Step Twelve Love

Step Twelve is about one person maintaining their sobriety by helping another to stay sober. This is a fundamental principle of recovery.

It is an expression of compassion for someone other than ourselves who is still suffering.

The essense of one alcoholic helping another is captured in the poem below. It is a favourite poem often recited by a member of Alcoholics Anonymous in New Zealand who has been sober for more than sixty three (63) years. (as at 2018) Always with a twinkle in his eye, this man tells this story. In his early sobriety an attractive young woman took him by the hand and led him to a quiet table in the corner of a bar.

She recited to him this poem, which he has never forgotten:

Step Twelve Love Poem

There's the wonderful love of a beautiful maid,

And the love of a staunch true man,

And the love of a baby that's unafraid -

All have existed since time began.

But the most wonderful love,
The Love of all loves,
Even greater than the love for Mother,

Is the infinite, tenderest, passionate love
Of one drunken bum for another.

Anonymous