A Dozen Steps

The Evolution Of The 12 Steps Of AA

by Mark on August 24th, 2006

The West Baltimore Group of Alcoholics Anonymous has a sweet web site where they have posted a very substantial quantity of AA history.

On one page they repeat the recovery writing of a man named Clarence H. Snyder titled “How It Worked.”

Contained within this work is “The Evolution of The 12 Steps of AA.”

They say;

“When Bill Wilson sat down to write ideas for what were to be the Twelve Steps of A.A, he didn’t just get them out of thin air. He had a basis for the Steps, founded on spiritual principles already in place. There come from the precepts of the Oxford Group, the Washington Temperance Movement (The Washingtonians), Biblical principles, and literature such as: The Common Sense of Drinking, by Richard Peabody, For Sinners Only, by A.J. Russell, I Was A Pagan, by V.C Kitchen, The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James, and others.

When Bill wrote the Twelve Steps, six were already in place in one form or another. Bill felt that the six steps had some loopholes through which an alcoholic could slip. He was not satisfied with the six already in place and decided to expand upon them so alcoholics could have a program of recovery, separate from the Oxford Group and separate from association with them. When he put the Twelve Steps in their original form, Bill felt at ease with them.”

When you have the chance, check it out.

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