Comes Alive

This opening session of "The Big Book Comes Alive" grounds the entire seminar in AA history, working through the Foreword to the Second Edition (Roman numeral 15), the Preface (Roman numeral 11), and the Foreword to the First Edition (Roman numeral 13). Joe McQ. and Charlie P. set the stage by reminding listeners that they are "just two old drunks" sharing what they've learned, and that the goal of the weekend is to study the book Alcoholics Anonymous itself, not the present-day fellowship.

The heart of the session is the story of how the program came together. Charlie walks through Ebby Thatcher carrying a solution and program of action to Bill Wilson's kitchen, Dr. Silkworth teaching Bill the nature of the illness (the physical allergy of the body and the obsession of the mind), and Bill's realization in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel that to save himself he must find another alcoholic. That leads to the meeting with Dr. Bob, the sobering of Bill Dotson (the "man on the bed"), and the summer of 1935 in Akron when the founders learned as much from their failures as their successes. Joe and Charlie distill it all to three things every recovering alcoholic must know: the problem (Step One, powerless), the solution (Step Two, a power greater than ourselves), and the program of action (Steps Three through Twelve).

From the history they turn to how the book is built. Joe, a printer by trade, explains that the book is laid out deliberately: the Doctor's Opinion and Bill's Story define the problem, chapters two through four present the solution, and chapters five through seven give the program of action. They argue that the great mistake in AA today is handing a newcomer the book and sending them straight to "How It Works" (chapter five) without first laying the groundwork of the Doctor's Opinion. Charlie develops the textbook analogy and Joe's algebra/mathematics analogy to show why sequence matters, and the two contrast the early recovery rates cited in the Second Edition Foreword with the much lower rates they see today, attributing the difference to the fellowship drifting from the program in the book.

Memorable threads include Charlie's strawberry cake analogy (follow the precise, specific, clear-cut directions or you'll bake a different cake), the sauerkraut-juice-and-honey remedy of Dr. Bob's, the naming of the book (the Way Out, Comes the Dawn, One Hundred Men, the Bill W. Movement), and Joe's candid, often funny account of his marriages, the preacher, and the psychiatrist who diagnosed a "vitamin deficiency" and never mentioned drinking. The session closes with Charlie quoting the book of Proverbs to show that alcoholism is nothing new, and that the book endures because alcoholics, alcohol, and human nature never change.

This session covers "The Doctor's Opinion," the Roman-numeral pages that open the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Charlie sets the historical stage with the long search to define alcoholism, from Dr. Trotter in England and Dr. Benjamin Rush in early America to Dr. William Silkworth, who at the Towns Hospital in 1930 began to see alcoholics cycle in and out and concluded that alcohol produces an actual physical craving in some bodies that it does not produce in others. The teachers explain why Silkworth insisted the chapter be called an "opinion" and kept his name off the first edition, and how his name was restored in the second edition once the medical profession recognized alcoholism as an illness.

The heart of the episode is the two-fold nature of the illness. Joe and Charlie spend most of their time on the word "allergy," which Charlie famously redefines from the dictionary as "an abnormal reaction." Charlie contrasts the normal, temperate drinker, who gets a relaxing, slightly dizzy, nauseous downer effect and stops at one or two, with the alcoholic, for whom alcohol is an upper that produces an in-control, exciting feeling and a body that demands more of the same. They read Silkworth's "phenomenon of craving" and his five types of drinkers, landing on "type five," the person entirely normal except in the effect alcohol has upon them.

Charlie then walks through the metabolism diagram, the modern science that, he argues, turns Silkworth's opinion into fact: in the alcoholic body the enzymes from the liver and pancreas fail to finish breaking acetone down, so it lingers and produces craving that climbs with every drink, making a progressive illness that worsens with bodily damage and aging. He uses the analogy of his friend who is allergic to fish yet keeps eating it because something in his mind gives him permission. That pivots the talk to the obsession of the mind, the chapter's note that men and women drink because they like the effect, the restless, irritable and discontented sober state, and the futility of willpower, which evaporates the moment the mind sees nothing wrong with drinking.

Memorable along the way: Charlie's description of his tongue-tied youth on the outside looking in and the night moonshine let him ask a girl to dance and take her home in the back seat of a '36 Chevrolet; his account of watching a "normal" drinker stir and stir a drink on an airplane and then read a magazine instead of drinking it; Joe's wife Phyllis insisting "everybody we know drinks just like we do"; and the closing read of the "psychic change," named here as the spiritual awakening that the Twelve Steps bring about, the only path out when the body cannot drink safely and the mind cannot keep from drinking.

This session covers "Bill's Story," the first chapter of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Building on the previous night's discussion of the physical allergy and the obsession of the mind, Joe and Charlie present Bill Wilson as the textbook example of an alcoholic who had both — a man placed at the front of the book so that any reader could identify with him and begin to believe and hope. They stress that identification comes not from Bill's surface details (Wall Street speculator, night-school lawyer, older man) but from the way he thinks, acts, and drinks.

Working line by line through the chapter, they trace the progression of Bill's disease: the war years where he discovered liquor and "moments sublime with intervals hilarious," the great drive for success on Wall Street, the motorcycle journey up the eastern seaboard with Lois that made his name, the 1929 crash, and the steady descent until liquor "ceased to be a luxury — it became a necessity." They follow him through failed willpower, questioning his own sanity, contemplating suicide, and finally drinking for "complete oblivion," landing in Towns Hospital 40 pounds underweight under Dr. Silkworth's Belladonna treatment.

The second half follows Bill's recovery. Charlie reads his admission of complete defeat ("Alcohol was my master") as the clearest description of Step One ever written. Then comes Ebby Thatcher — the old school friend gone sober through the Oxford Group — whose simple suggestion, "Why don't you choose your own conception of God?", melts Bill's resistance to religion and becomes his Step Two. Joe and Charlie then read the famous Towns Hospital passages and map each Oxford Group tenet (surrender, examine your sins, restitution) onto the last ten Steps Bill would later write, showing how the entire program is foreshadowed in his own story.

Along the way they share the backstory behind the text: Ebby shooting at pigeons and the two men (Roland Hazard and Sebra Graves) who interceded with the judge; the Jersey Lightning Applejack that triggered Bill's allergy and blew a business deal; Bill's grandfather Griffith, who believed in a power greater than himself but let no preacher tell him how; and the "wonderfully effective spiritual structure" built on the foundation of willingness. They close on faith without works being dead, and how working with another alcoholic kept Bill sober when nothing else would — pointing ahead to the next chapter, "There Is a Solution."

This session covers the Big Book chapter "More About Alcoholism" (pages 30-43), read closely against Step Two's promise that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Charlie opens by reframing what "insanity" actually means: not the crazy things done while drunk (those come from alcohol lowering inhibitions), but a mind that is "less than whole" and so cannot always see the truth. He uses the pie analogy, cutting a pie into ten pieces and giving slices away, to show that insanity doesn't mean you're all gone, just that you're "not quite all here." The recurring test throughout the chapter: stone-cold sober, just before the first drink, can the alcoholic see the truth about alcohol or not? If yes, sane; if not, insane.

A key teaching is Charlie's catch that Bill W. uses four interchangeable words, obsession, illusion, delusion, and insanity, all meaning to believe something that is not true. Joe and Charlie then study Bill's four examples in turn. The man of 30 stays bone-dry 25 years, retires, believes his discipline has qualified him to drink like other men, and is dead within four years. Jim, the car salesman Joe says he loves and identifies with, walks step by step through a perfectly normal, sane day (irritation at the boss, a drive in the country, a sandwich and milk) until the sudden insane thought that whiskey in milk on a full stomach can't hurt him. The jaywalker who gets a thrill skipping in front of fast-moving vehicles, breaking bones and his skull and finally his back, illustrates conduct that is absurd and incomprehensible with respect to the first drink. Fred, the high-bottom accountant on top of the world, gets drunk the same way Jim did, off guard, on the thought that a couple of cocktails would be nice with dinner.

The throughline Joe and Charlie keep returning to is that the real problem centers in the mind telling the alcoholic he can drink, rather than in the body that ensures he can't. The chapter closes "once more": the alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink, and that defense must come from a Higher Power. Charlie ends personally and candidly, describing the dilemma this creates for someone raised on hellfire-and-brimstone religion, recounting how at 12 or 13 a preacher told him that thinking about doing it was just as bad as doing it, how he defied God, his parents, and his teachers, and how he arrived in AA at 38 with the spiritual knowledge of a 12-year-old, which sets up the next chapter, "We Agnostics."

This session covers Chapter 4 of the Big Book, "We Agnostics," and the heart of Step Two. Joe opens by returning to Dr. Jung's idea that the ideas, emotions, and attitudes that guide the alcoholic must be cast aside, noting that his own ideas about God had never matured past those of a seven- or eight-year-old boy. They define the word "agnostic" as "without knowledge" and lay out the three possible positions on God — atheist, agnostic, and true believer — concluding that most people arrive in AA as agnostics who believe in some God but have never turned to that power or experienced it in their lives.

From page 45 onward, Joe and Charlie point out, the book stops talking about alcohol entirely and asks only one question: if you are powerless, how do you find the power, because the power will solve the problem. They work through the book's reassurances on pages 46-47 — that we need not consider another's conception of God, that our own conception, however inadequate, is enough to make the approach. Joe shares his sponsor George's suggestion to write down on a piece of paper what he would like God to be, and the permission that gave him to begin. Both men frame the chapter as the casting aside of old ideas (prejudice, the narrow exclusive path, hellfire and brimstone) and their replacement with new ones.

Charlie draws the key distinction between belief and faith using the analogy of taking a car to a recommended mechanic named John: you start on belief, act, get results, and only then arrive at faith. He extends this with the extended Columbus story — Columbus as the "drunk" who believed he could get east by sailing west, financed by a woman, who followed the universal formula for changing anything: willingness (made by circumstances), belief, decision, action, results, and finally faith. They map that formula onto the Steps, noting we cannot make a newcomer willing; only the whiskey does that.

The session closes on the question of where God is found. Charlie recounts his boyhood confusion watching the minister point up while looking down. Joe tells the parable of the three wise men of the East who hid the crown of life within man himself, leading into page 55 — that deep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God, the great reality found within. Charlie describes the inner voice he ignored and got into trouble for ignoring, concluding that if God dwells within, then he has his own personal God, and he is now ready to make a decision — setting up the next chapter, "How It Works."

This session bridges the close of "We Agnostics" and the opening of the chapter "How It Works," covering Steps Three and the conclusions of Steps One and Two. Joe and Charlie begin on page 55, where the Big Book locates God not in the sky but "deep down within us." Charlie tells of his childhood picture of God as a tall, robed old man on a cloud, and Joe shares a sponsee's story of the three wise men who hid the crown of life within man himself, the one place he would never think to look. From there they argue that the chapter order is deliberate: only after one's concept of God has shifted from hellfire-and-brimstone to a kind and loving God is a person ready to make a decision.

The heart of the episode is the history behind "How It Works." Joe and Charlie describe Bill Wilson's struggle to write Chapter Five for a fellowship split three ways over God, his prayer and the pencil that "raced across the pages," and the fierce fights that followed when the New York members forced him to soften "directions" to "suggestions," "you" to "we," and "must" to "ought." Joe reads the original manuscript version of How It Works and the Twelve Steps so listeners can hear what Bill wrote that night versus what the fellowship made him change, and they note how Bill quietly put the stronger language back two pages later.

They then teach that Steps One and Two are not action steps but conclusions of the mind drawn from the Doctor's Opinion and the first four chapters, leaving Step Three as the first real decision. Charlie distinguishes deciding from doing with his three-year story of finally driving to Los Angeles, and both define "will" as thinking and "life" as actions, anchored by the analogy of a legal will. A long central section draws on the Twelve and Twelve's three basic instincts of life, social, security, and sex, to explain self-will, the insatiable chase for more, and how overdoing in these God-given areas creates the wreckage. The episode closes on page 62-63 with selfishness as the root of our troubles, God as the new "principal" and director, the keystone of the triumphant arch, the Third Step prayer, and the value of taking Step Three with another person.

This session covers Step Four and the chapter "How It Works" in Alcoholics Anonymous, beginning at the bottom of page 63 and working through the inventory instructions on pages 64 to 70, with side trips to page 18, page 67, and the personal story on page 551. Joe McQ. and Charlie P. argue that the Big Book's instructions for Step Four have always been there in plain sight, but are so simple that alcoholics overlook them while chasing something more complicated. They tackle the procrastination and fear around the step head on, insisting that done by the book there is nothing to be afraid of, no list of dirty, filthy, nasty items, and nothing too complicated.

Charlie develops Bill Wilson's central comparison between a commercial inventory and a personal one: fact-finding and fact-facing, the search for truth about the stock in trade, and the disclosure of damaged and unsaleable goods to be gotten rid of promptly and without regret. He maps the "little store" in the alcoholic's head, with display cases full of resentments, a file cabinet full of fear, and a back storeroom full of guilt and remorse, all blocking God out. The pair then teach the resentment sheet one column at a time straight off page 65, then the fear inventory and the sex inventory, showing how the same five columns reveal how resentful and fearful we really are, that it is not the people but what they did, and ultimately that it is how we choose to react based on our relationship with God and our basic instincts.

Memorable illustrations carry the teaching: Charlie's 92-page life story thrown in the wastebasket; the football quarterback hit in the air and the announcer's slow-motion "resentment replay machine"; the alcoholic's get-even machine; the neighbor who paints his house and shames the whole street into cleanup as the right use of a resentment; and the cow that never lands on a psychiatrist's couch over sex. Joe shares his own inventory of Rose, while Charlie works his resentments toward Barbara and the Internal Revenue Service across all three sheets. They lean hard on the Step Four prayers, reading the woman on page 551 whose 25-year resentment against her mother dissolved through praying for her, and Charlie's own "give that son of a bitch everything he deserves" prayer that slowly became genuine goodwill.

Throughout, Joe and Charlie stress that this is a positive process, not a negative one: as resentments, fears, and selfish sex motives are removed, nature abhors a vacuum and God's thinking rushes in as love, patience, tolerance, compassion, goodwill, faith, and courage. They reject victimhood, insisting that justified resentments kill just as surely as unjustified ones, and close by noting that the completed sheets supply everything needed for Steps Four through Nine, leaving the listener with a Step Four that can be finished with a sponsor in a couple of evenings.

This session covers the chapter "Into Action" (Big Book page 72 onward) and works through Steps Five, Six, Seven, Eight, and Nine. Joe and Charlie open with Step Five on page 72, stressing that a solitary self-appraisal is insufficient and that the inventory must be shared with another human being who knows the program. Charlie relays Bill W.'s own explanation (from two women who worked with him) that "wrong," "defect," and "shortcoming" mean identically the same thing, and that Bill simply varied his words to avoid repetition. Joe describes doing his Fifth Step with his sponsor Franklin in Olive Branch, Mississippi, beginning with the Third Step prayer, and reads the promises that follow Step Five.

The heart of the talk is Steps Six and Seven, which the pair call "the tools of change." They point out the paradox that two of the biggest steps occupy only two short paragraphs. Charlie explains that God will not do for us what we can do for ourselves: we must find the opposite of each defect (unselfishness for selfishness, honesty for dishonesty, courage for fear, consideration for inconsideration) and practice it until the old habit dies and a new one takes its place. They warn that accepting this makes you responsible for what you are, with no more blaming Barbara, mother and dad, God, or society. Joe illustrates with the salad-store story of being given change for a twenty after paying with a ten, and going back to return it. The conversion of Saul into Paul ("the secret to living is daily dying") and Judas's inability to accept what he had done frame Six and Seven as acceptance after action.

Steps Eight and Nine cover the list of those harmed and making direct amends. Charlie shares his sponsor's "right now, later, maybe, never" four-list method for becoming willing, and the principle of equal restitution for material harms paid off a little at a time. Memorable stories include Dr. Bob's last drunk and final beer on AA's birthday (January 10, 1935), after which he spent the day making amends up and down the street; Dan, who took twenty-nine years to pay back everyone and "felt about eight foot tall"; and Joe's amends to his cousin Gary, his daughter Gail, and his ex-wife Phyllis ("I'm not paying anymore"). The episode closes with the Ninth Step promises, which Charlie rereads substituting "whenever I took a drink of alcohol" for each line, showing that the first nine steps now do for him exactly what alcohol once did when it was still his friend, and never turned against him.

Joe McQ. and Charlie P. close out their study of the Big Book by walking through the maintenance steps, Steps Ten, Eleven, and Twelve, drawing on the directions in "Into Action" (pages 84-88), "Working with Others" (pages 92-94), and the final page of "A Vision for You" (page 164). They frame these steps not as bare maintenance to keep us sober but as the steps that move us into what Bill calls a fourth dimension of existence, a way of living we continue to grow into in our relationship with God, with ourselves, and with other people.

On Step Ten, Joe points out that the program took the steps off the page and put them on cards and walls but left the instructions in the book, so people try to work the steps with no directions. He reclaims Step Ten as a daytime, walking-around step (the nighttime portion belongs to Step Eleven), and Charlie shows how following the book's directions means quietly doing Steps Four through Nine every day. He describes his own spot-check when he gets "screwed up at nine o'clock in the morning": asking who he is mad at, what part of self is affected, which character defect came back, then asking God to remove it, telling his sponsor, and making amends quickly, all in ten or twenty minutes. They read the Step Ten promises, that sanity returns and we recoil from liquor as from a hot flame because the problem has been removed.

For Step Eleven, Charlie tackles the problem of teaching spiritually bankrupt people to pray and meditate when Bill Wilson did not know how either, so he gave us definite, valuable suggestions instead. They cover the nighttime review, the self-will versus God-will inventory sheet, and the morning meditation, illustrated with Joe's long routine of caring for the body, feeding the cat, checking the car's tires and fuel, while doing nothing for the mind that runs the whole show. They explain "a form of meditation for busy people," prayer only for knowledge of His will and the power to carry it out, and Charlie's testimony of getting far beyond what he would have asked for: Iceland, Paris, the train under the English Channel. Joe shares how reading the morning meditation aloud led to praying with his wife, twenty-one years without a divorce.

On Step Twelve, they turn to "Working with Others" as a clear manual for the twelve-step call and sponsorship: share your story, show the alcoholic the allergy and the obsession, then the program of action, just as the Big Book itself is the twelfth step in print. They unpack the three pieces of the step, the spiritual awakening as a personality change sufficient to recover, carrying this message, and practicing these principles in all our affairs, at home, with children, and on the job. The episode ends with Joe retelling two stories from "that other book," the sick man let down through the roof by his friends and Legion in the cave, and the closing reading of page 164.