12-Step Anonymous Programs

All 12-Step anonymous groups are based on the pioneering Alcoholics Anonymous group.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is a global peer-led mutual aid fellowship begun in the United States dedicated to abstinence-based recovery from alcoholism through their spiritually inclined twelve-step program.

Besides stressing anonymity, AA’s twelve traditions establish it as non-professional, non-denominational, apolitical and unaffiliated.^[2In 2020 AA estimated its worldwide membership to be over two million with 75% of those in the US and Canada. More (drop)

In 1935, the recognized start of AA, Bill Wilson (Bill W.) first commiserated alcoholic-to-alcoholic with Bob Smith (Dr. Bob). They met through AA’s immediate precursor the Christian revivalist Oxford Group, where they and other alcoholics fellowshipped until forming what became AA. In 1939 the new fellowship, then mostly male and white, published Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered From Alcoholism. Known as the Big Book, it is also the origin of AA’s name.

Click here for various 12-Step programs beyond AA