EZ BIG BOOK
of Alcoholics Anonymous
A Translation for 21st Century Readers
B
y
An Anonymous Member of A.A.
Published by BeaconStreetUSA
Gainesville, Florida
at Smashwords
http://www.BeaconStreetUSA.com
Copyright 2011 BeaconStreetUSA, Publisher
Material that appears in this volume originally appeared in first edition of The EZ Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, published by BeaconStreetUSA. This book is available in print at most online retailers.
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BeaconStreetUSA, Publisher
5429 SW 80 Street
Gainesville, FL 32608
ISBN 978-193266780-6
To Bill Wilson,
who created a vision for us.
“A.A. must and will continue to change with the passing years. We cannot, nor should we, turn back the clock.”
––From Bill Wilson's last message to AA, 1970
Preface
History of AA’s Big Book
In 1939, Bill Wilson, cofounder of AA, wrote Alcoholics Anonymous. His 164-page text, now called The Big Book, described a recovery program that helped him and other alcoholics give up liquor for good.
The earliest AA members were mostly professional men whose lives had almost been destroyed by drinking. Desperate for a cure, they had tried everything. Then they created a spiritual program of recovery that included practical action steps.
Big Book sales were modest until, in 1939, Liberty magazine published an article about AA titled “Alcoholics and God.” Liberty readers deluged the little AA office in New York with inquiries.
Two years later, a feature article about AA appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. The description of AA’s work was so compelling that the New York AA office was again flooded with requests for the book.
As the fellowship became more widely known, it grew. By 1976, the book had sold over one million copies, and there were over a million AA members worldwide.
Since 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous has gone through more than sixty printings. For over six decades, few changes have been made in the basic text. The EZ Big Book of AA is the first known paragraph-by-paragraph “translation” of the original 1935 book for modern readers.
Foreword
Author’s Note
The original Alcoholics Anonymous, published in 1939 and later nicknamed The Big Book, was written by Bill Wilson and other AA founders. The book spoke mainly to white, middle-class men, who made up the bulk of early AA membership.
Many of today’s readers find the original Big Book difficult to read. The words and sentences tend to be long and abstract. The content is most relevant to readers with Christian backgrounds from families where only the husband works. This was the norm in the 1930s. The lifestyles now represented in AA groups throughout the world are much more varied.
Alcoholism is an equal opportunity disease. This book was written to carry the AA message to readers who find the first 164 pages of the original Big Book hard to digest for any reason. It also offers a reader-friendly alternative to women, gays, and people with non-Christian beliefs without altering the content. The EZ Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous is a paragraph-by-paragraph translation of the 1939 book and can be used alongside the original text as a study aid.
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Doctor's Opinion
Chapter 1: Bill's Story
Chapter 2: There Is a Solution
Chapter 3: More About Alcoholism
Chapter 4: We Agnostics
Chapter 5: How It Works
Chapter 6: Into Action
Chapter 7: Working with Others
Chapter 8: To the Partners of Alcoholics
Chapter 9: The Family Afterward
Chapter 10: Employers
Chapter 11: A Vision for You
Appendix I: Twelve Steps
Appendix II: Twelve Traditions
Appendix III: Dr. Bob’s Story
Introduction
As a reader wanting to know more about alcoholism, you might be interested in doctors’ opinions of the spiritual program of Alcoholics Anonymous. They have watched many suffering alcoholics follow the plan outlined in this book and return to good health.
Dr. William Silkworth, well-known director of a famous hospital for alcoholics and addicts in the 1930s, wrote a letter to AA about the effects of the program on his patients.
He gave an example of a man who’d had a successful career but was ruining his life with drinking. The doctor considered the man hopeless.
The third time the patient came for treatment, he asked permission to talk to other alcoholics about a new method to quit drinking. His idea was that if they managed to recover, they could carry the AA message to other alcoholics and help them do the same.
Seeing the encouraging results of the man’s effort, Dr. Silkworth predicted that this movement would grow and would open a new era of hope for alcoholics. At the time the doctor wrote his letter, the AA fellowship had over 100 recovering alcoholics.
Dr. Silkworth believed what AA’s founders and other early members of the program already knewthat the bodies of alcoholics are as sick as their minds. It does no good to point out their failure to adjust to life, to tell them they’re trying escape reality, or to warn them that they may be mentally ill, although that’s certainly true of many.
Dr. Silkworth held the theory that alcoholics have an allergy to alcohol. Bill Wilson and other early members of AA thought he was right. It explained many aspects of their drinking problem.
After reading the book Alcoholics Anonymous, Dr. Silkworth recommended it to his patients. He said that physicians realize that alcoholics need moral help but they don’t know how to give it. It’s outside their medical knowledge.
It was Bill Wilson’s opinion that some alcoholics require more than spiritual guidance as they begin recovery. Hospitalization or time in a treatment center may be needed to clear their brains so they can better understand what AA has to offer.
When asked to write a statement for this book, Dr. Silkworth gladly complied. He believed in the ideas covered “in such masterly detail.” He admitted that the moral psychology needed by alcoholics to recover was beyond the reach of most doctors. He wrote, “What with our ultra-modern standards, our scientific approach to everything, we are perhaps not well equipped to apply the powers of good that lie outside our synthetic knowledge.”
In his statement, Dr. Silkworth referred to a patient who had once stayed in his hospital and wanted to carry the AA message to inpatient alcoholics. At first, the staff hesitated. Soon, though, the effects of the program amazed them. Members of the fellowship were unselfish, generous, and wanted no money for their services. They all believed that some kind of Higher Power had pulled them back from certain death.
The craving for alcohol doesn’t always go away quickly, Dr. Silkworth observed. Once alcoholics have the drinking habit, they may not be able to break it. Their problems keep getting worse. It’s a symptom of an allergy to alcohol that is never seen in normal drinkers. This is where hospital treatment helps. Eventually, though, alcoholics must put their trust in a power greater than themselves.
Dr. Silkworth described the ravages of alcoholism that he and other psychiatrists witnessed every day. The effects of the disease left husbands, wives, and children in despair. Many alcoholics seemed to be past all help. Dr. Silkworth agreed with the AA principle that hope must come from a Higher Power if an alcoholic expects to recover.
In Dr. Silkworth’s experience, the AA program did what physicians could not. To any doubting professionals, he suggested that they try to help solve the alcoholic’s problems as part of their daily work. Then, he said, they will understand why he and his colleagues support the movement. He wrote that nothing contributes more to the recovery of alcoholics than the unselfish fellowship growing among them.
Dr. Silkworth explained that alcoholics drink for the feeling it gives them. Even after their drinking has started causing problems, they think their life is normal. Without liquor inside them, they feel restless, irritable, and discontented. Drinking brings them a sense of comfort and ease. They think, “Why shouldn’t I be able to drink like others do?”
Dr. Silkworth described the cycle that alcoholics go through. After they’ve managed to quit drinking for a while, they surrender to the craving for alcohol. They go on a spree. When it’s over, they feel guilty. They promise never to do it again. But they do.
Unless they have an entire psychic change of the kind described in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, they have little hope of recovery. However, once this change occurs, alcoholics find their craving easy to control, but only if they abstain from liquor entirely.
Faced with patients who beg for rescue from their alcoholism, doctors often feel helpless. They can give their all, but it’s seldom enough. Many sense that more than human aid is needed to cure the alcoholic.
Dr. Silkworth believed that willpower is not the answer. He treated many patients who had every reason to avoid alcohol. They risked losing successful careers if they picked up another drink. Yet when the craving hit them, they started again with no thought of the consequences.
The classification of alcoholics is difficult, Dr. Silkworth wrote. Some have psychiatric illness. These mentally unstable patients vow to quit forever, but soon go back to drinking and then show great remorse at every binge. Others won’t admit that they are powerless over alcohol and devise all sorts of strategies to control their drinking, such as switching brands of alcohol or changing the places where they drink. Others think they’re cured after they’ve succeeded in quitting for a period of time.
Many alcoholics are normal in every respect other than the effect alcohol has on them. Alcoholics share one symptom. Once they take a drink, they crave more. The only cure is total avoidance of liquor.
One patient came to Dr. Silkworth after a bout of gastric bleeding. The man was going downhill mentally. He’d lost everything of value in life and lived only to drink. After alcohol was taken away, the doctors could find no lasting brain damage, and the man agreed to try the plan in this book.
A year later, the patient returned to visit Dr. Silkworth. The doctor thought the man looked familiar but couldn’t place him. The man had gone from a shaking wreck without hope to a person filled with contentment. Even after their talk, Dr. Silkworth couldn’t connect this visitor with the man he’d seen a year earlier. To the doctor’s knowledge, the man never drank again.
Dr. Silkworth had another patient who recognized that he was an alcoholic and had no hope for the future. The man hid in an empty barn and waited to die. A search party found him and brought him to the hospital in desperate condition.
The patient told Dr. Silkworth that treatment would be a waste of effort unless it would give him the willpower to resist alcohol. The man was admitted to the hospital even though the doctors saw little hope. There, the man became sold on the ideas in the book Alcoholics Anonymous and never drank again. In the doctor’s words, “He is as fine a man as one could wish to meet.”
Dr. Silkworth ended his letter with these words: “I sincerely advise every alcoholic to read this book through, and though perhaps he came to scoff, he may remain to pray.”
Chapter 1
During World War I, Bill Wilson was a young army officer stationed in Plattsburgh, New York. The local people welcomed Bill and his fellow officers into their homes, treating them like heroes. In the midst of the excitement, Bill discovered liquor, forgetting his family’s warnings about the dangers of drinking.
After shipping overseas, Bill turned to alcohol when he got lonely. While in England, he visited an ancient cathedral and walked around the cemetery outside. He noticed a verse on an old tombstone, but ignored its warning:
Here lies a Hampshire Grenadier
Who caught his death
Drinking cold small beer
A good soldier is ne’er forgot
Whether he dieth my musket [gun]
Or by pot [large cup]
Bill was 22 when the war ended. Returning home, he was proud of his leadership record in the army and knew he was destined for great things. He got a job and studied law at night, but his drinking interfered with his studying so he almost flunked his first exam. He was too drunk to think or write.
Still, he was sure he’d succeed. His job took him to Wall Street, where he watched people get rich on the stock market. “Why not me?” he thought.
Bill’s drinking worried his wife. When they had discussions about it, he assured her that the world’s geniuses thought up their greatest ideas while drinking.
Bill knew that law practice was not for him, but he loved Wall Street. Financial leaders were his heroes. Between gambling on the stock market and drinking, he had carved a boomerang that, in Bill’s words, “later turned on me and almost cut me to pieces.”
Bill and his wife managed to save a thousand dollars by living carefully. He used part of the money to buy cheap securities on the stock market and waited for their price to rise. When he couldn’t persuade his broker friends to send him out looking for business, Bill and his wife went on their own. Bill’s theory was that people lost money in the stock market because of ignorance. Later, he found more reasons.
The couple roared out of town on a motorcycle. The sidecar was stuffed with a tent, blankets, clothes, and books about finance. Their friends thought they were crazy.
Because Bill had some success on the stock market, they had a little money. Once, though, they had to work on a farm for a month. Bill wrote, “That was my last honest work for a long time.”
In the next year, they covered the eastern United States. Finally, he landed a job with an expense account on Wall Street. With more money coming in from stocks, he put away several thousand dollars.
The next few years were lucky. Bill made money and gained a good reputation. In the financial boom of the late 1920s, his profits amounted to millions of dollars—on paper, at least.
Alcohol was becoming more important in Bill’s life. He made fair-weather friends in the New York night clubs. The bars were packed with excited people spending money by the thousands and talking in the millions. Before long, Bill was drinking all day and most nights.
When friends warned him about his drinking, Bill got defensive. Soon he became a lone wolf. He had arguments with his wife. At least he could claim that he didn’t get involved with women. “I didn’t have affairs because I was loyal to my wife and maybe too drunk.”
In 1929, Bill caught golf fever. He and his wife moved to the country, and soon he was playing like a pro. He loved playing on the rich folks’ golf course that impressed him so much as a boy. The sport allowed him to drink day and night. He bought expensive tailored clothes and acquired a great tan. He wrote fat checks while his banker looked on with doubt.
Soon liquor caught up with Bill. At the same time, hell broke loose on the New York Stock Exchange. One night in October 1929, he staggered from a bar to a broker’s office after the market closed. One of his stocks had dropped from 52 to 32 that day.
The newspapers reported men jumping to their deaths from office windows. Bill’s friends had lost millions since morning. “So what?” he thought. “Tomorrow is another day.” As he drank, his old will to win came back.
The next day, he phoned a friend in Canada who still had money. Bill and his wife moved to Montreal and started living in style again. Before long, though, Bill’s drinking got so bad that his generous friend had to let him go. After that, the couple stayed broke.
They went to live with his wife’s parents. Bill found a job but soon lost it as the result of a fight. No one knew then that he’d be out of work and hardly draw a sober breath for five years.
His wife took a job in a department store. Coming home worn out at night, she’d find Bill drunk. He tried to visit Wall Street offices, but he was no longer welcome there.
Now liquor was no longer a luxury. Bill had to have it. It was routine for him to drink two or three bottles of bootleg gin a day. Sometimes he’d make a few hundred dollars on a business deal, enough to pay his bills at the bars and delis.
This went on and on. He started waking up early in the morning with the shakes. He needed a glass of gin and several beers before he could eat breakfast. Still, he convinced himself that he was in control. He even had sober spells that gave his wife new hope.
Things got worse. The bank foreclosed on their mortgage. His mother-in-law died, and both his wife and father-in-law got sick.
In 1932, when stocks were at a low point, Bill had a lucky break. He was able to form a group of buyers for an investment, and he expected a big share of the profits. But he got drunk and the chance slipped away.
Writing about that period of his life, Bill recalled that he knew he had to stop. He couldn’t take even one drink. He swore to quit for good. He’d promised before, but this time his wife believed him.
He came home drunk again, without even resisting the alcohol. He had no idea what happened. Someone pushed a drink his way and he took it. Such a terrible lack of judgment made him wonder if he was crazy.
Bill vowed to try again. He did so well that he went from being confident to turning cocky. “I could laugh at booze,” he said. “I thought I had what it takes.”
One day he went into a restaurant to make a phone call. In no time, he was pounding on the bar with a whiskey in his hand, asking himself what happened. As the alcohol started taking effect, he figured he might as well go ahead and get drunk. He’d do better next time.
The next morning, his courage was gone and he felt doomed. He was afraid to cross the street because he might fall down and get run over by a truck. It was dawn when he went out, and an all-night place gave him a dozen glasses of ale to quiet his nerves.
In the morning paper, he saw that the market had gone to hell again. “Well, so have I,” he thought. The market would come back, but he wouldn’t. He considered killing himself, but decided to have some gin instead. He drank two bottles and blacked out.
Bill’s body endured this for two more years. Sometimes he stole money from his wife’s purse to buy booze so he could calm the morning jitters. He considered jumping out of their apartment window many stories up, or taking poison from the medicine chest. But then he cursed himself for being weak.
One night, the torture was so bad he was sure he couldn’t stop himself from jumping to his death. Somehow, he dragged his mattress to safety on a lower floor. A doctor was called and gave him a sedative. The next day, Bill added gin to the sedative and was in worse shape than ever.
People feared that he was losing his mind. So did Bill. He ate almost nothing when drinking and was 40 pounds underweight.
His brother-in-law, a physician, offered to get Bill admitted to a famous treatment center. After taking medications for withdrawal, undergoing a course of physical therapy, and getting some exercise, his mind cleared. A doctor explained that while Bill was certainly selfish and foolish, he was also seriously ill.
Bill was relieved to learn that an alcoholic’s willpower is terribly weak when it comes to liquor, no matter how strong it is in other ways. This explained why he couldn’t stop drinking even though he desperately wanted to. Bill said, “Now that I knew myself better, I had hope.”
For a few months, things went great. He went to town often and made a little money. He thought that self-knowledge was surely the key.
But the awful day came when he drank again. His spirits and his health hit a new low. So he returned to the hospital.
He thought he’d come to the end. The doctors told his desperate wife that Bill would die of heart failure during an episode of the DTs or get a wet brain, possibly within a year. She’d have to turn him over to a mental hospital or an undertaker.
Bill almost welcomed the idea, despite the blow to his pride. He had always thought well of himself and his ability to overcome his troubles. But now he was about to fall into a dark pit, joining all the drunks who went before him.
He thought of the happy life he’d had with his wife. That was over. He’d give anything to make amends. His self-pity was enormous. Alcohol was his master.
Bill left the hospital a broken man. Fear kept him sober for a while, but the insanity returned on Veteran’s Day, 1934. He was off again. Everyone accepted the fact that Bill would either have to be locked up or he’d stumble along to a tragic end.
Bill wrote, “How dark it is before the dawn! Actually, I was near my last drunk. I was soon to enter a life of happiness, peace, and usefulness—a life that has become more wonderful as time passes.”
One afternoon that November, he was drinking at his kitchen table while his wife was at work. He was glad he’d hidden enough gin around the house to last through the night and the next day. He thought about hiding a full bottle near the head of the bed because he knew he’d need it before dawn.
The phone rang. On the other end of the line was the happy voice of an old school friend who wanted to come and visit. He was sober! It was years since Bill could remember his friend coming to New York without drinking. Bill had heard that the friend had been locked up for alcoholic insanity, and Bill wondered how he’d escaped.
Bill planned to enjoy an evening of drinking together. He remembered the fun of the old days, like the time they chartered a plane while drunk. The friend’s arrival in town was an oasis in the desert of Bill’s life.
When the friend arrived, his skin was healthy and glowing. His eyes had a new look. Bill wondered what had happened, but pushed a drink toward his friend. The friend refused it!
“What’s this all about?” Bill asked.
The friend smiled. “I’ve got religion.”
Bill was shocked. He thought, “Last summer he was an alcoholic nut. Now he’s a religious nut … well, bless his heart, let him talk. My gin will last longer than his preaching.”
But the friend didn’t preach. He told a story about two men who appeared in court for him and talked the judge into suspending his sentence. They told him about a simple spiritual idea and program of action. Obviously, it had worked.
The friend wanted to tell Bill about it. They talked for hours, recalling childhood memories. As they sat there, Bill recollected his preacher’s voice on Sundays, giving him the chance to take an abstinence pledge. He never did. Bill remembered how his grandfather looked down on church people and figured the preacher had no right to tell him how to live.
Bill always believed in a Power greater than himself. He was not an atheist who took the view that the universe came from nowhere and is going nowhere. Scientists, his heroes, suggested that great forces were at work. Bill believed that a purpose was behind everything, but that was as far as he’d gone.
He’d turned away from religion and was irritated by talk of a “personal God of love.” He considered that Christ was a great man, but Christians didn’t follow his teachings very well. Bill said, “I myself used the parts that were convenient and not too hard. The rest I ignored.”
Human cruelty throughout history made him sick, and he couldn’t see that religion had done the world much good. He considered the ”brotherhood of man” a joke. In his opinion, the Devil, if there was one, was probably the real boss of things.
But his friend sat there and insisted that God had done for him what he couldn’t do for himself. His will had failed him entirely. His doctors gave him no hope for a cure and were ready to lock him up. Then his newfound faith lifted him from the scrap heap of humanity to a life better than any he’d ever known.
Bill wondered whether this power had come from inside his friend. Obviously not. Bill wrote, “There was no more power in him than there was in me at that minute. And that was none at all.”
Right then Bill threw out his old ideas about religion and miracles. He saw that his friend had totally changed and his roots had found new soil.
Still, Bill disliked the word “God.” He rejected the idea of a personal God. He could accept a “Universal Spirit” but not a “King of Heaven.”
His friend asked, “Why don’t you choose a God of your own understanding?”
Bill said that those words melted his cold intelligence of many years. He needed only to believe in a Power greater than himself to make a start. He could build a new foundation on this willingness. As his pride and prejudice fell away, a new world opened to him.
The real importance of his experience in the cemetery outside the English cathedral became clear. For a brief time, he’d needed and wanted a Higher Power, and it came to him. But soon the noise of the world blotted it out.
Shortly after his friend’s visit, Bill entered the hospital. He’d had his last drink. Humbly asking for God’s care and direction, he faced his wrongdoing of past and became willing to make things right.
When Bill’s old friend came to see him again, Bill talked about his faults and problems. Together they made a list of people Bill had harmed or whom he resented. Bill became willing to make amends to these people any way he could.
He was told he could get a better sense of his Higher Power by sitting quietly when troubled and asking for the strength to solve his problems as God would want. He was to request nothing for himself except to be shown how he could be useful to others.
Bill’s friend promised that if he did this, he would enter a new relationship with his Higher Power and discover a way of living that would solve all his problems. But it was essential for him to be honest, willing, and humble. However, there was a price. Bill had to give up being so self-centered. He had to turn in all things to a Higher Power.
While these ideas seemed drastic, the effect was amazing. Bill had a sense of victory, followed by peace, serenity, and confidence. He felt as though the clean wind of a mountaintop had blown through him. Accepting a Higher Power comes to most people gradually, he said, but the effect on him was sudden and deep.
These new feelings were so strong they scared Bill. His doctor said, “Something has happened to you that I don’t understand. But you’d better hang onto it. Anything is better than the way you were.”
While Bill was in the hospital, it occurred to him that thousands of other hopeless alcoholics might benefit from what was so freely given to him. If he could help them, they could go on to help others.
Bill’s friend made clear the need to practice these principles in all his affairs. He emphasized that faith without works is dead. If alcoholics don’t expand their spiritual lives through work and self-sacrifice, they can’t survive the low points ahead, the friend said. They’ll drink again. And if they drink, they’ll die.
Bill and his wife devoted themselves to helping other alcoholics. He had plenty of free time because his old business friends hesitated to give him work. Although he wasn’t well at the time and suffered waves of self-pity and resentment, working with others saved him every time. Reaching out to alcoholics at the hospital always lifted him up.
Bill and his wife began to make close friends in the AA fellowship, finding joy in their lives even when times were rough. They watched families solve problems that seemed impossible. Bitterness of the past was wiped out.
Bill saw alcoholics leave mental hospitals to take up vital roles in their families and communities. The reputations of professional people were restored. The AA program helped newcomers overcome every kind of trouble.
Bill observed, “Active alcoholics are not attractive people. Our struggles with them can be difficult and sad. One poor man committed suicide in my home.”
There’s fun in it, too, Bill pointed out. Outsiders might be shocked at the liveliness and humor of recovering alcoholics. But under it all, they’re deadly serious.
Bill was convinced that most alcoholics need to look no further for heaven. “We have it with us right here and now.”
Chapter 2
Many of us in AA were as hopeless as Bill W. before we stopped drinking. Our fellowship consists of average people of many backgrounds. Normally, we would never meet. But in AA, we enjoy an amazing closeness. We’re like survivors of a shipwreck.
In AA groups, we’re connected by friendship and equality because we’ve found a common solution to our problems. Even as we go our individual ways in life, the feeling of being rescued from the same peril binds us together. We have a way out that we all agree on.
The disease of alcoholism takes its toll on people around the alcoholic in a way no other does. The family of a person with cancer is upset, but they’re not hurt or angry with the patient. This isn’t true of the family of the alcoholic and all the other people whose lives are damaged by the drinker.
Alcoholism frustrates employers, brings financial disaster to drinkers and their families, and causes resentments all around. It creates havoc in the lives of husbands, wives, parents, and children. We hope this book will help and comfort the families of alcoholics, as well as the alcoholics themselves.
The best psychiatrists often can’t get alcoholics to talk about their problem. The same is true of their partners, parents, and friends. But usually one alcoholic can get another to open up within a few hours. This kind of understanding is essential for an alcoholic to move forward in recovery.
People in AA know what they’re talking about. Their whole manner shows that they have a solution. They’re not trying to be better than the next person nor give lectures. They don’t expect people to please them and won’t take money. They simply have a sincere desire to help. When such people reach out to a practicing alcoholic, the person can start on the road to recovery.
As members of AA, we don’t make a full-time job of helping other alcoholics. In fact, it wouldn’t make us more effective. Many of us devote much of our spare time to this effort, however. We reach out to those still suffering from the disease and show them how to apply the principles of AA at home, at work, and in all their affairs.
If AA continues this work, our communities are bound to benefit. Still, we can barely scratch the surface. In big cities, hundreds of alcoholics drop out of sight each day. Given the chance, many of them could get well. It’s our aim to share what’s been so freely given to us.
This book describes our experience and the AA program of action. Recovering alcoholics know that their lives depend on concern for others and making an effort to meet their needs.
In this book, we will discuss the medical and psychiatric aspects of alcoholism, as well as social and spiritual issues related to the disease. We have tried to approach sensitive topics with care, because people are more able to accept help when their views and opinions are respected.
You may wonder how alcoholics become so damaged from drinking. How can they recover from a disease that experts consider almost impossible to treat? If you are an alcoholic who wants to give up liquor, you may be asking, “What do I have to do?”
The purpose of this book is to explain the progressive nature of alcoholism. It tells how AA members escaped their hopeless state of mind and body. If you have a problem with alcohol, the book tells you what you have to do to recover.
When we were still drinking, friends said things like, “I can take alcohol or leave it alone. Why can’t you?” Or they asked, “If you can’t drink like a normal person, why don’t you quit?” Some suggested that we give up hard liquor and switch to beer or wine. Or they worked on our sense of guilt with comments like, “You’ve got such a great family. Can’t you stop for their sake?”
These questions reflect a lack of understanding of the disease. Moderate drinkers can usually quit with no trouble if they have a good reason. This is even true of some hard drinkers. They may injure their health and even die a few years before their time. But if they have an illness that worsens with drinking or their doctor gives them a warning, they can manage to cut back or quit.
Real alcoholics are another story. They may start by drinking in moderation. But after a while they go much further. They lose control as soon as they swallow the first drink.
Their lack of control is a puzzle to outsiders. Alcoholic drinkers seldom get just a little high. They go all the way, acting insane when drunk. They do outrageous things, even though they may be the best people in the world while sober. Drinking turns them into repulsive, dangerous human beings.
They have a knack for getting drunk at the wrong times. They get loaded just before a major decision or important event. They may be responsible in other ways, but they become selfish, dishonest people when they drink. If they have a successful career and promising future, they pull it down by a crazy series of sprees.
Many alcoholics go to bed drunk enough to make a normal person sleep around the clock. But they’re up early the next morning, looking for the liquor they hid the night before. They may have bottles stashed all over the house so they’ll have spares in case someone tries to throw their supply down the sink.
As things get worse, many alcoholics start taking drugs to calm their nerves so they can go to work. But the day comes when they can’t make it. They get drunk all over again.
Some alcoholics go to doctors who prescribe medications to help them taper off. At this point, they’re likely to start showing up in hospitals and institutions. These are just a few of the scenarios that we see among alcoholics.
It’s a mystery how they can know that one drink always leads to suffering and humiliation, and yet drink anyhow. What happened to the common sense and willpower most of them show in other matters?
Maybe we’ll never have the answer. We do know that when alcoholics stop drinking for months and years, they act fairly normal. But as soon as they take any liquor into their systems, something happens to their bodies and minds that makes it impossible to stop. Any recovering alcoholic can vouch for this.
Because the first drink starts things off, it’s logical that the problem begins in the mind. When asked why they drink, alcoholics give many excuses. But their reasons make no sense when you look at the awful results. Even when some of the excuses sound reasonable, they don’t add up when you consider the havoc caused by each drinking spree. If you point this out, the alcoholic will laugh your comments off or get irritated and refuse to talk.