There are some entry-level questions that should be promptly resolved on joining AA, within the first few weeks:
- A clear understanding of the components of alcoholism (physical craving, mental obsession, no such thing as a safe slip, its progressive, fatal, and incurable nature, the inability to manage one's life as a consequence of the inability to stay sober, and the need for God).
- The simple method of staying sober by seeking to do God's will in the place of one's own.
- The solution to resentment: withdraw negative judgement.
- The solution to fear: detach from material values.
- The solution to guilt: make amends and act right.
- The solution to 'low self-esteem': recognise one is wrong.
- The way to live: trust God, clean house, help others.
AA is a very strange fellowship: we introduce these ideas very early. Yet often, years later, they are not understood, or they are understood in principle yet not applied.
The first reason is because they have not been learned.
The second reason is because too much else has been learned that is not so, that is incompatible with the above, or that simply crowds out the above with complexity.