Alcoholics Anonymous: The Big Book, 4th Edition
by Anonymous
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Book Summary Information
Author: AnonymousEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-02-10
ISBN: 1893007170
Number of pages: 576
Publisher: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Book Reviews of Alcoholics Anonymous: The Big Book, 4th Edition
Book Review: Irrational mumbo jumbo
Summary: 2 Stars
Any discussion of this book cannot truly be separated from a discussion of Alcoholics Anonymous itself. It would be like trying to discuss the Koran without discussing what it is to be Muslim or discussing the Bible without discussing what it is to be a Christian. This is the religious text of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is a combination of junk psychology mixed with the author Bill Wilson's religious beliefs culled and watered down from a Christian cult known as the Oxford Group, or "Groupism" which involved self debasement, confession and admission of sin (disguised under the term "moral shortcommings") which AA claims are the deeper underlying causes of alcoholism.
AA has two sides, one is AA the cult and one is the fellowship of AA. The fellowship has been of great help in my recovery because it has helped to see and learn from others who went through the process of recovery and to see that my experiences and emotions are not unique. As an agnostic, the cult elements have been extremely hard for me to deal with emotionally, particularly when I was attempting to get sober as I was not completely rational and was in very bad state emotionally. The program of AA, has been adopted by many self help groups from Nicotine Anonymous to Overeaters Anonymous.
This book sets out AA's alleged program of recovery based on spiritual principals. Although AA claims it is spiritual and not religous, several courts have found otherwise. Again, this book is, essentially, AA's bible. It has two parts. The first describes the author's drinking history and spiritual redemption, sets forth AA's 12 step spiritual program of recovery. It contains a chapter to the Agnostics to beat the agnostics and athiests into submission to the program, a chapter to the wives and a chapter to the employeers of the alcoholic designed to enlist their aid in beating the alcoholic into converting to the AA cult religion. The second part contains stories of AA cultists who describe their experiences with alcohol, how alcohol abuse destroyed their lives, and how a spiritual conversion saved them.
The book contains some great truths, some half truths, some misrepresentations and some flat out lies. It is vague and not very well written. The few original ideas in the book were revolutionary in the field of recovery. Specifically: 1) once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic; 2) alcoholism is a progressive disease, and 3) that the alcoholic cannot take even one drink successfully. The book sucinctly describes that an alcoholic has a distorted thinking and self perception which lead to his drinking. The principal error with AA's program is that it concludes that the alcoholic is defective spiritually and is in need of redemption rather than defective in his thinking and in need of cognitive and emotional changes.
One example of a horrible misrepresentation in the book is contained in the author's autobiographical chapter. After serving in World War I, the author, Bill Wilson, became one of the first stock analysts in history, touring the country on a motorcycle with his wife, Lois, going from company to company and reviewing the company's assets, plans and so forth, and making reports to his magazine. He became very rich and lost it all to alcohol. Bill W. forgets to mention that the Great Depression played a part. He does state that when men were jumping off the buildings on Wall Street, he simply went back into the bar and continued to drink. He describes how his drinking progressed to the point where he was taken to Towns Hospital in New York with delerium tremmens for the third time in a year. He states that his friend Ebby Thatcher, who was an alcoholic who got sober through a religious conversion experience, was talking with his doctor in the hospital. Bill overheard his doctor tell Ebbie that the Bill did not have another drunk left in him. The next one would kill him. Bill W. claims that at just that moment, he felt a great need for God, invited God into his life and suddenly had an overwhelming sense of God Consciousness, of a wind blowing through him removing the desire to drink. He was "rocketed into the fourth dimension of consciousness." He forgets to tell the reader that he was flying on a halucinogenic drug coctail which they used to give drunks to help them dry out. If I were flying on acid, I might have a God experience too. I had a roommate in college who got high on LSD and saw little green men running around the room. I also know people who described halucinations of snakes and bugs and pink elephants which they had when withdrawing from alcohol poisoning. So, there was a perfectly rational, non-religous explaination for Bill W.'s "hot flash." Bill W. dropped acid with Timothy Leary in the '50s to try and repeat his conversion experience.
Another misrepresentation is in the foreword where the book states, "We are 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of body and mind." Many interpret this to mean all 100 were sober. They were not, but they were no longer "hopeless." Only 8 of the 100 members were sober over six months. Not all stayed sober. Ebbie was unable to stay sober. He died in a recovery home from emphysema (spelling?) during the '60s. He was about 2-1/2 years sober. Hank P., one of the earliest members, got drunk as soon as the book was published. Jim Burwell, the agnostic in the original group, was sober at least 20 years later.
After his hot flash, Bill W. promptly joined Ebby in the Oxford Group. The Oxford Group used a six step program to assist a person to have a spiritual relationship with God. When the author broke away from the Oxford Group, he borrowed and expanded the Oxford Group program and hid the cult aspects in his program of recovery which involves a 12 step "spiritual" process as follows:
Step 1 -- We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step 2 -- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Step 3 -- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Step 4 -- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Step 5 -- Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.
Step 6 -- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Step 7 -- Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Step 8 -- Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make ammends to them all.
Step 9 -- Made direct ammends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Step 10 -- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Step 11 -- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.
Step 12 -- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
The first 11 steps are an indoctrination into the cult, and the 12th step requires AAers to recruit new members. The cult aspects are revealed in the fact that nowhere in the 12 steps do they tell the alcoholic to stop drinking. This is because AA, like all cults, does a bait and switch. The first step is where the fraud comes in because it concludes the alcoholic is powerless over alcohol. But, the powerlessness is subjective, not objective, because drinking is voluntary. Once the alcoholic knows that the first drink sets up a compulsion, and is willing to go through the painful process of withdrawal and fighting off the habit of drinking, he is capable of getting sober.
Almost no one gets to AA in good financial and emotional condition. As such, they are ripe prey for the cult of AA. Sorrowfully, the Courts and medical community have made AA, rather than more rational approaches, the keystone of recovery from addiction. Court ordered recovery programs and medical recovery programs are often nothing more than a gateway into the AA cult.
AA is not necessarily an evil cult. It intends to help alcoholics, and has actually helped millions to recover. Performance of the 12 steps, a belief in anybody else's god, or even a belief in a god, is not mandatory for membership. But, under peer pressure from the group, even the most ardent athiests who join end up believing or pretending to believe in AA's god.
Be true to yourselves in recovery.
Summary of Alcoholics Anonymous: The Big Book, 4th Edition
It's more than a book. It's a way of life.Alcoholics Anonymous-The Big Book-has served as a lifeline to millions worldwide. First published in 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous sets forth cornerstone concepts of recovery from alcoholism and tells the stories of men and women who have overcome the disease. With publication of the second edition in 1955, the third edition in 1976, and now the fourth edition in 2001, the essential recovery text has remained unchanged while personal stories have been added to reflect the growing and diverse fellowship. The long-awaited fourth edition features 24 new personal stories of recovery.
Key features and benefits
·the most widely used resource for millions of individuals in recovery
·contains full, original text describing A.A. the program
·updated with 24 new personal stories
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