In The Spirit--not The Letter--of Alcoholics Anonymous

(from Grapevine 2007)

Love, not worship, for the Big Book

"My friends (and enemies) had diagnosed the problem--I could not drink without getting drunk. They weren't telling me anything I didn't know. And they offered no solution except, "Just don't drink," or, "Stop when you've had enough." If I could have done that, I would have. I'd tried countless times to control my drinking and always failed. In the end, I reached that state of "pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization" described in the book, Alcoholics Anonymous. A suicide attempt landed me in the hospital and a psychiatrist told me I should go to AA. So I made the call.

Two AA members twelfth-stepped me, and one of them gave me his copy of the Big Book as he left. "You can borrow this for a week," he growled, "and then you must get your own." And I did. At an AA meeting a week later, I returned his book and bought my own copy.

During their visit, I had asked the man with the book how AA worked. He had opened it at chapter five, shoved it in front of me and said, "That's how it works."

After he and his companion left that night, I sat down and read the book. The scales fell from my eyes. I'd known for years that there was something terribly wrong with the way I drank. Many people had scolded, lectured, demanded, threatened, pleaded, and implored me to "do something about your drinking." Heaven knows, I'd tried. I loved getting drunk--but I hated being a drunk. I felt humiliated, ashamed, guilty, mortified, and disgusted by my behavior during my binges.

"The Doctor's Opinion" explained a mystery that had baffled me for years--why couldn't I just get pleasantly high without descending into the chaos of uncontrolled excess? I read that I'd been in the grip of an obsession and, once I started to drink, I couldn't stop because the craving was more powerful than my good intentions and willpower. The book told how other men and women, similarly afflicted, had overcome the problem. I wanted what they had.

The chapter "There Is a Solution" says, "If you are an alcoholic who wants to get over it, you may already be asking--'What do I have to do?'" The logical answer to the question, "What do I have to do?" is "You must do this."

The Big Book answers this question tangentially; the Twelve Steps are suggestions that we are invited to follow, not commandments we must obey. The book points the way; it does not issue instructions. In chapter five, I read, "With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start." By following the Big Book's suggestions for twenty-one years, I have had a life truly beyond my wildest dreams.

I have copies of all four editions of the Big Book, including a facsimile copy of the original with its red and yellow dust cover. (An AA member would not have been very anonymous walking to a meeting with that under her arm!)

I love the Big Book but do not worship it. That would be idolatry. The book itself does not claim to be infallible. The writers acknowledge their limitations.

"Upon therapy for the alcoholic himself, we surely have no monopoly," they write. "We realize we know only a little," they caution. "God will constantly disclose more to you and to us."

"By no means do we offer [our approach] as the last word on this subject, but...it has worked for us," they say.

I've heard the Big Book referred to as a textbook, which I think is a mistake. I believe it is our basic text, which is not the same thing at all. The Big Book is a storybook. It says so on the title page--"Alcoholics Anonymous--The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism." A story does not give instructions; it is a narrative of experience, a work of inspired imagination. Bill W. wrote, in As Bill Sees It, "Most Steps are open to interpretation, based on the experience and outlook of the individual."

The Big Book is not sacred scripture; we have no "authorities" in AA who can impose their understanding of its message on the rest of us.

It is dangerous to make a fetish of the written word. As the Bible says, "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."

Laurie A.

Essex"

Fundamentalism

Trysh Travis gives an account of the growth of the fundamentalists’ resistance to what they saw (and see!) as the dilution of AA’s message by liberals in her book “The Language of the Heart: A cultural history of the Recovery Movement from Alcoholics Anonymous to Oprah Winfrey” (University of North Carolina Press; 2009) viz: “Probably the largest body of traditionalist literature in circulation today takes the form of what might best be called sobriety guides – books and workbooks intended to move readers through the Steps, to deepen their understanding of the Big Book, and, above all, to increase the quality and durability of sobriety by aiding them in the surrendered life. … Their publications typically derive from or are intended to work in concert with talks by seasoned members, who travel (the United States) offering workshops on how to implement the insights they have committed to print; audiotapes of their talks form an important complement to their printed works. Sobriety guides are not monolithic – some, for example, make an explicit case for Bible study while others are more ecumenical – but their authors generally share the characteristics associated with the mid-western, mid-century version of AA, and incorporate reprinted pamphlet material from that place and time alongside original writing, charts and diagrams”. (Here her footnote says: “Joe McQ, of Little Rock, and Charlie P, of Maysville, Arkansas, who began to travel and promote their ‘Joe and Charlie Curriculum’ in the mid-1980s, are perhaps the best known of the traditionalist sobriety guide-authors [other authors named are Searcy W, Wally P, Clifford B, Myers R, Paul O and the born-again evangelist Dick B] ). She adds, “The audience (for this literature etc) has grown since the late 1990s, when the internet began to provide traditionalist authors and their partisans an efficient means of communication and a highly visible platform. Websites like Silkworth.net, The Primary Purpose Group, AA Big Book Study Group and GSO Watch (!) to name only a few, promote traditionalist authors alongside The Little Red Book and 24 Hours a Day. While such sites differ in the degree of vitriol (sic) that they hurl at the dominant AA culture, all of them tout amateur publications as counterweights to a cultural mo(ve)ment in which ‘the Language of the Heart has gotten all tangled up with drugs, pop psychology, clinical terminology, and emotionalism’. (Jim H) … According to Mitchell K, during the 1990s they (the fundamentalists) also helped support the creation of a growing movement [of] ‘underground’ meetings. As in early mid-western AA, admission is carefully controlled: ‘they are not advertised; and attendance at them is by invitation only. One has to be ‘sponsored’ into them … [and they] are open for alcoholics and their families only’. This rigor, Mitchell K argues, counteracts official AA’s misplaced ‘desire to help the greater number of people,’ which has ‘led to lower expectations and to diluting of the message to make it more palatable’."

As I wrote in “Share” magazine (July 2007), these extra-mural, by invitation only workshops, Step weekends etc are a pestilential nuisance, setting member against member and sowing conflict among groups.

LAURIE A.

(our thanks as usual to this AA member for their contribution)