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From Skid Row-Time, July 18, 1955 |
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“The Big Book”: Bible for Alcoholics
by JOHN HAVERSTOCK
There
was a time when the organization known as Alcoholics Anonymous,
which has become one of the greatest boons to the drunkards
of the world, had a membership which was a little lopsided.
On its rolls the Bowery was better represented than Park
Avenue, a fact deplored by the organization's leaders. So,
recognizing that the rich can become as alcoholic as the
poor, the organization decided to do something about it.
Acting on its long-held tenet that only a sober ex-drunk
can cure a down-and- out drunk, the A.A. leaders looked
around for an ex-drunk with glamour and the ability to speak
the Park Avenue language. They found it in an ex-drunk countess.
The result: Park Avenue became as well represented as the
Bowery on the rolls of A.A.
Now
in the past few years, another change has taken place in
the membership of A.A. - a change which has proved even
more important than that accomplished by the countess, but
which comparatively unnoticed by the public-at-large until
last month. At that time A.A. held its bone-dry twentieth-anniversary
convention and, in conjunction with the ceremonies, issued
a revised, second edition of an oversized, ocean-blue volume
which is familiarly known to all A.A. members as "the
Big Book." The new edition, like its predecessors,
is jacketed in a reversible dust cover, one side of which
is blank, which allows it to be read in trains and buses
without attracting the eyes of the curious. But, unlike
its predecessor, the new edition is not intended solely
for alcoholics of the last-gasp variety. Right in the middle
of it lies a whole section devoted to drinkers who have
not yet lost their business or broken up their homes or,
as most of A.A.'s original members seem to have done, landed
in jail. Says ex-A.A. president Bill W. (who still keeps
his last name anonymous, though he has -now stepped down
from his executive position): Now we’re getting cases
whose drinking is merely become a menacing nuisance, and
we're glad for them."'
In
the same way that A.A. discovered that the Park Avenue set
could not be reached by the Bowery set it soon learned that
potential alcoholics of the "menacing nuisance'"
variety cannot be reached by a membership composed largely
of ex-last-gasp drunks. The solution: A.A. members made
an effort to get a few representative "menacing nuisances”
into the -fold and, having accomplished this goal, found
that its roll call of these "nuisances" soon began
to increase by leaps and bounds. In the new edition of the
"Big Book” appear twelve well-authenticated self-confessions
by former "menacing nuisances.” The section is
subtitled "They Stopped in Time" -and it will,
A.A. leaders hope, bring even more "menacing nuisances"
into the organization. "Half the people coming into
A.A. today are in this group, “ Bill W. says, "and
the members of this new class immediately identify with
each other. Otherwise we couldn't keep them."
Who
exactly are these "menacing nuisances?" For A.A.
purposes they are that segment of drinkers who are potential
alcoholics. According to Bill W., there are certain well-defined
symptoms by which they can be distinguished from other drinkers,
e.g.:
A
persistent lack of control over your drinking even when
you want to control it and when it is necessary that you
do control it.
An
underlying maladjustment from which the excessive drinking
usually stems.
Like
all A.A.'s the new members find themselves in one of the
most cleverly conducted organizations of modern times. It
accepts no money from outsiders, so that even if you wanted
to leave a bequest to A.A. the money would be refused. It
also insists on the public anonymity of its members. (last
year Bill W. turned down an honorary degree of doctor of
laws at Yale because it would have brought him a personal
type of glory frowned on by A.A.) Yet these two rules have
always been credited with bringing the organization more
really worthwhile publicity (i.e., the kind of publicity
that reaches alcoholics who need A.A.) than could have been
achieved by any other public relations policy. (Good A.A.'s
for example, disapprove of such authors as Lillian Roth,
who has publicly broken the shell of her A.A. anonymity
to write such a best- seller as "I'll Cry Tomorrow."
Says one A.A. spokesman privately in this connection: "We
have many members who have pulled themselves up by their
own resources.")
By equal cleverness, A.A. which has baffled psychiatrists
and religionists, has at the same time been approved by
psychiatrists and religionists. There was a time when the
Catholic Church, for example, did not see eye to eye with
A.A., believing that its religion was enough to cure any
alcoholic. Then A.A. pointed out to the Church that many
of its own priests, far from being able to pull themselves
up by their religion, had joined A.A. to be cured. As a
result the Catholic stigma was removed from A.A. Yet the
basis of A.A. itself, which, once was closely associated
with the Oxford Moral Rearmament Group, is a highly individualized
religion that has been made palatable for even the most
adamant atheist. Organized as what Bill W. describes as
"everything from a benign anarchy to a democracy to
a republic,” the organization is one in which no member
can be compelled to contribute anything to it or to believe
in any particular dogma. "If you believe," says
Bill, "that the hen came before the egg or that the
egg came before the hen you have enough religion to join
A.A." Even the most scientific alcoholic, the says,
has to admit that by the time he gets around to A.A. he
can't help himself. Therefore, he has to admit that there's
a higher power than himself and, says Bill, "We put
teeth into this belief by telling him that God in effect
is saying, 'I hope you boys behave' but John Barleycorn
is saying "You'd damn well better behave, because if
you don't -"
By such methods A.A. leaders estimate that they have now
corralled 150,000 to 200,000 former alcoholics into their
organization, though accurate membership figures are hard
to come by, partly because all members of A.A. are allowed
to make their own decisions on how closely they will work
with the organization and partly because there are thousands
of A.A.'s who, being isolated from cities where A.A. groups
are able to meet, must in their own words "stay sober"
solely by means of "The Big Book" and by means
of A.A.'s monthly magazine, The Grapevine. Sales figures
of the first edition of the book alone reached mammoth 300,000
copies - a figure that their membership extends far beyond
their records. They know, for example, that by means of
their tried-and-true methods the French membership has jumped
to a great deal from a time when the only A.A.'s in France
were American alcoholics in Paris. They also know that A.A.
has transcended many international boundaries which are
normally not transcended: for example, A.A.'s meet together
from both North and South Ireland, crossing the boundary
line to do so. One boundary still to be got across, however:
the Iron Curtain. But in time even this boundary as well
as others may disappear for, as A.A. leaders say, they have
a built-in-self-perpetuating system: in order to stay cured
every alcoholic has to spend some time helping another drunk
to be cured or otherwise he may very well sink back into
drunkenness himself.
Today
for those alcoholics and potential alcoholics who would
like to join A.A. but who are remote from all A.A. groups
the new and revised edition of "The Big Book"
is now available for $4.50 a copy. (to groups the price
is $4.) If you can not find it in your local bookstore the
book can be ordered from Box 459, Grand Central Terminal
Annex, New York City. Nobody - not even A.A. leaders - can
speculate what the demand for the book will be. Only one
thing is certain: that is that this edition will do better
saleswise than did the original edition when it was first
published in 1939. In that year A.A. Publishing Inc., was
left with 5,000 copies of a book which nobody seemed to
want and for which the unpaid printer's bills were so alarming
that A.A. headquarters was actually visited by a deputy
sheriff bearing a dispossess notice. Fortunately for everybody,
however, the old Liberty Magazine published an article on
the struggling organization and shortly thereafter John
D. Rockefeller, Jr., sponsored a dinner for the organization.
From that moment on A.A. was a success and so was "The
Big Book."
(Source:
Saturday Review, August 27, 1955)
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