Illustration · A flight of twelve stairs climbing to a landing window in early morning light, for Step Twelve’s “as the result of these steps.” Imagined; not drawn from a photograph.

The Educational Variety

A spiritual awakening

AA’s Twelfth Step speaks of a spiritual awakening, and since 1939 members have been working out what one is, and whether it comes in a moment or slowly.

“Most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James calls the ‘educational variety’ because they develop slowly over a period of time.”

The Big Book, Appendix II, “Spiritual Experience,” first added in 1941 · Alcoholics Anonymous, fourth edition, 2001

Step Twelve begins, “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps…” When AA’s book first came out, in 1939, the Step said “spiritual experience,” and the experience its first chapter tells is Bill W.’s own, a sudden one, at Towns Hospital in December 1934. Two years later a new printing changed the word, and a page added at the back said that for most members the change came slowly.

This piece follows the idea from the book that reached Bill in the hospital, William James’s book of 1902, to today: how Bill told his own night for the rest of his life; what the twenty-nine stories in the first Big Book say; the 1941 change; members’ writing in the Grapevine, and a Miami member’s account of the night he nearly died; and Bill’s question to Carl Jung about LSD. Legacy ends with members’ own accounts and the researchers who set out to measure what AA calls an awakening.

It’s built from AA’s own books, pamphlets and Grapevine, Bill W.’s papers to doctors and his letters, James’s lectures, Jung’s letters, and the work of Ernest Kurtz and Ian McCabe. It takes no view of what the experiences were: each is told in the words of the people who had them or wrote them down, and where the accounts disagree, these pages say so.

Start with 1 · The book Ebby brought

The idea, year by year

1902William James publishes The Varieties of Religious Experience, his lectures at Edinburgh. Among the people it tells of who were changed are drunkards.
1934In December, a few days into his last stay at Towns Hospital, Bill W. has the experience he would describe for the rest of his life. A day or two later James’s book reaches him.
1939AA’s book comes out in April. Its Twelfth Step speaks of a spiritual experience, and its stories tell of sudden changes and slow ones.
1941A new printing changes Step Twelve to “spiritual awakening” and adds an appendix saying that most members’ experiences are of the “educational variety,” and come slowly.
1944In the Grapevine, Bill W. half wishes a newcomer could be given a straight dose of the experience and have it over with.
1945T.B. of Atlanta writes in the Grapevine that very few members know the hour and date of their spiritual experience.
1949In a paper read to the American Psychiatric Association in Montreal, Bill tells his night with a cry, a blinding white light and a mountain wind.
1953Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions answers the newcomer’s question of what a spiritual awakening means.
1956On August 29, in California, Bill takes LSD for the first time.
1958The Grapevine prints a Miami member’s account of the night he nearly died, with a note from Bill asking to hear from every member who has had a sudden experience.
1961Carl Jung answers Bill’s letter of thanks with spiritus contra spiritum, and dies that June without answering Bill’s question about LSD.
1962Bill writes in the Grapevine that sudden and gradual experiences are “all of the same piece.”
1973AA publishes Came to Believe, in which more than 75 members tell what a spiritual awakening and God as they understood Him mean to them.
2001Two researchers in New Mexico publish Quantum Change, on 55 people who said their lives had changed in a short time.
2014AA’s pamphlet Many Paths to Spirituality includes a member who writes that an atheist on matters of the supernatural can still have a spiritual awakening.
2022A trial of the drug psilocybin for alcohol use disorder reports fewer heavy-drinking days among those given the drug than among those given a placebo. AA takes no side.
2026AA’s Conference approves a fifth edition of the Big Book. In its first 164 pages, where Step Twelve stands, it votes to remove one offensive term.

Walk through the idea

Each part has a short story, a one-minute audio stop, and a closer look for anyone who wants to go deeper. Read them in order, or start anywhere.

New to the story? The Kitchen Table tells how AA began, from one drunk talking to another to millions around the world.

Watch The Kitchen Table