Episode 1140: How Long Should It Take To Work The 12 Steps?Episode 1140: How Long Should It Take To Work The 12 Steps?
Take 12 Recovery Radio
HOW LONG SHOULD IT TAKE TO WORK THE 12 STEPS? In this episode of the Came to Believe Recovery Pod...
55:32•14 Oct 2026
Stop Stalling the Steps: Timing Your 12-Step Work
Episode Overview
- Working the 12 Steps quickly and thoroughly is presented as safer than stretching them over months or years in a life-threatening condition.
- The phrase is clarified as “spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection,” warning against using it as a reason to avoid hard spiritual work.
- Monty and Tom stress that recovery literature points to immediate action with phrases like “next we launched,” rather than long pauses between steps.
- They argue that repeatedly redoing Steps One through Nine keeps people feeling “always recovering” instead of living in Steps Ten, Eleven and Twelve as recovered.
- Stalling on inventories and amends is linked to being taught to focus on grim details instead of the nature of defects and meaningful amends.
“If your life depends on the solution, why in the world would you keep putting off the work?”
You’ll hear Monty read community comments ranging from “a step a year” to “as long as it takes, dude,” and then watch Tom calmly ask the hard question: “Who told you that?” They keep bringing the focus back to the recovery literature, pointing out that the book uses phrases like “next we launched on a vigorous course of action” rather than “take a month to think about it.” The pair argue that dragging out the steps for months or years isn’t automatically more thorough; it can actually keep people stuck in endless inventories and apology tours instead of experiencing the spiritual awakening described in the text.
What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol? This episode of Take 12 Recovery Radio’s Came to Believe Recovery Podcast tackles a hot-button issue many people are quietly wondering about: how long should it actually take to work the 12 Steps? Recovered alcoholic Monty “the Monty’man” Meyer teams up with Tom Williams, CEO of Came to Believe Recovery, for a straight-talking, often funny, sometimes challenging chat about timing, urgency and the way sponsorship is handled in many fellowships.
Monty gently corrects a popular slogan, explaining it’s “spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection,” and warns how misusing that line can become an excuse for avoiding the work. Together, they highlight how many people stall at Step Four and Step Nine because they’re taught to obsess over every grim detail of the past rather than focus on the nature of their defects and real amends.
The episode finishes with Monty’s tongue-in-cheek song "They Died at Step Two" and a punchy reminder: “If your life depends on the solution, why in the world would you keep putting off the work?” If you’ve been circling the steps for years, this conversation might nudge you to ask yourself: what are you actually waiting for?
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