24 October 2025: Principles and procedure
“Following his discharge, we contacted him. Without much ado, he accepted the principles and procedure that had helped us. He is undoubtedly on the road to recovery.” (Page 139, Big Book)
Principles and procedures—the two aspects of the programme.
Without much ado—in other words, once it was explained, that was that. Onward! No extensive explanations, winning over, cajoling. These are best avoided, as they’re usually a waste of time.
My job when presented with the programme is to accept it or walk away.
I was recently talking to someone who was interested in the programme but said they were an atheist. I do not try to offer ideas to someone who already has their own and is happy with them, or there’ll be a clash, and, if I offer and it’s not accepted, well, that, too, is the end of it. Fair play to you!
One must come to this with an entirely open mind, which means unwinding all of one’s conclusions and settled opinions. The data need not be discarded—the fieldwork, after all, is all we have to go on at the start—but what to do with the data is another matter. The principles give me a way of understanding the data; the procedure gives me something to do about it.
Note the singularity of procedure: the Twelve Steps are a single process, not itty-bitty options.
We’re not at the Bellagio buffet.
When the package is suggested, that means it is politely offered, with no obligation to accept it.
It should be noted, however that, whilst the person offering us the programme is in no position to force us, there is a compelling force, coming up fast behind us.
Imaging knocking on an inn door, and the innkeeper, spotting the ravening wolf bounding towards us from behind, says, ‘I suggest you come in, and we close the door.’
He is not compelling one; the situation compels acceptance.
The freedom is entirely illusory; the suggestion a politeness device only, and a reminder that the responsibility for the decision is the individual’s, which entails entire responsibility for the acceptance of the suggestion—or not—and for the follow-through—or not.
Once accepted, the elements are indivisible, and their inclusion in the package is not itself a suggested element.
People sometimes foolishly believe that the individual elements are individually suggested, and we can blithely take what we want and leave the rest, without coming to any harm.
Imagine a chemist’s recipe for making a particular chemical. The textbook suggests the approach, but it is the approach that is suggested, not the individual elements to mix and match.
Imagine being prescribed a medicine. One is not forced to take the whole course, but the suggestion is precisely to take the whole course. The suggestion applies to the prescription as a whole, not each individual dose.
Imagine being offered a job. The classification as offer means there is liberty as to whether or not to accept the offer. If you take a job, the employer would be nonplussed if one were to perform certain tasks and not others, on the basis that each element of the job was merely offered, and one was under no obligation at all to do anything in particular.
Suggestion is a time-limited status, which ends with acceptance.
Once the suggestion is accepted, the programme converted from a suggested programme to an undertaken programme.
To fish out and discard, alter, or skirt any particular element is to renege on the undertaking.
[The above might seem overly insistent; that is not the intention. Much of what we have to convey in AA is simple enough and would be simply accepted were it not of the context of the AA fellowship itself, with misinformation systematically pumped into the consciousness from the highest of authorities, left, right, and centre. The misinformation can take significant work to dislodge. Some examples, in addition to the suggestion fallacy: ‘it’s a selfish programme’, the ‘in God’s time’ amends, sharing ‘for oneself’, not sponsoring until you’re a year sober, a step a year, ‘its not a race’, ‘California sober’, a-separate-programme-for-each-problem, ‘it’s not about the drinking’, the spiritual malady being a feature of alcoholism, unmanageability relating to the living of one’s life generally, separate from alcohol, restlessness, irritability, and discontentment being manifestations of the spiritual malady, the bedevilments being a feature of alcoholism, meetings keeping you sober, service keeping you sober, one’s conception of the higher power can be anything at all, one could increase the list ad infinitum…]
The acceptance in the reading closes the period of suggestion and reflection.
The chef suggests this or that.
Once we order it, however, that’s what we’re getting.
The chef does not suggest we suggest variations in the recipe.