The authors didn’t form a fellowship and then write a book about it, they wrote a program describing precisely how they recovered. But then people say to us, “you might be making that up.” I direct your attention to where you can find that fact, go to page XV in the forward of the second edition about three paragraphs down it says:
“So, it was now time the struggling groups thought to place their message and unique experience before the world. This determination bore fruit in the spring of nineteen thirty-nine by the public publication of this volume. The membership then reached about a hundred men and women. And then the fledging society, which had been nameless, now began to be called Alcoholics Anonymous from the title of its own book.”
For three years the small groups did it just sitting in groups, praying in each other’s kitchens, helping those whom they could help. And then they decided to write a book to try and help get the message out. The fellowship is named after the book, not the other way around. There may be a place for fellowship, for reasons of support and camaraderie, but the program is in the book not the meeting halls. If you want to know precisely how they recovered, it is all in the book.
- Why is that important?
If I think I am in the program and all I am doing is showing up to meetings, I am still going to be restless, irritable, and discontented and I am not going to have the freedom the authors found. I am not going to have the purpose these people found, and I am not going to be able to sit there very long.