Earlier Today

Before the Shift...

Before heading out the door a little after 6 AM, I posted:

Historically, I know that it isn’t possible to save everyone from an alcoholic death, however, there is a solution and it’s been pretty well mapped out before I was even born. By April 1961, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was owning his shortcomings as a carrier of the message:

“Though three hundred thousand did recover in the last twenty-five years, maybe half a million more have walked into our midst, and then out again. No doubt some were too sick to make even a start. Others couldn't or wouldn't admit their alcoholism. Still others couldn't face up to their underlying personality defects. Numbers departed for still other reasons. Yet we can't well content ourselves with the view that all these recovery failures were entirely the fault of the newcomers themselves.” - Bill Wilson - April 1961, AA Grapevine

That’s 3 recoveries for every 8 encounters. It’s a pretty damnable record and Bill himself was owning it as he communicated with the fellowship of AA at large.

As noted earlier, I believe that there are an awful lot of perversions of the principles of AA going out there in the world. I see it in my own environment and have experienced it. Fortunately, I have the “gift of desperation” sufficient to keep my hand off a drink on a daily basis. There’s really only one way I could go wrong on that count and that is to volitionally choose to drink and I don’t have the compulsion presently. When it comes up, I talk with another alcoholic - drunk or sober won’t matter. All that matters is that I talk about what it is to have the overwhelming desire to drink and it passes off pretty quickly. It hasn’t happened in a long time.

I do not pretend to speak for AA. AA does a fine job of speaking for itself.

AA.org, on its front page says plainly:

“Have a problem with alcohol? There is a solution.

A.A. has a simple program that works. It’s based on one alcoholic helping another.”

Full stop.

There is nothing here about requiring anything other than a desire to stop and the willingness to help another. In my experience, newcomers help oldtimers more than the other way around.

About the time I was first approaching AA, the General Manager of the Fellowship was having his own misgivings:

Bob Pearson (1917-2008) was General Manager of the General Service Office from 1974 to 1984, and then served as Senior Advisor to the G.S.O. from 1985 until his retirement. His story is in the Big Book as “AA Taught Him to Handle Sobriety.” During the 1986 General Service Conference, Bob gave a powerful and inspiring closing talk to the conference at the closing brunch on Saturday morning, April 26. The following excerpts are taken from that farewell speech.

By Bob Pearson

This is my 18th General Service Conference – the first two as a director of the Grapevine and AAWS, followed by four as a general service trustee. In 1972, I rotated out completely, only to be called back two years later as general manager of GSO, the service job I held until late 1984. Since the 1985 International Convention, of course, I have been senior adviser. This is also my last Conference, so this is an emotionally charged experience.

I wish I had time to express my thanks to everyone to whom I am indebted for my sobriety and for the joyous life with which I have been blessed for the past nearly 25 years. But since this is obviously impossible, I will fall back on the Arab saying that Bill quoted in his last message, “I thank you for your lives.” For without your lives, I most certainly would have no life at all, much less the incredibly rich life I have enjoyed.

Let me offer my thoughts about AA’s future. I have no truck with those bleeding deacons who decry every change and view the state of the Fellowship with pessimism and alarm. On the contrary, from my nearly quarter-century’s perspective, I see AA as larger, healthier, more dynamic, faster growing, more global, more service-minded, more back-to-basics, and more spiritual – by far – than when I came through the doors of my first meeting in Greenwich, Connecticut, just one year after the famous [July 1960] Long Beach Convention. AA has flourished beyond the wildest dreams of founding members, though perhaps not of Bill himself, for he was truly visionary.

I echo those who feel that if this Fellowship ever falters or fails, it will not be because of any outside cause. No, it will not be because of treatment centers or professionals in the field, or non-Conference-approved literature, or young people, or the dually-addicted, or even the “druggies” trying to come to our closed meetings. If we stick close to our Traditions, Concepts, and Warranties, and if we keep an open mind and an open heart, we can deal with these and any other problems that we have or ever will have. If we ever falter and fail, it will be simply because of us. It will be because we can’t control our own egos or get along well enough with each other. It will be because we have too much fear and rigidity and not enough trust and common sense.

If you were to ask me what is the greatest danger facing AA today, I would have to answer: the growing rigidity – the increasing demand for absolute answers to nit-picking questions; pressure for GSO to “enforce” our Traditions; screening alcoholics at closed meetings; prohibiting non-Conference-approved literature, i.e., “banning books;” laying more and more rules on groups and members. And in this trend toward rigidity, we are drifting farther and farther away from our co-founders. Bill, in particular, must be spinning in his grave, for he was perhaps the most permissive person I ever met. One of his favourite sayings was, “Every group has the right to be wrong.” He was maddeningly tolerant of his critics, and he had absolute faith that faults in AA were self-correcting.

My purpose in laying this out is to arm those who might be buffeted by the opinions of those who might be unfamiliar with the growing pains that AA went through to arrive where they are today. It’s no mistake that AA published “Many Paths to Spirituality” as a “conference-approved” pamphlet in 2014 and led off with this quotation from Bill Wilson:

“Newcomers are approaching A.A. at the rate of tens of thousands yearly. They represent almost every belief and attitude imaginable. We have atheists and agnostics. We have people of nearly every race, culture and religion. In A.A. we are supposed to be bound together in the kinship of a common suffering. Consequently, the full individual liberty to practice any creed or principle or therapy whatever should be a first consideration for us all. Let us not, therefore, pressure anyone with our individual or even our collective views. Let us instead accord each other the respect and love that is due to every human being as he tries to make his way toward the light. Let us always try to be inclusive rather than exclusive; let us remember that each alcoholic among us is a member of A.A., so long as he or she so declares.” —Bill W. (AA Grapevine, July 1965)

The part about “not pressuring anyone with our individual or even or collective views” is far too often transgressed. We need to be on our guard and ever watchful, I would say. We need to be quick to call out those who deviate from this guidance and we will be far more effective in reaching the alcoholics who still suffer.

Many within the fellowship are ignorant of the fact that AA requires no belief whatsoever in anything. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. Bill himself said that he all but ruined the whole affair by saying “Believe as I believe or else!” - it’s probably worth quoting the exact passage from the April 1961 article:

“In AA's first years I all but ruined the whole undertaking with this sort of unconscious arrogance. God as I understood Him had to be for everybody. Sometimes my aggression was subtle and sometimes it was crude. But either way it was damaging - perhaps fatally so - to numbers of non-believers. Of course this sort of thing isn't confined to Twelfth Step work. It is very apt to leak out into our relationships with everybody. Even now, I catch myself chanting that same old barrier-building refrain, "Do as I do, believe as I do - or else!" - Bill Wilson, April 1961, AA Grapevine

I realize that I’m hammering on a drum that I’ve well and truly beaten, but after hearing from a friend that he’s encountering just this kind of crude manipulation from his ostensible sponsor, I feel it is my responsibility to put this information out there into cyberspace.

I’ll close by sharing the talk from 1965 by Bill given at the International Conference of AA in Toronto in 1965:

For those of you who might have been turned off by AA as I was in 1985, I hope this won’t harden your resolve against seeking help through learning more about what AA.org actually says, versus what those of us who might be ignorant of the message might say. I know that it is all too frequent that people attend a meeting where no one there really knows what AA is and how it evolved and continues to evolve.

We collectively have a solution that works for us and could transform the world if we were to put the actual message out. Many are going through hell without having to. Help is here:

Onward!

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