Were the Traditions written with the Steps?
In short:
- No. The Twelve Steps were published in the Big Book in 1939. The Twelve Traditions were first printed seven years later, in 1946, in the A.A. Grapevine.
- The short form most people know today was cut down from that 1946 "long form" around 1947–1950, and A.A.'s first International Convention, at Cleveland in July 1950, confirmed it.
- The Traditions answer different questions from the Steps. The Steps are how one alcoholic recovered; the Traditions are how A.A. groups and A.A. as a whole learned to survive.
The dates, from the books themselves
1939: the Steps. The Twelve Steps are in Chapter 5, "How It Works" (pp. 59–60), part of the first edition, whose first printing was in 1939 (p. xiii). The 1939 book has no Traditions. The nearest thing is a few lines in the Foreword to the First Edition: no fees or dues, "The only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking," no alliance with any sect, and a request that members stay anonymous in the press (pp. xiii–xiv).
1946: the Long Form. The Big Book's own appendix calls the short form "a condensed version of the original 'long form' A.A. Traditions as first printed in 1946" (p. 561). Bill W. dates it to "the Grapevine of May, 1946" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957), with more Grapevine pieces explaining each point over the following months. Those essays, from 1946 and 1947, are reprinted in the pamphlet P-17.
About 1947–1950: the short form. Bill credits Earl T., founder of the Chicago group, with the idea of cutting the Long Form down to statements as short as the Steps. Earl came to him with it "One day in 1947, or thereabouts" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). After months of refining, the Grapevine printed the new wording in every issue.
1950: confirmed at Cleveland. The Foreword to the Second Edition (1955) says the principles "had become so widely accepted by 1950 that they were confirmed by our first International Conference held at Cleveland" (p. xix). Bill puts it in July 1950 and records the Convention's "unanimous voice of consent" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957).
So the Steps came first by seven years, and the Traditions in their familiar form came about eleven years after the Steps.
Why they came later
The Traditions grew out of problems that didn't exist in 1939. When the Big Book came out, A.A. was "more than one hundred men and women" (p. xiii). By the close of 1941 it was about 8,000 (p. xviii). Then came what the Second Edition foreword calls a "fearsome and exciting adolescent period" (p. xviii), with quarrels over membership, leadership and money (pp. xviii–xix). The Traditions were the lessons drawn from those years (see Why were the Twelve Traditions written?).
Bill described the order in which things happened: "Nobody invented Alcoholics Anonymous. It grew." (P-17, Foreword, 1955). Lessons were adopted "first as policy and then as tradition" (P-17, Foreword, 1955).
How the two sets relate
Bill himself compared them. In the foreword to P-17 he wrote that many members already felt "we ought to apply them as seriously to our group life as we do the Twelve Recovery Steps" (P-17, Foreword, 1955) to each member's own life. He added: "Of this, it will take time to tell." In 1947 he wrote that groups follow the Traditions "for the very same reason that the individual A.A. follows the Twelve Steps to recovery" (P-17, "Will A.A. Ever Have a Personal Government?", 1947). By 1957 he could write that, a few years after 1946, the Traditions were seen to be as necessary to the society as the Steps were to each member, and "the key to the unity, the functioning, and even the survival" of A.A. (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). At first, though, many members found them a bore.
A later pamphlet (P-43, 1971) makes the same point about how both were made: "Like the Steps, the Traditions were not figured out in advance" (P-43, 1971).
Read it yourself
- Appendix I, "The A.A. Tradition" (pp. 561–566), free from A.A.: https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_appendicei.pdf
- Foreword to the First Edition (pp. xiii–xiv): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_forewordfirstedition.pdf
- Foreword to the Second Edition (pp. xv–xxi): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_forewordsecondedition.pdf
- P-17, A.A. Tradition — How It Developed: https://www.aa.org/aa-tradition-how-it-developed
- P-43, The Twelve Traditions Illustrated: https://www.aa.org/twelve-traditions-illustrated
- Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age is sold by A.A. World Services at https://onlineliterature.aa.org
Sources
| Source | Pages | First published |
|---|---|---|
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 5 (the Steps) and Foreword to the First Edition | 59–60; xiii–xiv | 1939 |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Appendix I | 561 | text 1946; in the Big Book from 1955 |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Foreword to the Second Edition | xviii–xix | 1955 |
| P-17, Foreword; "Will A.A. Ever Have a Personal Government?" | — | dated 1955; 1947 |
| A.A. Comes of Age | — | 1957 |
| P-43, The Twelve Traditions Illustrated | 1 | 1971 |
Big Book page numbers are from the fourth edition (2001). Our copy of A.A. Comes of Age has no printed page numbers, so it's cited by book and year.
Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book, A.A. Comes of Age and P-43 are © A.A. World Services, Inc.; the P-17 articles are © AA Grapevine, Inc.
These pages answer questions about A.A. from A.A.'s own published literature, read in full, with every quote checked word for word against the page it cites. Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. What we read, and when each source was written.