Most people in recovery first hear the AA Promises near the close of a meeting, when someone reads the Ninth Step Promises aloud. But the Big Book carries promises through all 12 Steps. This page gathers the AA promises tied to each step, from admitting powerlessness to carrying the message.
Some of these promises are stated directly. Others are implied, but just as real. Together they describe what the program offers anyone willing to do the work.
Each section opens with the passage that supports it, followed by a short look at what it offers. Except where noted, quotes come from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
What Are the AA Promises?
The AA Promises are the hopeful outcomes the Big Book describes for people who work the program. The best known are the Ninth Step Promises on pages 83 and 84, often called simply “the Promises.”
The promise of recovery runs through the whole book, though. Bill W., a co-founder of AA, wrote of a common solution: ordinary people finding a way out together. Every step adds something to that picture.
The Big Book’s Introduction to the 12 Steps
Before listing the Twelve Steps, the Big Book introduces them as a suggested program of recovery.
Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery. (p. 59)
These are steps “we took.” Other people have walked this road and found freedom from alcohol, so recovery is possible. Each step builds on the last, turning the program’s principles into daily practice.
Step 1: Hope in Admitting Powerlessness
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. (pg. 59)
Admitting defeat is the first step toward claiming life back from alcohol. It is also a reach for something better.
Rock bottom looks different for everyone. Once you name it, the only direction left is up. Right after the steps, the Big Book adds a simple word of encouragement: “Do not be discouraged” (p. 60).
Step 2: A Power That Could and Would
That God could and would if He were sought. (p. 60)
This is one of the plainest assurances in the Big Book. A solution exists for the drink problem, and a Higher Power can do what willpower cannot.
The same page makes clear that perfection is not required.
No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. (p. 60)
Willingness, not perfection, opens the door to progress. Earlier in the book, the first members describe what that willingness led them to.
We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed. (p. 25)
The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. (p. 25)
They show what is possible: a spiritual awakening, a new attitude toward life, and a life we could not imagine, in sobriety.
Step 3: Peace of Mind and a New Power
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. (p. 59)
Each person’s understanding of God can differ from anyone else’s, and that is okay. What matters is the turning toward. Many people reach this step after running the show on their own plans and finding that willpower was never enough.
The Third Step Prayer puts the surrender into words.
God, I offer myself to Thee, to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of Life. (p. 63)
As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow, or the hereafter. We were reborn. (p.63)
Right after the prayer, the Big Book describes what followed for the early members.
As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow, or the hereafter. We were reborn. (p. 63)
The implied promises here are striking:
- A new power and an awareness of a Higher Power’s presence
- Peace of mind
- The ability to face life successfully
- Freedom from fear of today, tomorrow, and the hereafter
- A sense of rebirth
Being all-powerful, He provided what we needed. (p. 63)
The promise concerns needs, not always wants. The two are often different.
An effect, sometimes a very great one, was felt at once. (p. 63)
Many people notice a change right away once they make this decision.
Step 4: Freedom From Resentment
If we have been thorough about our personal inventory, we have written down a lot. We have listed and analyzed our resentments. We have begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality. We have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness. We have begun to learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people. We have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct, and are willing to straighten out the past if we can. (p. 70)
This passage describes what a thorough inventory tends to produce. Resentments lose their grip once their cost is clear, and tolerance and patience begin to grow.
Willingness to make amends starts forming here, long before Step Nine. Change is already underway.
Step 5: Peace, Confidence, and Spiritual Experience
We can look the world in the eye. We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. Our fears fall from us. We begin to feel the nearness of our Creator. We may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience. The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly upon us. We feel we are on the Broad Highway, walking hand in hand with the Spirit of the Universe. (p. 75)
This is one of the most hopeful passages in the Big Book. Belief in God becomes an experience of God.
Fear falls away, peace becomes possible even in solitude, and confidence returns.
Step 6: Willingness to Change
Step Six is about becoming entirely ready to have these defects of character removed. That readiness begins with willingness. The 12 and 12 describes what happens when we resist that willingness:
The moment we say, “No, never!” our minds close against the grace of God. Delay is dangerous, and rebellion may be fatal. This is the exact point at which we abandon limited objectives, and move toward God’s will for us.
Willingness does not mean that every defect disappears overnight. It means becoming open to change and willing to let go of the patterns that keep us from living according to God’s will.
Step 7: Moments of Peace of Mind
By this time, in all probability, we have gained some measure of release from our more devastating handicaps. We enjoy moments in which there is something like real peace of mind. To those of us who have known only excitement, depression, or anxiety, in other words, to all of us, this newfound peace is a priceless gift. (12 and 12, p. 74)
Release from our character defects may already have begun. Real peace can be found, and it is a gift beyond measure.
Step 8: An End To Isolation
It is the beginning of the end of isolation from our fellows and from God. (12 and 12, p. 82)
As we make our list, we also gain a new understanding of our families and the people we love. We approach amends in a spirit of forgiveness, toward others and toward ourselves.
Step 9: The 9th Step Promises
These are the best known of all the AA Promises. They follow directly after the Big Book’s guidance on making amends, and people read them aloud everywhere, from a small home group to the International Convention.
The Big Book introduces the 9th-step promises in a single line.
If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. (p. 83)
- We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
- We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
- We will comprehend the word serenity.
- We will know peace.
- No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
- That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
- We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
- Self-seeking will slip away.
- Our whole attitude and outlook on life will change.
- Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us.
- We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
- We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them. (p. 84)
The promise that experience can benefit others sits at the heart of recovery. As self-pity loosens its grip, attention turns outward and a new life opens up.
For a closer look at each one, read the full guide to the 9th Step Promises of AA. A copy on the wall can serve as a daily reminder, and several free designs are available on the AA Promises printable page.
Step 10: The 10th Step Promise
For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor afraid. (pp. 84 to 85)
- Sanity will return, and our mental faculties clear.
- Normal responses return.
- As time passes, interest in drinking fades, and if it surfaces, we reject it automatically.
People in recovery see all sorts of remarkable things happen as this step takes hold.
Step 11: Conscious Contact and a Daily Reprieve
Much has already been said about receiving strength, inspiration, and direction from Him who has all knowledge and power. If we have carefully followed directions, we have begun to sense the flow of His Spirit into us. To some extent we have become God-conscious. We have begun to develop this vital sixth sense. (p.85)
- We become aware of the dictates of a Higher Power.
- We will experience a new sense of power.
- We are guided by effective spiritual experiences.
- God can strengthen us.
The 12 and 12 suggests that with daily prayer and meditation there is less danger of excitement, fear, or anger. This practice reaches the working part of the mind that willpower alone cannot.
What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. (p.85)
Sobriety holds one day at a time, as long as the spiritual condition stays fit.
Step 12: Freedom Through Service
Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. (p. 89)
Helping others stay sober is one of the strongest protections against drinking. Each person discovers a unique way to be useful, and service keeps the helper sober too.
When we look back, we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God’s hands were better than anything we could have planned. (p. 100)
Compared with the chaos of drinking days, the change is enormous. Life in our Higher Power’s hands turns out better than any plan made alone.
Follow the dictates of a Higher Power, and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world, no matter what your present circumstances. (p. 100)
Present circumstances do not have the final word. Alcohol never solves a problem, but a new approach to life can shape any situation.
What the 12 Step Promises Add Up To
Some of the AA promises are stated plainly. Others live between the lines of the Big Book and the other AA books.
Taken together, they point to something larger. Even after collapse, a way forward exists.
- An end to drinking and the start of a new way of life
- Present circumstances that need not be final
- A life in communion with the God of our understanding
- A transformed life for anyone who seeks it earnestly
These promises are not reserved for people with long-term sobriety. Change often begins in the first days and weeks.
Anyone still struggling is not alone. A new way of life is within reach.