It should be possible to recover entirely just with the contents of the Big Book.
The language is largely plain, aside from certain anachronisms and a small number of opaque passages; the attitudes to adopt and actions to take, at least, are unambiguous.
The Twelve and Twelve, likewise.
Let's take one line:
We perceive that only through utter defeat are we able to take our first steps toward liberation and strength.
What's defeat? The recognition that one has not won and can never win. Against what? Against alcohol, against the world, against oneself.
What is utter defeat? Defeat without exception: universal and resounding.
There is no ambiguity here.
Let's take another:
The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear—primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded. Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration.
To eliminate fear, it is clear, the demands must go. For that to happen, they must obviously be identified. If you want to get rid of rubbish from your home, you must identify the rubbish as rubbish. In the resentment inventory (whether in the third column or in answer to the question about self-seeking on page 67), the demands are identified.
Plain, plain, plain.
Moreover, today, we have a historically unparalleled range of resources available, in terms of written materials, recordings, and people. We can talk to AA members anywhere in the world. All questions can be answered simply and quickly.
Yet progress is often faltering and sometimes grinds to a complete halt, even on the part of individuals who are intelligent and quite able in other respects.
Why is this?
The ego is literally stultifying: it dulls the senses. What is required is a willingness to get the ideas, to understand, assimilate, and apply them. It is precisely this that is lacking.
There must be the desire, above all things, to acquire and master this programme, in particular in order to pass it on adequately to others.
This desire cannot be given.
No amount of clear instruction, detailed notes and feedback, and strong, effective sponsorship can do this, because no one can be forced to think, and to think clearly. That is something that must be done by the individual because they want this and nothing else.
As soon as that happens, the process becomes automatic, and almost no input is necessary.
The instructions are placed before the individual, and they run with them.
I know this is possible, because, apart from it being my own experience (note I was not actually taken through the Steps per the Big Book by a human being: I used the book and listened to some tapes), I sometimes see it around me in AA: people who, with clear instructions and a modicum of guidance produce startlingly clear and excellent stepwork and, in the way that a sportsperson with good technical form produces outstanding results, make astonishing spiritual progress, as well. It is not special ability that enables this but spiritual readiness.
The chief trap is the belief that adjacency to people with a strong programme, intermittent, perfunctory, or minimally diligent work, plus the safety net of a switched-on sponsor will somehow make up for the individual's own failure to integrate the programme and its ideas.
No child, learning to walk, can be walked for by their parents. It is the same with thinking.
The most maligned of the AA slogans is Think, Think, Think. And it is the most underrated.
To learn to think and communicate a clear, complete, concise, concrete, coherent, cohesive, and consistent story in each Step requires the desire to do so, and that desire comes from within.
Once the story of each Steps is arrived at, the experience follows. Without clarity, the light soon flickers out. With clarity, it can be fanned and directed to cause a spiritual conflagration that burns up the world of false ideas in the individual and in those around them.
Desire. Willingness. Action.