Comments on: 1952 TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS PUBLISHED

By: James F

James F — Fri, 27 May 2011 17:22:03 +0000

I was reading this site due to my gratitude and ever growing interest in the spiritual principles which have literally saved my life. The “basic text” is meant to be suggest only and encourages the reader 2 likewise share what was freely given him, very simple. No debate required! it’s working for me, is it working for you? are you working it

By: Frank M.

Frank M. — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 21:57:20 +0000

CORRECTION: Jim B. died in 1974 not 1978. He sobered up for good on June 16, 1938.

By: Frank M.

Frank M. — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 21:42:43 +0000

After his four-day slip, AA pioneer and atheist James Burwell (AA #4 in the NY group) took the group as his higher power. Two years later Jim switched over to “my own better self,” which he sought contact with through daily meditation. This practice served him well until the day he died in 1978 with thirty-six years of continuous sobriety. Jim wrote “The Vicious Cycle” in the first edition of the Big Book, started the first AA meetings in Baltimore and Philadelphia, and was instrumental in the development of AA in San Diego.

Bill W. was surely aware of Jim’s use of the group as his higher power. He must have known about it when the Big Book was written, but one can easily see why he wouldn’t have been inclined to complicate the message. So it’s fair to say Bill was referencing a proven practice for attaining and maintaining sobriety within the general framework of the Steps when he wrote about that approach in the 12 and 12. I’d be very surprised too, if Burwell had been the only man to go this route in those early years, after seeing that it did in fact work.

Old-timers will tell you that it’s either grow or go in recovery. The very program of AA itself could never have developed beyond the Oxford Groups without adherence to the same principle. I can see no good reason to abandon it now to the theory that at some halcyon moment in history some subset of AA had gotten it all exactly right, for everyone and for all time.

We know but a little…

By: Dick B.

Dick B. — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 18:47:47 +0000

Information we received when we researcjed at the Episcopal Church Archives in Austin, Texas revealed what Mary Darrah’s foreword by Father John C. Ford, S.J. had written: Ford edited the 12 x 12 as he did AA Comes of Age. Father Ed Dowing, S.J. also participated in the editing. According to Mel B.’s research, Bill was in the throes of a decade of deep depression. All these factors seem to explain some of the unusual language found in the 12 x 12. Not the least of which is the statement that the AA group can be your higher power.

By: Randy P

Randy P — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 16:25:34 +0000

This article puts into words what I have thought for many years and could not express effectively. The BB documents the “precise” experience of how arguably 40-70 people desperately “recovered” from a condition that was rapidly killing them. They didn’t have a map or a starting place. They did what they somehow mysteriously believed might work, and it did. The 12&12 is what one man thought of it all 17 years later when the novelty had worn off and he needed a man-made spiritual boost. Fours years later he was taking LSD as an artificial method of recreating the elusive spiritual experience that was no longer “firing his pistons”.

By: Frank M.

Frank M. — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 07:52:11 +0000

Bill Wilson once wrote that AA is a sort of spiritual kindergarten. My understanding is that most AA’s in the early days sought spiritual growth through vigorous religious practice outside of the fellowship. It was a fairly homogeneous group back then too. I imagine that when they spoke of God and the kind of direction that their devotion to Him represented, they were talking about a rather well understood set of principles. We don’t really have that sort of clarity now, and perhaps that is what makes for most of the differences between that time and this.

Not everyone is going to find a deep and expanding spiritual experience within the confines of AA as such. I’m not suggesting that religion is the answer here either. As Reinhold Niebuhr, the author of the serenity prayer, noted–”Religion is a good thing for good people and a bad thing for bad people.” We well get out of AA just what each of us puts into it.

By: Piers

Piers — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 04:05:29 +0000

That’s right…surrender, confession, restitution, amends, and service didn’t work for everyone in early AA and it doesn’t work for everyone now….but what do we mean by “work?” For many drunks, physical sobriety is as good as it gets. Only a minority of AA members reap the “new power, peace, happiness and sense of direction” described in the BB. The real question is whether the lowering of expectations one finds in the 12 x 12 a reflection of the limitations of alcoholics generally or could something have been done to preserve the integrity of the program as outlined in the BB. Over the last 16 yrs I have gradually moved from the latter position to the former. The dilution of the program is most likely a consequence of human nature; genuine spiritual experience inevitably “hardens” into cliches, slogans, and empty ritual. As Charles Peguy wrote, “All great things begin in mysticism and end in politics.”

By: Frank M.

Frank M. — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 20:15:58 +0000

I find a true spiritual scientist’s honesty at work in the 12 and 12. The “pet theory” that abandoning oneself to God, making confession and restitution, and moving on to other drunks would work for anybody just didn’t fit the facts as they emerged in those early years.

By: Colter K

Colter K — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 20:00:20 +0000

We see the same mechanisms at work in the “deification” of the Big Book that occurred with the Holy Bible. Man wants to control the God experience rather then being controlled by it. Bill’s home group objected to expanding the original absolutes to the 12 steps. But it is tempting to cleverly write off an entire piece of AA literature to avoid answering the 26 questions of step 4.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 24 May 2010 02:26:19 +0000

I thought the 12 and 12 was simply a more in depth presentation of the steps.After a number of years of sobriety a deeper understanding of the steps is only natural. I love the 12 and 12 and always use it along with the big book when sponsoring people.