This is the Foreword as it appeared in the first printing of the first edition in 1939.
We, of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.
Two-fold: mind and body.
The bodily part—the automated process that keeps me in a drinking bout for hours, days, weeks, months, or years—is what will kill me if it is activated. Once it’s activated, only providence stops me. I can’t stop me. You can’t stop me. The job is therefore not to have the first drink.
The problem centres in the mind: it is the mind, stone-cold sober, that takes me to a drink. How? The brain, programmed by years of drinking, periodically shoots up the order, ‘Have a drink’. It does not do this because it’s thinking and reasoning. The little subroutine does not have its own consciousness. It’s just programmed. It gets activated for reasons that are unfathomable. This is a phenomenon beyond explanation. It can happen now or in twenty years’ time. It can happen when I’m happy, unhappy, stressed, or relaxed. There is no condition that will definitely trigger it. There is no condition in which I am definitely safe from its activation. I am powerless over this, and the possibility that the little neuron cluster will burp out the order to the Command-and-Control Centre will persist forever, as alcoholism is incurable.
The real problem is not the fact it will do this. It’s living a life based on self that means, whenever my brain shoots up an order, I follow it, because I’m the Lord High Commander, the Highest Authority in the Land, the Captain of Knowing Things. This is why I need to be in the habit, 24 hours a day, of doing what I believe to be God’s will and, in the absence of awareness of God, following the 24-hour-a-day system of the Twelve Steps, Twelve Traditions, and Twelve Concepts. Once this is thoroughly ingrained, the fact my brain has said, ‘Let’s have a drink’ is irrelevant, because it’s just one in an endless stream of thoughts that are irrelevant.
That’s what my recovery looks like.
To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book. For them, we hope these pages will prove so convincing that no further authentication will be necessary. We think this account of our experiences will help everyone to better understand the alcoholic. Many do not comprehend that the alcoholic is a very sick person. And besides, we are sure that our way of living has its advantages for all.
The reason I am to be shown how they have recovered is because it will show me how I can recover, because what works for them will work for me. The question is therefore whether I want to recover and am willing to do what they did.
When, after years in AA, I decided to try this, it was in part because I decided to trust what they said. If they said they were rocketed into a fourth dimension, then that’s what happened, and, if I did what they did, I, too, would be rocketed. I did, and I was.
For years, I took the book with a pinch of salt. It did not convince me. Further authentication was apparently necessary. But no further authentication was enough or would be enough. It turns out my problem was not lack of authentication but a desire to keep my old way of life, my old identity, whatever the pain. That’s one aspect of the sickness of alcoholism: part of me does not mind pain, suffering, and death, as long as I get to be me. That’s what the alcoholism convinced me, as part of its plan to get me to drink. It tells me: the prize is worth the price (when the reverse is true).
It is important that we remain anonymous because we are too few, at present to handle the overwhelming number of personal appeals which may result from this publication. Being mostly business or professional folk, we could not well carry on our occupations in such an event. We would like it understood that our alcoholic work is an avocation.
I don’t have a career. I have an occupation: something to occupy me. If I ‘did AA’ full-time, that would become my occupation, and I would automatically be professionalising what I do in AA, even if I earn no money from it. That would set me apart, and that would help no one, least of all me. There are a few prophet-like characters whose allocated role is to essentially be message-carriers in AA, but I’m certainly not one of them. They’re one-offs, and it’s a heavy burden and lonely path.
I’m at my healthiest when I have a healthy occupation and a health home-life: home, occupation, and affairs.
A career would be self-centered, and I cannot afford self, so no career for me. What I do might look to others like a career, but what I do during the day is really a list of tasks to perform for others, as that is how I serve God. 99% of my character defects die through starvation of oxygen, and I starve them of oxygen by keeping myself nice and busy with nice and normal things.
The avocation of carrying the message (= the alcoholic work) is indeed an occupation but it’s the sideline.
I have no dog in the race of carrying the message: I carry it to others; they do what they want with it. I’ve already moved on by that point onto the next task. Best to not even peek.
One last point: the point of the home, occupation, and affairs is also that the stories and experiences these deliver become the worked examples for the programme and thus the best demonstration of the efficacy of the programme and the power of God.
Without a home, occupation, and affairs, the programme is a theory, and my ability to carry the message is hobbled.
When writing or speaking publicly about alcoholism, we urge each of our Fellowship to omit his personal name, designating himself instead as “a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.”
Very earnestly we ask the press also, to observe this request, for otherwise we shall be greatly handicapped.
People carry the principles of AA to me. They are the frame, not the picture.
I carry the principles of AA to others. I’m the frame, not the picture.
It’s not about the personalities—it’s about the principles.
Sponsorship in particular is about the content not the form.
If one sponsorship channel is extinguished, another is available.
The content flows unstoppably.
Nothing has been or can be lost.
A switch might be inconvenient practically.
But sadness shows that the sponsor was the commodity not the channel.
I don’t take or give gratitude personally.
Gratitude is about content not form.
Who to thank?
God.
We are not an organization in the conventional sense of the word.
AA is not organised from top down. Groups are not organised from top down. At least not in the ordinary sense of top down. The groups really are at the top in the sense of being collectively in charge of AA, and the individual members really are at the top in the sense of being collectively in charge of groups. But this is because AA is envisioned as an upside-down triangle, at group and fellowship level.
Intergroup, Region, Conference, the Board (GB) or District, Area, Conference, the Board (US & elsewhere) serve us. They’re not the cavalry; they’re not an ascending sequence of courts of appeal; they’re not authorities; they’re not there to fix our problems, tell us how to handle the minutiae of personal or group problems (cf. this year’s GB questions for conference, most of which concern how AA members and groups handle their personal affairs); they’re not there to swoop in to police how AA members interact with each other or structure groups in a conformant way; they’re not there to enforce contemporary ideologies or act as a bulwark against them. They’re there only to do those things groups cannot do for themselves: essentially, publications, public information, public communication channels, and Conference. AA is bottom-heavy (or top-heavy if you’re looking at the upside-down triangle): it’s the people who count, and authority, responsibility, accountability, and autonomy lie with AA members.
How do I practice this myself?
Meetings seem to work best with a simple group structure, a simple script, and as little organisation as possible (though as much as necessary).
Meeting officers are ideally highly competent administrators and actors (taking the requisite action promptly, effectively, efficiently, and harmoniously), but the aim is for this administration to be invisible, enabling the core of the meeting: people sharing what works for those who are afflicted.
The best way to bring this about is simply to demonstrate it oneself.
That’s what leadership is in AA: good example.
Lastly, building up bastions and structures within groups appears not to be a great idea. One might legitimately stay in a group for twenty years. One might have breaks. Or one might be called by God to shift, change, vanish, go somewhere entirely different, and start again in another part of AA. Nothing is ‘built’ for real. It’s like the tabernacle in the desert: dismantled and rebuilt; in the meantime, follow the pillars of cloud and fire (God).
God’s will for me as an individual trumps everything in my life: no powers or principalities; just sincerely seeking to do God’s will, even if it seems counter-intuitive or appears to break the rules. This is not an abandonment of rules: it’s the single rule that breaks the rules. That’s why organising AA does not work, at any level, in any relationship. Reality fights back, which is why I stop fighting it.
There are no fees or dues whatsoever. The only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking.
I’m not sure that desires can be honest or dishonest, in themselves. They’re either there or not.
When I speak I can be honest in the sense of candid or honest in the sense of truthful. These two senses are quite different from each other.
Neither can be said of a desire. One can conceal or disclose a desire, and one’s statement about a desire might be truthful or untruthful, but the desire itself cannot, itself, be candid or truthful.
There’s a third aspect of honesty: the absence of concealed motives.
If I want to be with Sally because I like being with Sally, that’s honest.
If I want to be with Sally because she’s rich and might pay for dinner, that’s not honest.
The desire is there and is neither honest nor dishonest; but the motivation is dishonest.
An honest desire to stop drinking might be a desire for sobriety itself, so not a desire merely to avoid the consequences of drinking and not a desire merely to acquire the benefits of sobriety: simply a desire to be free of alcohol (and all other mind- and mood-altering substances, regardless of their nature and origin).
This difficulty was picked up in early AA (reported here): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/literature/smf-127_en.pdf
“THE PREAMBLE was introduced in the June 1947 issue of the AA Grapevine magazine. It was written by the then-editor, who borrowed much of the phrasing from the Foreword to the original edition of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous. … The original version differed in two ways from the familiar form we all know: (1) It stated that the only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking,’ and (2) it contained only the very brief statement ‘AA has no dues or fees.’ People often ask why the word ‘honest’ was deleted. At the 1958 General Service Conference, a delegate asked about the words ‘honest desire to stop drinking,’ suggesting that since ‘honest’ does not appear in the Third Tradition, it might be deleted from the Preamble. In discussion, most Conference members felt that as AA had matured, it had become almost impossible to determine what constitutes an honest desire to stop drinking, and also that some who might be interested in the program could be confused by the phrase. Thus, as part of the evolution of AA, the phrase had been dropped from common usage. The midsummer 1958 meeting of the General Service Board of Trustees ratified the deletion, and since then the Preamble has read simply ‘a desire to stop drinking.’”
I have no beef with this deletion.
I would say that, whilst, in the first few months of 1993, when I was trying and failing to stay sober through AA, my desire to stay sober was contingent on all sorts of things, particularly feeling a certain away or perceiving good prospects sober.
After the last, exceptionally nasty and quite unexpected drinking episode on 24 July 1993, my previously qualified desire to stay sober became unqualified: I wanted permanent sobriety for its own sake, regardless of the price and regardless of the consequences. Sobriety became enough, and I was happy merely to be sober. After that, I found staying sober the easiest thing in the world.
Whenever I get into trouble, today, it is because I’m having a SLIP: Sobriety Losing Its Priority.
Tradition Five suggests my primary purpose: to stay sober and to carry this message (the contents of the book ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ up to page 164) to others.
Nowhere else in the Traditions does it suggest the development of secondary, tertiary, or quaternary purposes.
My primary purpose is my only purpose, therefore.
If I’m disappointed by life, it is frustration, and frustration is the frustration of other purposes.
What is your experience?
We are not allied with any particular faith, sect or denomination, nor do we oppose anyone. We simply wish to be helpful to those who are afflicted.
Not allied:
Not sharing my identity and objectives with someone else or something else.
If I have an identity through allying myself with a group of people with which I share a characteristic, a place, an ideology, I’ve denied my true self and placed constraints on my action. Identity is a merciless prison.
What’s my true self?
Child of God: extension, emanation, instantiation.
What does that entail?
Doing what God wants each day, not what my identity, my allying, would dictate.
As soon as I’m an ally, I’m preparing for war. Allies are needed only where there is division into ‘us’ and ‘them’. Division leads to war. And we have ceased fighting. To cease fighting, the first step is to take the uniform off.
I must be joined only to God. Then I am really free: nothing other than God need affect what I do.
God is creative and unpredictable, it seems. Every time I think I’ve got a handle and developed a ‘system’, God pulls out the carpet from under me and I’m back at square one with the entry-level reliance of ‘Please show me what to do!’
So no allying with anything earthly, as I cannot serve two masters.
No opposition:
To have allies is to have opponents.
If there’s nothing to hit, I cannot be attacked. If I cannot be attacked, there’s nothing to oppose.
What’s to hit? Identity (ego, self) and its extension through the material world.
People can step on my toes only if I have toes.
Helpful … afflicted:
To be helped, I needed to know I was afflicted. What was I afflicted by? Me. Only once I knew it was me that was afflicting me could I be helped. Whilst I thought it was something other than me, I was helpless: incapable of being helped.
Good sponsors neither allied themselves with me nor opposed me. They showed me a different way.
I kept changing sponsors until I realised it was not the sponsor who was the problem, it was me. Rather than changing sponsor, my job to was change me by surrendering to God, who shot the responsibility straight back to me to implement change under His direction.
What is your experience?
We shall be interested to hear from those who are getting results from this book, particularly from those who have commenced work with other alcoholics. We should like to be helpful to such cases.
Inquiry by scientific, medical, and religious societies will be welcomed.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
The book is there to be read, understood, and then followed like an instruction manual. It contains lots of actions to take. These actions produce results. Today, I’m after results, not theory.
… work …
The work is not the Twelve Steps. The work is the work with other alcoholics, which is part of Step Twelve. Firstly, those are alcoholics. Secondly, those are other alcoholics. I’m on the same level, just further along.
… Alcoholics Anonymous …
Primary identification: being an alcoholic.
Then comes ‘anonymous’: immediately stopping me from inserting my personality.