100: “You… must walk day by day in the path of spiritual progress. If you persist, remarkable things will happen.’’ I read things like that, and I keep hearing that it gets better and better the longer I stay sober, and I’m not kidding—if it gets much better, I’ll bust! When I was sober two years, I was told, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” Then, this month, after six glorious years of sobriety, one of my sponsors said, “You have barely scratched the surface!” All of the rewards that I’m receiving are much more than I’m giving. I’m so very grateful for Alcoholics Anonymous.
By looking into the Big Book daily, I am learning how to stay on that path that the first one hundred members cleared for me. Whenever I get down in the dumps, or feeling low, I think of “Bill’s Story,” on page 15, when he was full of self-pity and resentment during his trying times: “When all other measures failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day.’’
One of the ways I stay active is on our local H&I (hospitals and institutions) committee of AA. We carry the message to those who are confined. When I share my story at a jail or hospital, I talk about how AA has helped me stay sober, how I couldn’t do it alone. I read the beginning of Chapter 3—they always seem to identify with that. In many cases, I’ve found people who want help and honestly don’t want to drink any more. In our book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions , on page 109, it says, “The joy of living is the theme of AA’s Twelfth Step, and action is its key word.’’
The Big Book’s chapter “Working With Others” says (on page 89), “Carry this message to other alcoholics!… Life will take on new meaning. 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.” It is these things that keep me going back for more, because each one of them has happened before my eyes.
I see a lot of sick alcoholics just coming off one in detox centers. Most of them say that they have tried AA but it didn’t work for them. A doctor in AA told me to ask them, when they say that, if they have attended thirty consecutive AA meetings and at half of those gotten active with emptying ashtrays, stacking chairs, helping to clean up after the meeting, etc. Usually, that questions rings a bell when I ask it at a meeting. Afterward, one man will come up to me and say he thinks that’s the reason he slipped—he hadn’t been active. “How can I help?” he will ask.
If you really want to get into action, and you have already taken Steps One, Two, and Three, and you honestly know that you should do Step Four, but you keep putting it off (the way I did), I suggest that you get moving right now. Open the Big Book and start at the bottom of page 63: “We launched out on a course of vigorous action.” For those who say, “Oh, I’ve taken the Steps,” turn to page 88, where it says, “But this is not all. There is action and more action.” For me, that’s what this program is all about. That’s the magic word—action!
One of the best suggestions that I received early in my program, I’d like to pass on to others. I heard this from an old-timer in AA with lots of good sobriety. He held up four fingers and said, “AA is a simple program. There are four things you should do. One, put the plug in the jug. Two, go to plenty of AA meetings. Three, ask for help in the morning, and four, say thank-you at night.” I’d like to add one more thing to that list to make it five: Get into action as soon as possible.
H.R., Millbrae, Calif.
The Big Book: One-Shot Deal or Constant Companion?
March 1972
Some AA members voice the opinion that the book Alcoholics Anonymous can be sufficiently absorbed at the first reading, that the Big Book contains little or nothing to repay later reference or study. This may be true for geniuses gifted with instant comprehension and total recall. Yet capable nonalcoholic attorneys must refer frequently to basic source books. The same is true of engineers, navigators, editors, and surgeons. Is it possible that alcoholic brains, only recently groggy and confused with malnutrition, resentment, anxiety, and disastrous convictions, can permanently retain the essentials of a 575-page volume after only one exposure?
One thing is certain: I do not have such a powerful learning capacity as that. I frequently find it necessary to refer to our Big Book. Like many others, I often get the impression that changes have been made in the text since I last referred to it. Sentences have been added, meanings have been altered, and other statements that I recall with great clarity have somehow been deleted without a trace.
There are two possible explanations for this:
1 While I am asleep, gnomes sneak into my house and cleverly make revisions on their tiny Linotype machines and printing presses, even duplicating the marginal notes which I put there months before in my own handwriting! Or…
2 My memory is fallible, and also—if I am being restored to sanity, as the Big Book promises in Step Two, and if the program is giving me spiritual progress (page 60)—I may actually be aware of meanings that escaped me on my previous reading.
The gnome theory has its appeal. It is less damaging to the ego to believe privately in elves than to entertain the possibility that I could be wrong.
Prankish though the gnomes may be, they are invariably benevolent. So far, all their changes have been helpful. And the gnomes who tamper with my book seem to make identical changes in the Big Books of other members who constantly refer to their copies.
In addition to correcting my own erratic memory, there is another reason I must occasionally reread the Big Book. I hear statements from AA speakers that confuse me. For example, in our area we often hear it said, “There are no musts in AA.”
Such speakers evidently have a copy of the Big Book that has not yet been “defaced” by the gnomes. All through my copy, I find musts, sometimes three or four on a page. Here are a few (the italics are mine):
“If we are planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol” (page 33).
“…We must find a spiritual basis of life—or else” (44).
“Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us!” (62)
“…We must be willing to make amends…” (69)
“…We ask that we be given strength and direction to do the right thing, no matter what the personal consequences may be…We must not shrink at anything.’’ (79)
These are only a handful of the scores of musts scattered through the Big Book. Along with them are hundreds of other phrases containing words like “absolutely,” “necessary,” “completely,” “essential,” and “without fail.” These words imply musts to any mind not looking for a loophole or an escape hatch.
Admittedly, these musts are not forced on the newcomer by any “big shots” in AA or by any man-made law or regulation. In that sense, there are no musts; we alcoholics are free to drink, free to disregard the Twelve Steps. For doing so, we will not be fined or kicked out of the Fellowship. All that will happen to us is that we will go mad or die.
If we don’t try to make this consequence clear to new men and women, we are cheating them.
A few years ago, a fairly successful Los Angeles businessman, sober a few weeks, had to go back to Detroit on a company matter. There, he would meet some of his old drinking pals. At an AA meeting one night, he triumphantly told a friend of mine that he had read the Big
