runs from page 89 through page 103. That chapter is the Big Book's instruction manual for this Step. The closing lines of 'A Vision for You' belong here too, where the book tells us to 'Give freely of what you find and join us' (page 164). Appendix II, 'Spiritual Experience,' on pages 567 and 568, explains the awakening itself. And the 'all our affairs' portion reaches into the chapters on family and work that follow, because these principles are meant for our kitchens and our job sites, not only for Twelfth Step calls.

How the Big Book Says to Work It

Chapter 7 opens with one of the most confident sentences in the whole book: 'Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics' (page 89). Then it adds, 'It works when other activities fail' (page 89). The instructions that follow are practical. Learn what you can about the person you hope to help, and do not exhaust yourself on someone who does not want to stop drinking (page 90). See him alone if possible, and lead with your own story rather than a lecture (page 91). Speak freely about the spiritual side in everyday language, and if he believes differently than you do, let him (page 93). Never preach and never push; if he is not interested, leave the door open for another day (page 95). Help in practical ways, but never do for him what he can do for himself (pages 96 through 98). Then comes the anchor of the whole chapter: 'Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery' (page 97). As for practicing these principles in all our affairs, page 83 says it without softening: 'The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it.' Honesty in our paperwork, patience at the dinner table, kindness toward the person who irritates us most. That is Step 12 on an ordinary Tuesday.

What Changes, and Where We Go From Here

The promises attached to this Step are specific. 'Life will take on new meaning' (page 89). We watch people recover, we see them help others, we watch loneliness vanish, and a fellowship grows up around us. The book calls frequent contact with newcomers 'the bright spot of our lives' (page 89). The protection is real too, because the same page insists that nothing shields us from drinking like this work. Sobriety that once felt like gripping a rope starts to feel like standing on solid ground.

Here is the honest part. Almost all of us balk at this Step for the same reason: we feel unqualified. Who are we to carry a message? Our awakening feels too quiet, our sobriety too new, and we are afraid of saying the wrong thing and driving someone away. The Big Book never asks us to be experts or preachers. It asks us to tell another alcoholic what happened to us, nothing more (page 91). The results were never our department anyway; we carry the message, not the alcoholic. And notice which direction the protection flows on page 89. We do this work as much for our own sobriety as for the newcomer's, so waiting until we feel ready gets it exactly backward.

Step 12 has no Step after it because it is not the top of a staircase; it is the door into a way of life. The daily practice of Steps 10, 11, and 12 keeps us fit, since what we have is a daily reprieve contingent on our spiritual condition (page 85), and the newcomer keeps us honest. Find the alcoholic who still suffers. Sit with her. Tell your story. The book promises that if our relationship with God is right, great events will come to pass for us and for countless others (page 164). We simply pass on what was so freely given to us.