working works

The AA equivalent of “faith without works is dead” is the slogan “It works if you work it.”

AA recovery rates, despite what you’ll see claimed in various places, are difficult to calculate or evaluate for this very reason: recovery is not an automatic process where something happens ‘to’ me. Rather, recovery depends on work.

There are four logical possibilities when it comes to the two questions of a) whether recovery is working (or not) and b) whether a person is working their program (or not). These four possibilities are worth exploring briefly:

1. It’s working, and I’m working it. No mystery here. As promised in step 12, they have “a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps”. These folks surrender enough to not only attend meetings, but they work the steps with a sponsor, they do service, they call other members on the phone for mutual support. By helping others, they help themselves. It’s absolute genius.
2. It’s not working, and I’m not working it. No mystery here either. If you don’t do the work, you won’t see results. Not working “these steps” means no “spiritual awakening”. Pure and simple.
3. It’s working, but I’m not working it. One knows they are an alcoholic (or an addict of any kind) precisely due to their failure to get and stay sober through any means other than working a program. So then, if 1) a member of AA (for example) is clean and sober as the day is long, and 2) they have attained this ‘working’ sobriety without working the program, it means they have a condition other than ‘addiction’… If you’re not working it, but it is working… you really by definition cannot be an addict. This doesn’t mean you can’t attend AA meetings, but it does mean you need to be very careful with what you say and how you act in meetings, so that you are not ‘carrying’ a different ‘message’ to someone who needs to hear the real message of recovery through working the steps.
4. It’s not working, but I’m working it. Here we run into the reality that not all ‘working’ is the same. You won’t get sober from alcoholism (or another addiction) by simply doing a lot of ‘working’ in the sense of academic or intensive study and reading up about addiction. Recovery ‘work’ is not simply about head knowledge. Recovery ‘work’ is also not about therapeutic experiences. It has nothing to do with candles, bubble baths, or finding yourself on some intrepid meditation retreat in a distant country. Recovery work is indeed about spirituality, but not some uber specific form of spirituality that can be neatly detached from the grit of the inescapably practical recovery principles. Recovery work – step work – is about spiritual surrender, making a list of your faults, identifying areas you need to change, making things right to people you’ve harmed (after checking your motives!), and resolving to live a life of humility, honesty, spirituality, and service.

It works.
If you work it.