November 2nd, 1939 Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A
NOTED DIVINE REVIEWS "ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS"
By
ELRICK B. DAVIS
In a
recent series, Mr. Davis told of Alcoholics Anonymous, an
organization of former drinkers banded together to beat the liquor
habit. This is the first of two final articles on the subject.
The
Book
When
100 members of Alcoholics Anonymous, the extraordinary fellowship of
men and women who have cured themselves of "incurable"
alcoholism by curing each other and adopting a "spiritual way of
life," had established their cures to the satisfaction of their
physicians, families, employers and psychotherapists, they published
a book.
It is
a 400-page volume of which half is a history of the movement and a
description of its methods, and the other half a collection of 30
case histories designed to show what a wide variety of persons the
fellowship has cured. It is called "Alcoholics Anonymous,"
and may be bought for $3.50 from the Works Publishing Co., Box 657,
Church Street Annex Postoffice, New York.
The
name of the publisher is that adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous for its
only publishing venture. The address is "blind" because the
name "Alcoholics Anonymous" means exactly what it says. The
price of the book is "cost," 50 cents a volume less than
one of the country's soundest old-line book publishers would have
charged if the fellowship had accepted that house's offer to publish
the book and pay the society 40 cents a copy royalty on sales.
Among
the first reviews of the book to see print was that written by the
Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick for the Religious Digest. That review
so attracted at least one well-known Cleveland minister that he
obtained a copy of the book, got in touch with the Cleveland chapter
of the society, and plans to preach a sermon about the movement.
Dr.
Fosdick is himself the author of seventeen books. His review of
"Alcoholics Anonymous" follows:
"This
extraordinary book deserves the careful attention of anyone
interested in the problem of alcoholism. Whether as victims, friends
of victims, physicians, clergymen, psychiatrists or social workers
there are many such, and this book will give them, as no other
treatise known to this reviewer will, an inside view of the problem
which the alcoholic faces. Gothic cathedral windows are not the sole
things which can be truly seen only from within. Alcoholism is
another. All outside views are clouded and unsure. Only one who has
been a alcoholic and has escaped the thraldom can interpret the
experience.
Truth
"This
book represents the pooled experience of 100 men and women who have
been victims of alcoholism-and who have won their freedom and
recovered their sanity and self-control. their stories are detailed
and circumstantial, packed with human interest. In America today the
disease of alcoholism is increasing. Liquor has been an easy escape
from depression. As an English officer in India, reproved for his
excessive drinking, lifted his glass and said, "This is the
swiftest road out of India," so many Americans have been using
hard liquor as a means of flight from their troubles until to their
dismay they discover that, free to begin, they are not free to stop.
One hundred men and women, in this volume, report their experience of
enslavement and then of liberation.
"The
book is not in the least sensational. It is notable for its sanity,
restraint and freedom from over-emphasis and fanaticism.
"The
group sponsoring this book began with two or three ex-alcoholics, who
discovered one another through kindred experience. From this a
movement started; ex-alcoholics working for alcoholics, without
fanfare or advertisement, and the movement has spread from one city
to another.
"The
core of their whole procedure is religious. They are convinced that
for the helpless alcoholic there is only one way out-the expulsion of
his obsession by a Power Greater Than Himself. Let it be said at once
that there is nothing partisan or sectarian about this religious
experience. Agnostics and atheists, along with Catholics, Jews and
Protestants, tell their story of discovering the Power Greater Than
themselves. 'Who are you to say that there is no God,' one atheist in
the group heard a voice say when, hospitalized for alcoholism, he
faced the utter hopelessness of his condition. Nowhere is the
tolerance and open-mindedness of the book more evident than in its
treatment of this central matter on which the cure of all these men
and women has depended. They are not partisans of any particular form
of organized religion, although they strongly recommend that some
religious fellowship be found by their participants. By religion they
mean an experience which they personally know and which has saved
them from their slavery, when psychiatry and medicine had failed.
They agree that each man must have his own way of conceiving God, but
of God Himself they are utterly sure, and their stories of victory in
consequence are a notable addition to William James' 'Varieties of
Religious Experience.'" ”
Note
to all cult members: “freedom from …...fanaticism”
(our
emphases)
Cheerio
The
Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
PS Question: Why is the book not sold at "cost" anymore? Why is AA literature being sold at a profit?
Answer: Contrary to our Traditions income from literature is being used to subsidise service activities. Such sales do not constitute "voluntary contributions".
PS Question: Why is the book not sold at "cost" anymore? Why is AA literature being sold at a profit?
Answer: Contrary to our Traditions income from literature is being used to subsidise service activities. Such sales do not constitute "voluntary contributions".
