AA Och NA (Allmän diskussions-tråd)

"The wording was. of course. quite optional, so long as we voiced the ideas without reservation."
Alcoholics Anonymous (The Big Book) pg. 63
THE AGNOSTIC TWELVE STEPS
There are several agnostic versions of the 12 Steps.
This is one used by Beyond Belief in Toronto.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to accept and to understand that we needed strengths beyond our awareness and resources to restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the A.A. program.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to ourselves without reservation, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were ready to accept help in letting go of all our defects of character.

7. Humbly sought to have our shortcomings removed.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through mindful inquiry and meditation to improve our spiritual awareness, seeking only for knowledge of our rightful path in life and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

An Excerpt From AA COMES OF AGE (page 81)
A poignant story comes from the book AA Comes of Age. In the mid 1950s AA’s reach extended to alcoholics around the world. Bill Wilson, co-founder of AA, was quite clear about liberty for individual AA groups in his “Chapter on Unity” from A. A. Comes of Age. On page 81 he talks about Buddhists who said that they would like to be part of AA, but also would like to replace the word “god” with “good” so that the practice of the Steps would be compatible with their atheistic belief. In 1957, Bill Wilson writes:

“To some of us, the idea of substituting ‘good’ for ‘God’ in the Twelve Steps will seem like a watering down of A.A.’s message. But here we must remember that A.A.’s Steps are suggestions only. A belief in them, as they stand, is not at all a requirement for membership among us. This liberty has made A.A. available to thousands who never would have tried at all had we insisted on the Twelve Steps just as written.” Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age pg. 81, reprinted with permission of A.A. World Service Inc.

So why does this bother me? It bothers me because the phrase "the first one hundred" is often thrown around at A.A. meetings and on the internet. And this phrase is almost always followed up by placing tremendous emphasis on the following which "TO SHOW OTHER ALCOHOLICS PRECISELY HOW WE RECOVERED."



First off it can be argued that the authors of the Big Book don't really tell us PRECISELY how the recovered because the 12 steps that they claim they took had not even been codified or written down yet. Bill Wislon did not write the 12 Steps until he started to write the 5th Chapter of the Big Book. Most of these people had already "recovered" prior to there being written! Therefore,the recovery path A.A.'s original members actually followed could not have been the 12 Steps in their final form. What they actually used to get (and hopefully stay sober) was based on six concepts that were derived for the teachings of the Oxford Group as they were passed along word of mouth. Although one can find several versions of these six concepts they were generally (not precisely) something like the following lists of ideas or steps.



1. Complete deflation.
2. Dependence and guidance from a Higher Power.
3. Moral inventory.
4. Confession.
5. Restitution.
6. Continued work with other alcoholics.


The second thing in this sentence I take issue with is the word "recovered" since so many of these orginal members seemed to have difficulty with achieving long term permanent sobriety. Lastly I would like to know how one can rely one these original members to tell us "PRECISELY" how they "RECOVERED" when they can't even seem to tell us "PRECISELY" how many of them there actually were!

What these original members can tell us is GENERALLY how they managed to achieve sobriety and they can SUGGEST some guides to progress. Nothing more in my opinion.

Thank you for letting me share.

Jim F. Grateful Sober Alcoholic, DOS Oct. 4th 1987