Recovery, Unity, and Service — The History of Alcoholics Anonymous and it’s Beginnings

If you’re interested in the history and the foundings and the founders of AA, this is essential. This is about the real “formula” and the twelve traditions. The listener will really get a deep understanding about how this came to be. Knowing that this is a spiritual program will also help the listener have a grasp, because much of the program was also helped by religious men. Not all of those involved in the program were in recovery, there were also men in the medical community who dealt with alcoholics, first objectively, but could not for so long until the saw the despair it caused. They sought further to understand it and finally, found only a miracle, a spiratual solution could cure this disease.

There are so much to these speaker tapes that I can only touch on this, such as on the General Service Board and keeping the program simple and spiritual. Which in a sense could not always be such. Literature was discussed and how very important it was for those in the recesses of the world, such as those on the ships or the Australian sheep-man. The loners depended on the books and such. The starting of meetings were also vital and the spreading of these continue daily still.

The tapes are not all business history though, there are some personal stories from Bill W. and his times with Ebbie (the man who got Bill sober), and about his times in the Oxford group. These were quite fasinating because they’re not in the Big Book and you’ve not often heard them.

I was glad that I listen through the tapes because there is a lot of vital information in these tapes. Bill is quite frank about his experiences in Chapter three and relates his all to normal rationalizations and justifications as an alcoholic. If you’re an alcoholic, you’ll understand. His comparison to a cancer patient (consumer of body and mind) is profound if you’ve never heard that as well.

This also discusses the initial meeting with Bill and Bob, but not just a reading from the book, so that is worth listening. There is also the talk about the writing of the Big Book and the editing as well as discussion of the pre-publication. The Saturday Evening Post too. The fire that this started. Then the speaker discusses the spread of AA world-wide. It is essentially “AA in it’s early years” to the in 1980’s.

This is something I recommend especially to the conissouer of AA history and the founders, Bill and Bob and the Oxford Group and so much more.

Listen to History of Alcoholics Anonymous and Recovery Beginnings and more self improvement audio programs on Audiojoy — download free on iOS or Android.

 

Audio Program by: Pivotal Recovery | Review by: Luke Patterson