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Rating: 
Summary: A Powerful Tool for Transforming One's Life
Review: "12 steppers" beware -- this is not a kind review! This review is written by an agnostic alcoholic who has been sober for 5 years in AA without working one "step." AA is a cult, or at least very cultish. AA members accurately claim that one of the keys to alcoholism is that the alcoholic lives in a state of "denial" that he is an alcoholic. AA has a similar problem -- it is in denial of being a religion. The specific tenants of that religion are that by performing the 12 steps (described below) and attending many, many, many of its prayer meetings, you can get sober and have a spiritual relationship with AA's loving and caring god. (Some of the true believer cultists will tell you that if you don't believe in God, and get down on your knees and pray, two or more times per day, you will get drunk!) The thesis of this review is that performance of the 12 steps and attending AA meetings may be of assistance to the alcoholic in getting sober and maintaining sobriety, but not for the reasons asserted in this book. The AA program of recovery described involves a 12 step "spiritual" process as follows:
Step 1 -- We admitted we were powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step 2 -- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Step 3 -- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Step 4 -- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Step 5 -- Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.
Step 6 -- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Step 7 -- Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Step 8 -- Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make ammends to them all.
Step 9 -- Made direct ammends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Step 10 -- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Step 11 -- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.
Step 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.
The interesting thing is that none of the 12 steps tell the alcoholic to stop drinking! That is because they are not about sobriety, but about living sober -- as a cult member.
I suspect the reason I have so many people giving this review a negative rating is because I don't believe in the AA cult, and I am living proof that performance of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is not necessary to get sober. In my opinion, the way to stay sober is to not drink and has nothing to do with your beliefs and little to do with performance of the 12 step dance. Telling cultists their beliefs are wrong is never popular with the cultists who would be the ones voting on how helpful this review is. Regardless of how well intentioned AA and its members are, the fact is that AA is still a cult, and there is great peer pressure to conform to the group's beliefs in a loving and caring god who will micromanage your life and save you from alcoholism and other addictions if you perform the 12 steps.
This book, also known as "The Big Book," sets out Alcoholics Anonymous's alleged 12 step spiritual program of recovery from alcoholism. The Courts and medical community have made AA the keystone of recovery from addiction. Many alcoholics and addicts will tell you this book and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous saved their lives. This is probably true. The Big Book is required reading for anyone interested in recovery, if only from a historical perspective. It is not well written, is vauge, and has little original thinking. Although this review disagrees with many author's theories on recovery as misguided and inaccurate, it should be pointed out that few original ideas were revolutionary: 1) that alcoholism is a disease and is progressive; 2) that an alcoholic can never successfully take even one drink; and 3) an alcoholic must concede to his innermost self that he is an alcoholic in order to recover.
The problem is that this book and AA unnecessarily reek of Judeo-Christian religiosity. AA claims that it is a spiritual program, and is not religous. Several courts have disagreed. In its public face, AA's claim is the member can choose a god of his or her understanging, a doorknob, a Group Of Drunks, or whatever he chooses as a source of power to overcome addiction. This is not completely true -- AA has a specific belief that God is a loving and caring god who will micromanage your life. In time, most AAers will come to believe in this loving and caring god. This is not the God of my religion, who tended to be a mean, jealous God. When the Jews started worshiping a golden calf in the Sainai, the God of my religon opened the ground and swallowed the idol worshipers.
The Book contains two parts. The first part describes the author Bill Wilson's experience with alcohol, struggles to get sober, and spiritual redemption from alcoholism. It then proceeds to describe AA's 12 step program to have a "spiritual experience" sufficient to recover from alcoholism. It also includes a chapter to beat agnostics and athiests into submission to the "program" and a chapter to the wives and employeers of the alcoholic. The second part is confessional stories from AA members describing how God redeemed them.
The author's story is summarized as follows: Bill Wilson was a millionaire stock broker who lost almost everything to the bottle. The stock market crash of 1929 had a little bit to do with it. (Sarcasm.) One day, an old drinking buddy of Bill's, Ebby Thatcher, came to Bill's house. Ebby was sober. Bill had never seen him sober. Ebby found religion and got sober through a Christian cult known as the Oxford Group. (I highly recommend doing some research on the Oxford Group and its founder, Dr. Frank Buchman.) Bill rejected the notion that God could get him sober, and went on drinking.
Shortly thereafter, Bill ended up in the hospital from too much booze. He was undergoing the belladonna treatment, which used a halucinogenic drug coctail to help the alcoholic go through withdrawals. Psychodelic! Bill heard Ebby and his doctor talking in the hallway. The doctor said that Bill didn't have another drunk left in him -- the next one would kill him. Just then, Bill had a delusion of a wind, the spirit of God, passing through him and removing the desire to drink. This was known as Bill's "Hot Flash." This single delusion, which may have been from alcohol withdrawal, or perhaps from the belladonna treatment, is the basis for AA's program of recovery. (Some people in alcohol withdrawal see pink elephants or green men running around room!)
Although not stated in the book, Bill W. stayed in the hospital for about 90 days, afraid to leave lest he drink. During his stay, he carried his religious message to the other drunks in the hospital. He continued to "carry the message" to other drunks after he got out of the hospital. He did not drink ever since. 18 years later, he did ingest LSD with Timothy Leary to repeat his religious "Hot Flash" experience. But he did not drink. The book doesn't say so, but Ebby did not stay sober. I believe Ebby died years later in a recovery home, at one point having had 7 years of sobriety.
Despite Alcoholics Anonymous' substantial societal presence, benevolent appearance, and the support it gets from courts, numerous recovery programs, and much of the medical community, it is capable of great harm. Alcoholics Anonymous is a religious cult with roots deeply embedded in the Oxford Group, a religious group whose members strived for absolute purity, piety and abstinence. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous is the religious text of Alcoholics Anonymous. It contains some great truths, some half truths, some misconceptions, some misrepresentations, and some out and out falsehoods. The program of recovery outlined therein is religous, and is not a scientific or medical form of recovery. AA's program of recovery is no more successful than other more rational programs of recovery. The number of people who stay sober for one year is unknown, but estimated to be about 5%.
In contrast, the foreword of the first edition claims as its first line, "We, of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body." I've asked many "12 steppers" how many of the 100 were sober and usually get the response that all 100 were sober. Actually, they were no longer hopeless. The fact is, when the book was first published, AA was only four years old, and only 8 people were sober over 6 months. Not all of those 8 died sober.
The book states, "The fact is that most alcoholics ... have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week ago... We are without defense against the first drink." This is certainly a valid observation, from the point of view of the alcoholic, and contains the key to recovery. Alcoholism and addiction are diseases of denial. The alcoholic's will is either overwhelmed by the desire to drink or he simply forgets that he can't drink. But, despite the craving or selective memory lapses, the fact is that drinking and drugging are voluntary actions, and the feeling of powerlessness is illusory and subjective. The alcoholic can recover by: 1) a period of sobriety, such as Bill W's 90 day stay in the hospital, to get through the physical and psychological craving; and 2) taking steps to "bring into consciousness" the fact that ingesting alcohol will cause suffering and humiliation, which Bill W. did as part of "carrying the (religous) message".
In this reviewer's opinion, rather than directly approach the problem, the author took a wrong turn. The error in the AA program of recovery is that it is based on a false premise which is contained in the first step: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol -- that our lives had become unmanageable." The book claims the solution to that powerlessness is to find a power greater than ourselves, i.e., God, to help us recover. Again, the premise is incorrect because ingesting alcohol is a voluntary act. Thus, the solution of finding a higher power is surplussage.
The book attempts to make itself look "scientific" by attributing the basic theory to the great psychiatrist Carl Jung. There is a one or two paragraph mention of the Dr. Jung in A.A.'s text book (the Big Book), "Alcoholics Anonymous" at pp. 26, 27. The book claims that when a patient, Rolland Hazzard, asked Jung if there was any sure way for an alcoholic to recover -- truly recover, Jung is quoted as saying, "Yes, there is. Exceptions to cases ... have been occurring since early times. Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences. To me these are phenomena. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them." A more complete reading of the story than is presented in the Big Book indicates that Jung may have been trying to get Rolland to reach a point of such dispair that he would give up on the idea that he could drink successfully. One of the things the Book points out is that for the alcoholic to get sober, he must fully concede to his innermost self that he is unable to successfully take the first drink.
When Bill Wilson wrote the book, he was only four years sober, he was broke, he was a stock broker and analyst in the middle of the Great Depression, and he was unemployed and unemployable. He wrote the book, at least in part, to make dough. He wanted to help drunks, but he needed money. It took some time, but he made millions from the book. When Bill Wilson wrote the book, he honestly believed that the way to get sober was to read the book, get down on your knees and pray to God, and you would be cured. If you were a psychopath, you might have to repeat the process one time. The message from many of those with cult mentalities in AA has not changed, and may have gotten worse. In contrast, the Central Office of Alcoholics Anonymous publishes free literature which can be picked up at almost any AA meeting. In that literature, it explicitly states that neither a belief in a God, nor a faith in a God, nor acceptance of the 12 steps is mandatory to get sober or to be a member of AA. This is echoed in AA's third tradition which states, "The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking."
John Lennon said, "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." Alcoholics live in a hell on earth of their own creation. The alcoholic lives in a world of pain which he can see no way out of. Drinking and its results become intollerable, and not drinking is even worse. As such, alcoholics are ripe targets for religous groups and cults to prey on. AA is the result of one such religous conversion.
Robert Ingersoll said, "Our ignorance is God; what we know is science." AA was born out of ignorance. What we know is that recovery need not be based on self depreciation, confession of our sins, spiritual redemption, and ongoing dependence on the group for identity and emotional support. This is the cult of Alcoholics Anonymous at work. Recovery should be based on rational approaches to rebuilding self esteem, taking action to help the alcoholic change his/her expectations of what drinking will do to and for him/her, personal responsibility, and ongoing counseling and support groups. Much of this can occur through the fellowship of AA and "working" the 12 steps because doing the 12 step dance forces the alcoholic to focus on the physical, emotional, social and economic damage his drinking caused and/or causes the alcoholic to rebuild his relationship with the world.
The 12 steps may be a good way to live and to be happy sober, if you believe in a Higher Power. But the religiosity is unnecessary for people to get sober, and in many instances more harmful than good.
Rating:
Summary: This book has helped to saved my life.
Review: Anyone who wants to learn about the disease of alcoholism will benefit by this book. After reading some of the other reviews that have been written I find myself a little confused. At no point in the book Alcoholics Anonymous did anyone say it was a religion. I searched and searched for one sentence that implied it, but I couldn't find any. . If one person tells me that I'm stupid I may not believe it, but if a million people tell me I'm stupid then I better start believing. Millions of alcoholics have recovered from the disease of alcoholism by utilizing the A.A. Program. Most of them tried everything else imaginable before going to A.A. It is important to note that the format this book has not been revised since its conception in the 1930's, so some people may not appreciate the old-fashioned language. One writer also said "so called big book comes off as way to mysterious and risky." Alcoholism is mysterious and risky since thousands die every year from complications such as alcohol poison, hepatitis, liver and heart disease to name only a few. I am absolutely certain that the men and women who have watched their family members recover from alcoholism would not look at A.A. (As one reviewer put it) "a cruel tragedy that will one day be looked back upon as being as cruel as African American slavery." Instead, I am sure they are happy to once again have a sister, brother, mother, father, child or employee that is a productive member of society.
Rating:
Summary: A Book for an Extreme Minority
Review: Few books have affected so many lives for better and for worse as Alcoholics Anonymous. This book is belovedly called the Big Book by members of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is the basic text of the AA movement and claims to give "clear cut directions" as to how to recover from alcoholism using its twelve-stepped program. It's publication in 1939 can be seen as the beginning of what sociologists are now calling the "alcoholism movement" or the "recovery movement." But in that same year the American Medical Association reviewed Alcoholics Anonymous, and counted it among a growing number of post-prohibition quack remedies for chronic drunkenness - that the book had no medical or scientific value. AA was founded by about 68 severely alcoholic members of the Oxford Group, an evangelical movement, who instead of wanting to save the world according to Oxford Group tenets, wanted to only reform alcoholics. So they split off and formed AA. This book was written as a promotional tool. It was a way that they could send their evangelical message to the alcoholic masses. They crafted the language in the book so as not to seem pious or authoritative, but this tactic should be only thinly veiled to sensitive readers. By 1956 the AMA had changed its tune at least in part, recognizing the utility of a growing movement of reformed alcoholics in AA. In that year the AMA declared alcoholism a disease. AA has since been promoted both by its leadership, individual members, and "pragmatic" minded professionals into the mainstream of American social consciousness. Most Americans who seek help for a drinking problem of any degree are now referred to AA for help. Most rehabilitation programs in the US are based on AA's twelve-stepped method of conversion. Rejection of AA is now tantamount to rejection of all help. Alcoholic patients who resist AA conversion are often said to be "in denial." AA members regard the book as their bible, or as their manual for recovery. They are trained from their induction into AA to read the book with an "open mind," and not to think critically about what they are reading. AA even has slogans for such narrowing of focus: "Utilize! Don't Analyze." AA members are taught to approach the book with the assumption that it contains highly relevant guidance for their lives - even sometimes that the book was divinely inspired. In the final analysis, the Big Book presents a poorly constructed religious philosophy of the plight of the alcoholic and gives quite unclear instructions on how its program works. The book is chock full of persuasive rhetoric. In this way it is manipulative and indeed highly "suggestive" as it claims. But the power of suggestion is especially powerful in the context of treating such a desperate condition as alcoholism. People in the throes of addiction are often vulnerable with weakened cognitive faculties and this opens them easily to the sort of suggestions Alcoholics Anonymous makes. On page 23, it "suggests" that the alcoholic "has no mental defense against the first drink." These ideas of personal powerlessness pervade the text. One wonders if we are reading a text from a much earlier century. AA defends these ideas as being paradoxical truths. Whether paradoxes, contradictions, or an outright con job, they are not helpful to a vulnerable sufferer who needs more than a vague abstraction. Alcoholics Anonymous devotes an entire chapter to an ad hominem diatribe against non-belief in the Christian deity. The language of this chapter is disparaging of people who do not believe as the authors of the book would have them, accusing non-believers of having a "perverse streak," of being "vain," and even argues implicitly that non-believers live with the delusion that they themselves are God. Dr. Bob, one of the book's co-authors, ends his personal story with the comment that he feels sorry for anyone who cannot accept what the book is saying and even opines that the reason for non-acceptance of the book is "intellectual pride." Though the book claims that the individual can choose their own conception of God, it also requires certain attributes of your understanding of God that are not universal to all religions or theologies. It gives a detailed account of all the things that God will or will not do for you. This is not about helping you find your God. It is about helping you find the God of AA. The book is one of the most poorly written and poorly constructed texts I have ever read in my 35 years. It would seem the authors knew its message was so offensive that their very attempts to make it more palatable only succeeded in making it less intelligible. Its message is not easily derived except through extensive ancillary study of obscure Oxford Group texts. This is perhaps evidenced by AA member's incessant and obsessive study of the text, always hoping for some greater insight. AA members often claim that only "real alcoholics" can truly understand the Big Book. And you are only a real alcoholic if you accept what's in the book on faith. Those who doubt that AA is a religious cult of some degree might do well to learn a few things about how cultic groups typically intrigue and influence their members. All this being said, AA does seem to help an extreme minority of people who join AA. More people should read this book with an active mind along with the growing number of books that make a critical analysis of AA. There are now over 20 million copies in print with only 1.2 million AA members in the US. Alcoholics Anonymous can be found in any used book store, thrift store, and many garage sales for about 25 cents. It is now available online for free on several personal web pages because AA forgot to renew its copyright. Don't buy this book, but do read it. It should come as a shock to any rational individual.
Rating:
Summary: Living Life!!
Review: I don't know what to say except that this book saved my life. Thanks Bill.
Rating:
Summary: A Powerful Tool for Transforming One's Life
Review: I read the first chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous (Bill's Story) on the morning of my wedding day, which also happened to be my 30th day of sobriety. It was, and remains, one of the most powerful and moving works of literature that I have ever read, and I am a graduate of The University of Chicago with a B.A. in English Language and Literature, as well as being a grateful, recovering alcoholic. I highly recommend this book to anyone that suffers from alcoholism, or to anyone who thinks that they may have a problem with alcohol. What I admire most about this book, and Alcoholics Anonymous in general, is its honesty. This book reveals in stark detail the type of misery and pain that alcoholism causes those who suffer from it, and more importantly, the type of life that is availble to those who acknowledge their plight, and use the program outlined in this book as means of recovery. By the Grace of G-d I am now sober for one year, and words cannot express how grateful I am for having been exposed to Alcoholics Anonymous and the program for living detailed in this book. To those of you who are suffering and are reading this review as a way of determing whether or not Alcoholics Anonymous is a solution to your problems, please do yourself the favor of ordering this book and attending an A.A. meeting. Your life is precious and you have something to offer, and their is absolutely no reason for you to spend the remainder of your days in anguish and in fear when there is such a magnificent way of life waiting for you, if you will only take the first step.
Rating:
Summary: Happy, joyous, and free one day at a time
Review: The book Alcoholics Anonymous does not pretend to be the only answer to the age old riddle of Alcoholism. The persons who helped to write this book and launch this fellowship intended this "Big Book" to be utilized as a "help" to bring people to a relationship with a God that they can understand and lean on in tough times in order that they not turn back to a drink, or other chemicals that will affect them from the neck up, to solve or avoid their problems. The principles upon which the reader is to come to "recovery" are Judeo/Christian in nature. (Admitting weakness "sin", belief that human will is not sufficient by itself to overcome the sin nature, making a decision to turn away from sin and toward God (as understood by the reader), candidly writing down and admitting shortcomings and asking God to remove them, making restitution to those we harm, seeking God's will in our life on a daily basis and setting right new wrongs as we go along, and to carry "share" the successes with others.) The reader is not required to be Jewish or Christian, he/she is encouraged to choose their own conception of God, but also to look where religious people are right and to make use of what the medical, religious and secular community have to offer. The book Alcoholic Anonymous is based upon helping others rather than "self-help" and encourages accountability partnerships and fellowship style gatherings to help each other understand and apply the principles outlined in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. How have thousands recovered? Having had a spiritual awakening through taking the steps outlined, a person is to share this experience with another person who desires the same outcome.
Rating:
Summary: Living Life!!
Review: This book saved my life.
It taught me how to live one day at a time.
Living sober is so much better than in misery.
Can't say enough.
Thank you BILL W. & DOCTOR BOB>
Rating: 
Summary: 12 Steps, or Goose Steps? You decide
Review: While I myself haven't been in AA, I've attended Overeaters Anonymous and Emotions Anonymous -- yep, "Emotions" Anonymous," because I guess if we just surrender our emotions unto our H1er P0w3r, He'll (capital "H") take them away and leave us good little Borglings untroubled by any nasty thoughts or feelings. Feh.
Other Amazon reviewers slamming "The Big Book" (and if you don't think they're trying to glom some prestige off the Wholly Babble, you weren't paying attention) have laid out all my objections to it. Perhaps not quite how I'd have laid them out, but I see no need to re-invent the wheel tonight.
However, I'll note that while the negative reviewers by and large set out detailed and well-written explanations of their contempt for this book, the positive reviewers seem mainly delighted to regurgitate their cult's dumb little slogans and insult the negative reviewers, mainly by implying that they didn't "work hard enough" at their own sobriety. I especially liked the dude whose review was titled, "Life is better with God," then called the negative reviewers "idiots" in the first line. Yeah, buddy, I guess that "serenity" thing is working out really well for you.
One thing I will echo: Check out Charles "Chaz" Bufe's book _Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure?_ Although Jason Gold did a good job of CliffNoting Bufe's book, I still highly recommend reading it on your own, especially the latest edition, in the foreword to which Bufe recounts all the vitriolic hate mail he got from those serene, loving, doG-infused goose-- oops! there I go again -- 12-steppers.
Rating:
Summary: It Works if you Live it.
Review: Wow, where the previous reviewers attended AA is beyond me...First of all, I have never experienced any cult-like behavior or activities in relation to AA. Secondly, if you want to learn to live life free from the demon of alcohol addiction, this program works if you follow it. Relapse happens, but it is not because of the program, or the Big Book, it is because the suggestions for living were not followed and the person, once again tried to prove that they were not alcoholic. Some make it, some don't. We all have the freedom to choose which path we will take.
A lot of people struggle with the spirituality aspect. Many don't jump on it at all. All that is required is that one try to turn the problem over to a higher power---of the INDIVIDUAL'S understanding. That higher power does not require a connection to religion, it could be the AA group, or just a concept.
This isn't just a book about Bill W. and a bunch of alcoholics, it is a solution to a problem. One of the most beneficial aspects of the Big Book is that the alcoholic can see themselves in those whose experiences are described in this book. If you have tried everything to quit, this can be a very powerful feeling, that, "I am not alone", "I am not crazy", "there are others like me and they have been able to find a path of recovery". If you think you might be alcoholic pick up the Big Book. This is not a cult, it is a way to triumph over a horrific addiction that destroys families and lives.
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