Two-Stepping

Service work will guarantee you another 24 hours will it? And you’re telling this to newcomers? Well, I think two-stepping usually carries an opportunity to get drunk along with it! That might be why they speak of it in the Twelve and Twelve…

Page 113;

“We temporarily cease to grow because we feel satisfied that there is no need for all of A.A.’s Twelve Steps for us. We are doing fine on a few of them, the First Step and that part of the Twelfth where we “carry the message.” In A.A. slang, that blissful state is known as ‘two-stepping.’ And it can go on for years.

The best intentioned of us can fall for the ‘two-step’ illusion. Sooner or later the pink cloud stage will wear off and things go disappointingly dull. We begin to think that A.A. doesn’t pay off after all. We become puzzled and discouraged.

Then perhaps life, as it has a way of doing, suddenly hands us a great big lump that we can’t begin to swallow, let alone digest. We fail to get a worked-for promotion. We lose that good job. Maybe there are serious domestic or romantic difficulties, or perhaps that boy we thought God was looking after becomes a military casualty.”

I.E. the realities of life jump up and bite us in the a**! And if we’re not fully centered, or grounded, in the Twelve Steps, chances are we’ll drink again.

If you’re part of the “gang” who’s out there trying to convince newcomers that they can stay sober based on service work before they’re versed in the Twelve Steps, stop it, then go back and fix what you’ve done.

“But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven’t got.”