Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: big book, god stuff, sponsorship, twelve step practice
“The Twelve Steps are a design to change you. They also bring you every Step closer to God.”
Colby B.
HISTORY AND CONTEXT
Alcoholics Anonymous, which earned the moniker “the Big Book” due to the unwieldy size of its first edition, was not used as a guide to recovery from alcoholism until some years after its publication in Cleveland, where a member of the fellowship named Clarence S. began using the book as a way of educating newcomers. In Cleveland, meetings of this now growing fellowship were the first to call themselves Alcoholics Anonymous. Clarence S. and the AA members in Cleveland modeled a style of one-on-one sponsorship in which a member of the fellowship experienced in the Twelve Step program would take a “pigeon,” or newcomer, under his wing, help him adjust to sobriety, and coach him through the Twelve Steps. This meant that the sponsor and newcomer would meet and work their way through the Big Book together, page by page. “Big Book sponsorship” was a style of AA unique to Cleveland at that time, and has since become a vocal minority movement within the fellowship.
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As a child growing up in Paisley, Scotland, Jimmy K., widely recognized as the founder of Narcotics Anonymous, struck up an unusual friendship with a man named Mr. Crookshack:
“My very, very close friend was the town drunk. And he was a great guy, you know? He was so good to me in so many ways, and he was such a louse in so many others. He used to fall down the stairs and break himself open, break his head open, and blood would be running down two or three flights of stairs. When I was seven and a half, he fell down and I found him. I found him and went running in to get my mother. We got him into a hospital. I used to keep saying to her ‘When can we see Mr. Crookshack?’ and she said ‘Next week, next week’. This kept going on. Finally, I said ‘I have to see him’. So she took us up to a place called Crow Road. This was the nut house. And here he was sitting in a wheel chair, just staring straight ahead. I couldn’t understand why he couldn’t see me and wouldn’t talk to me. I said, ‘what’s wrong with him?’ She said ‘He drank too much and got hurt too much over the years’. I said, ‘When I grow up, I’m gonna help people like Mr. Crookshack’. I’ve never forgotten that. I had to become an alcoholic and addict to fulfill my destiny.”
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