Since the suggestion made by “The Grapevine” in the late 60’s that “Open Discussion” (OD) meetings might be a good idea, there has been a change in the message being presented in the rooms from a focus on the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous to “group therapy” where anyone and everyone is privileged to speak on whatever might be on their mind. The result of this has been a severe decline in the success rate of alcoholics finding lasting recovery.
We hear a lot of stuff said in meetings that can’t be reconciled with the program as described in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Here is a list of the opinions, perspectives, and slogans we often hear in rooms and what the our original Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous basic text (4th Edition) has to say about it.
“This program is caught not taught”
Page xiii Paragraph 1: “To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book.”
“Easy does it!”
This motto taken from page 135 of the BB was used as a suggestion to the family members of the Alcoholic when it came to the Alcoholic making changes in their lives i.e quite smoking and drinking so much coffee. Today it is used as a “battle cry” on how we should approach working the Steps.
Page 59 Paragraph 2: “Half measures availed us nothing.”
Page 84 Paragraph 3: “We vigorously commenced this way of living, as we cleaned up the past.”
Page 58 Paragraph 1: “…a manner of living which requires rigorous honesty.”
Page 58 Paragraph 2: “If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it–then you are ready to take certain steps.”
Page 58 Paragraph 3: “We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start.”
“Fake it til you make it.”
Page 151-152, Paragraph 3. “Now and then a serious drinker, being dry at the moment says, “I don’t miss it at all. Feel better. Work better. Having a better time.” As ex-problem drinkers, we smile at such a sally. We know our friend is like a boy whistling in the dark to keep up his spirits. He fools himself. Inwardly he would give anything to take half a dozen drinks and get away with them. He will presently try the old game again, for he isn’t happy about his sobriety. He cannot picture life without alcohol. Some day he will be unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it. Then he will know loneliness such as few do. He will be at the jumping-off place. He will wish for the end.”
“The gift of sobriety.”
Page 14, Paragraph 2: “Simple, but not easy; a price had to be paid. It meant the destruction of self-centeredness.”
“I choose not to drink today”
Page 24 Paragraph 2: “The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink.”
“Play the tape all the way through”
Page 24, paragraph 3: “The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into the mind to deter us. I f these thoughts do 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.”
“Think through the drink” — “Remember When” — “Remember your last drunk”
Page 43, paragraph 4: “Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power.”
Page 24, paragraph 2: “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.”
“I will always be recovering, never recovered.”
Title Page: “ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS. The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism”
Page 20, paragraph 2: “Doubtless you are curious to discover how and why, in face of expert opinion to the contrary, we have recovered from a hopeless condition of mind and body.
Foreword to the First Edition: “We, of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.”
Page 29, paragraph 2: “Further on, clear-cut directions are given showing how we recovered.”
Page 132, paragraph 3: “We have recovered, and have been given the power to help others.”
“We are all just an arms length away from a drink”
Page 84, paragraph 4, “And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone – even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality – safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us”
“I don’t have an alcohol problem, I have a living problem”
Page xxiv, paragraph 2: “In our belief, any picture of the alcoholic which leaves out this physical factor is incomplete.”
“I’m feeling pretty crappy. I need a meeting.”
Page 15, Paragraph 2: “I was not too well at the time, and was plagued with waves of self-pity and resentment. This sometimes nearly drove me back to drink, but I soon found that when all other measures failed, working with another alcoholic would save the day. Many times I have gone to my old hospital in despair. On talking to a man there, I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet. It is a design for living that works in rough going.”
“Don’t drink and go to meetings.”
Page 34, paragraph 2: “Many of us felt we had plenty of character. There was a tremendous urge to cease forever. Yet we found it impossible. This is the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it–this utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish.”
Page 34, paragraph 3: “Whether such a person can quit upon a nonspiritual basis depends upon the extent to which he has already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not.”
Page 17, paragraph 2: “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.”
“This is a selfish program”
Page 20, paragraph 1: “Our very lives, as ex-problem drinkers depend upon our constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs.”
Page 97, paragraph 2: “Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery. A kindly act once in a while isn’t enough. You have to act the Good Samaritan every day, if need be. It may mean the loss of many nights’ sleep, great interference with your pleasures, interruptions to your business. It may mean sharing your money and your home, counseling frantic wives and relatives, innumerable trips to police courts, sanitariums, hospitals, jails and asylums. Your telephone may jangle at any time of the day or night. ”
Page 14-15: “For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead.”
Page 62, paragraph 2: “Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles”
Page 62, paragraph 3: “So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn’t think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kill us!”
“You’re not sober if you’re taking psych-medication.”
Page 133, Paragraph 2: “But this does not mean that we disregard human health measures. God has abundantly supplied this world with fine doctors, psychologists, and practitioners of various kinds. Do not hesitated to take your health problems to such persons. Most of them give freely of themselves, that their fellows may enjoy sound minds and bodies. Try to remember that though God has wrought miracles among us, we should never belittle a good doctor or psychiatrist. Their services are often indispensable in treating a newcomer and in following his case afterward.”
“Meeting makers make it”
Page 59, paragraph 3: “Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery”
“I’m powerless over people, places and things”
Page 132, paragraph 3: “We have recovered, and have been given the power to help others.”
Page 122, paragraph 3: ” Years of living with an alcoholic is almost sure to make any wife or child neurotic. ”
Page 82, paragraph 4: “The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others. Hearts are broken. Sweet relationships are dead. Affections have been uprooted. Selfish and inconsiderate habits have kept the home in turmoil. We feel a man is unthinking when he says that sobriety is enough.”
Page 89, paragraph 2: “You can help when no one else can. You can secure their confidence when others fail.”
“You’re in the right place”
Page 20-21: “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.”
Page 31, paragraph 2: “If anyone who is showing inability to control his drinking can do the right-about-face and drink like a gentleman, our hats are off to him.”
Page 31-32: “We do not like to pronounce any individual as alcoholic, but you can quickly diagnose yourself. Step over to the nearest barroom and try some controlled drinking. Try to drink and stop abruptly. Try it more than once. It will not take long for you to decide, if you are honest with yourself about it. It may be worth a bad case of jitters if you get a full knowledge of your condition.”
Page 108-109: “Your husband may be only a heavy drinker. His drinking may be constant or it may be heavy only on certain occasions. Perhaps he spends too much money for liquor. It may be slowing him up mentally and physically, but he does not see it. Sometimes he is a source of embarrassment to you and his friends. He is positive he can handle his liquor, that it does him no harm, that drinking is necessary in his business. He would probably be insulted if he were called an alcoholic. This world is full of people like him. Some will moderate or stop altogether, and some will not. Of those who keep on, a good number will become true alcoholics after a while.”
Page 92, paragraph 2: “If you are satisfied that he is a real alcoholic”
Page 95, paragraph 4: “If he thinks he can do the job in some other way, or prefers some other spiritual approach, encourage him to follow his own conscience.”
“If an alcoholic wants to get sober, nothing you say can make him drink.”
Page 103, paragraph 2: “A spirit of intolerance might repel alcoholics whose lives could have been saved, had it not been for such stupidity. We would not even do the cause of temperate drinking any good, for not one drinker in a thousand likes to be told anything about alcohol by one who hates it.”
“We must change playmates, playgrounds, and playthings” — “Avoid people, places and things that you associate with alcohol or drugs”.
Page 100-101: “Assuming we are spiritually fit, we can do all sorts of things alcoholics are not supposed to do. People have said we must not go where liquor is served; we must not have it in our homes; we must shun friends who drink; we must avoid moving pictures which show drinking scenes; we must not go into bars; our friends must hide their bottles if we go to their houses; we mustn’t think or be reminded about alcohol at all. Our experience shows that this is not necessarily so. We meet these conditions every day. An alcoholic who cannot meet them, still has an alcoholic mind; there is something the matter with his spiritual status. His only chance for sobriety would be some place like the Greenland Ice Cap, and even there an Eskimo might turn up with a bottle of scotch and ruin everything!”
“I’m a people pleaser. I need to learn to take care of myself”
Page 61, paragraph 2: “Is he not really a self-seeker even when trying to be kind?”
“Don’t drink, even if your ass falls off.”
Page 34, paragraph 2: “Many of us felt we had plenty of character. There was a tremendous urge to cease forever. Yet we found it impossible. This is the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it–this utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish.”
“I haven’t had a drink today, so I’m a complete success today.”
Page 19, paragraph 1: “The elimination of drinking is but a beginning. A much more important demonstration of our principles lies before us in our respective homes, occupations and affairs.”
“It’s my opinion that…” or “I don’t know anything about the Big Book, but this is the way I do it…”
Page 19, paragraph 1: “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.”
“Don’t drink, no matter what.”
Page 34, paragraph 2: “Many of us felt we had plenty of character. There was a tremendous urge to cease forever. Yet we found it impossible. This is the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it–this utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish.”
Page 31, paragraph 4: “We do not like to pronounce any individual as alcoholic, but you can quickly diagnose yourself. Step over to the nearest barroom and try some controlled drinking. Try to drink and stop abruptly. Try it more than once. It will not take long for you to decide, if you are honest with yourself about it. It may be worth a bad case of jitters if you get a full knowledge of your condition.”
“We need to give up planning, it doesn’t work.”
Page 86, paragraphs 3-4: “On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives. In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while.”
“I have a choice to not drink today.”
Page 30, paragraph 3: “We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals – usually brief – were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.”
“If all I do is stay sober today, then it’s been a good day.”
Page 82, paragraph 3: “Sometimes we hear an alcoholic say that the only thing he needs to do is to keep sober. Certainly he must keep sober, for there will be no home if he doesn’t. But he is yet a long way from making good to the wife or parents whom for years he has so shockingly treated.”
Page 82 paragraph 4: “We feel a man is unthinking when he says sobriety is enough.”
“You don’t need a shrink. You have an alcoholic personality. All you will ever need is in the first 164 pages of the Big Book.”
Page 133, 2nd paragraph: “But this does not mean that we disregard human health measures. God has abundantly supplied this world with fine doctors, psychologists, and practitioners of various kinds. Do not hesitate to take your health problems to such persons. Most of them give freely of themselves, that their fellows may enjoy sound minds and bodies. Try to remember that though God has wrought miracles among us, we should never belittle a good doctor or psychiatrist. Their services are often indispensable in treating a newcomer and in following his case afterward.”
“AA is the only way to stay sober.”
Page 95, paragraph 4: “If he thinks he can do the job in some other way, or prefers some other spiritual approach, encourage him to follow his own conscience. We have no monopoly on God; we merely have an approach that worked with us.”
Page 164, paragraph 3: “Our book is meant to be suggestive only. We realize we know only a little.”
“My sponsor told me that, if in making an amend I would be harmed, I could consider myself as one of the ‘others’ in Step Nine.”
Page 79, paragraph 2: “Reminding ourselves that we have decided to go to any lengths to find a spiritual experience, we ask that we be given strength and direction to do the right thing, no matter what the personal consequences might be.”
“I need to forgive myself first” or “You need to be good to yourself”
Page 74, paragraph 2: “The rule is we must be hard on ourself, but always considerate of others.”
“Take what you want and leave the rest”
Page 17, paragraph 3: “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.”
“Your Higher Power can be whatever you want It to be; a door knob, a Dr. Pepper can, a light bulb, just any old thing.”
Page 59, Step 2: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” (A door knob?)
Page 45: Paragraph: 2: “Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a Power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves.” (A Dr. Pepper can?)
Page 25: Paragraph 3: “The great fact is this, and nothing less: That we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences* which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows and toward God’s universe. The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way that is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us that we could never do by ourselves.” (A light bulb?)
“Just do the next right thing”
Page 86, paragraph 4: “We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision.”
Page 87, paragraph 1: “Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas.”
“Don’t make any major decisions for the first year”
Page 60, paragraph 4: “(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. (b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. (c) That God could and would if He were sought. Being convinced, we were at Step Three, which is that we decided to turn our will and our life over to God as we understood Him.”
Page 76, paragraph 2: “When ready, we say something like this: “My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen.” We have then completed Step Seven.”
“Stay out of relationships for the first year!”
Page. 69, paragraph 1: “We do not want to be the arbiter of anyone’s sex conduct.”
Page 69, paragraph 3: “In meditation, we ask God what we should do about each specific matter. The right answer will come if we want it.”
Page 69, paragraph 4: “God alone can judge our sex situation.”
Page 69-70: “Counsel with other persons is often desirable, but we let God be the final judge.”
Page 70, Paragraph 2: “We earnestly pray for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity, and for the strength to do the right thing.”
“Alcohol was my drug of choice”
Page 24, paragraph 2: “The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink.”
“Keep coming back, eventually it will rub off on you”
Page 64, Paragraph 1: “Though our decision was a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face, and to be rid of, the things in ourselves which had been blocking us”
“Ninety Meetings in Ninety Days”
Page 15, paragraph 2: “We meet frequently so that newcomers may find the fellowship they seek.”
Page 19, paragraph 2: “None of us makes a sole vocation of this work, nor do we think its effectiveness would be increased if we did.”
Page 59, paragraph 3: “Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery”
“You only work one step a year” “Take your time to work the steps”
Page 569, paragraph 3: “What often takes place in a few months can hardly be brought about by himself alone.”
Page 63, paragraph3: “Next we launched on a course of vigorous action.”
Page 74, paragraph 2: “If that is so, this step may be postponed, only, however, if we hold ourselves in complete readiness to go through with it at the first opportunity”
Page 75, paragraph 3: “Returning home we find a place where we can be quiet for AN HOUR, carefully reviewing what we have done.”
“Make sure to put something good about yourself in your 4th step inventory.”
Page 64 paragraph 3 “First, we searched out the flaws in our make-up which caused our failure.”
Page 67 paragraph 3 “The inventory was ours, not the other man’s. When we saw our faults we listed them.”
Page 71 paragraph 1 “If you have already made a decision, and an inventory of your grosser handicaps, you have made a good beginning.”
“You need to stay in those feelings and really feel them.” Page 84, paragraph 2: “When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them.”
pg. 125 paragraph 1 “So we think that unless some good and useful purpose is to be served, past occurrences should not be discussed.”
“We learn to live life on life’s terms.”
Page 77, Paragraph 1: “Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us.”
“There are no musts in this program.”
Page 99, paragraph 1: “…it must be done if any results are to be expected.”
Page 99, paragraph 2: “…we must try to repair the damage immediately lest we pay the penalty by a spree.”
Page 99, paragraph 3: “…it must be on a better basis, since the former did not work.”
Page 83, paragraph 1: “Yes, there is a long period of reconstruction ahead. We must take the lead.”
Page 83, paragraph 2: “We must remember that ten or twenty years of drunkenness would make a skeptic out of anyone.”
Page 74, paragraph 1: “Those of us belonging to a religious denomination which requires confession must, and of course, will want to go to the properly appointed authority whose duty it is to receive it.”
Page 74, paragraph 2: “The rule is we must be hard on ourself, but always considerate of others.”
Page 75, paragraph 1: “But we must not use this as a mere excuse to postpone.”
Page 85, paragraph 3: “But we must go further and that means more action.”
Page 85, paragraph 2: “Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will into all of our activities.”
Page 85, paragraph 2: “These are thoughts which must go with us constantly.”
Page 80, paragraph 1: “If we have obtained permission, have consulted with others, asked God to help and the drastic step is indicated we must not shrink.”
Page 14, paragraph 2: “I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all.”
Page 62, paragraph 3: “Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us!”
Page 144, paragraph 3: “The man must decide for himself.”
Page 89, paragraph 2: “To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends – this is an experience you must not miss.”
Page 33, paragraph 3: “If we are planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind”
Page 79, paragraph 2: “We must not shrink at anything.”
Page 86, paragraph 2: “But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others.”
Page 120, paragraph 2: “…he must redouble his spiritual activities if he expects to survive.”
Page 152, paragraph 2: “I know I must get along without liquor, but how can I?”
Page 95, paragraph 3: “…he must decide for himself whether he wants to go on”
Page 95, paragraph 3: “If he is to find God, the desire must come from within.”
Page 159, paragraph 3: “Though they knew they must help other alcoholics if they would remain sober, that motive became secondary.”
Page 156, paragraph 3: “Both saw that they must keep spiritually active. ”
Page 130, paragraph 2: “…that is where our work must be done.”
Page 82, paragraph 3: “Certainly he must keep sober, for there will be no home if he doesn’t.”
Page 143, paragraph 2: “…he should understand that he must undergo a change of heart”
Page 69, paragraph 4: “Whatever our ideal turns out to be, we must be willing to grow toward it.”
Page 69, paragraph 4: “We must be willing to make amends where we have done harm”
Page 44, paragraph 3: “…we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life – or else.”
Page 78, paragraph 3: “We must lose our fear of creditors no matter how far we have to go, for we are liable to drink if we are afraid to face them.”
Page 93, paragraph 3: “To be vital, faith must be accompanied by self sacrifice and unselfish, constructive action.”
Page 43, paragraph 4: “His defense must come from a Higher Power.”
Page 66, paragraph 4: “We saw that these resentments must be mastered”
Page 146, paragraph 4: “For he knows he must be honest if he would live at all.”
Page 73, paragraph 5: “We must be entirely honest with somebody if we expect to live long or happily in this world.”