The Title page of the Big Book through the Forewords at the "Fellowship of the Spirit West 2006 Conference" in Big Bear, CA

Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I'm Dan, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi. Hi, Dan.

And welcome to the 2006 Fellowship of the Spirit West Conference. We're gonna talk about when you first start to work with somebody through the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, some people just skip right ahead to the doctor's opinion where it starts to talk about the physical craving. Alright? So what I'm going to, do is basically start at the beginning as far as what I share with the people that I work with. And, you know, there's a lot of information that we've accumulated before we get here.

And a lot of it has to do with my own reasoning and and, what I perceive to be the problem. Also, what I've perceived to be this on my solutions in the past. Somebody who's new has developed possibly some ideas of what they really need here. Right? Somebody who's been here a long time has been exposed to a lot of information that they've picked up in meetings, that they've picked up over the years.

What I try to encourage at this point here is whatever information you may have at the beginning of this process, although it may be good and and some of you have might have gone through the steps a few times. But to start this process in the big book, thinking you know everything doesn't leave a lot of room to hear much else. So in the beginning of the book, I like to suggest that people turn to the first page of their hardcover big book. If it's a softcover big book, it doesn't work. You see the first pages what do you have?

The blank one or the one that's about product. The mom and us, or do you want the The first one. What's the first one? The blank one. Yes.

The first page in this big book of Alcoholics Anonymous is blank on both sides. And what a great place to talk, about the idea of coming to this process with an open mind. Setting aside all of the ideas that I might have picked up along my AA path or setting aside the ideas of what I think I need to straighten out my life if I'm new. Maybe there's some information in this book that people that have had some experience with recovery that can tell me some things that I don't know. If I've been doing this for years, my personal experience with this is is I'm always seeing different twists to what I already think I know.

Right? But it starts with having an open mind. And this is a a great place to write this a prayer that I was that was shared with me when I was new. And that was, god, please enable me to set aside everything I think I know for an open mind and a new experience. I encourage people to say that all through, especially the first three steps.

In the beginning, in the general information, it set aside everything I think I know about this program, these steps, this process, these meetings, these people. In the first part of step 1, it's a good prayer to say, god, please set aside everything I think I know about what's wrong with me. Right? With the physical craving, what happens when I start to drink? Right?

And then what happens, in my mind before I start to drink? Alright. So this prayer can just adapt to each section. And it's, it's a little early for some people to talk about God. I realized that, I can't let that scare me about who I work with.

Right? And, and if they aren't in a in a place where they want to hear about god or say a prayer with the word god in it, then so much for an open mind anyway. Right? So the first page I'm gonna talk about is the title page, which starts off Alcoholics Anonymous. Now my book has the circle and the triangle printed in on in the center of that page.

And, it was taken out in 1994 because of copyright reasons. In copyright law, if you have a copyright on something and people are infringing on that copyright, you are required by law to fight for that copyright in order to keep it. And for years, Alcoholics Anonymous was asking people to not put it on t shirts, to not make medallions, to not make all those gift items. AA members loved that stuff, and it created a very large business. And, what it did was created another situation.

See, when you allow someone to use a copyright, you lose it. It goes out into the public domain. So Alcoholics Anonymous could as it continued to to push and and try to fight for this, eventually got to the point where where they were confronted with having to hire lawyers, and they were looking at to come out in the news. Alcoholics Anonymous is suing all these people for this and for that, for t shirts and then it's you know, and they decided that it's better to drop it out of the book and let go of it than to fight for it. So that's why they it ended up being taken out of the book, which for a lot of people that are into using the big book and done a lot with the title page, that was inconvenient.

But the circle and triangle is easy enough to draw in to talk about it. So from the title page on, I, for lack of a better word, I like to call this the general information of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's gonna give us some general ideas of what AA is, how it started, and some certain points that are really important to understand, in the beginning. And, from this page all the way up to but not including the doctor's opinion. I consider the general information.

And it starts off here with a promise, a promise of hope. The story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism, and it uses the word recovered. You don't have trouble finding anywhere in this book that says we're always gonna be recovering or that we're always gonna be suffering. Because always being in a state of recovering means suffering. This is a statement of hope that I can recover.

If you have 2 different people standing in front of you, one says, hey. I got a program, and I can take you down the this, this process, this road, and you can be you can be recovered. And this other guy on the other side, he says, my program promises that you won't be alone, but you'll always be sick and you'll always be recovering. Which way do you wanna go? And that I wanna talk a little bit about that circle and the triangle.

And the circle and the triangle is not unique to Alcoholics Anonymous. It's got long spiritual roots. In the in the past, it has meant things like body, mind, and spirit. One for each side of that triangle. And the circle is like an eternal symbol, like the eternity of God.

Alright. So it's body, mind, and spirit together as one. That first side on the left of the triangle, my body. I had nothing else that I could do with my body except get it to a meeting, in that first meeting. I knew nothing about the book, knew nothing about recovery, and, I knew nothing about being powerless.

But that was the first part of any experience of any kind of power other than my own. That is there was a flow of power going through the group. Something that attracted me. Something that pulled me towards it. Something that offered the first sense of hope that maybe there was something for me.

Something that would help me. And it wasn't because I knew what the program was. It wasn't because I knew what they were gonna ask me to do. It was simply because these people said that they were like me, and they're not like that anymore. And the bottom side of the triangle of the mind, I relate to being 6 months in the program, didn't pick a sponsor, hadn't worked the steps.

Nothing had changed in my mind. And I had but I floated for a while because this window of opportunity opened up for me, but I didn't do anything to keep it open. And that window, even though I didn't know it at the time, was shutting. But I got the sense after a few various things that happened that told me that something more than these meetings were gonna be necessary for me to stay here. So I got a sponsor, and I started working this process, which started to examine some things that were going on in my mind, another important part of this this whole picture.

And then there was, this, third side of the triangle, and that's service. Now I personally bunch up making coffee and cleaning ashtrays and setting up chairs as part of the fellowship. And I consider surface as working with others. Obviously, I couldn't do that yet. The best that I could accomplish was driving alcoholics to the message rather than bringing any kind of message to an alcoholic.

But again, I can relate to that being more about the fellowship, because I wasn't qualified really to share anything except what I had, and that wasn't very much. So here's a great question in the beginning, and that's what's Alcoholics Anonymous or what's Cocaine Anonymous? Obviously, Cocaine Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous is the fellowship, the meetings. It's the recovery process in this book. And the service side, the working with others.

That's what Alcoholics Anonymous is. It's what all 12 step programs are. The fellowship, the 12 step process outlined in the book, and working with others. So a great question to start off with with someone, especially when they've been in and out of this program, especially Do you have a home group that you're connected to? Do you have a home group that you're connected to?

It's interesting that people that have been here a long time and are still uncomfortable, a lot of times they'll share that they don't have a home group anymore. People that go in and out a lot. When you work with someone who has been going in and out, important for them to see. I don't have a home group. I rarely have had a group of people I've committed to.

Right? And then the bottom side, where am I in the recovery side of this? Have I ever worked the process outlined in the book? Have I ever finished? I come across a lot of people with a lot of time that have never come across even someone that knew how to take them through the big book.

People that have gone in and out, I don't know that I've ever come across anybody that's finished the process and lived that way, you know, that's been So the working with other side, the service side, if I'm not committed to the rest of it, I probably am not involved in the service side either. So it's a great question to look at in the beginning, especially for someone that's been going in and out for years. It's Since if I haven't worked with others, if I haven't done the 12 steps, and I've I've never been connected with the home group, then am I NAA? Or am I just hanging around other people that are? And it's an important thing to see that, primarily because one of the things that when you have someone that's been coming in and out, in and out, back of their mind, it's this thing really isn't gonna work for me.

It's working for you guys, but it's not gonna work for me. It's important to help them see good reasons why they should have an open mind and say, well, maybe Alcoholics Anonymous hasn't failed me. Maybe I failed to do Alcoholics Anonymous. Because if action in all three of these areas are taken, if I get connected with a home group, committed to that home group, doing the events that that home group does, showing up, make working my life around that home group, going to the group consciences, becoming part of that home group. If I'm actively trying to complete the 12 step process, and if I finish that process and actively searching searching out people that I can help and share this process with, then there's a promise that if action in all three of these areas are taken, I can feel whole.

Later on in this book, the book is gonna refer to the 4th dimension of existence. If you draw a dot right in the center of that triangle on that title page, that's the 4th dimension of existence. Right? A point in this program centered between my mind, body, and my spirit. A balance in my life that I may have never really been able to live in the past.

At times, I probably felt good in these areas mentally, physically, spiritually. Never really been able to hang on to that in my life, any kind of balance. This will take me down this path that promises that. So then I turn to the contents page, because this is a textbook meant to be done in order, and there's a plan laid out in this book, and it's important to understand what that plan is here. From the title page up until the doctor's opinion, I call it the general information, what we're gonna go through today.

It's gonna give some history about Alcoholics Anonymous. It's gonna make some important points that we're gonna get to or it's gonna talk about the spark of Alcoholics Anonymous. The thing that started this whole thing. That would be important to know. Then step 1 starts with the doctor's opinion.

Where we're gonna look at step 1 from 3 different aspects through doctor's opinion up to page 43. Between the doctor's opinion and page 43, step 1's broken down. 1st, the physical part. What happens after I start to drink or use? Then from 23 to 43, you're gonna look at what happens before I start to use, before I pick up the first drink, the mental state that precedes the first drink, the mental obsession.

And 44, 45, and 52 is what I use to look at the unmanageability, the condition that sets up the mental state that triggers the obsession that takes me to the first drink. Then from We Agnostics, all of We Agnostics I use for, step 2. And then and how it works when it gets to step 3, from then on, it's gonna tell you you're at step 3. And from then on, the book is going to lay out where the steps are. Right.

And how it works, you're gonna see 34. And into action, you'll see 5 through 11. And in working with others, you'll see step 12. And then from then on up until 164, it'll talk about practicing the principles in all our affairs. And that's the way the book is laid out.

So I'm gonna skip over the page. Although the stories are good to read, I'm gonna go right to the preface page, which is on x I. And, certainly don't have time to read everything, but I'm gonna touch on the high points and important points that I share with someone who's sitting across from me. First paragraph down, it says, because this book has become the basic text for our society, I underline basic text, and has helped such large number of alcoholic men and women to recover, there exists a sentiment against any radical changes being made in it. Therefore, the first portion of this volume describing the AA recovery program has been left untouched.

So here it calls it a basic text. Now basic text, say if it was mathematics, a basic text might start you off with addition and then move you into subtraction, then maybe multiplication, then division, then maybe some easy, simple algebra. Right? But it'll build on itself. And the book is laid out the same way.

It starts with the physical problem, what you can see, and then the mental state behind it, what you can't see, and then the other thing that's above that's underneath the mental state, the unmanageability or the spirituality, you'll see that that this is gonna be a process that walks you deeper and deeper inside of yourself. But it'll start with the basic ideas of lack of control when I start. And it also points out here that this is where you find the AA recovery program in this book. And it also, in that part that I just read, talks about that they didn't want any radical changes made in this book because it was laid out a particular way. Although, I wanna point out that there was one, and a lot of people didn't like it when that they did this.

That is in the first edition, the doctor's opinion, page 1. But somebody along the way decided that because doctor Silkworth wasn't an alcoholic, that they'd move him into the general, information part or the Roman numeral part of the book. So a lot of newcomers will pick it up and start at Bill's story, which is now page 1. I've completely missed the doctor's opinion. And one of the things we're gonna touch on is how important the doctor's opinion is to this whole deal.

K. Next page, x I I. In the middle of the last paragraph, I've got a 3rd edition. So the 4th edition might be a little different than what mine is. But it's it's the paragraph that starts off all changes made.

In the middle of the paragraph, it says, we hope that you may pause in reading 1 of the 42 personal stories and think, yes. That happened to me. Or most important, yes, I felt like that. Just so happens the first story you come to is Bill's story, and that's the instructions for Bill's story. We pause in reading and think, did I drink like him?

Did I think like him? Was I as hopeless as Bill? And then it says, and most important, yes, I believe this program can work for me too. In the second half of Bill's story from page 9 to 16 is the, is Bill's recovery. So from page 1 to page 9, I look at where I relate to Bill's story, setting aside the difference, pausing and thinking, was I like Bill?

I wasn't in the service in London when I first felt that alcohol made me feel like I was a part of life at last. You know, I was in Culver City in a gas Right? But there was a time when alcohol and my life kind of came together, and I was there. He was in England. I was in Culver City.

So, again, I have it going through Bill's story with an attitude of where can I relate? So in the next page here with forward to the first edition on XIII, here's where the book tells us what recovers. Alright? Says we have Alcoholics Anonymous of more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. So here it tells us what recovers.

Keep something in mind, and that is we look at the problem as a threefold problem. My body, I lose control when I start. My mind, I suffer from obsessions to alcohol, and I have a spiritual malady. All the 3 of those things are important in this picture, yet all it's saying here is I recover mentally and physically. Some people like to qualify as a recovered alcoholic, which is fine.

There's nothing wrong with that. But sometimes it it gives the illusion that's it. I've recovered and that's it. And we have to keep in mind that later on it warns us that all we have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Because if we lose that, we lose this.

There's people that have walked into the program and never drink again, so they never suffer the physical craving. And that window's opened up wide enough for them to get into the program and not suffer from the obsession. Right? Just by going to meetings. So by just that description here, they've recovered.

But why do I need to stay here? Why do I need to stay here? That's what becomes important. Because if I don't get that part of it, then I'm gonna live my life like I need a drink. And then I'm on the edge, like that piece of fluff on the edge of a record.

You know, because at any time that piece of fluff could just fly away. And life's like that. At any at any point something can happen that just knocks me off center. Then what do I have? So just recovering physically and mentally is just a part of it.

Important part of it, but just a part of it. It goes on to say, to show other alcoholics precisely have we have recovered is the main purpose of this book. I'd say that they were pretty specific as far in in telling me that this is this is an instruction manual that I better read and that they're gonna tell me what I need to do. For them, we hope that these pages will prove so convincing that no further authentication will be necessary. When you're done going through this process, you'll know if you need to stay here.

Or if you've had an open mind, maybe you'll find out you don't. And that's another part of having an open mind. It's coming to this thing, ask myself, really, what's wrong with me? Can't start a spiritual process with a lie. And the purpose is not to chase alcoholics out of the program.

The purpose is is at this point here is to is to hook the ones that in the back of their mind don't think they really are like you. And have an open mind. Maybe you're maybe that little voice in the back of your mind that tells you you don't need to be here is true. Maybe you don't. But if you relate to this thing, you know, you might be stuck in a situation that you don't like or want.

We think that the account of our experiences will help everyone to a better understanding to better understand the alcoholic. Many do not comprehend that the alcoholic is a very sick person. And besides, we are sure that our way of living underlying way of living has its advantages for all. This is not a process to work on my sobriety. This process will work on the way you live to create a life conducive to staying sober.

And it's very important to stress to people that that this is a way of life. You're not gonna do x amount of meetings, x amount of steps, x amount of of service work, and graduate. It's a way of life conducive to staying sober. It's people that that think that they've got enough they've got all they're gonna get from this thing, and now they can go on off and work on on other parts of their life and leave behind all the stuff that's taken them so far. It's important to hang on to what's worked so well to this point and add to it, not subtract what's worked and try to add and go back and focus on the things that didn't work in the past for you.

Working hard, trying to get money is gonna get you everything you need, the relationship. All those things are good, and all those things are important to a well rounded person. But don't let go of of the way of life that brought you to where you are. You know, I don't like the word balance. I like the word juggling.

Right? I've never wanted a little bit of anything. I want all the program I can get. I want all the relationship I can get. I want all the money I can get.

It's all part of my life. So I'm gonna skip ahead to the, forward to the second edition on XV. Now I'm going to bottom line this whole page and then we're going to get into the meat of this thing, some really important stuff. This page basically talks about the growth in AA from 1939 to 1955. It grew to a 150,000 members in 16 years.

So I'm gonna start the reading from the bottom indentation where it says the spark. Okay? It's on XV. The spark that was to flare into the 1st AA Group was struck in Akron, Ohio in June 1935 during the talk between a New York Stockbroker, Bill Wilson, and an Akron physician, doctor Bob Smith. Do you guys know what kind of doctor Bob Smith was?

No. A proctologist. He was a proctologist, but he was a proctologist before there were proctologists. It wasn't a specialty. You know?

So it gives it gives you some kind of a, perspective as what you know, he was smart. He was He was excelling in areas that weren't, you know, that there wasn't a lot of people excelling in. It was a specialty, there wasn't that he was, right? I'm not I'm pointing out what I'm pointing out is he was a very intelligent person, and obviously thought really well of his ability to reason all these things, to think about all this. I mean, you know, people's lives were on the line when he started poking around in there.

Now think about this, if you were living back then, there wasn't really much AA going on yet, and somebody says, you know, Dan, you've got you've got a really bad problem with this drinking thing. You know, there's this doctor over in Akron who's doing some really great work with alcoholics. Get myself over to the doctor's office, and I look at the door of the doctor's office. Doctor Bob Smith, proctologist. I'd really wanna get sober.

That'd be going to any lengths. Right? Anyway, it calls Bill a stock broker here, but that was before stock brokers had to be licensed 2 very smart people, very driven people. 6 months earlier, the broker had been relieved of his drink obsession by a sudden spiritual experience following a meeting of an alcoholic friend. That alcoholic friend was Abby Thatcher who later comes to Bill in his story.

Bill was actually more friends with Eddie's brother, and it's calls him a school friend, but actually they were friends because of of baseball after school. So, but they had they had stayed in touch over the years. And Ebby had been in contact with the Oxford Group of that day. Now the Oxford Group, they were basically a fundamentalist Christian society, and they believed that we all could be Christ like, and we move around the the world just trying to be helpful to others. And they believed that their solution was good for everybody.

Ebby was was involved in that and did bring Bill into that. And also, point out one thing that's interesting is how the Oxford group got their name. Bunch of them got together and they were traveling through Europe. And when you see groups traveling, even at the airport today, there'll be, like, a little sign saying what this pile of luggage is. Right?

Ever seen that? But, anyway, they would have this everybody's luggage in one big pile, and they had the sign on it to differentiate it from the other piles. And the, train conductor rode on it the Oxford Group. So all through Europe, this sign kind of followed their luggage. So they kind of just somehow adopted that name.

They called themselves The Oxford Group after that. So, following the meeting with the alcoholic friend, Ebby, who had been in contact with The Oxford Group of that day, He had also been greatly helped by the late doctor William d Silkworth, a New York specialist in alcoholism who was encountered no less than a medical saint by AA members and whose story of the early days of our society appears in the next pages. That's her doctor's opinion. So here, in this book, Bill is saying he was greatly helped by the doctor's opinion of what was wrong with him. Let me get back to that in a second.

From this doctor, the broker had learned the grave nature of alcoholism. Though he could not accept all the tenants of the Oxford Group if you wanna see what the tenants of the Oxford Group is in, if you have a 3rd edition, it's on 292, and the 4th edition, it's on 263. Complete deflation of ego, dependence of guidance from a higher power, moral inventory, confession, restitution, and continued work with other alcoholics. So here he's saying he could not accept all the tenants of the Oxford group, but then it goes on to list 5 of the 6. He was convinced of the need for moral inventory, confession of personal defects, restitution to those harmed, helpfulness to others, and the necessity of belief in and dependence upon God.

The only one missing off of that list is the first one, complete deflation. Complete deflation of ego. You have, investor, stockbroker, could not accept complete deflation of ego. And I can relate so much to that because I was I was a fairly driven person. I had started little companies, a lot of them, lost them all, but was good at starting them.

I was very full of myself and believed that I could I could accomplish things that I'd set out to do. I'd proven it to myself, which led me to a place where I was completely baffled with why couldn't I straighten out the other area of my life, the drinking. In the back of my mind, I knew that if that when I really when it really became important, then I would stop drinking, except the day never came. So I could not grasp the idea of complete deflation of ego. And after all the torture I experienced prior to Alcoholics Anonymous, what finally drove me to the point where I was just gonna say, okay, I need to go to a meeting.

Right? I still was sitting in the middle of the meetings thinking, I'm not like you people. I can figure this thing out where you can't. So I haven't actually understood what powerlessness meant. I haven't really seen what a first step experience looks like.

I still had the idea that there might be something I could figure out here, because look it. I've been able to do this in other areas of my life. So, prior to this journey to Akron, the broker had worked hard with many alcoholics on the theory that only an alcoholic could help another alcoholic, but he had succeeded only in keeping sober himself. So he was he went around after his experience with the Oxford group and trying to be helpful to others, and he started dragging drunks off bar stools and off alleys. And he brought them home, and him and his wife started to take care of these guys trying to, and he started working on them trying to help them stay sober.

None of them stayed sober. And he was real concerned about that because his focus was on them and how he's failed them. And it was actually his wife, Lois, that pointed out says says, yeah. Bill, they didn't stay sober, but look. Look at your life you have.

Which started to develop some ideas in him, which he realized was really what the Oxford Group was talking about. Helpfulness to others would separate me from what I was. The broker had gone to Akron on a business venture which had collapsed, leaving him greatly in fear that he might drink again. He suddenly realized that in order to save himself, he must carry this message to another alcoholic. That alcoholic turned out to be the Akron physician.

So there was no AA meetings at this time. He couldn't call his sponsor, Ebby, because Ebby would be already drinking again. Ebby only got 2 months. But he realized that that if he didn't try to carry this message like he had been doing, that that he was gonna drink again. So he he got this list of people to call to get he put this list of people to call together that, which included priests and various people.

And at the very bottom of the list was someone he didn't wanna call. And but he had called everybody on the list except that person with no luck. And that person was Henrietta Sebring. And that was kinda like going to going to Palm Springs and thinking that you got you're gonna drink and maybe I'll give Betty Ford a call and see if she's doing tonight. And, you know, because she was a prominent person.

He didn't wanna bother her with this, but he had exhausted everything else and didn't know what to do, so he he made the call. What Henrietta Seberling responded with was, thank God. We've been waiting for you. Right? See, Henrietta Sebring was in the Oxford group, and, doctor Bob was in the Oxford group.

And they all knew that doctor Bob had a problem, but in the Oxford group, they didn't point their finger at you and say, you're an alcoholic. You had to come to it yourself and confess to the group, I have a problem with alcohol. I need God's help. And they were waiting for him to do that. It wasn't happening.

So they would meet on their own and in little prayer groups, specifically asking God to send help to doctor Baum. So they had been praying for this. So when he made that phone call and connected with Henriette Sebring, her response, thank god we've been waiting for you. Another part of the synchronistic situation that that led up to to what we're gonna talk about soon. Doctor Bob didn't really wanna talk to to Bill.

He didn't wanna talk to anybody about his drink. But with some pressure from Henrietta, he agreed to talk with him a little while. And, it goes on to say on XVI, the last indented paragraph, it says, this physician had repeatedly tried spiritual means to resolve his alcoholic dilemma, but had failed. He was a church member. He'd been been in the Oxford group for a while.

So he had the solution. He had everything he needed, except he wasn't convinced of what of the problem. It was the missing part of the puzzle. Complete deflation of ego. Just like Bill, he could not accept it.

But when the broker, Bill, gave him, Bob, doctor Silkworth's description of alcoholism and his hopelessness, are step 1. The physician began to pursue the spiritual remedy for his malady with the willingness he had never before been able to muster. He sobered, never to drink again up to the moment of his death in 1950. So that was the spark that started Alcoholics Anonymous. When Bill shared with doctor Bob the doctor's opinion of what's wrong with with him, and doctor Bob related to it triggered a chain of events that we still see importance with today.

1 alcoholic talking about his drinking so that another alcoholic who doesn't know whether they belong here can relate to that drinking. Because if I can relate to your problem and I don't have a solution, and you seem to, that gives me hope. That's the core, the basis of Alcoholics Anonymous. So this seemed to prove that one alcoholic could affect another as no nonalcoholic could. It also indicated and this is important to hear.

It also indicated that strenuous work, one alcoholic with another, was vital to permanent recovery, which means that the real work in Alcoholics Anonymous is taking people through the steps, not constantly working on myself. Back then, they didn't have a book to read. They didn't even have the 12 steps yet. They saw the importance of working with others. That was the basis of this program at the time.

And they started to develop some certain ideas of what worked and what didn't work, And that's what they laid down for us. Hence, the 2 men set to work almost frantically upon alcoholics arriving in the ward of Akron City Hospital. Their first case, Bill d Bill Dodson, a desperate one, recovered immediately and became AA number 3. So you know what they shared with him? They didn't have a lot of information yet.

All they had was the doctor's opinion and what's wrong. That's what they shared with him, the doctor's opinion. So that's why in the beginning, I pointed out, can you see how how big a deal it was for them to move the doctor's opinion from page 1 to the Roman numerals? And makes some people, especially newcomers, skip right to page 1, miss the doctor's opinion altogether. From here on, it's it's gonna talk about the formation of groups and some influences for Alcoholics Anonymous, as it starts to grow.

They had, managed to get enough money to do the first publishing of the book, and nobody knew really about Alcoholics Anonymous. So there's boxes of books piled all around their first office and using it as furniture, as chairs. And they and they were really hurting for money, and they had all these people that invested in this book. And in exchange for a stock certificate, which they which a lot of people didn't get their money back from because it's because they're just they had this book and they had this idea and they were growing, but it wasn't quite, you know, wasn't just out there. And then in spring of 1940, John d Rockefeller junior offered to give a dinner for them.

And it it's talking about right here on page x v I I I. And, Bill got this idea that now things are gonna be okay. Rockefeller's gonna invite all of his friends with money, and they're gonna all throw money at at Alcoholics Anonymous. And, then they'll be able to, to really start to grow. Said Rockefeller didn't even show up.

He sent somebody else because he couldn't make it, in his place. And, that person started the talk off with these people aren't here for your charity. Right? They're these are a bunch of alcoholics, and they're trying to help each other stay sober, and they don't want anything from you except just want you to to know about them. Naturally, Bill's heart probably sunk at that point because all his his vision of all these dollars coming in just flew out the window.

But the important point here in this section is is what this section is talking about is the things that happened in a early AA history that built credibility for Alcoholics Anonymous. Getting donations from people for charities doesn't build credibility, but the way that it all transpired did. And it by March 1941, the membership had shot up to 2,000. Then Jack Alexander wrote a feature article in the Saturday Evening Post and placed such a compelling picture of alcoholics anonymous before the general public that alcoholics in need of help really deluged us. See, Jack Alexander was a scam buster, like a 60 minutes kind of a person.

People expect that Jack Alexander to go into a situation and dig up all the dirt so that he could trash the organization, but that's not what he wrote. He wrote a compelling article about Alcoholics Anonymous. See, he'd he'd actually met with Bill, and Bill talked to him because Bill knew what kind of a writer he was. He said, look. You know?

We're a bunch of alcoholics. We have no no rules here. No membership fees. No nothing. Just little groups of people trying to help each other survive.

And and asked him if to not just go to one meeting and draw a conclusion, but to gave him a couple addresses to to go around and to and to get an idea of what's happening from group to group. And, people had actually reported seeing him in, in their meetings. He was showing up, and he was checking out what was going on. And he was so impressed that this person that normally looks for scams wrote this article. And when Jack Alexander gave it the thumbs up, credibility for Alcoholics Anonymous.

Right? So what they're leading to here is is that the along with all of this the sub successes that they were had in getting the people sober and the credibility that they were gaining in the community and the increase of membership rising. This mushrooming process was in full swing. AA had become a national institution. Since our society then entered a fearsome and exciting adolescent period, the test that it faced was this, could this large number of erstwhile erratic alcohol successfully meet and work together?

Would there be quarrels over membership, leadership, and money? Would there be striving for power and prestige? Would there be schisms which would split AA apart? Soon, AA was beset by these very problems on every side and in every group. But out of this frightening and first disrupting experience, the the conviction grew that AAs had to hang together or die separately.

So as the membership grew, there was obviously a lot of opinions on what AA was supposed to be, and it was causing a lot of arguments. 1 of Bill's best friends was was noted to have actually punched at Bill in in the office over a quarrel of the way Bill was running this thing. And somebody else came up to Bill and in the middle of all these problems in this that were going on and said, you know, this is starting to look a lot like the Washingtonians. The Washingtonians was a group of people that were actually started a 100 years prior to Alcoholics Anonymous in 18/35, and it was half a dozen drunks that would meet in the back of this bar to just help each other stay sober. And it worked so well that their membership actually grew faster than Alcoholics Anonymous.

And, they thought that their their program worked so well for them that they should let anybody come to their meetings. But what happened was is they tried to be everything to everyone. There was abolitionists that, would come and talk about about how they they wanted the ban of slavery. There was drug addicts, but there was different drugs. There was different political situations, that where people were were trying to push in this group, and people with all kinds of different problems and, trying to come to these meetings to get help.

And and just almost as fast as it grew, disappeared. Within 15 years, you couldn't find an a Washingtonian meeting. And it had credibility. It had it was known. I mean, even even Lincoln mentioned it in one of his speeches, but it disappeared because it tried to be everything to everyone.

There's also things going on like in Florida. Bill gets this call from this guy who says, hey, Bill. We think you should know about this. This guy in Florida is, charging for alcohol anonymous. So next time Bill was in Florida, he decided he should go check it out.

He goes to talk to the guy, and the guy says and guy says, yeah, we're charging for it. And we found down here that people appreciate it more when they have to pay for it. And besides, we're sending all the money to you guys up up in the office. So Bill just said, oh, you know, sounds good to us. You know, but there was all these inconsistencies and and all these complaints that were coming in, and and Bill started to see similarities between what was happening with the Oxford group and what was happening with the Washingtonians.

And he started to see that, this last sentence in that top paragraph. We had to unify our fellowship or pass off the scene. So Ruth Hopp was was the secretary at, their office there, and she was really good at organizing these questions that were coming in, and she'd group them into these files as these problems came in. And there was these responses that they would that they had come to traditionally give certain situations. And, this next paragraph starts to talk about, as we discovered the principles by which individual alcoholics could live, we had to evolve principles by which AA groups and AA as a whole could survive and function effectively.