AA Book Club

  Big Book Topics for study, meditation or use with a sponsee, from our online study guide at AABookClub.org :   What's The Problem? What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time the desperate experiment of the first drink?...for obviously this is the crux of the problem. (Page 35) But there was always the curious mental phenomenon that parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check. The insane idea won out. (Page 37) When we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the Spirit of the Universe, we had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work. But the God idea did. (Page 52) Love and tolerance of others is our code. And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. ...

Throwback Thursday AA history post - Nancy K. on History of Women in Early AA: Nancy K on History of Women in Early AA  

  Thoughts on Tradition Eight from the Shropshire (UK) Intergroup: Short form Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centres may employ special workers. Long form Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional. We define professionalism as the occupation of counselling alcoholics for fees or hire. But we may employ alcoholics where they are going to perform those services for which we might otherwise have to engage non-alcoholics. Such special services may be well recompensed. But our usual A.A. Twelfth Step work is never to be paid for. From The Twelve Traditions Illustrated:   Spiritual as it is, AA remains very much of this world. The Eighth Tradition, like the Seventh, focuses on a vulgar five-letter with that isn't actually mentioned in either: money. Many of us have had to explain to some cynical prospect, "No, I'm not a social worker. I don't get paid for talking with you. I'm doing it because it...

Throwback Thursday AA history post - The New York Times' review of the Big Book from 1939 (H/T: Shropshire, UK Intergroup ): BOOK REVIEW NEW YORK TIMES June 25, 1939 ALCOHOLIC EXPERIENCE by Percy Hutchison Alcoholics Anonymous.400 pp. New York: Works Publishing Company. $3.50 Lest this title should arouse the risibles in any reader first let me state that the general thesis of “Alcoholics Anonymous” is more soundly based psychologically than any other treatment of the subject I have ever come upon. And it is a subject not to be neglected, for, irrespective of whether we live under repeal or prohibition, there will be alcohol addicts, precisely as there are drug addicts. It is useless to argue that under one legal condition or another the number will be less or more. When populations are to be reckoned in the million, fractions cease to count. Under prohibition alcohol will be manufactured and bootlegged, as it was during our late “noble experiment,” precisely as narcotics are toda...

The 12 & 12 contains summaries at the end of each step, which briefly give perspective or reveal benefits we can expect. These are somewhat like the Big Book Promises . Step One: "Under the lash of alcoholism, we are driven to A.A., and there we discover the fatal nature of our situation. Then, and only then, do we become as open-minded to conviction and as willing to listen as the dying can be. We stand ready to do anything which will lift the merciless obsession from us." Page 24 Step Two: "Therefore, Step Two is the rallying point for all of us. Whether agnostic, atheist, or former believer, we can stand together on this Step. True humility and an open mind can lead us to faith, and every A.A, meeting is an assurance that God will restore us to sanity if we rightly relate ourselves to Him." Page 33 Step Three: “Our whole problem had been the misuse of willpower. We had tried to bombard our problems with it instead of attempting to bring...

  Saturday AA speaker/history post - From the archives of the Akron Intergroup, a talk by Ethel M., the first woman with continuous sobriety in AA: Ethel M.          

  From William Schaberg's Writing The Big Book, Page 286-287: Bill as the Sole Author Many modern readers have been critical of the writing in this chapter [We Agnostics - Jim B.], so a few word about its composition may be helpful.    Wilson's authorship of the Big Book has been challenged - most famously by himself - but it is clear from everything he writes during this time that, at this point, he was the writer. There is no mention in contemporary records of the much touted collaborative editing process (which did, to some degree, occur later). In fact, all the 1938 evidence supports Bill Wilson as being the sole author of these chapters. His writing was, however, being criticized and critiqued by Hank Parkhurst and Ruth Hock, the two people who were constantly present as he dictated the book at their Honor Dealers office in Newark. In what proved to be a less than fruitful attempt to help with the book, both Ruth and Hank took a semester's worth of shor...