How 12-step programs can help build healthier movements

This article How 12-step programs can help build healthier movements was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

The Trump administration is stoking fear by mass arresting immigrants, militarizing cities and cracking down on free speech, all while further enriching billionaires and consolidating power. If nonviolent movements are going to successfully challenge such authoritarianism they will need to draw in more people, and at the same time maintain their inner resources and resilience. Since the election, movement organizers have called for greater care for one another and making community building a larger part of organizing work and protesting.

A new 12-step fellowship program is ready for this moment. Twelve-step is a method individuals use to recover from their personal demons. It began with Alcoholics Anonymous and branched out into many programs addressing different addictions. The practice and impact of 12-step is broader, however. It is also a mutual aid model that builds and strengthens communities at the same time as restoring individual spirits, and it has been inspiring hope for 90 years. 

In addition to being mutual aid, 12-step programs are especially relevant now because recovery is resistance. Personal recovery from dysfunctional programming is recovery from authoritarianism.

I first encountered this idea in the book “When Society Becomes An Addict,” where Anne Wilson Schaef maps addiction patterns within individuals to patterns in the authoritarian political and economic system warping our society. She notes that ingestive addictions (substances) make us compliant and controllable, while process addictions (such as getting hooked on making money) “cause us to lose our moral and social perspective on a global scale,” perpetuating and expanding the dominant system. 

There is hope, though, because through 12-step participants have learned a lot about how to disentangle addiction from their thoughts and behaviors. Schaef posits that since we have small scale recovery, we can have large scale recovery. They are the same process and as the community of recovery grows, the system ruling our society loses its grip.

Personal recovery is political recovery

Most of the 12-step programs are named after identifiers such as alcohol, narcotics, overeating, underearning and codependency. For many people, coping mechanisms become doping mechanisms, take over their lives, then their identities, and run them into the ground. 

The 12 steps are a set of principles that, when activated and practiced, can restore a person’s power of choice over their life. Going through a series of reflection questions and guided actions per step teaches participants how to resist urges, refuse self-harm and embody serenity, courage and wisdom instead. The first through the fourth steps are revolutions in thought; the fifth to the ninth step transform the new thinking into new behaviors; and the 10th to 12th steps are maintenance so that owning the power of choice becomes a new way to live. 

In a hypercapitalist society, regaining any power of choice is resistance. The revolutions in thought also have to uproot specific indoctrinations. Step One is admitting we’re powerless over our coping mechanism and that we need help. Step Two is believing that help is available and Step Three is deciding to ask for that help. These three steps together are a break from rugged individualism. 

Step Four is an inventory of our personal assets and liabilities, not to be judgmental but to be liberatory. We assess what beliefs and behaviors are and are not serving us anymore, so that we can choose what to change. Often this means identifying inaccurate perceptions of ourselves, on a spectrum from grandiosity (100 percent assets) to self-loathing (100 percent liabilities). Our inaccuracies were programmed into us, usually by people who had power over us when we were kids. We needed our coping mechanisms because we couldn’t reject the programming. We coped because we couldn’t be our true selves. Right-sizing ourselves now means bucking the rules of those authorities. 

Many 12-step programs agree with the idea that addiction is a disease of isolation, of feeling so disconnected from other people that only our coping mechanism can give us solace. In response, 12-step fellowship helps people create their own tribes. This could be a helpful response to the loneliness epidemic that authoritarians are exploiting through the classic tactic of “divide and conquer.”

However, the requirement to identify as an addict or addict-adjacent can be a barrier to entry. Paul Engler and colleagues from various recovery groups have asked the question: What if we started a 12-step program that shifts the focus away from the identifiers?

Personal recovery remix

Engler is executive director of the Center for the Working Poor and was a co-founder of Momentum, a training program for organizations on the left. A writer, strategist and licensed therapist, he has also personally worked two 12-step programs. 

Engler realized that the Gordian knot tying together all the identifiers is: We aren’t who we want to be. Authorities play God with our lives, and their programming and our resulting habits contort us into rigid boxes. Those boxes have been called our shadows, false selves, egos, personas. We know we’re trapped in them because we keep reacting to people and situations in ways we later regret. Our own reactive behaviors feel terribly wrong or they don’t get our needs met, or both.

12 Step For Everyone, the new program from Engler and his colleagues, doesn’t require labels. Instead, it offers recovery from reactivity for anyone who wants to participate.

The strengths of the mutual aid model will continue in this new iteration of the 12-step model: There is anonymity, sponsorship, small support meetings and donation-based participation so that money isn’t a hurdle or a corrupting influence. (Funding for three staffers is coming from grants.) A new guidebook describing the program’s approach, informally named the Big Book within 12-step communities, is ready and available on request. For those who are already plugged into 12-step fellowships, 12 Step For Everyone recommends continuing that work concurrently (in contrast with some programs that limit their members to one fellowship only).

A new feature in 12 Step for Everyone is the inclusion of donation-based initial trainings, which will occur every three months starting in January 2026. The traditional onboarding for a 12-step program is: A person hits rock bottom, someone suggests the relevant program, they head into a meeting metaphorically on their knees, and they sit through it confused, maybe suspicious and possibly resentful. Yet something happens to keep them coming back — a kind word, recognition of their story in someone else’s experience or simply a short rest from their personal hell. In my program (Al-Anon, for friends and families of alcoholics), I’ve heard newcomers share, “I have no idea what you all are talking about but you seem pretty happy, and I want that.”

The new program includes a training session partly because in the switch away from identifiers, newcomers may not have hit bottom in a recognizable way. The training is meant to explain what this version of recovery is and why it’s worth starting now.

Training will also share guidance around God and prayer language that unfortunately, not all programs communicate. I’m in New York City where many people work their programs without an institutional God, so we help newcomers understand that spiritual doesn’t mean religious, and a “higher power” doesn’t have to mean superhuman. 

The other new feature of this program is that it’s overtly politically progressive. It’s starting in partnership with movement organizations on the left, such as unions and nonprofits, and the training will include political analysis. Twelve-step programs codify what they call “traditions,” which structure practices for all the small groups within a program. These usually include a rule against groups having opinions on outside issues. 12 Step For Everyone will have a new set of traditions because, as Engler says, “We consider the crisis of our culture, community and the world not to be an outside issue.” 

Recovery benefits from political context because the authorities who program us sometimes use mechanisms like internalized racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia and every other weapon of oppression. Recovery also requires safety. For example, a trans person should not have to deal with another member questioning their right to exist. Partnering with movement organizations means members will already share fundamental respect for each other. Ideally we would be living in a society where we could take that for granted, but we don’t.

This isn’t the first time the 12-step model has been adapted to include political alignment. The polar opposite program is called Celebrate Recovery, or CR. It was founded by a white evangelist at the Saddleback megachurch as “a biblically-based approach” to recovery.

Engler researched the extent of CR’s influence after starting 12 Step For Everyone, and he is adamant that CR is supporting people in their sobriety and meeting their basic need for community. 

CR has gatekeepers, though. According to the “DNA of Celebrate Recovery” document, a CR small group can only exist as a ministry within a local church and “should follow the policies of the local church.” 

Community recovery

The left is not toothless at this critical moment in U.S. history. The record-breaking protest marches, the pushbacks against ICE, a democratic socialist blowing past the establishment to win the New York City primary for mayor, and Tesla Takedown are all signs of hope, determination and new recruits. But the left has problems with onboarding, toxicity, unity and continuity. 

Onboarding into organizations on the left still mostly relies on friendliness, adrenaline and the importance of the work to keep people in community. In the face of increasing aggression these motivations might fail, and being inspired by the mission doesn’t prevent or heal burnout. As life gets tougher, we need stronger ties with each other as soon as possible. 

In 12-step groups, sponsorship creates those bonds. A sponsor is a member of the program who a sponsee can contact when they’re worried, overwhelmed, in pain or (as my sponsor just reminded me) to share victories. Critically, nobody needs to make friends first to access this level of support. I had barely spoken to my sponsor before I asked her to guide me in my recovery work.

Imagine being a newcomer to the left, to activism or to community, and connecting with a seasoned activist who will respond to your call or text when you’re shaking over the latest ICE kidnapping or Supreme Court decision. You aren’t stranded alone with harmful thoughts no matter when the next meeting or march is scheduled. Meanwhile, your sponsor isn’t burning out because they understand they don’t have to solve problems or take control. They simply share experience and provide perspective. I haven’t seen the equivalent of this support in movement spaces yet.

Division and toxicity make it hard for people to stay organized on the left as well. Disagreement is essential for a healthy community, and if we bring in the numbers of people we need to win a liveable future, it should be a regular occurrence. Disagreement doesn’t have to blow up into division but it can be difficult to know where to draw the line and agree to disagree, versus identifying a problem for the group that needs resolution. In 12-step programs, participants are free to say what they think while sharing in small groups, and crosstalk, criticism and gossip regarding shares are strongly discouraged. Disagreement occurs without reactivity all the time. Meanwhile, a structure of business meetings, votes and ad hoc committees resolves problems as they occur. 

Staying organized isn’t always the right answer and organizations fold for healthy reasons as well as tragic ones. It’s part of adapting to circumstances. But there is a shortage of continuous, durable home organizations on the left that activists can plug into regardless of burnout, illness, changing focus or life circumstances. I learned the hard way that if you’re not on a committee somewhere, you can get lost, because the concept of community has been beaten out of our organizations and society at large.

When you take stock of all these problems that plague movement spaces, imagine how different it could be if colleagues were working on being less reactive together. With all our different reasons for reactivity and different weapons we pick up when we’re reacting, the process of recovery would be the same and shared. We would be regularly feeling empathy and pride for each other — and practicing gentleness with each other and with ourselves. If anyone had to take a break or if an organization needed to recalibrate, members wouldn’t lose connection with the tribe because they could still come to recovery meetings. And we wouldn’t be subject to our own harsh knee-jerk reactions when disagreements arise. 

Twelve-step doesn’t work for every person who tries it. Reasons vary for this, from the conduct of particular small groups to the practice of losing your “day count” after a slip (for example, a person who has been in AA for 10 years takes one drink and their count of days sober resets from thousands to one). Holly Whitaker criticizes this mechanism as unhelpfully punitive in her book “Quit Like a Woman.” 

The left hasn’t worked for every person who tried it either, partly because we tend to organize people using expectations instead of support. We expect people to stay in community for the mission and we assume that any personal bonds that happen to form will carry us through any challenge.

This is not accidental. The dominant system wants us to forget, or never learn, how to build lasting tribes. But 12-step mutual aid has provided reliable support at scale, over time, regardless of circumstances. With millions of members, it’s popular at a level the U.S. left needs. And because it uproots authoritarianism deep within us, it might help achieve not just a victory over one tyrant, but a society that doesn’t foster and elevate tyrants at all.

This article How 12-step programs can help build healthier movements was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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Source: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/10/how-12-step-programs-can-help-build-healthier-movements/