Step 12 suggests working with other people in our respective programs. From the very beginning in AA, this has been a predominant focus in our recovery. Carrying the message to other sufferers has always been recognized as an effective way of keeping our own addiction at bay.

The word "sponsor" is absent from the first 164 pages of the AA Big Book. Although working with other alcoholics was at the core of the early days of AA, it had not yet been formulated into sponsorship as we know it today. That "deficiency" has been more than remedied since. You can even purchase books on how to sponsor other people.

For the first few years of our recovery, we were glad to have sponsors who knew what we should do and who told us. With the passing of the years, though, we tended to move away from people who knew what we ought to do. Somehow, we found it more comforting to be around people who were a little less sure of themselves and who usually told us they had no idea what we should do next in our recovery.

For us, "carrying this message" to others may no longer look much like the classic definition of sponsorship or even good old-fashioned twelfth-Step work. Instead, it may consist mainly in sharing ourselves in depth with those others in our program who have committed themselves, like us, to a way of life based on the last three Steps. For we know from our own experience that, as long as we downplayed Steps 10, 11 and 12, we continued to suffer.