Alcoholics Anonymous - The Original 12 Step
Program
Author: Scott Michaels

The original 12 Step Program is Alcoholics Anonymous - which
deals with what they call the "powerlessness" to stop drinking
alcohol[1]. Although the 12 Steps have been adopted by other
groups including Al-Anon for people impacted by having or
having had alcoholics in their life, Alcoholics Anonymous and
the 12 Steps were designed and are only intended for use by
alcoholics. The only requirement for membership of an
Alcoholics Anonymous Group "is the desire to stop drinking".

Other twelve-step programs are similarly fellowships which aim
to aid in the recovery of the consequences of an obsession,
addiction, a physical and mental compulsion, or another harmful
influence on their lives, with the help of the faith-based
Twelve Steps dependent on reliance on "A Power Greater than
ourselves". As is said in Alcoholics Anonymous, it is not just
a matter of putting the cork in the bottle, the 12 Step Program
deals with the underlying mental and emotional causes of the
obsession with alcohol (or other substances in other Programs
based on the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous).

These fellowships of men and women, a bond of loosely
organized, autonomous groups, function on the basis of
principles formulated in the Twelve Traditions. Synonyms are
anonymous program and A-program; the original twelve-step
program is Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A), which was started in the
US. Today there are meetings and fellowships all over the world.


All twelve-step programs follow some version of the Twelve
Steps. Members meet regularly to discuss their problem(s) and
share their victories. Common among all such programs is the
view that members are dealing with an illness rather than a bad
habit or a maladaptive behavior, that the illness is a
combination of an allergy of the body that creates
uncontrollable cravings coupled with an obsession of the mind
that keeps finding rationalizations for returning to that which
causes the cravings, and that recovery from the illness can
occur by abandonment of individual will through the Twelve
Steps.

True to the Twelve Traditions, twelve-step programs do not take
positions on outside issues such as medical ones. The word
"illness" rather than "disease" was used by Bill Wilson, a
co-founder of A.A. and the drafter of the Big Book, Alcoholics
Anonymous (which was co-written by the first hundred men to
find recovery in A.A.).

One of the most widely-recognized characteristics of
twelve-step groups is the requirement that members admit that
they "have a problem". In this spirit, many members open their
address to the group along the lines of, "Hi, I'm Pam and I'm
an alcoholic" — a catchphrase now widely identified with
support groups.

Attendees at group meetings share their experiences,
challenges, successes and failures, and provide peer support
for each other. Many people who have joined these groups report
they found success that previously eluded them, while others —
including some ex-members — criticize their efficacy or
universal applicability. Thus there is some controversy about
twelve-step programs.


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