What you will find in the 12 Step Companion
The 12 Step Companion is designed to be used as a guide to help you take someone (referred to here as a sponsee) through the Twelve Steps as detailed in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. The 12 Step Companion is set out in a format where each session could take a few hours or less. You can combine sessions to complete the program over a few weeks. You can do the steps in several weeks, two sessions per week. Or you can go at whatever pace works best for you and your sponsee.
Session 1a – Intro and Credibility
The Beginning of a new and powerful lifelong spiritual journey! “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.” The beginning means opening the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous to the very first title page. Then there’s a page about other books. Then there is perhaps one of the most important and hope-filled pages you will ever read in your early sobriety.
Alcoholics Anonymous “The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism.”
Session 1b The Doctor’s Opinion and Bill’s Story
Session 1b continues with the early outline of how to approach working through the steps. Then reading through The Doctor’s Opinion and finishing with Bill’s Story.
“Although I wish only the best for you, I know that your happiness, or unhappiness, depends on your actions, not on my wishes for you.” ~Unknown
Session 2a There is a Solution
We have more encouraging language with the second chapter. There Is a Solution!
“The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a common solution.” – Bill W.
They define alcoholism as an illness, and what they have discovered works to recover from alcoholism. They start outlining what the illness is, how it manifests in people’s lives, and exactly what you have to do to accomplish the miracle of solving the problem.
The miracle of working the steps is that I have had the spiritual experience they talk about in the Big Book, and the obsession to drink alcohol has been removed. In the big book they use the word recover 26 times and recovered 27 times. So it may be useful here to look up what the word recover means.
Recover: Verb (used with object) To get back or regain (something lost or taken away): to recover a stolen phone or a wasted life. To make up for, or make good for (loss, damage, etc., to oneself). To regain the strength, composure, balance, or the like, of (oneself). Verb (used without object) To regain health after being sick, wounded, or the like (from…): to recover from an illness. To regain a former and better state or condition
2b More About Alcoholism
We find that alcoholism is a progressive disease, even though we have tried many times to prove to ourselves that it is not, and even convincing ourselves that we are not real alcoholics.
“People who are not alcoholics never try and convince themselves they are not alcoholics.”
They give several great examples of people struggling with their alcohol addiction. They define the distinct parts of the disease. We continue to learn what alcoholism is all about. The spiritual program of action is talked about and a decision has to be made.
Session 3 – Step 2 and Step 3
“Lack of power is our dilemma.”
What shall we do about this? How can we get this power? There is a lot of ground covered in this section. First we read chapter four – We Agnostics
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Sandy B. says this chapter can be summed up in three words “Change your mind!”
Another speaker says the title of this chapter should be “We Former Agnostics!”
God works in mysterious ways. They don’t say we need to find God or even understand God. They simply say we need to seek a God of our own understanding.
Willingness is the key.
We then read chapter five – How It Works.
More great news for us, there is a plan and it does work. You will begin to realize that the Big Book is full of promises. The first sentence of this chapter is one of those promises: “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed are path.”
There is a path to follow. Follow is an action word. You don’t go far on a path if you just sit and look at the path, or read about the path in a book. You have to put some effort in to move along the path. This action step is thoroughly outlined in How It Works and in this section you will start to put pen to paper as we begin to write out our Step Four.
Session 4a – Resentments, Cause and Affects My
This session continues with the extensive work of writing out our Step Four inventor. Any business that doesn’t take regular inventor is bound to go broke! Remember that it asked you in the beginning of this journey
Are you willing to go to any lengths to find the solution to your alcohol dilemma?
How free do you want to be from alcoholism?
Session 4b – Where were we to blame?
This session continues the work on Step Four with a searching effort to look for causes and conditions. Primarily we look for our own mistakes. Where we were to blame. Column 4 – Our own mistakes. Column 5 – Our fears. Column 6 – Our Character Defects.
Session 5
The Inventories Continue. Session 5 gives us more instructions on how to complete our Step Four inventory. Primarily looking back through our lives regarding our sex conduct.
Session 6
Amazingly enough the inventory is complete – for now. Wow these guys just don’t let up.
The last paragraph of Chapter 5 has an important sentence; “If you have already made a decision, and an inventory of your grosser handicaps, you have made a good beginning.“
After all of the solid work you have done from the start of the steps until now you may think to yourself; “Well now I can take some time to reflect on my own magnificence.”
Take as long as you want – as long as you want to turn to the next page…
Session 7
Chapter 6 Into Action
Finally, we completed our personal inventory. Now what shall we do about it?
This brings us to Step Five. Until we actually sit down and talk with someone about what we have so long kept hidden, our willingness to clean house is still largely theoretical. This requires action on our part! When we are honest with another person, it confirms that we have been honest with ourselves and with God. Session 7 gives some helpful instructions on how to prepare for and complete the Step Five process.
Session 8
This brings us to Step Six and Step Seven on the path. Step Six and Step Seven are only two paragraphs in the Big Book and yet these two humble paragraphs are the foundation on which we build our new life. Bill has a great deal more to say about Step Six and Step Seven after fifteen years of experience working with alcoholics, and wrote two chapters in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions book about these steps. Drawing from his many years of understanding Bill expanded greatly on how to work these two steps. There are whole books written on Step Six and Step Seven if you want to really get into it.
Session 9
Moving right along Session 9 continues with our action steps as we walk through Step Eight and Step Nine. This session completes the chapter “Into Action”. But it doesn’t end the action steps.
Session 10
Step Ten and Step Eleven
Step Ten – Continue to take Personal Inventory pg. 84. This step is the beginning of our daily disciplines. As my friend Patrick says: “A.A. doesn’t get in the way, A.A. is the way.” People often refer to this A.A. step as the daily inventory or the daily spot-check inventory. The simplest way to describe Step Ten is from pg. 90 of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions:
“Every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us.” — Bill W.
Session 11
Step Twelve
Always be willing to carry the message of recovery, sponsor and work with others. You never know what part God wants you to play in someone else’s sober journey!
Session 12
A Vision for You – And Chapters 8, 9, and 10
It seems that every list and banner in Alcoholics Anonymous has 12 elements to it. So you might be saying to yourself; “What does Session 12 have for me?” I am a hopeful, joyful, sentimentalist and I ask you to think of the rest of your life as Session 12. What will you be writing about for that session? What will your story of recover in action bring to Alcoholics Anonymous?
“Turn your attention away from trying to prove to God what you can do, and let God prove, through you, what He can do.” ~ Unknown