AA's twelve steps are a proposal for a personal recovery program based on the experiences of AA's earliest members.

The steps describe the approach to things that AA's first members believed helped them in their efforts towards a sober lifestyle. Experience shows that those AAs who seriously try to follow these suggestions and apply the steps to their daily lives rarely fail.

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The Twelve Steps were first published in Alcoholics Anonymous in 1939. In the preface of the first edition, the following is said, among other things: "The main purpose of this book is to tell other alcoholics exactly how we have recovered".

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In the fifth part of the book, "What is the question?" -chapter shows the steps:

We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become out of control.

We learn to believe that some power greater than ourselves can bring us back to our senses.

We decided to surrender our will and our lives to God - as we understood him.

We conducted a thorough and fearless moral introspection.

We admitted the exact nature of our shortcomings to God, to ourselves, and to someone else.

We were fully prepared to let God remove all these defects in our character.

We humbly asked him to remove our infirmities.

We made a list of all the people we hurt and wanted to make amends to all of them.

We personally made amends to these people whenever possible, unless in doing so we harmed them or others.

We continued to introspect and when we were wrong, we admitted it immediately.

Through prayer and meditation, we seek to develop our conscious connection with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for our relationship and the strength to carry it out.

After experiencing a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to convey this message to alcoholics and implement these principles in all our activities.