Twelve-Step Programs

David R. Rudy & Hugh Everman

Twelve-step programs include the namesake organization, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), and other mutual help programs that are modeled on the 12 steps of AA. Their unifying assumption is that the most effective and efficient path to recovery from alcoholism, addiction, and other problems is the dynamic of mutual help—one addict helping another. AAs primacy and influence make detailed knowledge of its approach essential to understanding twelve-step programs in general. Since the founding and development of Alcoholics Anonymous in the United States during the late 1930s, numerous programs representing a broad range of maladies have utilized the general principles of AA, the 12 steps. Initially concentrated in North America, AA and its spin-offs have progressively been adapted and implemented in significant areas of the world. On May 11, 1935, a failed, middle-aged New York City stockbroker, William Griffith Wilson, was in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel in Akron, Ohio, facing a ...

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