Dick B. talks
about preparations for "The First International Alcoholics Anonymous
History Conference" on the June 11, 2013, episode of the "Christian
Recovery Radio with Dick B.” show
Dick
B.
© 2013
Anonymous. All rights reserved
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Alcoholics Anonymous History Conference" on the June 11, 2013, episode of
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A.A.
History and Application in Depth
Preparing
for Our September International A.A. History Conference in Maine
Dick
B.
© 2013
Anonymous. All rights reserved
Scads and scads of communications have given us some strong
new ideas about what can be accomplished at the forthcoming First International
Alcoholics Anonymous History Conference in Portland Maine, September 6-7, 2013.
When we go on these trips, we learn far more than we impart. And the major
piece learned even before this conference is that many participants are going
to be experienced, talented, well-informed communicators about their particular
areas of recovery work. The outcome could well be the centering at the
conference and in our future work with others on some major areas of recovery need
and exposition, which are: (1) Bold statements about how the Big Book and
Twelve Steps open the door to utilizing A.A. pioneer techniques today. (2) An
appealing focus on the Eleventh Step can be a simple, effective, way to point
recovery back to its rich beginnings, consistent with the “continuing” phase of
growth embodied in that 11th Step. (3) A study of what sponsorship
means and what sponsors can do with this approach is vital. (4) A presentation
of what the newcomer really needs today in light of the development of recovery
work and A.A. itself and how structured beginners meetings can meet the need.
(5) Constructively applying both our original 1935 Akron A.A. program for those
in A.A. today and the “new version” of the program embodied in the Big Book and
Steps by Bill Wilson in 1939.
Why
We Need Piece by Piece Study and Preparation to Begin Recovery
If entertainment were the objective of drunkalogs and war
stories, or if dating or finding friends, or if passing on the “wisdom of the
rooms” in study groups and conferences were the real mission for those of us
who serve as speakers, sponsors, secretaries, leaders, counselors, and
facilitators, we could continue to “serve” A.A.’s diverse crowd of newcomers by
just talking—talking and talking and talking about anything we’ve heard or
anything that sounds “sincere” and “usable.”.
But neither the Big Book, the Twelve Steps, the heart of
successful A.A. achievements, nor the
aim of helping the newcomer who still suffers suggests that we be measured by
what we say. Rather, by the documented facts, tools, and teaching that we
study, and learn, and pass along to the end of recovery and healing and
bettering the lives of those in the fellowship who still struggle. If we are
not working with others as we were helped, we are really not in the game.
We suggest that as many in recovery as possible obtain, at
its present very low price, the Dick B. 29 Volume A.A. History Reference Set—using
it for a lifetime, as needed, and for accurate talk and writing. Also to bone
up on each of the topics embodied in this huge information repository. See the
right navigation bar of our main website www.dickb.com
to order. We also suggest all consider participating in International Christian
Recovery Coalition by going to its website www.ChristianRecoveryCoalition.com.
We suggest they listen to our frequent radio interviews and presentations on www.ChristianRecoveryRadio.com.
And we certainly suggest that you join us in Maine for the exhilarating educational
and sharing interchange of this international event.
Why
the Pieces Need Beefing Up
Today’s recovery world is awash in historical conjecture,
scientific analyses, grants, subsidies, statistics, remote control reform
ideas, and anti-this and anti-that. But, on its founding, A.A. was not burdened
with such unhelpful, remunerated, research, and biased opinion.
At first, the original A.A. program of recovery was
unbelievably simple and bereft of uninformed well-doers.
A.A. Cofounder Dr. Bob pointed out that, in the early days,
there were no Steps, no Traditions, no Big Books, no drunkalogs, and no
meetings like those mass congregations we see today. The first three AAs had all studied the Bible. All believed in
God. All had accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. All had reached the
devastating bottom of the slime pit. All finally realized they were licked. All
renounced liquor. All reached out to God for help. And all immediately focused
on helping others get well by the same means.
Then, as Dr. Bob explained in his last major address (and as
Bill joined him in writing about the Bible and Akron A.A., the Bible took
center stage in A.A. recovery. It did so in company with prayer, Quiet Time, devotionals, Christian literature,
and work with newcomers. As Dr. Bob said, the pioneers believed the answer to
their problems was in the Bible. They said that the Book of James, Jesus’s
Sermon on the Mount, and 1 Corinthians 13 were absolutely essential. They met
daily. And, from 1935 to 1938, the pioneers rolled up their sleeves. They participated
in studies, teachings, and efforts. They took their basic ideas for the
Christian Fellowship program from the Bible. They leaned heavily on the
principles and practices of the First Century Christians as related in the Book
of Acts.
What
Winners Do
Athletes go to spring training, hear coaches teach them, and
absorb chalk talk. Pianists practice, practice, and practice their pianos hours
on end and work with a teacher.as well. Some businessmen don’t get hired until
they have an MBA degree. Doctors and dentists and nurses get schooling and
on-the-site teaching before they get their licenses. Laborers go through apprentice
stages. And professors have to work their way up from lecturer, to assistant
professor, associate professor, professor, and advanced degrees.
For the most part, in the present recovery scene, AAs just
walk into the rooms from court, or prison, or hospitals, a treatment center
bus, or rehabs, and listen to opinion after opinion, story after story, void of
any substantive orientation, basic training, manuals, and qualified
instruction. These new 12-Steppers hear little ordered teaching from the Big
Book. They hear little skilled talk about how to take the Twelve Steps. They
hear virtually no teaching that untangles the messed up “spirituality” myths, “higher
powers,” “awakenings,” history and roots, and blather by sponsors, speakers, guides,
articles, pastors, therapists, and treatment people.
If a fledgling professional athlete, military person, teacher,
physician, clergyman, journeyman, mechanic, computer whiz, or musician were to
stake his effectiveness on such unorganized beginnings, God save that new
person. Moreover, in A.A., we are in an age of secularism and idolatry and
compulsory attendance which quashes almost any chance to get the story
straight. “Scholars” are inclined to ridicule anyone in A.A. who talks about
God, Jesus, and the Bible as an “amateur,” a “hobbyist,” a person lacking a
degree or Ph.D., or as relying on a “faith based” or “faith centered” or “God
centered” program that is not “evidence based.” Bleeding deacons holler at
someone and call him in a meeting a “Jesus freak” if he mentions his Savior. Yet
we have centuries of records and writings and events that would pass the test
of “evidence based” in any court or tribunal or board. This because that historical
evidence has been studied, seen in life, and fostered healings, miracles,
deliverances from disasters, and so on. You can find those results in that
document known as the Bible—the resource upon which A.A. planted its
beginnings.
Becoming
a Winner and Teaching the Solution
If a person were to walk into a lions’ den and expect to
find rabbits and deer running around freely, he might conclude that the lions
had lost all of their teeth and vocal chords. And the alcoholic or drug addict
who walks into a 12-Step meeting and hears talk of “relationships,” vulgarity, “spirituality,”
“light bulbs,” and “higher powers” and learns how many there have had relapse
after relapse or have never been oriented, instructed, or seasoned with truth,
might wonder whether he was listening to a gang of uneducated losers or mental
cases or rabble rousers. In fact, he is probably listening to some very very
sick people crying out for stature or for help.
But there is a solution. And it involves the answer to a
simple question” ”How can you eat an elephant?” The solution? “One bite at a
time.”
Today there are lots of eloquent speakers, successful
thinkers, prolific writers, and people eagerly questing for answers and cure.
What those folks can do is shed the idea that they are there by compulsion, to
find sexual satisfaction, to obey a probation officer, because they were bussed
there, because directed to go there by an interventionist or counselor, or
simply because they are sick, hopeless, without help, medically incurable,
afraid, anxious, lacking in resources, isolated, and lonely.
Take the same people—if they are willing—and urge them to
start devouring the elephant one bite at a time. That means telling them what
the winning resources may be—(1) “Conference-approved” literature, (2) the
Bible, historical chunks, and (3) details as to how the early AAs succeeded
with the simple seven point program summarized on page 131 of DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers. And how
to apply it all today.
We are convinced that recovery winners go to God for
guidance, direction, healing, forgiveness, deliverance, love, and an
everlasting life. I did. So an aspiring speaker and trainer can start there.
See Dick B. and Ken B., Stick with the
Winners! http://mcaf.ee/s50mq; Pioneer Stories in Alcoholics Anonymous http://mcaf.ee/gj7iw; The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches Their
Last Major Talks; and the important original Big Book newly published by
Dover Publications, Alcoholics Anonymous:
The Original 1939 Edition With a 23-Page Introduction by Dick B. http://mcaf.ee/j4hq5.
What You Can Do
·
Put a Bible in front of the newcomer,
tell him what the original AAs read, and read it with him, little by little—just
as Dr. Bob did with the newcomer in the hospital. Show him the records of how
the Bible was used by others.
·
Treat the newcomer as someone who needs
training and is in training—from the beginning. Urge old-timers to qualify the newcomer as to his
understanding of his drinking or using problem, his willingness to quit
forever, and his acknowledgement that he passes the tests on pages 30 and 44 of
the Big Book and perhaps the 20 Questions as well.
·
Send the newcomer to a qualified
physician who can help prevent seizures and major health breakdowns or else place
the newcomer in a hospital or detox.
·
Set up a beginner class that is
organized, informative, and effective. This may mean including in the newcomer’s
meeting schedule several structured “beginners” meetings that tell him:
(1) How A.A. began—the real story of
the first three AAs and how they got sober, the biblical basics, and the seven point
Akron program.
(2) The role that God, His Son Jesus
Christ, and the Bible played in recovery and can play today for those wanting
and seeking God’s help.
(3) The need today for love and
tolerance of the diverse beliefs and un-beliefs of a new generation of
beginners.
(4) The principles concerning
autonomous groups, informed group consciences, literature that enables the
newcomer and his sponsor to get the facts about godly recovery, his freedom to
believe, and his right to unhindered efforts to express himself.
(5) His need for a regimen of decisions
to—(a) go to God first, (b) go to a qualification session, (c) go to a
physician, (d) listen to some Bible basics and some Big Book and 12 Step
basics, (e) hear the role of the sponsor, and (f) learn the primary purpose of
A.A. groups, meetings, and fellowship activities.
(6) need for a regimen of determination
to—(a) go to any lengths to get well, (b) ignore sausage making, (c) in company
with his sponsor and by himself sift meeting remarks for correlation with
recovery ideas he has learned; and (d) begin as quickly as possible to work
with others, serve at meetings, master conference-approved writings, refrain
from intimidating or condemning others for their remarks and actions, and
renounce drinking and using every single day.
(7) His need for a regimen of discipline to become
a winner.
Avoiding
the Loser Label
.
The drop-out new person might as well go back to his misery
and learn more about the devastation of alcoholism, addiction, and disaster.
We believe from our own experience--with my sponsoring over
100 men and women, teaching them the Big Book and the Steps, and offering them
a Bible fellowship of drunks who engage in practices very similar to those in
the Book of Acts and early Akron A.A.--that the person who dives into A.A.’s
literature, the Bible, prayer, religious instruction of his choosing, fellowship with like-minded
believers, and obeying God’s commandments directing us to eschew temptation,
trust God, love God and others, forgive renew one’s mind with what God has said,
and become born again of the spirit of God--as every early pioneer did. See
Dick B., The Golden Text of A.A.
The
Victory Path
Many diligent alcoholics and addicts wind up being excellent
speakers in their fellowship.
Let them learn to talk about something other than their “experience,
strength, and hope” and substitute or enhance their story with talk about the
A.A. victory path and how they learned it.
Others wind up being capable writers. Let them, as well,
take the same path.
As stated, in little more than eighty years, A.A. and many
of its “historians” and academic spectators have boldly walked away from the
Akron program They often ignore it, and seldom publish or write about it. For
years, they had removed from A.A.’s basic conference-approved text the personal
stories of the pioneers that told the victory facts. And, for the sick
newcomer, this left a virtually complete vacuum devoid of astonishingly simple
and effective “spiritual” recovery by reliance on God. Yet all newcomers need
the tools that do inform them, not censorship of the tools that might have informed them.
It seems quite clear, from my observation of the New York
world offices and workers, that what I will now propose could not possibly
emanate from A.A. World Services, Inc. in the form of books or pamphlets—although
there allegedly is in preparation a pamphlet or writing telling how atheists or
agnostics can use the Twelve Steps, something not remotely connected with early
A.A. Therefore, we conclude that valuable time can be spent at our conferences,
talks, and communications in fashioning and offering to present useful one-bite-at-a-time
guides that constitute the essence of the victory path.
It is appropriate to call your attention to the abc’s of
A.A.—which open the door today to looking at all the A.A. development,
including that involving what the Big Book described as God, Creator, Maker,
Father, Heavenly Father, and Father of Lights.
Page 60 of the latest (the 4th) edition of Alcoholics Anonymous. It claims to “make
clear three pertinent ideas” which point up the entire basic text—the fore
matter, all of Bill Wilson’s chapters, and at last, all of the personal stories
which were removed from A.A. view for so long. See Experience, Strength and Hope: Stories from the First Three Editions of
Alcoholics Anonymous (NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 2003).
The page 60 abc’s (the three pertinent ideas) are:
(a) That
we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.
(b) That
probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
(c) That
God could and would if He were sought.
Those three ideas are absolutes. They are unqualified and
unrestricted. And they certainly proved to be the truth during my 27 years of
continuous sobriety. For God can, and did when I sought Him!
For more information, contact dickb@dickb.com!
Gloria Deo
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