Without necessarily taking that first drink, we often get quite far off the beam. Our troubles sometimes begin with indifference. We are sober and happy in our AA work. Things go well at home and office. We naturally congratulate ourselves on what later proves to be a far too easy and superficial point of view. We temporarily cease to grow because we feel satisfied that there is no need for all of AA’s Twelve Steps for us. We are doing fine on a few of them. Maybe we are doing fine on only two of them, the First Step and that part of the Twelfth where we “carry the message.” In AA slang, that blissful state is known as “two-stepping.” And it can go on for years. (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)
The chief sign of two-stepping is where I find myself again and again being 'saved' by twelfth-step work and service. Twelfth-step work works when other activities fail, not because other activities fail. Other activities should and do largely work.
It is certainly the case that, when other activities (exceptionally) fail, I must engage heavily in service and twelfth-step work as the only available remedy.
It is also the case that, when I am generally off-bream and realise I need to rework the first eleven steps to come back on beam, it is the twelfth-step work that (a) keep my head above the water (the drink) and (b) empowers me to actually do the reworking work.
However, when I find myself in the position of someone 'whose head is always insane unless I'm doing service or sponsorship', there's something wrong. Something in the first eleven steps has been missed: usually a lot of things. Almost invariably I'm (a) attached to material-world outcomes (hard to achieve, and yield only thin and exiguous milk, regardless of how one works the udders, as it were) and (b) not trusting God's plan for my 'salvation'. Everything else is detail.
Step Twelve should ideally arise out of abundance. It should not be the hammer to break the glass again and again because the carriage is full of smoke. The carriage is not full of smoke because life is being lifey or life does not stop happening just because one is sober. It is full of smoke because my arse is on fire, and the question is then to find out why my arse is so flammable.