After the third and fourth chapters--"More About Alcoholism" and "We Agnostics"--were completed, Bill came to a place that had been a barrier in his own mind and had given him considerable worry. He had to set down the actual program for the alcoholic to follow, and he wanted to make it as powerful as possible.

He had a great fear that the message might be misunderstood by alcoholics in distant places. . . What was printed on the page might well be the only information the suffering alcoholic would have access to. It had to be powerful--and thorough. As Bill put it, "There must not be a single loophole through which the rationalizing alcoholic could wiggle out." Bill was about to write the famous fifth chapter, "How It Works".

The basic material for the chapter was the word-of-mouth program that Bill had been talking ever since his own recovery. It was heavy with Oxford Group principles, and had in addition some of the ideas Bill had gleaned from William James and Dr. Silkworth. Moreover, Bill had worked with Dr. Bob and other alcoholics in testing and sifting the workability and effectiveness of the early program. While he would be the nominal author of the fifth chapter, he was in fact serving as spokesman for all the others. . .

There is no evidence that the Oxford Group had such a specific program; yet the Oxford Group ideas prevail in these original six steps, as listed by Bill:

1. We admitted that we were licked, that we were powerless over alcohol.
2. We mad a moral inventory of our defects or sins.
3. We confessed or shared our shortcomings with another person in confidence.
4. We made restitution to all those we had harmed by our drinking.
5. We tried to help other alcoholics, with no thought of reward in money or prestige.
6. We prayed to whatever God we thought there was for power to practice these precepts.

Although those steps had helped in the recovery of New York and Akron alcoholics, Bill felt the program still was not definitive. "Maybe our six chunks of truth should be broken up into smaller pieces," he said. "Thus we could better get the distant reader over the barrel, and at the same time we might be able to broaden and deepen the spiritual implications of our whole presentation."

Bill wrote the Twelve Steps, he said, while lying in bed at 182 Clinton Street with pencil in hand and a pad of yellow scratch paper on his knee. . .

As he started to write, he asked for guidance. And he relaxed. The words began tumbling out with astonishing speed. He completed the first draft in about a half hour, then kept on writing until he felt he should stop and review what he had written. Numbering the new steps, he found that they added up to twelve--a symbolic number. . .

Reprinted with permission; "PASS IT ON"; Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.