Al-Anon literature often talks about 'studying' the Steps.
That is all very well, and, yes, let's read the literature and think about it. Let's read the literature about the Steps. But in that case we're studying the literature about the Steps. That's susceptible to study. But the Steps, themselves, are not to be studied; they're to be taken.
Studying a plane ticket does not get me a suntan.
Buying the plane ticket and taking the trip might.
I've never needed to study a step. They're not academic exercises whose purpose is to generate intellectual understanding.
The Steps are things to do.
The purpose of devoting time to Al-Anon is not intellectual edification, as though there's no actual suffering happening and we have oodles of spare time to fruitfully fill with study.
Rather, the purpose is to change, because life will otherwise become increasingly intolerable.
If someone had a broken arm, would you encourage them to study anatomy?
No, you'd tell them to go to the Emergency Room.
That's where God is.
If you were taking your child to hospital, would you drive particularly slowly, because there would be a virtue in driving gradually and gently?
Obviously drive carefully, but for heaven's sake, there's an emergency here.
When you're in distress, the gentle and gradual approach, in terms of result, is cruel. Why continue to suffer? Why prolong the bad behaviour? Why prolong the rotten thinking? Why hold on to the false beliefs for a moment longer than necessary?
Gentle and gradual is fine as long as you don't have anonism.
It's like Paul Martin says: self-help books are great, unless you actually need help.
That's why I have taken the Steps, and I continue to retake them regularly, to keep the walkways clear and clean.