Figures given in this foreword describe the Fellowship as it was in 1955.
SINCE the original Foreword to this book was written in 1939, a wholesale miracle has taken place. Our earliest printing voiced the hope “that every alcoholic who journeys will find the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous at his destination. Already,” continues the early text “twos and threes and fives of us have sprung up in other communities.”
Miracle: a once-in-a-while intervention in the system by Whoever created the system.
Wholesale: the intervention is universally and eternally available, and we have found a way of activating it systematically and on a large scale; wholesale goods are also the same; I don't need a special miracle: I just need an ordinary miracle, because I'm an ordinary alcoholic.
Sixteen years have elapsed between our first printing of this book and the presentation in 1955 of our second edition. In that brief space, Alcoholics Anonymous has mushroomed into nearly 6,000 groups whose membership is far above 150,000 recovered alcoholics. Groups are to be found in each of the United States and all of the provinces of Canada. A.A. has flourishing communities in the British Isles, the Scandinavian countries, South Africa, South America, Mexico, Alaska, Australia and Hawaii. All told, promising beginnings have been made in some 50 foreign countries and U. S. possessions. Some are just now taking shape in Asia. Many of our friends encourage us by saying that this is but a beginning, only the augury of a much larger future ahead.
‘In that brief space’
Sixteen years, apparently, is not long. It is a brief space. I can expect too much too quickly from AA. It is true, when I surrender, I get immediate relief from the confidence that the problem has been placed in the hands of the Creator of Solutions. I then see surprisingly quick progress in certain ways. But other things take considerably longer to work themselves through fully.
However long one has been sober, the response is: A very good start! A ‘promising beginning’.
The spark that was to flare into the first A.A. group was struck at Akron, Ohio, in June 1935, during a talk between a New York stockbroker and an Akron physician. Six months earlier, the broker had been relieved of his drink obsession by a sudden spiritual experience, following a meeting with an alcoholic friend who had been in contact with the Oxford Groups of that day. He had also been greatly helped by the late Dr. William D. Silkworth, a New York specialist in alcoholism who is now accounted no less than a medical saint by A.A. members, and whose story of the early days of our Society appears in the next pages. From this doctor, the broker had learned the grave nature of alcoholism. Though he could not accept all the tenets of the Oxford Groups, he was convinced of the need for moral inventory, confession of personality defects, restitution to those harmed, helpfulness to others, and the necessity of belief in and dependence upon God.
“Grave nature”
Alcoholism is deadly, and the deathly blow is struck not at the moment that death occurs, not at the moment I have the first drink, but at the moment I assert my ‘right’ to make my own decisions.
Alcoholism is powerless over me if my decision-making is escalated to a Higher Power, who then delegates tasks back to me.
When I really trust God, drinking is impossible: God isn’t thirsty and will never delegate drinking to me as one of my tasks of the day.
The only answer to alcoholism is a spiritual experience.
How is that acquired? Firstly, someone sets fire to me, which places me in a state of temporary grace. To turn temporary into permanent grace: inventory, confession, amends, service, God-reliance. Once this process has been completed, provided I stay up to date, I am out of the danger zone. Then I spend the rest of my life setting fire to other people.
Prior to his journey to Akron, the broker had worked hard with many alcoholics on the theory that only an alcoholic could help an alcoholic, but he had succeeded only in keeping sober himself. The broker had gone to Akron on a business venture which had collapsed, leaving him greatly in fear that he might start drinking again. He suddenly realized that in order to save himself he must carry his message to another alcoholic. That alcoholic turned out to be the Akron physician.
Some lessons:
The theory was right.
Attempting to help others will always help me, even if it does not appear to help them in terms of immediately attained sobriety.
His fear was incorrect: whether we drink is down to our relationship with God, not external circumstances.
His months of working hard with people resulted in a sudden realisation: I don’t realise something as I might, for instance, boil a potato. Realisations happen to me. The realisation happened to him. It was sudden: a violent intrusion, an intervention by God. What created the conditions for this realisation? The work he had done over the previous months with other alcoholics. What was the realisation? Keep doing what you’ve been doing to date! No need to change the formula in a crisis.
The solution to the problem (the collapsed business venture) turns out to have nothing to do with the problem (carry his message to another alcoholic).
Note that we hear no more of the problem. It has disappeared. Something more important has taken its place.
This physician had repeatedly tried spiritual means to resolve his alcoholic dilemma but had failed. But when the broker gave him Dr. Silkworth’s description of alcoholism and its hopelessness, the physician began to pursue the spiritual remedy for his malady with a willingness he had never before been able to muster. He sobered, never to drink again up to the moment of his death in 1950. This seemed to prove that one alcoholic could affect another as no non-alcoholic could. It also indicated that strenuous work, one alcoholic with another, was vital to permanent recovery.
Alcoholism—the two-fold problem of the compulsion to have the first drink then the compulsion to continue—is hopeless, because it is incurable, progressive, and fatal, and its arrest cannot be actuated by the individual operating alone.
This means, as an alcoholic, I need God, namely something more than what has failed. If what I have is not enough, I need more than what I have: the Power greater than myself.
What is standing in the way? The third problem: the spiritual malady, namely the insistence that I am ‘my own man’, self-created, reliant on no one, dependent on no one, answerable to no one, making my own decisions, master of my own fate.
This represents a denial of God’s nature as That Which created me, That on Which I rely and depend, That to Whom I am answerable, That Which makes decisions and is Master of my fate.
Self is therefore the problem, because it is literally a denial of the solution:
If God is the Decision-Maker, I cannot drink.
If I am the decision-making, I will inevitably drink.
The spiritual malady has a spiritual solution.
But the spiritual solution requires not only a present and ongoing surrender but a clear-out of the detritus from living in denial of God, chief amongst which is the litany of unamended wrongs.
I cannot access the pre-programmed forgiveness until (a) I have forgiven and (b) made amends.
The ‘physician’ (Dr Bob) pursued the spiritual malady in two ways he had not previously done:
(1) He made all of his amends promptly.
(2) He got going on vigorous Twelfth-Step work.
It was only a bad slip that persuaded him to act.
My job, therefore, if I want the spiritual solution, which provides a defence against the first drink, is to maintain the channel to God open by being spiritually fit.
Hence the two men set to work almost frantically upon alcoholics arriving in the ward of the Akron City Hospital. Their very first case, a desperate one, recovered immediately and became A.A. number three. He never had another drink. This work at Akron continued through the summer of 1935. There were many failures, but there was an occasional heartening success. When the broker returned to New York in the fall of 1935, the first A.A. group had actually been formed, though no one realized it at the time.
Others’ ‘desperate’ is matched by my ‘[almost] frantic’.
Without the ‘desperate’, the ‘[almost] frantic’ is a waste of time, and in fact can be harmful, because, in compensating for others’ lack of ‘desperate’ with my excess of ‘frantic’, I’m preventing them from figuring out what they want and whether they want it enough to take responsibility for picking a course of action and sticking to it.
The reading talks about ‘failures’. What’s the reason for these?
At other points in the book, there’s reference to people who cannot and will not do this programme.
I don’t think there’s another reason.
One doesn’t see people thoroughly following this path and failing. Occasionally there’s an apparent exception, but, on talking to such people at depth, they always reveal a pocket of reservation that converted into a pocket of resistance and self-reliance. They knew they had not let go.
If one lets go absolutely, one has let go.
If one is hanging off a branch and has let go, one will fly through the air, no exceptions.
A second small group promptly took shape at New York, to be followed in 1937 with the start of a third at Cleveland. Besides these, there were scattered alcoholics who had picked up the basic ideas in Akron or New York who were trying to form groups in other cities. By late 1937, the number of members having substantial sobriety time behind them was sufficient to convince the membership that a new light had entered the dark world of the alcoholic.
The problem of darkness is solved by light.
I’ve never had a problem solved by looking at the darkness, using the vocabulary of darkness to talk about it.
The solution involves learning and speaking the language of light.
It was now time, the struggling groups thought, to place their message and unique experience before the world. This determination bore fruit in the spring of 1939 by the publication of this volume. The membership had then reached about 100 men and women. The fledgling society, which had been nameless, now began to be called Alcoholics Anonymous, from the title of its own book. The flying-blind period ended and A.A. entered a new phase of its pioneering time.
The Book elsewhere talks about change at root and branch level (“I ruthlessly faced my sins and became willing to have my new-found Friend take them away, root and branch.” Chapter One) and about new soil (“His roots grasped a new soil.”, Chapter One)
If there is going to be ‘fruit’ in my life, my roots have to be renewed and placed in new soil (God).
The Book preceded the fellowship and gave it its name. The Book and its contents are … the contents. The fellowship is the vessel. It is the contents that are to be eaten, not the vessel. You can’t eat a casserole dish. The fellowship is necessary but is not the source of sustenance.
The pioneering days are never over. Unless I’m breaking new territory, I’m relying today on past work rather than on God’s direction to carry me forward into alien land.
With the appearance of the new book a great deal began to happen. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, the noted clergyman, reviewed it with approval. In the fall of 1939 Fulton Oursler, then editor of Liberty, printed a piece in his magazine, called “Alcoholics and God.” This brought a rush of 800 frantic inquiries into the little New York office which meanwhile had been established. Each inquiry was painstakingly answered; pamphlets and books were sent out. Businessmen, traveling out of existing groups, were referred to these prospective newcomers. New groups started up and it was found, to the astonishment of everyone, that A.A.’s message could be transmitted in the mail as well as by word of mouth. By the end of 1939 it was estimated that 800 alcoholics were on their way to recovery.
AA’s about forming a relationship with God. That’s it. Everything else is ancillary. That’s the answer. There’s no other answer.
“Franti … painstaking”. The reason I’m painstaking (note the word is used elsewhere—in Step Nine, being the condition for the realisation of the promises) is because someone is frantic. No frantic—no painstaking. What got me frantic? Not alcoholism: my realisation I was doomed, that irreversible and final doom could come upon me at any moment, and that neither me, nor you, nor AA could do anything about that. I was utterly alone. I needed God, and, once I realised that, the role of me, you, and AA became clear.
“in the mail as well as by word of mouth”: of course it can. The message is clear. The book is clear. The problem—if any—is not lack of clarity; it’s lack of belief and lack of implementation.
When I became frantic, I believed and acted.
In the spring of 1940, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. gave a dinner for many of his friends to which he invited A.A. members to tell their stories. News of this got on the world wires; inquiries poured in again and many people went to the bookstores to get the book “Alcoholics Anonymous.” By March 1941 the membership had shot up to 2,000. Then Jack Alexander wrote a feature article in the Saturday Evening Post and placed such a compelling picture of A.A. before the general public that alcoholics in need of help really deluged us. By the close of 1941, A.A. numbered 8,000 members. The mushrooming process was in full swing. A.A. had become a national institution.
… poured … shot up … deluged … mushrooming
Vigorous verbs indeed.
When I’m vigorous, I get results. When I’m lacklustre, I lack lustre.
The above is a story of contagion, and a good AA day is a day of contagion: catching ideas and energy from others, and passing on ideas and energy to other people.
Our Society then entered a fearsome and exciting adolescent period. The test that it faced was this: Could these large numbers of erstwhile erratic alcoholics successfully meet and work together? Would there be quarrels over membership, leadership, and money? Would there be strivings for power and prestige? Would there be schisms which would split A.A. apart? Soon A.A. was beset by these very problems on every side and in every group. But out of this frightening and at first disrupting experience the conviction grew that A.A.’s had to hang together or die separately. We had to unify our Fellowship or pass off the scene.
When I’m separated from others in my mind, in fact, I’m dead.
Life means togetherness, not separation.
What separates me?
My story.
As we discovered the principles by which the individual alcoholic could live, so we had to evolve principles by which the A.A. groups and A.A. as a whole could survive and function effectively. It was thought that no alcoholic man or woman could be excluded from our Society; that our leaders might serve but never govern; that each group was to be autonomous and there was to be no professional class of therapy. There were to be no fees or dues; our expenses were to be met by our own voluntary contributions. There was to be the least possible organization, even in our service centers. Our public relations were to be based upon attraction rather than promotion. It was decided that all members ought to be anonymous at the level of press, radio, TV and films. And in no circumstances should we give endorsements, make alliances, or enter public controversies.
This was the substance of A.A.’s Twelve Traditions, which are stated in full on page 561 of this book. Though none of these principles had the force of rules or laws, they had become so widely accepted by 1950 that they were confirmed by our first International Conference held at Cleveland. Today the remarkable unity of A.A. is one of the greatest assets that our Society has.
Some personal applications of the Traditions:
- Shun no one; be civil to all
- I’m not in charge
- I’m my business; you’re yours
- Seek nothing in return
- Take responsibility for myself
- Organise but not too much
- Silent attraction; no selling
- Serve invisibly
- Approve of no one
- Disapprove of no one
- Tie myself to no one but God
- Stay out of the rugby scrum
While the internal difficulties of our adolescent period were being ironed out, public acceptance of A.A. grew by leaps and bounds. For this there were two principal reasons: the large numbers of recoveries, and reunited homes. These made their impressions everywhere. Of alcoholics who came to A.A. and really tried, 50% got sober at once and remained that way; 25% sobered up after some relapses, and among the remainder, those who stayed on with A.A. showed improvement. Other thousands came to a few A.A. meetings and at first decided they didn’t want the program. But great numbers of these—about two out of three—began to return as time passed.
People commenting on the success statistics often miss the condition ‘and really tried’. In my experience, I have never ‘really tried’ and failed. I have never seen anyone I know well ‘really try’ and fail. I’ve talk to hundreds of people after slips, and there is always a period of half-measures preceding the slip and a considerable degree of half-heartedness and ‘listening to oneself’.
“at first decided they didn’t want the program”
On page 58: “If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it—then you are ready to take certain steps.”
Both quotations use the word ‘want’: I had to not just need it and recognise that need but want it. Wanting plus willing equals ready. A decision is real turning point.
Half-hearted action shows that the decision made was not really a decision at all but a half-hearted resolution.
All in or all out: those are the only two long-term options.
Another reason for the wide acceptance of A.A. was the ministration of friends—friends in medicine, religion, and the press, together with innumerable others who became our able and persistent advocates. Without such support, A.A. could have made only the slowest progress. Some of the recommendations of A.A.’s early medical and religious friends will be found further on in this book.
Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religious organization. Neither does A.A. take any particular medical point of view, though we cooperate widely with the men of medicine as well as with the men of religion.
With medical and religious matters, although AA does not have a view, I as an AA member can and should have a view about my own relationship with these domains.
“God gave us brains to use” (page 86, Big Book).
I can also arrive at my view in consultation with others.
With medicine (including the various professionals and practitioners who treat the mind), I consult with others.
With religion, I consult with others.
I’m not a non-sentient beast; my doctor is a human doctor not a veterinarian.
The same principles applies with religion.
The relationship with people of medicine, religion, and other domains is not one of mindless submission but one of holistic cooperation.
There’s more than one way to cook an egg, and there’s more than one way to approach any medical, religious, or other question or problem.
It is important for me to hold to the principles I have adopted and to God above all.
No external human being takes the place of God in my life, and such external persons always actively encourage the individual to understand what they are getting into and to play an active role in determining their own participation.
To God, I submit; with others, I cooperate.
Alcohol being no respecter of persons, we are an accurate cross section of America, and in distant lands, the same democratic evening-up process is now going on. By personal religious affiliation, we include Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Hindus, and a sprinkling of Moslems and Buddhists. More than 15% of us are women.
Alcoholism isn’t picky. Nor is God. God seems to love everyone and seems to welcome everyone. God knows the divisions and labels and categories are trivial, superficial phenomenon. We’re his. That’s what’s real.
At present, our membership is pyramiding at the rate of about twenty per cent a year. So far, upon the total problem of several million actual and potential alcoholics in the world, we have made only a scratch. In all probability, we shall never be able to touch more than a fair fraction of the alcohol problem in all its ramifications. Upon therapy for the alcoholic himself, we surely have no monopoly. Yet it is our great hope that all those who have as yet found no answer may begin to find one in the pages of this book and will presently join us on the high road to a new freedom.
“So far, upon the total problem …, we have made only a scratch.”
Wherever I’ve got to in recovery, I’ve made only a scratch.
That means: I am to credit God for everything learned or achieved so far, set it aside, and be totally open to be shown the next thing.
There’s no room for self-satisfaction.