Getting
Started (Continued)
C:
Let's
look forward a moment at the forward to the first edition. In the forward
to the first edition there's a statement that says: 'We, of Alcoholics
Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from
a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. To show other alcoholics
precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book.'
Again
two short ideas. First, we're more than one hundred men and women. That
alerts me to the fact that I'm not reading a one person, one author book.
Now most books I
read have been authored by one individual. And with my keen, intellectual.
alcoholic mind, when I read a book that's been authored by one individual,
if I disagree with what he says, I say, well, who's he to think he's
smarter than I am.
I
just ignore what he has to say and then go on with the rest of the book.
But if I do that with the Big Book, "Alcoholics Anonymous," I'm
not going to be arguing with one person, I'm going to be arguing with one
hundred.
Remember
the first forty told Bill to write it, but let us see the chapters as you
complete them. We will add to, delete from, and change around whatever we
want. When we're through with it, it will be the story of how all forty of
us recovered, which by 1939 turned out to be this first one hundred. So
when I argue with the book today, I'm arguing with one hundred people, not
just one.
These
one hundred have recovered from the same thing that's tearing me up as a
practicing alcoholic, the hopeless condition of the mind and of the body.
It's a little bit
harder to argue with those people. (p. xiii, par. 1) 'To show other
alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this
book.
Now,
Joe and I have both been in A. A. long enough to know that there's only
one requirement for membership in Alcoholics Anonymous, and that's a
desire to stop
drinking. You know you can come to an A. A. meeting. You can stand up in
the middle of the meeting. You can say 'I don't like you suckers at all.
Hate your old damned Twelve Steps, and I can just barely stand your lousy
old coffee. But I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous because I've got a
desire to stay sober.'
And
nobody can say anything about that at all. You know, you don't even have
to be sober to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. It helps if you are.
(laughter) But you have to have a desire to quit drinking to be a member
of Alcoholics Anonymous.
But
those things all deal with membership in the fellowship of Alcoholics
Anonymous. The Big Book has nothing to do with the fellowship. The Big
Book deals with the
recovery, only. The purpose of this book, is to show other alcoholics
precisely how the first one hundred recovered from the disease of
alcoholism. If I want to recover as they do, then there's probably some
things I am going to have to do, which I won't necessarily want to do.
