CHAPTER 2

Chapter 2

THERE IS A SOLUTION

There really is a solution.

There is a solution to the physical craving: complete abstinence.

There is a solution to the mental obsession: reliance on God’s guidance.

There is a solution to upset: acceptance of God’s will.

There is a solution to futility: fulfilling God’s purpose.

There is a solution to problems: placing them in God’s hands.

There is a solution to depression: gratitude to God and industry for God.

There is a solution to anxiety: trust in God’s providence.

There is a solution to loneliness: meetings, fellowship, and being with God.

There is a solution to materialism: a relationship with God..

You name it, there’s a solution, and the solution—once I’m physically sober—is God.

There’s not much need to talk about anything else.

When something other than the solution is being talked about, it is helpful to consider why.

We, of ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, know thousands of men and women who were once just as hopeless as Bill. Nearly all have recovered. They have solved the drink problem.

Without hope in two senses: without prospect of recovery; without the hopeful vision of an effective solution.

In other words: without the fact of hope; without the sense of hope.

Funnily enough, it is the sense of hope that is the more important of the two.

The sense of hope creates the fact of hope.

The fact of hope is irrelevant unless I can see it.

This works for those who believe it will.

Recovered: a process with a beginning and an end. To maintain the recovery requires staying in the world of recovering and recovered people and being abundantly active within in.

We are average Americans. All sections of this country and many of its occupations are represented, as well as many political, economic, social, and religious backgrounds. We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful. We are like the passengers of a great liner the moment after rescue from shipwreck when camaraderie, joyousness and democracy pervade the vessel from steerage to Captain’s table. Unlike the feelings of the ship’s passengers, however, our joy in escape from disaster does not subside as we go our individual ways. The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us. But that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined.

Meetings with a good mix are helpful for several reasons:

I realise I can learn from people who are very different than me.
In seeing the range of people, I realise this can work for anyone.
When there is an eye-watering variety, no one need feel like an outsider.

The tags of difference are no longer relevant; it is the tag of commonality that is key, and, once that tag is applied, the tags of difference recede and melt away completely. There’s no justification for the cry, “But my case is different.”

It is precisely this attitude of all-in-it-together that submerges the self sufficiently to provide members with relief, if only for the hour of the meeting.

Special interest groups—wonderful in their way and whilst having certain merits and justification—lack this ability to fully submerge the self. There is a dual rallying point of alcoholism and the special interest. Alcoholism is something that afflicts the person, is alien to the person. The special interest is intrinsic to the person. Individuality is saved from drowning by this little lifebelt. There is commonality and distinction baked into the design, “But our case is different. Our needs are different. This group meets the different needs.”

Special interest groups also, necessarily, skew the demographic of regular groups by extraction. Each time one meets, if the individuals might have gone to a meeting that day anyway, those other meetings are selectively stripped of a particular demographic. I used to go mostly to gay meetings. There would be thirty people, say. When we met, thirty other meetings might go from having one gay attendee to no gay attendees. This affected the AA experience of, say, 30 x 30 = 900 members. As Willow said in Buffy, you can do anything with magic, but there’s a price.

Friendliness: being open to speak to anyone; being courteous when doing so.

Democracy: includes standing back so others can have their turn, even if one could do the job better.

The common problem is necessary. Hearing about addictions I do not have is boring and weird. Hearing about one’s own is viscerally affecting. Hope, too, is contingent on sharing a common problem; I know that the solution you have implemented worked for you, but I only trust it will work for me if I have the same problem as you.

The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a common solution. We have a way out on which we can absolutely agree, and upon which we can join in brotherly and harmonious action. This is the great news this book carries to those who suffer from alcoholism.

Without a solution at all, AA would just be complaining about problems. Sometimes one does have that experience of a particular meeting. There is no sense that there a solution beyond having ‘somewhere to come, to talk about it’ or AA being ‘great, because it has helped one access outside help’. But there really is a solution pointed to within the book. The book is not the solution: the relationship with God is the solution. The tools are not really tools to do things: the tools are tools to build a relationship with God.

If we all have different solutions, the job of the new AA member is to systematically try each solution suggested in the hope that he’ll find something that works for him too, and to hope that this is successful before the first slip happens. The first slip, of course, might be the last, so one’s life depends on whether one happens to mimic the right person. This won’t do.

I need a programme and I need one which will work first go. This is the wonder of the book: it’s the collective experience of what works, as a single coherent system. Groups that are focused on the book provide practical guidance on how to implement it and a pool of people ready to help.

An illness of this sort—and we have come to believe it an illness—involves those about us in a way no other human sickness can. If a person has cancer all are sorry for him and no one is angry or hurt. But not so with the alcoholic illness, for with it there goes annihilation of all the things worthwhile in life. It engulfs all whose lives touch the sufferer’s. It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children, sad wives and parents—anyone can increase the list.

Illness, sickness. Common symptoms, common solution.

Alcoholism is not essentially a question of will plus willpower.

The pathology must be understood, and the treatment activated.

The treatment does involve will and willpower.

But the effect is indirect.

One does not lift the heavy weight.

One operates the crane, and the crane lifts the heavy weight.

Alcoholism does not yield to a head-on assault.

I surrender to God, and God assaults the alcoholism for me.

~ ~ ~

It’s good to make a list of the things worthwhile in life that the alcoholic illness annihilated (literally, ‘reduced to nothing’, from the Latin word ‘nihil’).

This list is later useful when one observes that such annihilations failed to prompt an attempt to stop or moderate or that such an attempt failed. The diagnosis of alcoholism is based not merely on drinking a lot but on doing so in the presence of good reasons not to. Without the reasons, the test cannot be taken. In the absence of a price, one might legitimately say one wants to drink.

What if one has such reasons to stop or moderate yet still ‘wants’ to drink?

Under normal circumstances, one wants what is good and does not want what is bad.

If one wants something that is more bad than good, the wanting mechanism is broken.

The wanting system can no longer usefully be interrogated.

Once one is a danger to oneself, one ceases to be a reliable witness.

One is also rightly intervened on. By God.

The assessment is then based on the objective view only:

What good is alcohol bringing?

What bad is alcohol bringing?

If it is bringing substantially more bad than good, and one continues, the test is positive for alcoholism.

We hope this volume will inform and comfort those who are, or who may be affected. There are many.

One needn’t object to anything in the Big Book. It provides information. One should never be offended at information.

What is the information about?

The nature of the problem
The nature of the solution
What happens if the problem is not fixed
What happens if the solution is applied

Where does the comfort lie?

In the fact that the problems discussed—in fact all problems—have solutions.

Although all problems have already been furnished with solutions, my effort is required.

There are many: the job is never done.

One need only go to a meeting and open one’s eyes.

Lots of problems around.

Highly competent psychiatrists who have dealt with us have found it sometimes impossible to persuade an alcoholic to discuss his situation without reserve. Strangely enough, wives, parents and intimate friends usually find us even more unapproachable than do the psychiatrist and the doctor.

The reserve is the truth I hold back.

What makes it possible to tell the truth fully to another AA member is that they are flawed and openly so, and usually in similar ways. Moreover, they’re probably not listening, so it’s pretty safe to say anything; they’re usually thinking about themselves. They lastly have no right to intrude; they might make observations at my invitation; at most they can make suggestions, and then I have a decision to make.

But the ex-problem drinker who has found this solution, who is properly armed with facts about himself, can generally win the entire confidence of another alcoholic in a few hours. Until such an understanding is reached, little or nothing can be accomplished.

Similar is not the same as the same.

Other addictions are similar but they’re not the same.

The mechanics of the physical craving and mental obsession are different from addiction to addiction and substance to substance.

Having the same addiction is therefore required to grasp one’s own situation accurately through the example of another’s.

But a visceral or instinctive level of identification is also required to trust what the other person is saying: this is the winning of confidence.

Identity of experience is vital for innate understanding.

That’s the foundation on which the analysis of the problem and confidence in the solution is built.

That the man who is making the approach has had the same difficulty, that he obviously knows what he is talking about, that his whole deportment shouts at the new prospect that he is a man with a real answer, that he has no attitude of Holier Than Thou, nothing whatever except the sincere desire to be helpful; that there are no fees to pay, no axes to grind, no people to please, no lectures to be endured—these are the conditions we have found most effective. After such an approach many take up their beds and walk again.

Trust saves years of convincing and persuading. An instant saves decades. One drinking story or even a one-liner, and the job is done.

You meet some people in AA, and you know they’re OK. They don’t need to say anything to prove the point.

People who are further ahead are not further up, but they are further ahead.

They’re more likely to be right.

The desire to be helpful is sincere because they don’t want anything in return.

There is nothing I could give them, anyway.

No money changes hands.

Money goes from pocket to pot.

Axe-grinding is a bit of an occupational hazard in AA. Perhaps a bit less of that would not hurt, on my part at least.

No people to please: Sometimes people say, “Here’s my inventory for you!” and one says, “It’s not for me; it’s for you.” Sometimes people say, “What do you want me to do next?” and one says, “I have no desire as far as you’re concerned. But what I suggest you do next is …” When I was new, people were not personally interested in me. They were happy to help but they had no dog in the race. They were indifferent purveyors of excellent goods. Kevin asked his sponsor, “What would you do if I drank?” The sponsor replied, “I wouldn’t like it, but I wouldn’t worry about it either.” I didn’t want a personal relationship with a sponsor. I wanted a business relationship. I wanted and needed help, not affection, intimacy, bonding, or sentiment. Hardware supplier, not gift-pack from Lush.

No lectures. Three-minute sharing is pretty good. That’s when the bell should go off, nice and loud, nice and clear. I’m done.

We take up our beds. No one takes them up for us.

None of us makes a sole vocation of this work, nor do we think its effectiveness would be increased if we did. We feel that elimination of our drinking is but a beginning. A much more important demonstration of our principles lies before us in our respective homes, occupations and affairs. All of us spend much of our spare time in the sort of effort which we are going to describe. A few are fortunate enough to be so situated that they can give nearly all their time to the work.

In other words, get a job, maybe a family, certainly occupations and affairs.

What remains most important is doing God’s will.

The most important element of doing God’s will is carrying the message.

This is the work referred to.

This is what guarantees sobriety and peace of mind.

The homes, occupations, and affairs are not more important than this, but they are a more effective demonstration that the programme works and that God-reliance is effective. People trust an effectively, efficiently, and harmoniously lived life more than a bravura pitch from the AA floor or podium.

Full-time AAs can be disconcerting.

Those who do things are interesting.

Their focus is on the living of their lives.

Full-time AAs can have alcoholics as their focus.

One can feel watched, surveilled.

I get the best advice from people whose focus is elsewhere.

They demonstrate through their lives.

I watch and imitate.

Their provision of help is not about me.

Their care about me is utterly impersonal.

I am interchangeable with anyone else.

They help by demonstrating.

I’m invisible and anonymous, a simple viewer.

The test of whether I am doing enough Twelfth-Step work: Is ‘much’ of my free time spent sponsoring?

Free time is time left over after obligations are fulfilled.

If I do not have enough sponsees, such work time gets filled with activities placing me in a position that maximises the likelihood I will be asked to sponsor or otherwise fitting myself to sponsor.

Only a few are so fortunate they can give most of their time to the work.

It’s fortunate because it’s fun.

But it’s dangerous so limited to a few.

Regular folks—like me—had better have ordinary, busy lives.

If we keep on the way we are going there is little doubt that much good will result, but the surface of the problem would hardly be scratched. Those of us who live in large cities are overcome by the reflection that close by hundreds are dropping into oblivion every day. Many could recover if they had the opportunity we have enjoyed. How then shall we present that which has been so freely given us?

This is still true today. Walk out on a Saturday evening. A lot of people are nutted. Many will be alcoholic. The non-alcoholic folly of excessive drinking often develops into alcoholism: there are thus both real and potential alcoholics in play. However: the condition is progressive—and unstoppably so—so merely foolish drinking is the inevitable precursor for worse.

The purpose of the book is to relate what was given: I did not earn recovery; I was given it.

This gift gives me an opportunity to take the steps indicated.

My job is to make this opportunity available to others, too.

We have concluded to publish an anonymous volume setting forth the problem as we see it. We shall bring to the task our combined experience and knowledge. This should suggest a useful program for anyone concerned with a drinking problem.

It’s a whole volume. The programme, once you’re doing it, is simple, but there’s a lot that needs to be explained first, and there are a lot of specific tips on how to apply it to various areas.

The book is the result of combined experience and knowledge. To doubt it is unwise. In fact, one can’t legitimately doubt it, in itself. If that’s their experience and knowledge, that’s their experience and knowledge. They’re not making it up.

The only question is whether it will work for me. The answer to this question is another, largely rhetorical question: Why wouldn’t it? After all, it worked for all of them.

A useful programme, or a programme full of use: not a theory-ful programme, not a thoughtful programme, but a useful programme, although there is theory and thought contained within it.

Of necessity there will have to be discussion of matters medical, psychiatric, social, and religious. We are aware that these matters are, from their very nature, controversial. Nothing would please us so much as to write a book which would contain no basis for contention or argument. We shall do our utmost to achieve that ideal. Most of us sense that real tolerance of other people’s shortcomings and viewpoints and a respect for their opinions are attitudes which make us more useful to others. Our very lives, as ex-problem drinkers, depend upon our constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs.

There are eight areas in life, it seems: the mental, the physical, the social, the practical, the religious, the spiritual, the moral, and the philosophical. The above list covers four, in part. The other four—the practical, the spiritual, the moral, and the philosophical—are covered in even greater depth throughout the book, so prominently that I needn’t give page or chapter numbers here.

Alcoholism affects all areas of life, so it’s not surprising recovery requires attention to all eight. This is a good reason why attempts of mine to solve my alcoholism as a purely medical or a purely psychiatric problem, for instance, failed. These specialisms address complex problems from a specialised but single point of view. Alcoholism, by contrast, is a complex problem that really does require an eight-pronged attack—at least for me.

Of course, professionals are well-trained experts in their fields with a lot to offer, but those very professionals regularly say they prefer us to be well-informed and maintain our thoughtful agency. In the clinical trials I have worked on in my professional life, the patient information and consent forms typically encourage patients’ active understanding and discussion of the medical condition and its treatment with friends and relatives. I have therefore concluded, for myself, it’s quite valid to think about and talk with others about areas in which professionals have a role. Just because I’m not a doctor, psychiatrist, or theologian, etc., does not mean I’m stripped of agency, need remain entirely ignorant about my body, mind, and spirit, and must blindly follow their indications. The relationship between patient and doctor is not the relationship between animal and vet.

The four listed areas are controversial, but so are the other four—the practical, the spiritual, the moral, and the philosophical. This is why the book is so sensible in setting out ideas but grounding those in experience and then suggesting, essentially, if you want what we have, you do what we did. One remains at liberty to disagree with the book and disregard its suggestions entirely without fear of reprimand, although when I’ve done that, people have helpfully asked, ‘How is that working out for you?’

Alcohol and life are great persuaders, so the book does not need to be.

Tolerance—real tolerance—in my perception means leaving people alone, leaving them be as they are, not trying to fix, change, or control them, not trying to dislodge their ideas unless they actively want them dislodged, and not dwelling on their differing views or practices.

If saying something really is indicated, it’s always possible to present a differing view in a non-obnoxious way if that is what one really wishes. Provided one has done one’s best in this regard and not deliberately or unconsciously set out to upset, then one must simply accept that people will sometimes take offence anyway. Lovely as it would be to make omelettes without breaking eggs, it is better to do that than not to cook, or, worse, to break eggs without making omelettes. Seek to help and all will be as well as it can be.

Constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs.

Note: we do not meet their needs—we help meet their needs. They’re responsible for meeting their needs—I’m responsible for doing for them what they cannot do for themselves, where the help is warranted, and I’m the most rightful provider of that help. Note: it is needs that are met. My job is to meet needs that others have and perceive they have—no remoulding in accordance with my wishes and against their wishes.

You may already have asked yourself why it is that all of us became so very ill from drinking. Doubtless you are curious to discover how and why, in the face of expert opinion to the contrary, we have recovered from a hopeless condition of mind and body. If you are an alcoholic who wants to get over it, you may already be asking—”What do I have to do?”

We drank
We became ill
We became very ill
We became so very ill
The illness is of the body
The illness is of the mind
This is alcoholism
According to experts—at least from back then—the condition is hopeless

Question 1:
Why did we become so very ill?

Question 2:
How have we recovered?

Question 3:
Why have we recovered?

Question 4:
What do I have to do?

Re Question 1: The answer is the combination of mental obsession (which compels the first drink) and physical craving (which compels the rest). These are why such a large quantity of alcohol is introduced into the system, and all other ills flow from that.

Re Question 2: This is covered by Chapter Five onwards.

Re Question 3: This is interesting. The question as to ‘why’ could refer to upstream causal chain or downstream purpose. In terms of the former, my recovery was facilitated by others’ Twelfth Step. In terms of the latter: in order to carry out the Twelfth Step and help initiate and propel yet others’ recovery.

Re Question 4: The answer to this is the same as the answer to Question 2.

On the question of the hopelessness of the condition as described by expert opinion, things might be a little different today with medical recognition that recovery is indeed possible.

Many other conditions are viewed in society as hopeless or associated with only limited hope.

Before AA, I saw some people about anxiety, depression, and various other states. Compassion and processes were offered, but not a solution.

I then joined AA, and met some elderly women, some housewives, a gardener, and various other people who said, “Start taking these actions and you’ll start to feel better in days, if not sooner.” And I did. Days. Sometimes sooner. Instant solutions that actually worked. The elderly women et al. did not think my situation hopeless at all.

It is the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically. We shall tell you what we have done. Before going into a detailed discussion, it may be well to summarize some points as we see them.

This parallels other passages about what the book is for:

“To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book.” (Foreword to the First Edition)

“We hope this volume will inform and comfort those who are, or who may be affected. There are many.” (Page 18, Big Book)

“But where and how were we to find this Power? Well, that’s exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem.” (Page 45, Big Book)

This can be summarised as:

Informing those who are or may be affected
Comforting those who are or may be affected
Showing what the authors did
Showing how the authors recovered
Showing how to find a Power greater than oneself

The actions bring about recovery; recovery centres on finding a Power greater than oneself.

Therein lies the comfort.

How many times people have said to us: “I can take it or leave it alone. Why can’t he?” “Why don’t you drink like a gentleman or quit?” “That fellow can’t handle his liquor.” “Why don’t you try beer and wine?” “Lay off the hard stuff.” “His will power must be weak.” “He could stop if he wanted to.” “She’s such a sweet girl, I should think he’d stop for her sake.” “The doctor told him that if he ever drank again it would kill him, but there he is all lit up again.” Now these are commonplace observations on drinkers which we hear all the time. Back of them is a world of ignorance and misunderstanding. We see that these expressions refer to people whose reactions are very different from ours.

‘whose reactions are very different’

What are the different reactions?

Firstly, the reaction to alcohol entering the system of the alcoholic: this is beyond reason and beyond will. This means any attempt to understand why the alcoholic has the tenth or the twentieth drink—or to understand why the consequences are failing to hold him back from that—is based on the false premise that reason and will are behind those drinks. They’re not.

Secondly, the reaction to the fact of the consequences. In a regular person, there is regulation, in that the consequences will flow into the decision-making about the first drink. In the alcoholic they do not, or do not for long.

Moderate drinkers have little trouble in giving up liquor entirely if they have good reason for it. They can take it or leave it alone.

If the drinking is moderate (one or two drinks a day), there will be no good reason to give up, so the question is moot. There might be a reason extraneous to the drinking—living in a dry place, being with people who do not like drinking, a medical condition or medication necessitating not drinking any alcohol at all—that would constitute such a good reason, and they can act on that with no problem.

There is also the suggestion, with the phrase ‘take it or leave it’, that particular occasions on which are drinker cannot or should not drink present no difficulty. Difficulty on such occasions (to not drink or to cap the drinking at one or two) is a sign that one is not a moderate drinker.

I was never a moderate drinker.

Then we have a certain type of hard drinker. He may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally. It may cause him to die a few years before his time. If a sufficiently strong reason—ill health, falling in love, change of environment, or the warning of a doctor—becomes operative, this man can also stop or moderate, although he may find it difficult and troublesome and may even need medical attention.

If one is being impaired physically and mentally to the extent that one develops and dies of a fatal illness, there is a sufficiently strong reason to stop or moderate for as long as the drinking is impairing one, yet one is not stopping or moderating. This category therefore does not exist as such during the drinking phase.

Clearly, such an individual, whilst they are drinking, is indistinguishable from a drinking alcoholic. If sufficient reason to stop or moderate is inoperative, that means that the individual is powerless over alcohol and his life is unmanageable.

The only difference is that at some point the ‘certain type’ (CTHD) goes from being unable to stop or moderate to being able to stop and moderate. In other words, he has switched category from alcoholic to non-alcoholic or post-alcoholic. This might be termed ‘spontaneous remission’. In other words, the sufficiently strong reason that has been there all along goes from being inoperative to operative, i.e., since the reason has not changed, the individual has changed and has acquired the ability to stop or moderate, an ability he did not have before.

Importantly, the CTHD and the alcoholic, before spontaneous remission occurs, are identical. If spontaneous remission occurs, the individual can then be classed as the CTHD.

From the point of view of the alcoholic, there are two options.

Either spontaneous remission will not occur, so the individual must surrender and take the steps. Or it does occur, in which case surrender and taking the steps are rendered unnecessary. However, one cannot make spontaneous remission take place (this being the whole point of spontaneous remission), so the only viable option on the table—unless one wants to take the risk of waiting for spontaneous remission—is taking the steps.

Arguably there are a lot of people in AA who are of the CTHD type, who did indeed require a bit of help at the beginning, but essentially don’t need a spiritual awakening to stay sober. Such people find others’ insistence on the necessity of the Steps baffling, and, for them, they’re right.

The thing is, the fellowship of AA is so powerful that it affords alcoholics significant grace, so real alcoholics also stay sober a while in AA without much work, although how long cannot be predicted at individual level.

If in doubt, take the Steps.

This passage is also useful as a diagnostic tool for alcoholism.

Question: Did I have good reason to stop or moderate (list the consequences of drinking)?
One regularly encounters people in AA who think they’re doing fine without the Steps or God, but then they drink and they themselves admit they were wrong. Relapse comes swiftly and without warning, and, by the time one knows it’s happening, it’s too late.

If so, did I stop or moderate?

If not, that’s alcoholism.

Whether one tried is irrelevant. The fact of failing to stop or moderate (with or without an attempt to do so) is sufficient.

But what about the real alcoholic? He may start off as a moderate drinker; he may or may not become a continuous hard drinker; but at some stage of his drinking career he begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption, once he starts to drink.

As indicated in reference to yesterday’s reading, the ‘certain type of hard drinker’ is really an alcoholic of a type. This is compounded by today’s description: someone who is a continuous hard drinker, i.e. is under the influence twenty-four hours a day, has lost all control of his liquor consumption and probably did so years or decades previously. The continuous hard drinker is a category of alcoholic, not someone in a precursor stage. He’s already there.

What would losing control of one’s liquor consumption once one starts to drink look like? Simple: getting drunk and ill, messy, violent, rude, etc.

In any case, I can report I began to lose all control of my liquor consumption the day I start drinking.

Here is the fellow who has been puzzling you, especially in his lack of control.

What is control? The ability to direct the course of something. This assumes rationality, in other words the manner in which something is controlled or managed is, overall, in the best interests of the stakeholders. If the results are off to a certain extent, this can be put down to ignorance, inexperience, inattention, and a hundred other failings. If the results are regularly or consistently way off, the individual does not have the ability to control and manage rationally and therefore at all.

The narrow lack of control—over whether or not to have the first drink and the subsequent drinks.

The broad lack of control—the inability to manage one’s life—one’s affairs—as a result of the narrow lack of control.

The lack of control in relation to one thing—alcohol—gives rise to a 360° inability to manage anything.

Alcoholism is the spanner in the works.

Why is this puzzling?

Because, as an alcoholic, one never really tells the truth until one is in AA, and, even then, that takes a while. All of one’s narratives as to why it is happening are untrue. They are the rationalisations that alcoholism uses to get its own way.

As soon as one says, “I am gripped by a compulsion to have the first drink that defies reason and am then unable to stop for days, weeks, months, or years,” the game is up. This is why alcoholism refuses to let one see this truth. Once one does, its days are numbered.

He is a real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Some interesting points: Jekyll took the potion in order to be Mr Hyde—his true self he was suppressing (I’m informed).

After a while, Jekyll did not have to the potion: he found himself turning even without it.

Mr Hyde does not want to be returned to the condition of Dr Jekyll.

He has a positive genius for getting tight at exactly the wrong moment, particularly when some important decision must be made or engagement kept.

The lack of containment shows the powerlessness: if the excesses were relegated to safe corners of one’s life; if the bulkheads between different compartments remained secure; if one made a fool of oneself only in front of the forgiving, maybe there wouldn’t have been reason to stop.

But, certainly with some progression in the condition, the lack of control over starting, the quantity drunk, and the subsequent behaviour (often out of proportion with how much I’d actually drunk) infected every area of my life.

The progression in the destructiveness was unnatural: it was as though an accelerating force was being brought to bear.

He is often perfectly sensible and well-balanced concerning everything except liquor, but in that respect he is incredibly dishonest and selfish.

Most alcoholics I have known—including myself—have not been perfectly sensible and well-balanced concerning anything. But the few who are and yet are alcoholic are good evidence that the particular forms of dishonesty and selfishness that are characteristic of alcoholism are not generalised personality defects. Ordinary dishonesty and selfishness might also be present but have a more benign flavour.

The chief sign that the alcoholism is running the show is the sacrifices it demands. The first thing to go is other people, and their interests. That’s the particular selfishness. It’s breathtaking.

Dishonesty is required because (a) honesty would require me to stop (b) honesty would confront me with the horror of living under the control of an alien presence in my consciousness that does not care about my interests or those of other people.

A sufficiently compelling yarn must be spun, namely ‘good reason’ to drink: triggers, problems, circumstances, present feelings, some upstream emotional cause, some downstream emotional purpose, emptiness, the ‘void within’, the unbearable lightness of being, the ‘sense of unease’ or ‘dis-ease’, low self-worth or low self-esteem, trauma, PTSD (complex or otherwise), dual diagnoses, neurodivergence, life being life-y, life not being a bed of roses, ‘this insane world’, unresolved this, unresolved that. In my time, I’ve presented all of these in essence as the reasons for drinking or acting out. That’s all part of the dishonesty. The truth is I drink because I am subject to compulsion. If it’s irrational, which it is, anything presenting as a reason is not a reason. I cease to be a reliable witness.

He often possesses special abilities, skills, and aptitudes, and has a promising career ahead of him. He uses his gifts to build up a bright outlook for his family and himself, and then pulls the structure down on his head by a senseless series of sprees.

I’m not sure about this assertion of special abilities on the part of alcoholics. In any case, any positive reasons given for behaviour that is self-destructive are not the reason for the behaviour: if reason is behind it, why are the drawbacks not brought into the reasoning? This shows that we’re not dealing with reasoning but with rationalisation, which is the pretence of reason to justify the irrational or unreasonable. This is why the sprees are ‘senseless’. Attempting to make sense of them misreads their nature.

Gifts are given, not innate.

One cannot take the credit for gifts: the credit lies with the giver.

The truth of this is recognised in the guilt one feels when a gift is not used: it represents ingratitude to the giver.

Bright outlook vs dark ‘in-look’: one should be looking out brightly, not looking inward darkly.

He is the fellow who goes to bed so intoxicated he ought to sleep the clock around. Yet early next morning he searches madly for the bottle he misplaced the night before.

My alcoholism started out as blips.

Eventually the blips joined up, and there was only blip.

Searches ‘madly’.

With desperation. But also with insanity.

If he can afford it, he may have liquor concealed all over his house to be certain no one gets his entire supply away from him to throw down the wastepipe.

When seeking to identify with this, one might have experienced this particular pattern but only if there are people who are repeatedly attempting to throw the supply down the wastepipe. (One might note in passing that for an alcoholic to drink alcohol is to throw the alcohol down the wastepipe in any case.)

The question of securing the supply can manifest in a thousand ways, not just with alcohol but with other perceived sources of supply than God. It is interesting the lengths to which I will go to secure the supply from people, institutions, etc., when such sources are unreliable and their commodities, hollow; contrariwise, I’m struck by my reluctance to secure the supply from God, who, as a source, is reliable and whose commodities are plentiful and durable. Fear always indicates reliance on an unreliable supply.

I watch out for my attempts to secure the supply from other people, through charm, deference, supplication, emotional outbursts, silence, little sighs, sharp looks, mockery, chiding, patronisation, and other manipulative tactics. I watch out for others’ attempts to secure the supply from me in such ways.

I ask, in both cases, ‘What is the supply sought?’

One is always mistaking channel for source.

As matters grow worse, he begins to use a combination of high-powered sedative and liquor to quiet his nerves so he can go to work. Then comes the day when he simply cannot make it and gets drunk all over again. Perhaps he goes to a doctor who gives him morphine or some sedative with which to taper off. Then he begins to appear at hospitals and sanitariums.

Alcoholism is progressive (drunk and sober).

At the core is the refusal to face the music: the consequences in my consciousness of my beliefs, thoughts, words, and deeds. If one feels rotten, one should indeed do something to change the way one feels (rather than, as some advice goes, learning to ‘sit with’ the feelings—one would not sit with impetigo, stiff muscles, or hunger, so why sit with their emotional equivalents?)

I spent too many years drugged to want to waste one more minute under the influence. If I feel terrible, the treasure lies in that terrible feeling. When I can stand it no longer, I make the effort to trace and correct its causes. The system appears to resist this, so I typically need to experience considerable pain before I am willing to undertake this work. Anything, anything, that provides relief or distraction will delay this process, and can delay it indefinitely. It is horrific to think one might drug oneself with a substance or behaviour forever simply to avoid a single realisation lying just below the surface, beneath a feeling I am unwilling to feel.

I would appear at hospitals. I like the word ‘appear’. There was, indeed, quite a performance.

This is by no means a comprehensive picture of the true alcoholic, as our behavior patterns vary. But this description should identify him roughly.

In the foregoing list, I identify with some items 100%, others less so, still others only by analogy.

But instinctively, I recognise the character as a version of me.

More importantly, the preceding diagnostic is what counts:

Can I stop or moderate?

No.

How do I know?

I should have but did not.

It is the diagnosis that counts, not the specific symptoms. As with many medical conditions, one can have an atypical presentation, but it is the surefire diagnostic procedure that matters, so whether or not one identifies with particular manifestations is largely irrelevant. Identification corroborates the finding, but non-identification does not detract from it. Identification is more a factor of degree of progression than anything. Sit with it long enough, and the welts appear.

Why does he behave like this? If hundreds of experiences have shown him that one drink means another debacle with all its attendant suffering and humiliation, why is it he takes that one drink? Why can’t he stay on the water wagon? What has become of the common sense and will power that he still sometimes displays with respect to other matters?

A year or two of alcoholic drinking does not sound much until one counts out the days: hundreds of experiences.

It does not take more than a few bad experiences to conclude that there is something off; I note that my non-alcoholic friends never once drink so much they have consequences they regret.

Oddly, alcoholic drinking does require willpower: the will to withstand the consequences and persist anyway. That, after all, is what willpower is: the ability to put up with effort, pain, or sacrifice to achieve an end.

The problem is not lack of willpower but the inability to point the willpower in the right direction. It is pointed towards continuing to drink rather than not drinking. The full force of the will is applied to self-destruction rather than self-preservation.

Perhaps there never will be a full answer to these questions. Opinions vary considerably as to why the alcoholic reacts differently from normal people. We are not sure why, once a certain point is reached, little can be done for him. We cannot answer the riddle.

The questions, the riddles, to which there is no full answer, as of the writing of the book (and apparently not even today):

Why the alcoholic reacts differently to alcohol once it is in the system
Why the alcoholic reacts differently to the prospect of returning to drinking (i.e. the defence mechanism is deactivated)
Why the alcoholic cannot be helped by people.

Answering these is beside the point of the book.

The only thing that should be noted is that this is the case.

Maybe there are many people in AA who, without God, stay sober with the human help of AA alone, without any steps, without any self-reported spiritual awakening.

Maybe God, through AA, is actually working to keep such people sober, so such people are just as beyond human help as those of us who need to work jolly hard to establish and maintain the spiritual defence against drinking but are being given something of a divine free pass.

Maybe such human-help-only people—if they exist at all—are at greater risk of drinking again.

More riddles. More opinions. More speculation. Less clarity.

Best to leave the riddles to one side as an interesting pastime but return to the business of the book.

We know that while the alcoholic keeps away from drink, as he may do for months or years, he reacts much like other men. We are equally positive that once he takes any alcohol whatever into his system, something happens, both in the bodily and mental sense, which makes it virtually impossible for him to stop. The experience of any alcoholic will abundantly confirm this.

‘he reacts much like other men’: In other words, he reacts sanely to the option of a drink—in his case, it’s a bad idea, so he does not drink it. But the idea is broader. Alcoholics do not have special alcoholic thinking or special alcoholic emotions; are not broken in special ways; are not a class apart in relation to anything but drink; there is no alcoholic personality; there is no alcoholic type; there are no alcoholic emotions; there is nothing intrinsically special or different about alcoholics. We have the same egos and immaturity as other people. The only thing that might be different might be the delusion we are different.

‘both in the bodily and mental sense’

The physical craving has a mental element (which the book has not really admitted before): the body operates ‘me’ through my mind; when the body (in the form of the impulse to drink) signals the desire for another drink, that signalling is registered in the mind, which may produce thoughts about the drink (which are insane but are undeniably involved in the process), and these thoughts then manifest back into the realm of the physical through having a drink.

It might be noted that the mental obsession has a physical component: as an alcoholic, I would start drooling, mentally, once the thought of a drink occurred to me; I could feel a physical surge gush through my system.

The two components of alcoholism—the physical and the mental—are intrinsically bound up in each other. There is really only alcoholism. If one part is present, the rest is there, too, whether or not I can see it in the moment. Whatever part of the cat is sticking out from under the bed, you know that what is unseen is the rest of the cat.

These observations would be academic and pointless if our friend never took the first drink, thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion. Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than in his body. If you ask him why he started on that last bender, the chances are he will offer you any one of a hundred alibis. Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really makes sense in the light of the havoc an alcoholic’s drinking bout creates. They sound like the philosophy of the man who, having a headache, beats himself on the head with a hammer so that he can’t feel the ache. If you draw this fallacious reasoning to the attention of an alcoholic, he will laugh it off, or become irritated and refuse to talk.

The problem of the physical craving that arises from taking the first drink is not a problem unless one takes the first drink.

Who takes the first drink?

I do.

Where does the impulse originate? Even if the first event to take place is someone else suggesting a drink, the impulse to say ‘yes’ originates in me, in the physical brain. To drink, I have to assent to the impulse, to let it pass through the turnstile and convert into an action.

It is here the alcoholism really lies: impulses—including irrational impulses—arise continually in all people. In someone healthy, irrational impulses do not convert into actions. The pathology lies not in the impulse but in its superior power: either reason is not activated, or reason is co-opted to generate some implausible excuse or alibi, or reason is fully activated yet powerless to hold back the impulse. Whichever of these is operative, the conversion to action takes place.

Think of it as a wave. Cannot be held back by reason or waving a stick at it. What is required is a tall wall, and, in the alcoholic, the wall is gone or was never there in the first place.

Any proposition that attempts to justify a particular drinking episode, drinking in general, or a failure to stop by citing reasoning processes, does not explain anything at all: this represents merely the recounting of insane narratives.

The nature of alcoholism is such that, with its progressive, incurable, and fatal nature, no reason is good enough to warrant or justify a drink, so any reason presented is really an excuse or an alibi, not the actual reason.

It is remarkable how much discourse in AA centres on ‘explaining’ drinking (episodes or the fact of it), as though the first or subsequent drinks are arising out of a process of reason, whose validity justifies the drink.

Whenever I would say (sober, in AA), ‘I drank because …’ or ‘I drank in order to’, I was still under the influence of alcoholism, spinning yarns. Try explaining this to someone who is not amenable to the idea and watch how the prophesied irritation or shutting down of the conversation takes place!

What is the reason, then?

There is no reason: there is only cause. What is the cause? An ineradicable impulse lacking any rational component and ultimately more powerful than any rational defence mounted against it.

Something other than a mental defence is required.

What is that ‘something’: the breaking of the link between impulse and action, such that action in one’s life in general is based not in impulse or even thought or reason but on a system to which one submits. Once the individual (me) is in the groove of that benevolent system, impulse, thought, and reason in the ordinary sense cannot dislodge me from the track I am on.

That system is given by God and powered by God.

The man with the hammer: the reason given has plausibility in the moment but not overall. The relief from the pain justifies the action but only if one ignores the doubling of the pain caused by the relief. This is similar to the scratching of a mosquito bite. Scratching it to relieve the itch is insane, because the relief immediately yields to greater itching.

Once in a while he may tell the truth. And the truth, strange to say, is usually that he has no more idea why he took that first drink than you have. Some drinkers have excuses with which they are satisfied part of the time. But in their hearts they really do not know why they do it. Once this malady has a real hold, they are a baffled lot. There is the obsession that somehow, someday, they will beat the game. But they often suspect they are down for the count.

‘Explanations’ for drinking, presentations of the ‘reasoning’, are not the truth.

What is the truth? There is no ‘reason’ in the ordinary sense of going to the post office to buy a stamp or going to sleep because one is tired. No ‘in order to’ or ‘because’. Such propositions of ground or purpose might be articulated in the mind, but they are not the cause of having the first drink (or the subsequent) drinks.

The book says that we have no idea why we take the first drink. It does not go on to present any reason ‘why’ but merely states that we will (using the word ‘prophesy’ at one point) have the first drink, unless we acquire a sufficient defence.

There is a second layer of explanation one encounters: people attempt to explain what caused one to become alcoholic in the first place. But for every person with a dreadful childhood, being presented with poor adult examples when one was growing up, early exposure to alcohol, or presence in heavy-drinking environments, there will be others—often people in the same family—exposed to the same influences who did not become alcoholic.

Best to leave aside so-called explanations. With my own alcoholism, I’m more interested in the ‘that’ than the ‘why’.

The preoccupation with the ‘why’ might be traced to the desire to eliminate the alcoholism by eliminating the ‘why’.

This is not an innocuous error: one regularly encounters people who stop working with others in AA or even leave AA in the belief that the causes of the alcoholism have been identified and dealt with, so AA is no longer necessary. Needless to say—though I am saying it—they often come unstuck, drink, and discover themselves just as alcoholic as thirty years before, even though the childhood and living difficulties—internal and external—have been adequately resolved. The alcoholism appears to have been operating, all along, on different circuity.

Down for the count—when left to one’s own devices; but with the system of reliance on God to determine one’s actions, there is a perfectly reliable path ahead.

How true this is, few realize. In a vague way their families and friends sense that these drinkers are abnormal, but everybody hopefully awaits the day when the sufferer will rouse himself from his lethargy and assert his power of will.

Hope is good, and action based on hope is better.

But beneath that hope there must be the realisation that many alcoholics and addicts simply cannot or will not get well—and may never acquire or be given the ability or willingness.

This is not a counsel of despair but a recognition of the baseline reality, from which God’s intervention—directly and through AA—is the rule-breaking exception, albeit, now, a magnificently common one.

This protects against frenetic fussing, reading of the runes, constant interference, preoccupation, and the continual dashing of nascent hopes. Assume the worst, then await a genuinely suitable opportunity.

The ordinary hope that the person will pick themselves up and do something about their problem is not appropriate with alcoholics and addicts. They might, or they might not, but waiting around for it, putting one’s life on hold until they return to the fold of sanity, is ill advised.

The reading speaks of the sufferer rousing himself—he cannot rouse himself; that is the point. Divine intervention is needed if any rousing is to take place.

Lethargy—this is the appearance. Inside, the system is full of nervous tension, conflicted, pulled in multiple directions, frantic. The alcoholism has this energy encased, as it were, in a train stuck on a track to perdition; the train is heading for the abyss, apparently insouciantly accepting its fate, whilst the passengers experience every colour of panic, despair, resignation, and futile attempt to seize control.

The power of will is indeed there, but it is being deployed by the alcoholism to maintain the alcoholic system in place.

The redirection—as it were the redirection of the train onto a different track—is a question of railway points, and these are controlled by the Controller; they cannot be actuated from within the train.

The tragic truth is that if the man be a real alcoholic, the happy day may not arrive. He has lost control. At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic, he passes into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail. This tragic situation has already arrived in practically every case long before it is suspected.

The line between the potential and the ‘real’ (also referred to as the ‘true’) alcoholic is the line marking the start of the inability to stop in the presence of a powerful desire. One could also legitimately expand this—in line with references elsewhere—to the inability to moderate in the presence of a powerful desire.

One can cast the mind back to the first time one thought, ‘I’m not doing that again!’ (Whether the ‘that’ is drinking too much or drinking at all.) If one drank too much again or drank again at all, that was where the line was crossed. There might be one line for moderation and one for crossing.

As indicated, the point at which this line is crossed is not recognised to be such until much later.

In any case, I ran into trouble when I first started drinking, and rapidly discovered I was going to ‘do that again’ (drink and drink too much). Drinking at all put me across the line.

The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically non-existent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.

Treat ‘most’ as one of the Big Book hedging devices to avoid the categorical, absolute, universal statements that could so easily create controversy or challenge readers to provide counterexamples. Obviously an alcoholic who has the power of choice of drink is not actually alcoholic. There is no such thing as an alcoholic who has not lost the power of choice in drink.

Treat ‘so-called will power’ as ‘the will power one used to have’, ‘the will power one ought to have’, or ‘the will power others have’.

Treat ‘the first drink’ as ‘the impulse to have the first drink’. The first drink has no agency, does not act, and does not throw itself down one’s throat; it does not impel one to act; the culprit is an internal compulsion, an internal impulse to drink; we are without defence not against the first drink but against the impulse to have the first drink. The defenceless against the first drink is what leads to the first drink.

In a healthy person, unhealthy, irrational, or other unwelcome impulses continue to arise. These are countered by the faculties of the mind, which identify the impulse and assess it rationally based on information, experience, principle, and reason. An assessment is made, and the will follows through that assessment with action consistent with the assessment.

In the alcoholic, the information does not show up, the information shows up and is processed irrationally, or, whilst the information shows up and is processed rationally, the conclusion drawn (‘do not drink’) does not convert into action, with the impulse, unimpeded, driving the subsequent action (the first drink).

At certain times there is no defence, which means at certain times there is.

Where there is a defence at a particular point in time, this does not mean that the defence is now cemented in place in perpetuity.

How can one tell whether such a defence is in place?

One assesses whether the conditions for the establishment of such a defence are in place. If they are, the defence will be, too.

There are several ‘death threats’ in AA: things I must avoid or eliminate to stay sober:

Disunity (Tradition One)
Reservations (Step One)
Dependence on people, places, and things (Step One, Step Three Requirement)
Harboured resentment (Step Four)
Keeping secrets (Step Five)
Selfishness (Step Six, Step Seven)
Ongoing harm without sincere repentance (Step Six, Step Seven)
Failure to make amends (Step Eight, Step Nine)
Failure to face creditors (Step Eight, Step Nine)
Complacency (Step Ten)
Not living on a spiritual basis (Step Two, Step Three, Step Eleven)
Lack of spiritual growth through work and self-sacrifice for others (Step Twelve)

The inverse of these: things I must have in place to stay sober:

Unity with others in AA
Wholehearted acceptance of Step One
Detachment from people; dependence on God
Equanimity in the face of reality
Self-honesty and appropriate candour
Selflessness
Innocuousness
The completion of amends
The establishment of terms with all creditors
Daily diligence
Living life based on service of God
Work and self-sacrifice for others.

The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into the mind to deter us. If these thoughts occur, they are hazy and readily supplanted with the old threadbare idea that this time we shall handle ourselves like other people. There is a complete failure of the kind of defense that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove.

What are the consequences?

Drinking more
Doing things I shouldn’t do
Failing to do things I should do
Eroding the capital of my life

Any sound assessment of the above would yield this:

STOP.

I don’t assess.

Or I assess, but not soundly.

Or the assessment is overridden by mad ‘reasons’.

These reasons are lies.

The impulse always wins.

There is no defence against it.

You can’t negotiate with it.

You can’t regulate it.

You can’t eliminate it.

You can’t block it.

You can’t alter it.

Burn yourself once or twice, you’re clumsy.

Burn yourself five hundred times, you’re out of control.

The alcoholic may say to himself in the most casual way, “It won’t burn me this time, so here’s how!” Or perhaps he doesn’t think at all. How often have some of us begun to drink in this nonchalant way, and after the third or fourth, pounded on the bar and said to ourselves, “For God’s sake, how did I ever get started again?” Only to have that thought supplanted by “Well, I’ll stop with the sixth drink.” Or “What’s the use anyhow?”

The passages refers to non-thinking and ‘casual’ thinking: absence of thought and irrational thought. Elsewhere the third scenario is presented: deliberate drinking apparently with full knowledge of the consequences. Here, the thinking is rational in that it correctly predicts what will happen, but the irrationality lies in decision to drink in the face of what will happen.

The four ways of testing whether one is drinking against one’s will:

Did I drink more than I intended?
Did I do things I should not?
Did I harm myself or others?
Did I regret my drink or actions afterwards?

If any of these are operative, the individual is out of control.

*When this sort of thinking is fully established in an individual with alcoholic tendencies, he has probably placed himself beyond human aid, and unless locked up, may die or go permanently insane. These stark and ugly facts have been confirmed by legions of alcoholics throughout history. But for the grace of God, there would have been thousands more convincing demonstrations. So many want to stop but cannot.”

If I can’t stop me or moderate me, how would you be able to?

Unless guarded and literally under someone’s control 24 hours a day, the addiction—working through me—would have me drink.

I cannot outsource the stopping or moderation to another human or another group of humans, even through my voluntary obedience. All it would need is a single moment of rebellion, and the plan would be sunk.

If I obey another or others as a voluntary act, I’m still really in control: I’m doing what I want to do, and, when what I want to do is obey you, I will obey you, but, as soon as I do not want to obey you, I will not. This is not surrender but outsourced self-direction.

The programme offers something entirely different: the surrender to God.

This is different—if done sincerely—because it involves not the conditional permission for God to ‘drive’, with me retaining control of a second set of pedals, like in a driving instructor’s car, but the substitution of God for me as driver. I’m now in the passenger seat. One cannot surrender to another person or even a group. But one can surrender to God. God is available as the director of mind in a way that other human beings simply are not.

God directs my mind, and my mind directs my actions.

I’m now operated through, rather than being the operator.

If I rebel too much, for too long, God will indeed withdraw, as He respects my free will, but he’s incredibly tenacious, it seems, in the role of driver. When I take Step Three, God takes me at my word, and I find myself unable to do certain wrong things, including drinking, even though I want to. Outright rebellion is indeed possible, rebellion so grave the deal is off, but it takes quite persistent rebellion, as a matter of principle, for the Step Three contract to be torn up. The contract is not compromised by mercurial emotions and thoughts.

If there is real instability of thought and action, there has been no real surrender, only a moment-by-moment co-option of ‘the right action’ because in that moment it seems as though it is in my best interests to do the right thing.

The surrendered will make mistakes, but the non-surrendered are loose cannons.

There is a solution.

It works.
Only one thing works.
The solution is only one thing.

Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation.

Self-searching (Steps Four and Eight), levelling of pride (Steps Six and Seven), plus confession of shortcomings (Steps Five and Nine).

For years I did not like these things in the anticipation, but I did find interest, pleasure, and relief in the doing of those things.

That has altered my view. I do actually enjoy these now.

Why would one not?

Perhaps: identification with the subject matter. Whilst I think I am my attitudes and actions, my self-worth will be pinned to these like a sock caught in a rollercoaster. Attitudes and actions are unstable and never perfected.

Once I am detached from these and adopt the position of being a child of God, I become the operator of my person and my life, and I discover myself happier once the attitudes and actions are straightened out, which is why I do like these steps now. Daily inventory plus quarterly review (followed by corrective actions). That does the trick.

But we saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it.

‘Saw’—evident in the general air, demeanour, and comportment of others in AA.

‘It’—the AA programme (the contents of the book up to page 164).

‘Really worked’—people being effective, efficient, and harmonious, but not being pushovers, sycophants, kowtowers, or nice-y-nice: they got the job done; that was the main thing, and, in doing it, they were as pleasant as possible but without compromising the mission or compromising spiritual principles. Their chief aim was not to be liked or loved but to get the job done. It was this detachment and independence that I found most attractive, as I was sorely attached to and dependent on others.

‘As we had been living it’—seeking money, sex, power, prestige, comfort, thrills, and appearance to remedy an apparent emptiness that was in fact the result of my self-indulgence, self-interest, cowardice, and sloth. Such a life was without virtue and without value and was beneath me. The problem was not that I was living above my station but that I was living below it. So, a futile life. Also a hopeless one, because a system that does not work on Monday will not work on Tuesday, either. The problem is not the day of the week.

‘Come to believe’—I had to come to believe that my way did not work before I could show interest in a life that did work.

When, therefore, we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet.

‘Those in whom the problem had been solved’: recovered alcoholics whose problem (singular: self) has been solved by God because they took the Twelve Steps.

‘Approached’: this is the active working of the Twelfth Step.

‘There was nothing left’: I have to strip away everything I am holding onto such that the only option is to work the programme. Whilst I think I have options and have to stop to consider the options, I’m not ready.

‘Spiritual tools’: the Twelve Steps.

‘Kit’: they’re a single set; indivisible; operating in unison.

‘Simple’: ‘read the black bits on the page’. One can do the programme wrong by not doing what it says, by altering it, or by embellishing it. Each compromises the result: under-egging the pudding, over-egging the pudding, or using egg-substitute.

We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.

Bill was told off for using the word ‘heaven’ elsewhere and changed it to ‘utopia’. He snuck it in here instead.

Heaven—the realm of the spirit, perfect, blissful.

Rocketed—this happens quickly, not slowly. The injunction: take the actions promptly. A rocket that lumbers or dawdles will tumble back to earth before reaching orbit.

Fourth dimension—the realm of the spirit (see above)—the location of the spirit (who one really is); the material is the domain of activity, not home.

Of which we had not even dreamed—the world seems often unaware that there is anything beyond the material. Unless the realm of the spirit is found and inhabited, life in the material eventually becomes intolerable. Drink or premature death then entice.

The great fact is just this, and nothing less: That we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences (fully explained—Appendix II) which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows and toward God’s universe.

Spiritual—inward—subjective—metaphysical.

Material—outward—objective—physical.

The experience is spiritual.

But the effects are felt not just there but in the material: life, fellows, universe.

This indicates the direction in which change propagates and also the futility to trying to effect change at the level of the material, outwards, objective, and physical alone.

Material acts towards a material end will end up being trumped by whatever is going on spiritually.

Material acts towards a spiritual end will end up transforming the spiritual domain and thus will transform the material domain, which lies downstream.

The effect is indirect (disappearing into the spiritual, from whence the material changes originate), which is why the material acts and the material outcomes seem unrelated causally and asymmetrical in magnitude.

Small material acts to a spiritual end can have a huge effect.

Large material acts to a material end can have no effect.

The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous.

This establishes God as Creator. That needn’t, of course, entail specific understandings of the notion of creation, so we can happily leave the question of fossils, for examples, to religionists and their opponents—a broad understanding of the notion of creation would include both creationism and the scientific theory of evolution as possible mechanisms. But from a personal view it’s helpful, at least, to me: if God created me, I’m here not for my purposes but for God’s, so I do not need to devise or discern any purpose of my own.

God’s present in my heart—figurative language representing the internal life of attitudes, beliefs, motivations, conscience, inspiration, intuitive thoughts, and decision; God’s also present in my life—my circumstances.

In other words, God is omnipresent internally and externally.

Both domains are in God’s hands; there’s no need to worry. Providence provides.

‘Lives’ can be read as a verb not a noun. This is probably not intended but works well and consistently with the actual reading.

Miraculous: the notion that God intervenes metaphysically and physically. This does not entail breaking the laws of physics. Physics governs the motion of billiard balls but not does predict whether someone will play a shot. When the shot is played, the laws of physics are not interfered with but obeyed. The railway schedule tells you when the trains are due to run but will not tell you who will board the trains or of any incidents occurring on the lines. The laws of physics do not govern reality: they describe but one aspect of its operation.

Central fact: if the Creator of the universe is intervening internally and externally and is in fact in overall control, subject only to our exercise of will, that’s a pretty big deal.

Certainty: what else might explain the change brought about by actively seeking to build a relationship with God and actually building that relationship? If this is not God, it is something with a godlike power, and thus, for all intents and purposes, God.

He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves.

What are the things?

Not drinking
Taking the right action

By ourselves (not just ‘we could never do ourselves’): that means we still have a role to play in the doing of these things. We are not overridden; we merely side with God, and God (more than) doubles our stake.

Commenced: and will persist forever.

If you are as seriously alcoholic as we were, we believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution.

What would a middle-of-the-road solution be? Half-measures, which, as we know, yield not half-results but no results, in the same way that half a bucket holds no water.
We were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid, we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could; and the other, to accept spiritual help.

‘[L]ife was becoming impossible’: firstly because of the direct results of drinking and secondly because of the indirect result of drinking, namely the inability to manage everything else effectively (due to absence, incapacitation, distraction, financial damage, damage to relationships, etc.)

The region of no return through human aid is the region where signs of the physical craving and mental obsession are present yet the drinking is continuing. Once that’s in place, God, quite literally, help one.

The existence of only two alternatives: other apparent alternatives—(3) delay, (4) half-measures, (5) other measures—are illusions.

‘[G]o on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could’: essentially, leaving alcoholism to take its course.

‘[T]o accept spiritual help’: this means not keeping my life as it is whilst adding a dose of spirituality to it but rather placing myself entirely in God’s hands and then proceeding on an entirely new basis: focusing only on the relationship with God as employer, fulfilling my employee duties as best I can.

This we did because we honestly wanted to, and were willing to make the effort.

The two requirements for accepting spiritual help: wanting and willing.

Wanting requires an internal consistency (that’s one aspect of the honesty indicated), in other words the force of emotion is fully behind the intention, with no conflict, and with no ulterior motive or sense that the spiritual life is a means to an end (that’s the other aspect of the honesty indicated)—in other words, I want the spiritual life for itself, not because it will give me what I want materially.

Willingness is the readiness to make effort, which requires the sacrifice of what I might otherwise do plus the cost of effort—at times confusion, uncertainty, practical difficulty, insecurity, and other assaults.

Once wanting and willingness are established, the path is clear.

A certain American businessman had ability, good sense, and high character.

We will note that this individual is alcoholic and, at the start of the story, is refractory to all treatment. We thus learn that his alcoholism cannot be attributed to incompetence, stupidity, or immorality.

I was incompetent, stupid, and immoral.

How much more trouble was I in, faced with alcoholism?

For years he had ﬂoundered from one sanitarium to another. He had consulted the best known American psychiatrists. Then he had gone to Europe, placing himself in the care of a celebrated physician (the psychiatrist, Dr. Jung) who prescribed for him. Though experience had made him skeptical, he finished his treatment with unusual confidence. His physical and mental condition were unusually good. Above all, he believed he had acquired such a profound knowledge of the inner workings of his mind and its hidden springs that relapse was unthinkable. Nevertheless, he was drunk in a short time. More bafﬂing still, he could give himself no satisfactory explanation for his fall.

[A footnote for British readers: in British English, the word is usually spelled ‘sanatorium’.]

To follow on from yesterday’s reading, this chap is alcoholic and refractory to medical and psychiatric treatment of the highest quality, including residential treatment.

Things that neither cure alcoholism nor prevent relapse:

Going to treatment centres
Seeing doctors
Seeing psychiatrists
Seeing one of the best psychiatrists in Europe
Being in fit physical condition
Being in fit mental condition
Self-knowledge
Knowledge, in particular, of how the mind works and its cause-and-effect mechanisms

He is, however, wise enough not to attempt to ‘explain’ his relapse with reference to a particular emotion, thought, event, or circumstance. He knows that these would be unsatisfactory explanations.

So he returned to this doctor, whom he admired, and asked him point-blank why he could not recover. He wished above all things to regain self-control. He seemed quite rational and well-balanced with respect to other problems. Yet he had no control whatever over alcohol. Why was this?

Wishing is not enough. If I wish, wholeheartedly, to remain sober, I will not necessarily do so, unless I take the actions indicated. At this point in the story, the individual has no path set out before him, so there are no actions for him to take. He will drink even though he does not want to. Sometimes, in AA, people infer from the two facts of their present sobriety and wishing to stay sober that they will. This inference is unsound.

Reason and emotional balance are also irrelevant: these will not prevent relapse. Likewise, inferring that one will stay sober because one is rational and emotionally balanced is unsound.

The deployment of reason and the attainment of emotional balance are, respectively, a necessary tool for and an inevitable consequence of establishing and maintaining a relationship with God, but the purpose of the Steps is to act on God’s intervention into one’s life to cement such a relationship in place. Anything else is incidental.

The Steps are not there to make me better or to get me well. They’re there to place me under God’s protection, and I can be kept safe even when I’m nuts or out of whack emotionally, provided I’m sincerely pointed towards God. I’ll likely get well, too, but that’s incidental to the system.

He begged the doctor to tell him the whole truth, and he got it. In the doctor’s judgment he was utterly hopeless; he could never regain his position in society and he would have to place himself under lock and key or hire a bodyguard if he expected to live long. That was a great physician’s opinion.

A good example of how the book places categorical statements in the mouths or pens of non-AA members (‘utterly hopeless’), whilst the authors’ language is usually hedged (e.g. with ‘probably’, ‘may’, etc.)

But this man still lives, and is a free man. He does not need a bodyguard nor is he confined. He can go anywhere on this earth where other free men may go without disaster, provided he remains willing to maintain a certain simple attitude.

Life requires not having the first drink.

Freedom means not requiring material constraints to stay away from the first drink.

Disaster = having the first drink.

A certain (a particular, a singular) attitude—a simple one. What is that?

The text does not say at this point, but from other passages it is clear that the attitude is that God is in charge and one is committed to obeying God twenty-four hours a day, with no days off, with no moments off.

A commitment is a willingness to fulfil an undertaking regardless of how one feels or what one thinks during the fulfilment. Seeing it through, come what may. What is the undertaking? To do God’s will at all times (or at least anything but drinking).

On one’s own, such an undertaking simply will not be fulfilled.

When such an undertaking is towards God, God reciprocates with sufficient power. I do my small part, and God bridges the gap.

Some of our alcoholic readers may think they can do without spiritual help. Let us tell you the rest of the conversation our friend had with his doctor.

‘Do without’. Do what? Not act on the thought of a drink when it comes.

The doctor said: “You have the mind of a chronic alcoholic. I have never seen one single case recover, where that state of mind existed to the extent that it does in you.” Our friend felt as though the gates of hell had closed on him with a clang.

Recover = go from being unable not to act on the thought of a drink to being unable to act on the thought of a drink.

One goes from sobriety being impossible to drinking being impossible.

One impossibility to another.

One screenplay to another.

Whatever screenplay one is in is the only show in town.

At no point is there any choice. One isn’t given back choice. Someone who is lucky enough to make it into the lifeboat is not then choosing not to dive back into the water and go down with the sinking ship. That option is not on the table.

All of this takes place in the mind, where incoming thoughts (e.g. of a drink) are sifted and reviewed and where action is formulated.

The unrecovered state is hell.

He said to the doctor, “Is there no exception?” “Yes,” replied the doctor, “there is. Exceptions to cases such as yours have been occurring since early times. Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences. To me these occurrences are phenomena. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them. In fact, I have been trying to produce some such emotional rearrangement within you. With many individuals the methods which I employed are successful, but I have never been successful with an alcoholic of your description.”

‘Phenomena’: a perceptible event that is unusual.

‘… occurring … have had … occurrences … are suddenly cast to one side … dominate them …’

The point is that such phenomena could not, at that point, be ‘gone and gotten’, constructed, produced, controlled, managed, or directed.

The individual was the patient, the raw material for the transformation, not the actor or agent bringing it about.

Rarity: here and there, once in a while. In other words, this cannot be relied upon to happen, certainly not on cue, and certainly not on time.

What changes? Ideas, emotions, attitudes, conceptions, motives: these, together, form the guiding forces.

One will be subject to such guiding forces or dominated by such guiding forces.

The only question is, ‘Which guiding forces?’

Historically, one was governed by the guiding forces of materialism and then alcoholism.

Then, if one was lucky, a ‘phenomenon’ would occur, and one would be guided by spiritual forces, which are able to pull rank over the materialism of alcoholism.

Jung’s conclusion, however: the individual alcoholic can’t bring this about, and even someone like Jung was not able to bring this about in an alcoholic (though he apparently could in others).

Upon hearing this, our friend was somewhat relieved, for he reﬂected that, after all, he was a good church member. This hope, however, was destroyed by the doctor’s telling him that while his religious convictions were very good, in his case they did not spell the necessary vital spiritual experience.

Convictions—maybe necessary but certainly insufficient.

What is required is the internal rearrangement that places God at the centre of one’s life in the place of self, with self banished to the outer rim of the universe. One can go to church and still have self at the centre of one’s life.

The spiritual experience is the shift to being God-centred, followed by the life that exhibits that.

It is vital in the sense of necessary and vital in the sense of being crucial for life itself.

Here was the terrible dilemma in which our friend found himself when he had the extraordinary experience, which as we have already told you, made him a free man.

This is not strictly a dilemma. Bill sometimes misuses abstract words, and this causes confusion.

A dilemma is where there are two options, and one is forced to choose between them. When Bill says ‘dilemma’, he usually means ‘predicament’, meaning apparently insoluble and grave problem. (See page 45 of the Big Book, and page 12, page 25, page 28 of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, where it’s used in the sense of ‘predicament’. The word is used correctly on page 87 on Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. It’s then used to mean ‘personal problem’ on page 103 and page 125 of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.)

The position that Rowland is in is that he has been told he will die of alcoholism unless locked up or otherwise restrained. He does not have multiple options. He’s in a predicament, not a dilemma.

Jung does not advise him, at least as far as this passage is concerned, to go and seek such a spiritual experience. He apparently thought it could not be brought about by will or effort.

Nonetheless, Rowland did seek out such an experience after his discussions with Jung, which—contrary to certain accounts in the AA world that place the discussions in 1930–1931—took place in 1926.

There was an organisation called the Emmanuel Movement, an outreach of the Emmanuel Church in Boston, which adopted psychologically based approaches to religious healing. An Emmanuel parishioner, Ernest Jacoby, started the Jacoby Club, ‘A Club for Men to Help Themselves by Helping Others’, which remained active in the 1920s and 1930s, and actually provided space to the first AA meetings in Boston. Lay psychotherapist of the movement Courtney Baylor provided instruction, amongst others, to Richard R. Peabody, who later wrote, in 1931, ‘The Common Sense of Drinking’, which was read by early AA members.

Rowland, it is thought, received instruction from Baylor, but also certainly started attending meetings of the Oxford Group, which was dedicated to the ‘Four Absolutes’ of honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love, as taught in the Sermon on the Mount. The Oxford Group also employed a method for the vigorous pursuit of personal change and advocated personal evangelism. This where Rowland first became sober by spiritual means. He then came in contact with Ebby Thatcher, for whose release from potential commitment to the Battleboro Retreat—an unconventional mental health hospital in Vermont—he successfully advocated, together with other members of the Oxford Group. Ebby then got sober and sought out Bill. Rowland and Ebby both had patchy experiences with permanent sobriety, but Bill remained permanently sober.

Free, here, means free to go anywhere without getting drunk.

We, in our turn, sought the same escape with all the desperation of drowning men. What seemed at first a ﬂimsy reed, has proved to be the loving and powerful hand of God.

Escape from what? Escape from the predicament of being unable to refuse a drink even though the physical craving might mean one never stops.

Drowning is not just a predicament but an urgent one.

Alcoholism—even when it extends over decades and progresses at a glacial pace—is always an urgent predicament because of the possibility of misadventure at every turn.

Once escape is really being sought it has really been found already. The relationship with God is activated in the seeking.

The revelation that the flimsy reed is the hand of God—initially, the programme seems to be a mindless, arbitrary set of actions; however, those actions activate the relationship with God, and, whilst the actions remain necessary, one realises they are not the means of achieving sustained sobriety directly but the means of activating the divine defence.

A new life has been given us or, if you prefer, “a design for living” that really works.

If there is a problem with the living, there is a problem with the design, and the key element to the design is this: Who is this for? Who is this about? Who is at the centre? When I am at the centre of things, the purpose and the beneficiary, the design—however well executed—will produce results that are suboptimal at best and terrible at worst. When God is at the centre the design—even if executed incompetently—will produce excellent results, although I may not be able to see this at the time.

If my life is about me and for me, I’m sunk. I’m too awake to sacrifice my breath on material ends alone, although spiritual ends of course require material means.

If my life is about God and for God, there is hope. The good news is that I needn’t work out my purpose or what good I’m for and whether or not I’m succeeding. These all lie behind a veil of unknowing. I need only trust that these are taken care of.

If I’m wrong in backing God, because all there is in reality is the material, with the realm of the spirit an artificial concoction, then I’m actually no further behind, because whether the atoms that form me are here or there, doing this or that, is quite indifferent. Matter cannot care about matter. Meaning and sense can lie only above the material, never in it.

The God design also works because it is formulated to solve every problem. God has the answer for every situation, because He created every situation. He also has all the resources available, because He created them. All I need to do is ask what to do and ask for the strength to do it.

The distinguished American psychologist, William James, in his book “Varieties of Religious Experience,” indicates a multitude of ways in which men have discovered God. We have no desire to convince anyone that there is only one way by which faith can be acquired.

AA provides one way to establish a relationship with God. There are others. Since AA works, however, and appears to work whatever one’s make-up, history, or situation, I need look no further.

What is ‘faith’ in this context?

A belief in the existence of the metaphysical realm; a belief in the existence of a Being in that realm that is an adequate source of direction and strength; action in line with these beliefs to access that source of direction and strength and then to proceed in accordance with such direction, powered by such strength.

If what we have learned and felt and seen means anything at all, it means that all of us, whatever our race, creed, or color are the children of a living Creator with whom we may form a relationship upon simple and understandable terms as soon as we are willing and honest enough to try.

Learned: the information provided by others and from one type of experience: the external, objective, material, and physical.

Felt: a second type of experience: the internal, subjective, spiritual, and metaphysical.

That cleverly covers both realms. The proposition is fully supported.

What follows is the primary observation that flows from what is learned and felt.

The observation concerns all people—regardless of apparent differences: this means I can cheerfully disregard external markers of difference (sex, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political orientation, demographic category, nationality, language, age, ability) and recognise myself as one with all others, not hived off into separate groups. That’s the unity promised by Tradition One. Identity is separation, and separation is attack.

Creator—one can, of course, believe in any higher power one wishes, provided, as the book indicates, that it makes sense to one, but the notion that one is created—not emergent—is helpful. If I was not created (i.e. if I were the accidental result of billions of years of chemical reactions and the inevitable and unstoppable processes of the laws of nature), I have no more significance than a potato, and nor do you. If I hurt you, that has no meaning. If I love you, that has no meaning. That would have no more meaning than to say the potato loves something, or the potato is important. If, however, there is intelligence behind creation (which, of course, does not preclude the full application of the laws of nature, but refers at the very least to the creation of the soul, spirit, or however you term the ‘being’ of the person, operating within and through the physical being), I’m in a universe where, if I hurt you or love you, that has meaning, where my life has meaning.

That Creator is not the deistic winder of the mechanism, the absentee landlord who has set up the system then gone to read His paper whilst the whole mechanism winds down, falling apart as it goes, but one who is living, and actively involved, today, right here, right now.

Relationship: the most useful model for this, for me, is the relationship of service. I serve God; God provides for necessities, including the resources to do His will. He is not mocked, and I am never prevented from doing His will, so, if there is something I cannot do, it cannot have been His will. My identity, value, and purpose are fully taken care of and need never again detain my attention for a moment.

God’s love might be unconditional, but the relationship is not: there are terms.

What are the terms? The spiritual fitness produced by adopting the attitudes and following the instructions contained in the book.

What basic faculties are required?

Honesty: the accurate recognition of one’s own failure to make a go of things in the material realm solely, plus the recognition that there is a different way, which involves the consciousness being uplifted to the realm of the spirit, from where it can operate life in the realm of the material far more satisfactorily but now achieve its true spiritual purpose.

Willing: the commitment to make continuous effort along the lines suggested.

A last point: if I am the offspring of the Creator (rather than just something made by the Creator), then I am a chip off the old block: immortal in a sense, of incalculable value in a sense, nothing compared to God, but infinitely higher than a potato. Low self-worth is ignorance and confusion about the reality of a person. The question of self-worth is solved forever. If I have low self-worth, I’m wrong. If I persist in it, the problem ceases to be low self-worth and becomes arrogance.

Those having religious affiliations will find here nothing disturbing to their beliefs or ceremonies. There is no friction among us over such matters.

The best way to avoid friction over such matters is not to talk about them.

All that matters, really, is that one have a relationship with a Higher Power and activate that using the Twelve Steps.

Everything else is down to the individual.

I suppose that it is possible to work the Steps whatever one’s religion. I’m not a specialist and I have only my own experience, so I cannot vouch for that. I can say that, as my religious views have changed, the compatibility with the programme has improved, along with its effectiveness.

Not all religions, it seems have a notion of a God one can talk to who provides direct direction and strength, in a sort of conversational manner, or a God who really is in charge of everything. I do find the programme works best with a conception of a Higher Power that is intelligent, protective, providential, generous, resourceful, and actively involved, amongst other characteristics.

But each to their own—what works, works; if things are not working, perhaps the conception can be reviewed.

We think it no concern of ours what religious bodies our members identify themselves with as individuals. This should be an entirely personal affair which each one decides for himself in the light of past associations, or his present choice. Not all of us join religious bodies, but most of us favor such memberships.

I’ve certainly belonged to such bodies. I’ve found it far easier to find other people who want an active relationship of serving God in AA than in outside organisations. Such bodies, such associations, such memberships I’ve found interesting and useful in various ways, but nothing replaces meetings, fellowship, and sponsorship. Such other bodies etc. come and go in my life. Meetings, fellowships, and sponsorship continue uninterrupted.

In the following chapter, there appears an explanation of alcoholism, as we understand it, then a chapter addressed to the agnostic. Many who once were in this class are now among our members. Surprisingly enough, we find such convictions no great obstacle to a spiritual experience.

The agnostic is the person with conflicted views, the person sitting on the fence, or the person who believes in the unknowability of such matters. The agnostic’s convictions do present an obstacle, but not a great one. Why not?

The journey towards a spiritual experience requires a mustard-seed notion of God.

The individual must momentarily set aside their conflicted views, fence-sitting, and settled convictions to grasp this single, rudimentary notion of God.

This grasping opens the door.

What comes next is action, and action drives more action.

Once action is being taken, the notion need not be revisited for quite some time.

Having arrived at a rudimentary notion and taken Step Three, that’s it for the theology until Step Nine has been completed.

On arriving at the completion of Step Nine, everything will look different.

One goes from looking at the universe with a lit match and looking at the universe in broad daylight.

One does not need to understand everything about France to learn French and go and travel to or live in France. One need only have the desire to establish the relationship, and the process of learning will tell you what you need to know.

Further on, clear-cut directions are given showing how we recovered. These are followed by forty-two personal experiences.

The directions are clear-cut but not comprehensive. I’m told precisely what to do when I wake up in the morning (ask God to direct my thinking). But I’m not told about the form or duration of Step Five other than that it is single, long conversation.

‘How we recovered’—not how we remained constantly recovering.

One’s story is one’s experience. This is a description not of external events, facts, and circumstances but of internal events, facts, and circumstances, which are what constitute the experience. The externals related to tell the story are the scaffolding not the edifice. When we share what ‘it is like’ etc. we’re really sharing scaffolding. Sometimes people put up scaffolding but to no purpose: no edifice is actually built. Rather, we’re enjoined elsewhere to share what ‘we’ were like, what happened, and what ‘we’ are like now.

Regarding the forty-two, in Kabbalistic tradition, 42 is the number with which the Almighty created the universe.

He appears to have used the number to create AA, also.

42 is also about the right number of people in a meeting or group.

Fewer and meetings become dull and repetitive, and there might not be enough variety for newcomers to identify with at least one person.

More and participation is restricted, cohesion is impaired, and newcomers fall through the cracks.

Each individual, in the personal stories, describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way he established his relationship with God. These give a fair cross section of our membership and a clear- cut idea of what has actually happened in their lives.

An individual is an undivided person. Having recovered, the individual is undivided in their loyalties and no longer entangled with others.

If there are 42 stories, then all 42 are necessary, with their varying language and point of view.

Some groups stipulate the form and content of sharing for their members, via senior members of the group.

This strays from this principle.

Such meetings are dull.

The purpose of the story is not to say what ‘it’ (with its unidentified referent) was like, what happened, and what ‘it’ is like now. The Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, there is a conversation about what ‘it’ means in such sentences. The duck offers that, when it finds a thing, the ‘it’ usually turns out to be a frog or a worm. Quite.

In any case, the purpose of an AA story is to show the way in which the individual established their relationship with God. If it does anything else, well, that’s well and good as part of the package, but if it fails to do that, it fails in its chief purpose.

Imagine being the speaker-finder of a meeting and framing each request to a potential speaker thus: “Would you be available to come and tell us how you established a relationship with God?”

I can only imagine the grimaces, and the subsequent horror of the meeting if the individual did actually say, “I’m going to tell you how I established a relationship with God.” Within weeks there’d be a group conscience about frightening newcomers off or about the fact that the programme is supposed to be spiritual, not religious.

Be that as it may, those who went before us adopted this approach, and this is what established the global fellowship that we find ourselves in.

If one is crossing an ocean in a perfectly seaworthy vessel, that might be a bad time to reengineer the ship—mid-course—on the basis that the shipbuilders built on the wrong principles. Not a good point to start removing elements of the hull or engine.

The vessel got us this far.

Perhaps best to stick with it.

We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women, desperately in need, will see these pages, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that they will be persuaded to say, “Yes, I am one of them too; I must have this thing.”

The accounts should be self-revealing—to an extent—without being excessively lurid or grotesque. There’s got to be something to chew on; something to light up the mind.

The three requirements:

Being in desperate need (whilst one thinks one has other options, one will resist the admission of the problem and the recognition of the solution)
Being presented with real recovered people (simply being with other people in desperate need is not enough)
Being presented, in person after person, with the description of the problem and the description of the solution

‘I must have this thing’: what is ‘this thing’?

A relationship with God.

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CHAPTER 2