Steps 3 through 12 are how we get from step 1 to step 2

"Steps three through twelve are how we get from step one to step two."  I heard someone say that at a meeting a while back and I think it's an interesting and, for me at least, fresh way of viewing steps.  

I've long said that step one without step two is a good description of Hell.  "Oh, so I'm powerless over alcohol and my life is unmanageable.  How nice."  Personally I knew that damn well for at least 10 years before I got sober and it just made me drink more.  My salvation was when a small glow of hope that there was a way out appeared.  Typically, I've always viewed that as an intellectual event.  I received the information that AA could help me and that gave me the hope I needed.  

Of course, that's not really the way it really happened.  My bottom came with heart failure induced by my attempt to go cold turkey off alcohol completely on my own.  Laying in an ICU bed I actually decided it would be better if I died, especially for my wife.  I was certain she'd be happier with a new husband.  I don't know what my doctors would say but I was and am convinced that if I had let go at that point that I would have died.  However, the thought crossed my mind that if I worked at it I could be that second husband and that would be a way to try to make up for the years of pain I had put my wife through.  A couple of days later a guy came into my hospital room and 12th stepped me.  That didn't go very well, but I did get a meeting book out of it.  I decided to try a meeting.  That's the point.  I didn't really have hope at that point.  I had a desperate need for hope and a path of action that might provide that hope.  

That, I think, is what the speaker meant when she said that "Steps three through twelve are how we get from step one to step two."  It is by our actions and their results that we grow in optimism and faith in AA.

As the old AA slogan says, it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.