![]() They were willing to tip tables, work ouija boards, go to seances and all this incredible far-out stuff. Bob, and their friends – including my dad – had heart. I used to sit in the front room at Stepping Stones (Bill Wilson’s home in Bedford Hills, NY) as a kid and listen to these unforgettable discussions. Bob, and the rest – were endlessly on the lookout for anything that would provide real spiritual experience, and they were shockingly daring in how far they were willing to go to get it. In the final analysis, the only thing that will sustain your recovery – long term – is spiritual experience, and you’d better be willing to work for it. If you don’t use the Absolutes as yardsticks, all of your nice Twelve Steps are going to turn into relative pop psychology.” And indeed they have. In effect, what he said was, “Take it back to the Absolutes, folks. Bob Smith took it back to this basic wisdom in his last public speech before he died. No less an authority than AA co-founder Dr. #Keep it simple aa full#Practice the full Program – the Steps and Absolutes – and our experience over many years is that you will certainly succeed. If you’re trying the Program this way and failing, here is our suggestion: Instead of looking for a new type of group therapy, drug therapy, vocational therapy, geographical therapy, or whatever, instead just try taking a stronger dose of the old, tried-and-true AA Program medicine. Believe me, I tried as hard as anyone to get by with the minimum possible dose for my first six years in AA, and I kept falling on my ass. ![]() The point is we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.” – is largely abandoned in the actual practice of a majority of groups throughout the Fellowships. The requirement, stated in chapter 5 of the Big Book – “We are not saints. Program slogans like “Keep it simple” and “Easy does it” have been altered from their early sense to justify a minimalist approach to living the Twelve Steps and Four Absolutes. Unfortunately, that approach works in way less than 75% of the cases – maybe more like 20% or even fewer. The driving principle is: Saturate yourself in the society by going to meetings virtually daily, do a lot of interacting, and thus you’ll get clean and stay clean. And yet, today, the majority of the recoveries being pursued throughout the Anonymous Fellowships are not based on this kind of real spiritual experience, but on something that is a crude imitation, with a lot of running around to meetings, a lot of self-counseling, and not very much serious pursuit of improved conscious contact with God. That was true in 1935, and it is true today. ![]() ![]() To cash in on that promise, what we have to do is to back up to this notion that a Power greater than ourselves can do what we can’t do for ourselves, and that our recovery hinges on getting and maintaining a living relationship with that Power. The AA Program never guaranteed restoration of health, wealth, or relationships, but it did promise sobriety and a return to sanity – and it delivered on that promise over 75% of the time. The little group of original AA members, between 19, discovered a very odd thing: By doing a few relatively simple things along spiritual lines, without sectarianism and without anything that was beyond the elementary level in the spiritual department, these once-promising, but now-wrecked, human beings could attain sobriety and were attaining it at a previously unthinkable rate. ![]() No matter how smart you are, how well-educated you are, how experienced you are (world traveler – been there and done that), it doesn’t matter: as a hooked addict, you’re a loser, and this whole Program is about taking losers and turning them into winners. #Keep it simple aa how to#We find early on, as the AA Big Book states in chapter 2, that getting sober – booze sober or drug sober or whatever form sobriety takes for you from your particular addiction – depends on learning how to say “No” to the “first drink.” This is something that is beyond our own finest thoughts and our strongest resolves through will-power. The author of Gresham’s Law and Alcoholics Anonymous discusses the importance of avoiding political, religious, medical, and sectarian pitfalls on the road to recovery, without falling into the worst trap of all – “weak cup of tea” AA. ![]()
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