How we let the Therapeutic/Treatment Industry WATER-DOWN the 12 Step Recovery Program / 2

How we let the Therapeutic/Treatment Industry WATER-DOWN the 12 Step Recovery Program / 2 from Big Book Sponsorship

Furthermore, membership in A.A. meant complete abstinence from alcohol. If you couldn’t stay sober, you were no long a member! Thus the A.A. rooms of the 1940’s were full of recovered alcoholics sharing experience, strength and hope to newly indoctrinated members. (Unlike today where the 12 Step rooms are filled with chronic relapsing alcoholics and addicts who have a revolving door membership with the local withdrawal management centers.)

In the September 1945 issue of the Grapevine…

The Genesee Group in Rochester, NY explained their format for taking newcomers through the Steps. The title of the article was “Rochester Prepares Novices for Group Participation”. This is how they perceived the recovery process to operate most efficiently: “It has been our observation that bringing men [and woman] into the group indiscriminately and without adequate preliminary training and information can be a source of considerable grief and a cause of great harm to the general moral of the group itself. We feel that unless a man, after a course of instruction and an intelligent presentation of the case for the A.A. life, has accepted it without any reservation he should not be included in group membership. When the sponsors feel that a novice has a fair working knowledge of A.A.’s objectives and sufficient grasp of it’s fundamentals then he is brought to his first group meeting.

In the A.A. Washington, Pa., Bulletin, April 1949, it stated…

“When Bill W. got the ‘jitters’ out in Akron (back in 1935), he couldn’t call another A.A. to furnish cry-on-my-shoulder service. There weren’t any other AAs. So he called — and called — until he found a drunk who needed help.

“He finally found ‘Doc,’ and in helping ‘Doc’ he forgot his own troubles and stayed sober. If that prescription worked for the founder of our fellowship, and it did, then it will work for us today. So, instead of always looking up an AA who is staying sober to give us a lift in spirit, it might help all of us to use Bill’s ‘prescription’ once in a while and find a drunk who needs help. Let us not lose sight of one of the cardinal principles of A.A. — ‘To help ourselves, we help others.’”