Big Book History (continued)
C. Then in turn they had spread this to other people,
(p. 156-161) and by the summer of 1937, as they sat down in Dr. Bob's
house and counted heads, they realized in three strange groups, one in
Cleveland, one in Akron and one in New York City, and various ones or twos
around the country in the Northeastern part of United States there was a
total of forty people sober based on this information. (p. xvii, par. 2-4;
and "Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age," p. 76)
And I think for the first time they realized that
maybe they did have the answer to the disease of alcoholism. Maybe if all
alcoholics knew these three things: what is the problem, what is the
solution, and what is the practical program of action, that perhaps they
would be able to help literally hundreds and then thousands of people to
recover from this disease.
I'm almost sure that night Bill said, "Dr. Bob what do you think we
ought to do with this information?" And probably Dr. Bob said,
"Beats the hell out of me Billy Boy, what do you think?"
(laughter) Maybe this was the time the first group conscience really came
into being in Alcoholics Anonymous because they decided that they didn't
need to make this decision by themselves. They said there's several of us
here in Akron that are staying sober. Let's call a meeting of these
people, and during that meeting we will discuss and decide what to do with
this information. (" Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age'' pp. 144-146)
They called a meeting. That night at that meeting
there were approximately eighteen people there. The whole thrust of the
meeting was: what are we going to do with this information so in turn, we
can give it away and help other people? Thank God that their idea was not
that, well, there's forty of us, already sober and that's enough. We don't
need to help anybody else.
Thank God their idea wasn't that now that we're sober
we'll say home and let the other people go to the devil. The whole thrust
and idea of the meeting was how can we best present this information to
other alcoholics suffering in the United States and Canada, and basically
throughout the world.
That night at that meeting in 1937, they decided to
do three things, all for the purpose of being able to better carry this
message to the alcoholic that still suffers. The first thing they decided
upon, voted upon, and approved that night was that they would build a
chain of hospitals throughout the entire United States and Canada, and
eventually throughout the world, so that all alcoholics wherever they may
be would have the possibility of recovering from the disease.
Maybe the first floor they would have a withdraw
unit, a detoxification unit. Maybe on the second floor a treatment center
where they could carry them through the planned program of action. Maybe
on the third floor a retraining center, where they could train them into
occupations so they could find a job.
Joe and I always laugh about that. We don't know any
alcoholics that need to be retrained. Most of us have got four or five
occupations. (laughter) You damn near have to have if you're practicing alcoholic. Maybe the top floor would be a
live in, work out arrangement, where they could live and work in a
structured environment for an extended period of time.
The second thing they voted upon and decided that
night was to hire and train a group of paid missionaries to send them out throughout the world to carry this great message to all who suffered. And
probably some pragmatic individual in the back of the room said those are
great ideas, but where in the world are we going to get the money to pay
for that? And somebody came up with the idea that maybe we ought to write
a book. And if we write this book, we will give all this information that
we have learned ourselves during this two year period from 1935 to 1937.
This book will carry this information to alcoholics throughout the world.
It will be such a great best seller that we will almost immediately make
millions of dollars. Then we'll take that money, and we'll build the
hospitals and hire and train the missionaries.
Thank God only one of the three come true. The three things they decided
that night--the only one that came true was the writing of the book. The
book was to give to the person in Arizona, the person in California, the
one in Oklahoma, the one in Florida, the same information that all forty
of those people had had to learn themselves in order to recover from their
disease. Because they knew they would not be able to see everybody on a
one on one basis. They were all in the Northeastern part of the United
States.
But the book was to be written in the same sequence,
the same information, the same knowledge that those forty people had all
used also. All forty of them had recovered basically on three pieces of information. Number one: What is the problem?
Of course they told Bill to write the book. They said
Bill, you know more about it than anybody else, after all you're the one
who started this thing. You've been sober longer than any of the rest of
us, and at that time it was about three years. They said, now Bill, this
is not to be your book. This book is to be the collective knowledge and experience and wisdom of all forty of us. When the book is completed, it
will carry the message of how we recovered from our disease, so other
people can apply it in their life in the same manner. And by putting it
down in the written form, it will remain the same. It will not become
garbled, nor will it be lost in the future.
They reserved the right to read each chapter as it
was written. They said, Bill, we will read it. We will delete what we
don't like. We will change what we want to, and we'll add in whatever we
think is necessary. And whenever the book is through, it will be a
compilation of the knowledge and experience of all of us, not just one
alcoholic.
Now, as we read and study the book this weekend, I
think this is what we basically need to keep in mind: that the book was
written to present this information in the same sequence that they had to
know it also.
We're going to find certain parts of the book will
deal with what is the problem, and certain parts will deal with what is
the solution, and certain parts will deal with the practical program of
action necessary to find that solution. The same sequence that the first
forty--who later turned out to be one hundred by 1939--the same sequence
they had to know it.
