Experience, Strength and Hope. Anonymous
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The Twelve Steps The Twelve Traditions The Twelve Concepts (Short Form)
Introduction
Since the first edition of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, came off press in 1939, there have been three revised editions—a second published in 1955, a third in 1976, and a fourth in 2001. In all four editions, the first 164 pages have remained unchanged, preserving A.A.’s message just as it was originally recorded by the founding members. The impetus for change has been the need for revisions to the section of personal stories, as suffering alcoholics of many different ages, occupations, lifestyles, and ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds have learned about the Fellowship and come to knock on its doors.
The importance of these personal stories cannot be overstated. Co-founder Bill W. articulated it in a 1954 letter, written when he was immersed in collecting new stories for the second edition: “The story section of the Big Book is far more important than most of us think. It is our principal means of identifying with the reader outside of A.A.; it is the written equivalent of hearing speakers at an A.A. meeting; it is our show window of results. To increase the power and variety of this display to the utmost should be, therefore, no routine or hurried job. The best will be none too good. The difference between ‘good’ and ‘excellent’ can be the difference between prolonged misery and recovery, between life and death, for the reader outside A.A. . . . The main purpose of the revision is to bring the story section up to date, to portray more adquately a cross section of those who have found help—the audience for the book is people who are coming to Alcoholics Anonymous now.”
As stories were added to new editions, others were removed. Difficult as it must have been to take out any A.A. story, hard decisions were integral to the process of making space for A.A. experience that reflected the growing diversity of the membership. And since there is no such thing as a “bad” A.A. story, every time a new edition came off press the General Service Office received calls and letters asking why some member’s “favorite” had been removed.
The idea of developing a separate publication to make these slices of A.A. history and experience available once again came up periodically over the years, but for quite some time it did not receive substantial support. By 1997, however, when members of the General Service Conference called for preparation of a fourth edition of the Big Book, they asked concurrently for development of a volume of the stories that had been dropped from the first three editions. Alcoholics Anonymous had grown from the original struggling band of 100 members, living primarily in Ohio and New York, to a multifaceted, worldwide Fellowship, estimated at more than two million strong. Changes from the third edition to the fourth were the most extensive yet, and more than half the stories had to be taken out to make room for those of contemporary members. Thus, in the pages that follow, you will meet a large number and variety of A.A.s from earlier times, whose stories are no longer part of our basic text, but are most emphatically part of our common experience.
All but ten of the stories in this volume were published in either the first or the second edition of Alcoholics Anonymous. As a collection, therefore, they greatly enrich our knowledge of “what we used to be like” as a Fellowship. Most of the A.A. writers got sober before the Twelve Traditions had been adopted, many of them in that chaotic period when A.A. was “flying blind” and learning from its many mistakes. For the most part, they stopped drinking, and stayed stopped, without the numerous A.A. meetings and other resources so readily available. Yet they demonstrate powerfully that A.A. experience is timeless. They tell us, as clearly as the speaker we heard last night, “what we are like now”—sober, grateful alcoholics who with the help of the A.A. program will continue to stay that one crucial drink away from a drunk.
PART ONE
The stories presented here were deleted when the second edition of Alcoholics Anonymous was published, and the introductory material to this section provides information about A.A. as it was at that time.
It was 1955, and thanks largely to the Big Book, A.A.’s membership had grown from a few struggling groups with a total of about 100 members to an estimated 6,000 groups with more than 146,000 members. Traveling A.A.s and those serving in World War II had carried the message throughout the U.S. and Canada, and into about 50 other nations. The Twelve Traditions had been adopted in 1950, establishing guiding principles for the formation and development of groups everywhere. And at the 1955 Convention in St. Louis, A.A.’s “coming of age," the Three Legacies of Recovery, Unity, and Service were turned over to the Fellowship as a whole by its founding members.
Given all these changes, the 1939 Big Book’s personal stories section no longer adequately represented the membership, and co-founder Bill W. set out to broaden its scope in a revised edition. The Preface to the second edition explained: “When the book was first printed, we had scarcely 100 members all told, and every one of them was an almost hopeless case of alcoholism. This has changed. A.A. now helps alcoholics in all stages of the disease. It reaches into every level of life and into nearly all occupations. Our membership now includes many young people. Women, who were at first very reluctant to approach A.A., have come forward in large numbers. Therefore, the range of the story section has been broadened so that every alcoholic reader may find a reflection of him- or herself in it."
For the second edition, Bill restructured the story section in three parts: “Pioneers of A.A.," “They Stopped in Time," and “They Lost Nearly All." Only two stories from the first edition were retained intact; three were edited, one of which was retitled; two were completely rewritten, and 30 new stories were added. The completed section contained 38 stories, compared to 29 in the first edition (Dr. Bob’s, along with 28 others).
The stories that follow, reprinted from the first edition, take us back to the “trial and error" days, and paint a fascinating picture of what the A.A. experience was in the formative years. The A.A.s we meet here had been sober for very short periods of time (Bill W. was sober only three and a half years, Dr. Bob about three). They were still a little unsure and afraid of this “thing" they had found, still groping for clear guidelines, still largely uneducated about their alcoholism. Much of the terminology is strange to us: they wrote of “former alcoholics," described their recovery as a “cure," and referred to alcohol in terms such as “John Barleycorn." There were only a handful of groups at the time, and many of these writers found A.A. more or less by accident—perhaps a friend or relative happened to hear about a group of former drunks who were staying sober, or some early members heard about their problem and made a Twelfth Step call.
Some of the rough edges found in the first edition stories (the use of profanity, for example, references to specific religious beliefs, and several rather disorganized stories) would be smoothed out in those chosen for later editions. When Bill W. began the revision, he laid out some general guidelines: “Since the audience for the book is likely to be newcomers, anything from the point of view of content or style that might offend or alienate those who are not familiar with the program should be carefully eliminated. . . . Profanity, even when mild, rarely contributes as much as it detracts. It should be avoided." In a letter to a prospective contributor, Bill set forth the framework he was seeking: “We are looking for straight personal narratives which describe the drinking history, how the newcomer arrived in Alcoholics Anonymous, how A.A. affected him, and what A.A. has since accomplished for him."
But with all their faults of style, the differences between the stories we hear today and those written in 1939 are not important. These writers were alcoholics, and their experience rings true to any A.A. member of any time or place.
The Unbeliever
Dull . . . listless . . . semicomatose . . . I lay on my bed in a famous hospital for alcoholics. Death or worse had been my sentence.
What was the difference? What difference did anything make? Why think of these things which were gone—why worry about the results of my drunken