Extracts
from our forum: http://forums.delphiforums.com/aacultwatch
under thread: “aacultwatch forum daily reflections”
“1933-1934
"In
the autumn of 1933, when Bill found himself in Towns Hospital for the
first time, the affliction of alcoholism was generally viewed as a
mystery and a terrible shame. An alcoholic could expect to receive
little understanding or compassion.” (Pass It On page 100)
"When
Bill described Towns as ‘a nationally known hospital for the
rehabilitation of alcoholics,’ he was not exaggerating, but someone
else who remembered the hospital described it simply as a place where
alcoholics were ‘purged and puked.’ The purging was most probably
the effect of the liberal doses of castor oil that the patients were
given, together with belladonna.” (Pass It On page 102)
"How
long Bill stayed sober is unclear; he thought it was two to four
months; Lois thought it was ‘a month or so."(Pass It On page
105)
"By
midsummer 1934, he was back in Towns.” (Pass It On page 108)
“Suppose,
for instance, that during the last twenty five years, AA had never
published any standard literature – no books, no pamphlets. We need
little imagination to see that by now our message would be hopelessly
garbled. Our relations with medicine and religion would have become a
shambles. To alcoholics generally we would today be a joke and the
public would have thought us a riddle. Without its literature, AA
would certainly have bogged down in a welter of controversy and
disunity”
Bill
W. (AA Grapevine May 1964; Language of the Heart page 348)
“In
the years ahead we shall, of course, make mistakes. Experience has
taught us that we need have no fear of doing this, providing that we
shall always remain willing to confess our faults and to correct them
promptly. Our growth as individuals has depended upon this healthy
process of trial and error. So will our growth as a fellowship. Let
us always remember that any society of men and women that cannot
freely correct its own faults must surely fall into decay if not into
collapse. Such is the universal penalty for failing to go on growing.
Just as each A.A. must continue to take his moral inventory and act
upon it, so must our whole society do if we are to survive and if we
are to serve usefully and well."
Bill
W. 1955, St Louis 20th anniversary convention;AA Comes of Age page
231 -233)”
Comment:
Well it would seem Bill was right … again! How annoying! Indeed we
are “of course, mak[ing] mistakes” …. and at a considerable
rate of knots! What seems to be missing however is a willingness to
'fess up and do something about them. We certainly can't rely on the
AA conference for leadership and perhaps that's the way it should be.
But all the signs are there for anyone who cares to take a look.
Membership is stagnant if not actually falling. We're failing to get
our central message across even to our own membership. We're a
spiritually 'powered' movement and should not be driven by dogma
(religious or otherwise) or reliant upon 'personalities' of any kind
and yet the talk is constantly of sponsorship ….. sponsorship .. do
what your sponsor says .. and so on ad infinitum and ad nauseam....
Our critics are pointing out to us our faults (sometimes
constructively, sometimes destructively) ever more vociferously and
still we're not prepared to look. The choice is very much ours as to where AA is going to end up – growth and development … or
decay and collapse! And the buck stops where? Take a guess!
Cheerio
The
Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
