Writing the Big Book — William H. Schaberg — Tuesday Night History Workshop — June 5, 2020

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Speaker William H. Schaberg

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Date Recorded June 5, 2020

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Topic Creation of the Big Book

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William Tuesday Night History Workshop • June 5, 2020

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William Listen to Meeting Recording

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William ABOUT THIS MEETING

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William Author William H. Schaberg discusses the research and human history behind the writing and publication of the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book.

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William Full Transcript

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Moderator All right. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Recovery Speakers History Meeting. And this is the fifth or sixth week that we've been hosting this meeting. Um, it's focused, we've been focused on early AA, Bill W. and Dr. Bob and Akron meeting, and now we're leading up to, um, Bill Shabergh, um, guest speaking with us tonight and next week, and it will be focused on his book, Writing the Big Book. Um, just to let everyone know, this meeting is being recorded. Um, the purpose of the recording is only for the audio. No video is being shared with anyone. Um, the audio will be posted on recoveryspeakers.com for anyone that misses the meeting to listen to it later on. If any of you that are here, um, want to share this meeting with anyone, any of your friends, feel free to find the link. It will be up later this evening on Recovery Speakers, and feel free to share it. And also at, throughout the meeting and, and at the end of the meeting, if you have any questions, next week we'll be doing a Q&A session.

0:34

Moderator So feel free to send messages or questions in the chat, and I will save them for next week. And now I will hand it off to Mike, who will introduce Bill. Hi, everybody. I'm Mike, and I'm an alcoholic. Morning. And, uh, welcome. I'm glad so many people joined us tonight. I kind of wanted to real quick give you a, a little bit of background on Recovery Speakers before I introduce Bill. And, uh, Recovery Speakers was a initiative that we started 12 years ago when I was fortunate enough to purchase the Midwest tape library, um, that was originated in Texas is in the early '50s. And, uh, when I bought the library, it was on over 3,000 reel-to-reel tapes and some wires, and we've been digitizing those recordings and making them available o- over the years for free to anybody who wants to stream the audio and listen. We've added CA, we've added some more current. I actually, uh, just had a library donated to us, um, a few months ago, and we're starting to go through that and we'll be posting. There was, uh, over 10,000 CDs with that library.

1:02

Moderator So we've got a lot of work to do. But this meeting, uh, was really set up to, to bring the history of the early pioneers and the early 12-step movement. It's not always gonna be dedicated to AA. It's not an AA meeting. It's a history meeting, and it's an open meeting, and we're grateful and, and happy that you're a part of this. And we hope that you'll continue to sign on every Friday night at 9:00 PM Eastern, 6:00 PM Pacific. Um, this week is William Shabergh, the author of Writing the Big Book. And you're gonna hear from Bill, and he's gonna make a presentation this evening, but if you have any questions that you want to ask him, please send them to the, through the chat or to Tim at Recovery Speakers, and Tim will make sure that Bill has them ahead of time next week. And next week he's gonna take his entire time and do Q&A for us. So tonight we're not gonna do the Q&A. This evening is just going to be the presentation of Bill Shabergh. And I'm gonna shut up and let Bill present before he doesn't have enough time.

1:34

Moderator Thank you again, and I'll jump on at the end of the meeting. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Mike. Appreciate the opportunity. I'm amazed. We got 322 people it says at the bottom of my screen. And hopefully it won't be like this morning when I lost it an hour before I was supposed to speak at a lunch meeting, but I got it back in time. So, uh, hopefully we won't have any of those kind of problems. And you should know ahead of time I'm a technologically challenged guy. So we're gonna try and do this share screen thing, and I hope it all works the way it did when we were test driving it, but we'll have to see. So, um, let's just go there. And, uh ... Okay. This, uh, this is the book we're gonna be talking about tonight. Alcoholics Anonymous. This is a, a copy of the first edition, first printing in an original dust jacket. It's, you can see it's a red, red book. The, it, we call it The Big Red. It's the only one that was published in red. Uh, they did 4,650 copies of this book in the first printing.

2:04

William And it was published on April 10th, 1939. Uh, so, um, just how did we end up with this particular book, was the question I was, uh, ended up dealing with and I wrote this book called Writing the Big Book: The Creation of AA. Um, I began researching the book at General Service Office on, in September of 2007. I started writing on, uh, July 24th, three years later, basically in 2010. Uh, I finished the first draft of the book exam- To the day, eight years later on July 24th, I polished and edited, uh, with the help of my wife, the lady Sarah, who is one of the dedicatees of, dedicatees of the book. Uh, and, um, and five other AA historians. And then, uh, it was published on November 4th, 2019. And quite frankly, the book's been doing well. We, we, we did an initial press run of 3,000, which sold out. We've caught, caught the publisher unaware. We did a second printing. We're about halfway through that. So, uh, things are going, uh, really well with that.

2:29

William Um, my wife, the lady Sarah, says it's, I should be calling it The Bigger Book because it's, um, it, it, it's bigger than The Big Book. It's, uh, it, there was just so much information in the archives that I just, uh, there was no stopping places. There was no place where I could really leave stuff out. Um, so we ended up with 606 pages of text and another 175 pages of appendices, end notes, and, uh, index and bibliography. Um, it came out to be, I thought it was gonna be a 250-page book when I started. So, um, that did not happen and, uh, I hope you can, uh, motor your way through it all. Uh, the subtitle of the book is, is called The Creation of AA. And, uh, and the, the reason I, I, I call it The Creation of AA is because there was no Alcoholics Anonymous in my opinion, no clearly articulated formula of recovery, that is, you know, no 12-step program until the book was published on December 10th, 1939. And I think this is really, really critical.

2:55

William It's, uh, it's, um, it's like I know that people were getting sober before December, uh, 1939, but, but after that, once this book came out, we're still talking about this book and what's in this book exactly and explicitly as it was printed in April 10th of 1939. It's like, it's like, think about it like the, the c- the Colonies and the, and the Confederation of Independence. Before we had a Constitution of the United States being adopted, um, it was, it was, it was kind of a mess before that. But once the Constitution was adopted and, uh, and ratified, we've still been working with that exact same program ever since. And I think that's exactly true of The Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, which is why I consider April 10th, 1939 to be the true birthday of Alcoholics Anonymous. Okay. Here, here's our guy. Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. We're gonna be hearing a lot about him, uh, as we go through this, uh, a little bit further on. But, but he called the period between December 1934 and April 1939, that's a four and a half year period, he called that the Flying Blind Period.

3:25

William That was the period before the book was published. And, uh, my book, uh, primarily covers just the last 18 months. It's the last year and a half of that Flying Blind Period. It goes from October 10th, 1937 when they, when they first got together in Akron, Ohio and they said, "Hey, hey, we should write a book." And 18 months later, April 10th, 1939, the book was published. Now, I, I just gotta say that, that, that there's a whole bunch of, uh, presumptions floating around AA about how, um, how divinely inspired this book was. And it may have been divinely inspired. I'm not, I'm certainly not, not gonna counterargue that, but, uh, but I've got a couple of quotes here about what was really going on when this book was published. Bill Wilson speaking in Fort Worth in 1959 foresaid, "Some people reading the book now, they say, well, that this is the AA bible. And, and w- and when I hear that, it always makes me shudder because the guys who put it together weren't a damn bit biblical.

3:51

Moderator I think sometimes some of the drunks have the idea that these old-timers went around with almost visible halos and long gowns, and they were just full of sweetness and light. Oh, oh boy, how inspired they were. Oh, yeah. But, but wait until I tell you." And then, uh, a few months later, Bill was get prepping to, uh, write, uh, AA Comes of Age, and he interviewed Dorothy Schneider, Clarence's wife. And she said, "The people talk as though there were 100 men that all went saintly, and they were, they were taken straight up into heaven, and, and God just guided Bill's hand. And when Bill sat there and let the words just come through." Actually, Dorothy, who was up front and personal with this, this process, actually she said, "It wasn't anything like that at all. No, it wasn't anything like that at all." It was a much more human affair and, um, making AA survival, um, just that much more miraculous than the hallowed stories that were being told all the time. Um, so for instance, we all know the story of Bill Wilson pacing the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel in Akron.

4:20

Moderator "Should I go in the bar? Should I call somebody? Should I go in the bar? Should I call somebody? Should I go in the bar?" Actually, I know Mike's got one of these tapes that I finally listened to one time. He, one time when he told the story, he said he did go in the bar, and he did belly up to the bar and he ordered a ginger ale. Good God. I don't think he ever, he didn't make, he didn't tell that story a lot because it, uh, it didn't quite fit the message he was trying to, trying to relay. We'll get back to that more later. Anyhow, Bill's going back and forth. Should he go in the bar? Should he call somebody? Not only- is Alcoholics Anonymous, but my entire sobriety and even my very life hung in the balance that day when Bill Wilson is pacing back and forth between the telephone booth and the bar door. And miraculously, Bill decides to call somebody. Now, the unvarnished truth of AA is littered with more twists and turns than you can imagine.

4:48

Moderator Time after time when the whole project could've gone completely off the rails and none of us would be here tonight on a Zoom call if any one of these things went in the wrong direction, and there's dozens and dozens of them. Um, one, one thing that I, one thing that I picked up that, I don't know, I've never heard anybody say this. So, uh, it's June of 1938. Bill Wilson has just written the first two chapters of the Big Book. He's written There Is a Solution and Bill's Story, and he sent them off to a potential contributor on June 17th. It's the very first step in the book-writing project, and it's just been launched. He's got it out the door. 10 days later, June 21, 27, Lois' diary says, "I got mad at Bill and he went over to Jersey for lunch. He came close to taking a drink." Holy Moses. Bill Wilson taking a drink in the middle of June 1938? I'm a dead man. I'm a dead man. It's never gonna happen for me. I'm never gonna get sober if this guy goes out and drinks in the middle of June 1938.

5:18

William Lois' later compilation, she actually wrote a little bit more clearly about this. She said, "I got mad at Bill and he dashed over to Hank's house, uh, then dashed out for a drink, but went to Parkerson's instead." Now, Hank Parkerson's his, uh, number one right-hand joint at the Hip Man in New York City. We'll hear a lot about Hank, Hank Parkerson going forward. But I, I, I wanna pause here just for a second and think about the fact that Bill Wilson was so thirsty that he ran out, he dashed out of his Brooklyn, uh, house to go take a drink, you know? So he goes over to Hank Parkerson's house and I, and of course, Hank was a guy who a y- a, a year after this was getting divorced by his wife. I mean, Hank's not the kind of guy you would expect to be showing up with great marital advice one way or the other. So I, I'm curious about what exactly got said between these two guys that night when, uh, Hank calmed him down and, and talked him out of having a drink. Also, this happened on a Monday.

5:48

William The next night was the n- the traditional night for the meeting in New York City. So, um, they, they had, they had their AA meeting on Tuesday night. And I, I would love to be a fly on the wall to know whether Bill Wilson actually owned up in public about how thirsty he was and how he dealt with it, or if he just drove right by it, you know, because he's such a sober guy running the meeting and leading the group. I would love to be a fly on the wall on, uh, June 28th and hear what those guys were talking about. So, so it's because of that kind of true and well-documented facts and stories like this and many more that, uh, tell a story completely different from what I've always heard that the first chapter of my book is called Challenging the Creation Myth. Um, so I want you to be forewarned. Many of the stories I'm about to tell are not the stories that you're used to hearing in AA about AA's early history.

6:14

Moderator But they are supported in my book by 416 informational footnotes at the bottom of the page, and 1,570 citation endnotes in the back of the book. So if you wanna know where I got that quote or if you wanna know where I got that fact, it's completely, uh, referenceable, uh, in, uh, in the, in the book. And, uh, and please, if you can find any kind of information, any hardcore documents from that time that contradict what's in the book, I would be the first guy who would wanna know about that. Uh, the problem is where do, where do all these errors in, uh, in AA history that I'm alleging, especially the early AA history, actually come from? Oh, there he is. There he is. There's our guy. Um, now a bunch of people when they read the first chapter of my book, if they don't... Some people, I've been told, don't even finish it because they think I'm bashing Bill Wilson. I'm talking about his fallibility as a human being, and most especially the fact that he, uh, he just, he just wasn't, wasn't telling the truth all the time.

6:43

William Does that mean that Bill Wilson was a liar? No, it doesn't mean that at all. It doesn't mean that, anything even close to that. Bill Wilson was a great storyteller. He was a fabulous storyteller, but he was a terrible, terrible historian, and there's a number of reasons for that. Um, the first one was, uh, he, you know, when, when we tell our story, even when we tell our story in AA meetings, there's no messing, taking the messy details out, you know? You wanna tell a coherent, entertaining, with, uh, story with a message. So, so we take out all the messy, the messy details. And one, like one, one fact to this, I note that in, in, uh, in Bill's writing about going to see the, what, what turned out to be AA number three, they say, he literally says the very first guy that he and Dr. Bob went out to talk to got sober. Got sober right away. Didn't happen that way. There was at least two g- at least two guys that didn't get sober before they got Bill Dodson sober. So, uh, that happened over and over and over again.

7:12

William I mean, certainly- The story I tell when I tell my story is, uh, is, uh, I think it's probably a little bit more heroic when it, th- than the story I told when I was 90 days sober. So, uh, no messy details. Uh, Bill was a, a, a willful myth maker. He, uh, he, when he was telling stories, he was telling stories to make a point and, and, and to, and, and to actually help people see the way to staying sober. He's a willful... So why did he tell the story about Bill Dotson being the very first, he says the very first guy. Why did he tell that story? He told that story because, uh, uh, three reasons. It, it was significant that it was the very first guy. It was revolutionary that it was the very first guy. And most especially, the thing that he and Dr. Bob had discovered together was repeatable. That was the message, was that this thing is repeatable. If you deliver the message in the right kind of package, guys get sober, and that's a beautiful thing.

7:38

Moderator And I really want to spend a little quick time on this mythical discourse. It, the, m- a myth is the truth of the narrative in this sense does not arise from the correspondence of the words or sentences to reality, but from the coherence of the story as a whole. Um, and here's a pass it on. This is a conference approved book. I'm not the only guy saying this. This is a conference approved book. On pages 237-38, the author says, "Bill was never reluctant to stretch a fact for the sake of emphasis." Nope, never was. Uh, he often spoke in metaphor, uh, rather than relating ac- uh, incidents as they really happened. And, uh, he never was likely to pass up the opportunity to deliver a parable when he thought it could do some good. That's what we're talking about. Bill Wilson wasn't telling lies, he was telling parables. Bill Wilson was trying to sell a, a, a message that, uh, that, that, that needed this kind of delivery system. You like that? Yeah. Bill Wilson was not a good historian. He was a man of vision, a grand, uplifting, universal, deeply spiritual and life-saving vision.

8:07

William He wasn't preaching salvation in this world, but he was preaching salvation, uh, in the next world. He was preaching salvation in the here and now. Now, I said that Bill's vision was grand, uplifting, universal, deeply spiritual and life-saving. Uh, so just to be clear, uh, I, I, I want you to realize I, I'm not bashing Bill Wilson and I'm not bashing AA, and I'm not, certainly not bashing the program of recovery. But I want to be clear about what my understanding is of the basic vision, the central message that I see in the first 164 pages of our big book that Bill Wilson was constantly driving home. I think there's two nutshell, in a nutshell, this is what Alcoholics Anonymous is, is, is saying. Premise number one, if you're a real alcoholic, then you have no defense against the first drink. And I'm very clear in my book that I think this was one of the most brilliant things Bill Wilson ever put together.

8:33

Moderator And if, if he's got any claim for genius, and I do think he does have claim for genius, I think this idea that you have no defense, you got no booze in your body, and you're still gonna pick up that first drink no matter what. Sooner or later you're, you're, you're gonna do it. Premise number two. Oh, oh, no defense, except there is a solution. A vital spiritual experience can successfully stand between you and the next drink. Now, I know, and you all know that there's a lot more involved in getting that spiritual experience and getting to that point where you've got something that gets between you and a drink. But in my opinion, those are the core teachings, the core beliefs of Alcoholics Anonymous, and that's what it says in the book. So Wilson's a willful myth maker. He's also into, uh, he's also into, uh, this whole, uh, self-deprecation thing. I mean, he just did it all the time. I mean, Bill knew he had an ego and, uh, and he, he, he really worked against it, uh, through a lot of his life. Um, I mean, let's face it, one of the...

9:03

Moderator He, he admits it in AA Comes of Age. You know, he was thinking of calling it not Alcoholics Anonymous, but the BW movement. Well, I mean, how big an ego you gotta have to be doing something like that? But so he, he had an ego and he knew he had an ego, and he worked actively to reduce that and, and to, he fought against it most of his life. Now, the, I think the real problem though was that when, when, when, when this thing took off, all of a sudden everybody started thinking Bill Wilson walked on water. He was, he was the guy who got me sober. He was the guy. That man saved my life. Without that man, I'd be a dead man. And, and people started just worshiping, worshiping him. I mean, they, they were coming at him like a, they treated him like a, a god at times. And I don't know how this man dealt with it, especially through the last two decades of his life, that kind of worshipful, uh, you know, it's like, like being a, you know, a mega rock star today.

9:30

William You know, nobody, nobody really pays attention to you as a human being. We're, we're only paying attention to you as the icon. So Bill was deliberately self-deprecating, uh, in, in his talks, and you hear it over and over and over again. Uh, he was always telling stories on himself. He was telling stories really about how human he was. The problem was that he kind of, kind of tilted the scale in, in the wrong direction because a lot of people would think that, that Bill Wilson was, uh, was something of a... Well, the word I'm coming to mind so quickly- Is one I shouldn't be using on this recording. But I think you know what I'm talking about. So, um, self-deprecation is, uh, is, is something that messed up a whole bunch of things in the, in the stories. Uh, Bill left out a whole bunch of, of un- uncomfortable facts when he told his stories. I mean, the, the, the, the seeds that Alcoholics Anonymous grew out of was the Oxford Group, and, uh, and he wasn't talking much about the Oxford Group.

9:58

William And he wasn't talking much about the Oxford Group because, because the Oxford Group didn't have a great reputation in 1938, and there was a lot of people who had, had to push back against the Oxford Group. So he didn't mention that. And, uh, one of the more, one of the most uncomfortable facts that he didn't mention was all the details and credit that should have gone to Hank Parkhurst. We'll get to that. Because Hank Parkhurst, who was his right-hand man in New York, drank six months after the book was published. So that's a pretty, that's a pretty uncomfortable fact, you know? You can't, you can't be blowing smoke at a guy who is not, um, holding up his end of the bargain by staying sober. He's not a great exemplar. So he, uh, Hank, uh, makes some, uh, some appearances in, uh, in, uh, AA Comes of Age, but, uh, very, very, very minimal. And last but not least, he had a bad memory for dates. Um, now this isn't just Bill Wilson we're talking about. The, these, uh, some of these things apply to a whole bunch of people.

10:27

Moderator Ruth Hock, for instance, who, who's written a, a... They exchanged letters, for instance, in 1955 about what was going on in the early days. And, uh, and, and Ruth admitting that she has a terrible memory for dates on one thing, but she got all kinds of, all kinds of details completely wrong. I mean, just completely wrong in these letters. Um, Jim Burwell, the New York atheist, one of the early guys to get sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, uh, wrote a thing called The Evolution of AA. He gave a speech in 1947, and then it was typed up and rewritten and edited and, uh, circulated in 1948. And there are so many mistakes in that thing that it's, that it's just unbelievable. Uh, it's really, really, really hard. You're doing, you're, you're f- if you're trying to tell a historically accurate story, you're fighting rear guard all the time. Um, I, I, I, I continually stumbled over things that, that, that contradicted stories I've been told for over 30 years in Alcoholics Anonymous, and it was shocking at times for me to have to backpedal and try and figure out if what I was reading was accurate.

10:57

William And if so, how can I fit that into, into a credible story that I'm trying to tell here about early AA history? There are, however, alternatives to Bill's parables and myths. There are primary documents, and there are thousands and thousands of them. You can find them at the GSO archive in New York City, Stepping Stones in, uh, uh, in Westchester, the Rockefeller archive also in Westchester. Brown University has the greatest temperance collection in the world, to my knowledge, and they have a whole bunch of stuff on, uh, AA, uh, AA history there. Akron and Cleveland have, have archives that have in- great and interesting information. Um, I, uh, one of the, one of the, one of the problems, one of the challenges, one of the issues with, um, GSO and Stepping Stones is they, uh, they have a policy that you can't copy anything. You can't throw it in a copy machine. "Can you give me a copy of that document?" No, you can't do that.

11:22

William The Rockefeller archive, you go there, you can, you have to fill out, um, really lengthy kind of, uh, request forms and pay 25 cents or 50 cents a copy, whatever it was, but you can at least get copies of things. So I spent hours and hours. I tried dictating things and then dealing with them afterwards, and that just wasn't working for me, wasn't working for my style of, uh, of investigation. Um, so I ended up typing every word on every piece of paper in the GSO archive from 1937, 1938, and then half of, uh, the first half of 1939. That document's over 400 pages long. Um, and I was doing the same kind of thing at Stepping Stones. So I ended up all these bits and pieces and fitting them together in a c- credible and coherent story is like doing a jigsaw puzzle. And that's what I felt like. I like to say I was a detective in the archive, um, stumbling over neglected clues, bits and pieces of facts, and things that just didn't line up with many of the stories that have been told for decades about early AA history.

11:49

Moderator Sometimes they fit, and sometimes they didn't. And sometimes there was these amazing large holes. So for instance, Lois' 1937 diary has 70 pages ripped out of it. It's the only diary, uh, that there's missing pages for. And, uh, and the missing pages are, were missing, uh, before Lois, uh, sent, uh, a copy of that down to, uh, GSO, uh, from Stepping Stones. Um, I have no idea what was going on with the ripped out pages. Uh, but most especially when we talk about there, the, uh, in October of 1937, I said that was the first time they said, "Hey, we should write a book. Hey, we should write a book." Uh, that was at the Akron meeting, the so-called famous counting noses meeting, uh, in October- Of 1937. And, uh, I mean, what's interesting to me about that meeting, and I, I talk about it at length in the book, is that, uh, Bill always told the story about him being up there with, sitting around with Bob and Ann, and they got some more guys from Akron to come in, and they did a vote and it was 10 to eight.

12:17

William It just barely passed, blah, blah, blah. Well, in Lois' diary, Bill, Roe Dillon and his wife Kathleen come down to Brooklyn, pick up Bill and Lois, drive them up in the middle of Pennsylvania. The next morning, pick up Fitz Mayo on the way to, uh, Akron and, um, and there's another couple up there, uh, uh, a, a brand-new guy in AA from New York. So Bill didn't just go up to Akron for this, uh, this big meeting where they, where they decided the future of AA. They're gonna, they're gonna have a string of hospitals. They're gonna have paid missionaries, and they're gonna write a book. That's what they approved at that meeting. Um, he didn't just go up there and deal with Akron people. He brought power. He brought some, some votes from New York that he'd already, uh, already, uh, secured. So Lois' diary has all these details about being picked up and the, the two days of going up to Akron, and then the next four pages, the next four days' entries are torn right out.

12:45

William And then the next page that shows up, she says, "So Sterling Parker and his wife drove us down to Newark, and we had breakfast at Childs, and then we went over to Brooklyn," and that was the end of it. So I have no idea what was on those four pages. I don't know if, uh, Lois didn't like what she wrote after the fact, and she, she thought it was a little too snarky about somebody at the meeting. I don't know. Or maybe it contradicted completely the stories that her husband told later. Lois was a very, uh, a very, uh, loyal wife. Almost all of the stories that Lois told directly parroted exactly what, uh, what Bill had been saying. So I, man, I would love to know where those 40 pages went and what it said, especially. Another large hole is that, uh, Hank Parkhurst lived with Bill Wilson for 10 weeks in early 1939. And, uh, this is, this is, this is right before the book goes and gets printed and published.

13:10

Moderator And, and there's paper trails between these two guys before this and immediately after this, but there's nothing for those 10 weeks between Bill and Hank because they were living in the same house. They were sitting down to breakfast every morning. They were just talking. And so here's another case where I would love to have been a fly on the wall to know what was going on with Bill Wilson and Hank Parkhurst during these critical 10 weeks in early 1939. It's a black hole, and we're never gonna get that one back. So what happens when I look behind the curtain, when I start putting together all these facts and trying to weave them into a coherent story? Um, I gotta tell you, it's just awesome to be able to watch the AA program of recovery evolve over this time period because there was get-- they were getting real serious about, about crystallizing it and putting it on paper. Um, for instance, the first typed version of the chapter, "There Is a Solution," was a full 37% longer than the version finally printed in the Big Book.

13:37

William And, uh, uh, if you have my book or you get my book, that entire early typed version of the, of "There Is a Solution" is, is included as Appendix Three. Um, but I mean, I really, really enjoy reading that. Now, it doesn't really change the message of what's in our book for "There Is a Solution," but it, it's really interesting to see some of the, some of the, the, the bad writing, I think, more than anything else. There's, there's-- In my book, I talk about one particular paragraph that covers about nine topics in one paragraph, and it's, it's just, uh, it's just a mess. The question that I am most frequently asked is, uh, "So what was the most surprising thing you uncovered doing all this research?" The most surprising thing was this man here, Henry G. Parkhurst. I am convinced that the only accurate description of this man is to call him the forgotten co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Uh, he's been all but written out of the story because he drank again. He drank six months after the book was published.

14:06

William And, uh, for other reasons, Hank did not go gently into the night after he started drinking. Uh, Parkhurst has been so forgotten, this guy doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. And I don't know how many people are on this call at the moment, but I don't know how many people on this call have ever heard of, uh, 361. Thank you. I don't know how many people on this call have even heard of Hank Parkhurst. But let me tell you, no Hank, no Big Book. Just as, just as black and white and clear as that. Um, this man is so central to the story of how the book was written that I was, I was just flabbergasted. I was flabbergasted. I, I keep tripping over him as I was going through this thing chronologically, as I was looking at the records that people were, uh, uh, giving me to, to read through at the archives. Um, so let me just go through some- Bullet points here on Hank Parkhurst on why, why he was so important. Uh, he convinced Bill to write the first two chapters of the book.

14:33

William That was in late May and early June of 1938, and Hank needed them because they, they, they hadn't been able to raise any money. They just, they, they, they, they couldn't get anybody to, to, to sit down and get the checkbook out. So, so Hank, uh, Hank thought that if they had the two chapters of the book, There is a Solution and Bill's story, and they were printed in that particular order, that, that he could put it up in a nice promotional package and send it out to people and get, get really good, um, interest generated and hopefully get appointments with important people who would, who would, who would give him a thing. So, so he, he really talks Bill into writing the first two chapters of the book. While Bill's creating the chapters of the book, Hank creates an outline of the book. As soon as he's got the two chapters done, he's done an outline of the book. And again, that, that, uh, I think that's, um, that's, that's... It's a fascinating thing to look at.

15:01

Moderator It's a short thing but it, but, uh, but again, I included the entire outline of the book a- as appendix five in my book because I, I was just so, uh, knocked out. I can remember the day we're in Stepping Stones archive. My wife, a lady, Sarah, is working with me, and we're going through things, uh, individually and she says to me at one point, she said, really excited, she said, "William, William, William, you need, you need to look at this." And it was this one-page outline that Hank Parkhurst had done for the outline of the book, which I had heard about 'cause he me- Bill mentions it in a letter to Bob Smith. But I had never seen the outline and, uh, and there it was, the outline of the book. So we, we, we included that in the book. Uh, Parkhurst, his fundraising schemes forced Bill to start writing the book again, uh, in September of 1938. Between mid, early June and Sep- September 15th, no writing of the Big Book. They're out trying to get money. They're trying to get testimonials. They're down running around at Johns Hopkins University and other places.

15:30

William They're doing everything they can do to get people to pay attention to them, get out the checkbook, and give them money. And they don't. So Hank Parkhurst comes up with this scheme, and the scheme is this. We're gonna get an article written in one of these Sunday supplements that has millions of copies sent around the country, and it's gonna be about AA. And at the, at the bottom of the story, we're gonna say, "Listen, the book isn't written, but we're writing this book, and if you want to send us $1, we'll send you five chapters of the book." That was Hank's scheme. And he says to Bill, "Look, we only got two chapters and, you know, what am I gonna do? Uh, uh, there, nobody's gonna cough up a buck for two chapters. We need five chapters in the book, so you need to start writing this book again." And on S- September 15th, 1938, Bill did because Parkhurst is lighting a fire under his butt. Uh, Hank Parkhurst wrote the chapter to employers.

15:57

Moderator Um, Hank Parkhurst wrote a proposed Q&A chapter, which is one of the more fascinating things in AA history that I uncovered. Uh, there's a copy of this chapter down in, uh, the GSO archive in New York. There's 20, I'm sorry, there's 15 typed pages, and it's got, uh, 94 Q&A things on it. Now, obviously, this never made it into the book and, uh, but it was circulated. He, he, he, he, he wrote it up and he sent it around. He sent it around to a couple of guys that he's, for, for, he was looking for feedback and the, and the feedback, uh, the only real feedback we've got in the archive, there's one or two typed up, uh, comments on it, but they, both of them came from guys that Hank Parkhurst was basically sponsoring at the time. So, uh, so that was the Q&A chapter. Um, and Hank, Hank, Hank was the guy single-handedly who insisted that they publish the book themselves.

16:23

Moderator Now, you know, they were made, they were famously made this offer by, uh, by a, a big publisher in New York and, uh, and offered $1,500 and, uh, and Hank was the one who said, "We have to control this book." Can you imagine, can you imagine if this, our book, published in 1939, was controlled by Harper Brothers and, and Harper Brothers was, you know, asking for, uh, "We need this thing to be, uh, revised and updated so we can get more sales by having a revised edition of the book." Um, Parkhurst was the guy who absolutely insisted that they, and he convinced Bill and that by the time, this time they're, they're working with the Rockefellers. In, in August of 1938, they had set up a, a foundation and the Rockefeller guys, these, these guys that, uh, were very, very close to John D. Rockefeller Jr., uh, they were, they were, they were 100% against Bill and Hank publishing this book themselves, 100%. They wanted them to take the 1,500 bucks and run.

16:47

William And there was a whole bunch of reasons that Hank had for why they shouldn't do that, but most especially he th- he said, "If this is gonna be the foundational work for our, our growing society of sober people, we need to control that." And, uh, people in AA should give, uh, thanks forever, I think, to Hank Parkhurst for being able to convince Bill Wilson to go along with him on that. Hank Parkhurst hired the two editors of the book. I always thought there was just one editor of the book. Tom Husul is a guy who gets mentioned with some regularity when people poke around AA history. But, uh, there was a woman named Janet Blair. Oh, there we go. Some woman, they just didn't pay attention- her at all. But I mean, there's correspondence between Blair and Hank Parkhurst and Blair and Bill Wilson that's really, really interesting on the things she did when she edited the book, and I try and talk about that as much as I can in the book. Uh, Hank edited the stories in the back of the book.

17:14

William If you go up to Stepping Stones Archive, there's six handwritten stories, three from New York, three from Akron, handwritten stories that, that Hank is, that Hank is s- I mean, one of the stories, um, one of the stories by Myron, um, um, I forget Myron's last name, at the moment, but Myron from, uh, New York City, was a 15-page story, and Hank slashed the first seven pages. Just slashed it. And, uh, so he did all this editing on the stories in the back of the book. I know that he worked on those six stories. I don't know what, what other stories he might have worked on because they haven't been preserved. Those are the only six we've got. Uh, Hank recorded most of the in- So they did a multilit copy in February of 1938. It was a pre-publication copy of the book to see what people thought of it and what comments and critiques people wanted to offer, and they got a ton of them. You can see all the handwritten changes and notes in the book that started it all, published by Hazelton. It's a facsimile of that marked-up multilit copy.

17:43

William And you can also note in the upper right-hand margin, I think it's the upper right-hand margin, it is signed off by HGP, Henry Griffin Parkhurst. He's the guy approving these things. And perhaps most important, Hank's the guy who adds four new paragraphs to Bill's story, um, and it's, it's all about the second step. It's, you know, that whole, that whole thing about, you know, you can choose your own conception of a God. And then Bill, Bill has that, that, that, that, that, in, in the multilit, it's under, I mean, in the, uh, in the book it's, uh, it's, uh, it's italicized. He says, "You know, all I needed to start was to, was to have some idea of a power greater than myself." And Parkhurst, in, in, in, again, the, the book that started it all, you can see that handwritten in, and that is in fact Hank Parkhurst's handwriting. Hank Parkhurst was constantly argued about what should and shouldn't go into the book. He was he had very definite ideas. He, he did an 11-page document, handwritten document in June of 1938.

18:12

Moderator Bill wrote at the bottom, "Hank's ideas." Bill did not agree with most of Hank's ideas. But, uh, uh, Hank, you know, we got two alpha males here in a small office at Hunter Dealers in Newark, New Jersey. I mean, I just can't imagine how that stuff was working over there. Hank wanted a psychological book rather than a religious book, and he fought, he fought with Wilson about this all the time. He was always arguing for the psychological perspective rather than a religious perspective. And once in a while, he actually won, and when he won, he won big time. For instance, higher power was one of Hank's... That's what, thing he's lobbying for. Power greater than yourself was one of the things he lobbied for. God as we understand him was one of the things he lobbied for. And then I think most shocking, again, this place came up late in the thing. I found this, this document in, uh, I found this document in Stepping Stones where he literally forced Bill to make the changes suggested by Dr. Howard. The, it's a memo and he says, "Look, Bill, you gotta make these changes.

18:41

William You gotta make, Bill, you, we got to." That's, Dr. Howard was getting all the, you know, the book was written in a very you thing. You have to do this. You have to do this. You have to do that. And Dr. Howard said, "Alcoholics, they're not gonna stand for that. You need to change that into we. This is what we did. This is what we did." And Wilson didn't want to change that at all. He was, Wilson, Wilson didn't like changing stuff he'd already written. And, uh, and Hank writes this memo 17 days before the book is published, and he says, "Look, if you don't change it, I'm gonna put together a committee," and he names all the guys who are gonna be on the committee, "and we're gonna change it before we publish the book." Bill Wilson, having no choice, changed the book. So I can't say this too strongly. No Hank, no big book. Now, here's our other major player here. Um, this was one of the most shocking things to me, is Bob Smith was not a co-founder of AA.

19:11

William Um, and I'll explain why I say that and why I think that and why I do believe that. First of all, the first instance I can find of that term being applied to Bob is in 1947. It appeared in the Grapevine when they reported on the 12th anniversary meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Um, granted, in the, in the 1945 when they had the 10th anniversary meeting out in Ohio, uh, they talk- they called it Founders' Day, plural. But there was no, they didn't actually use the phrase co-founder. But they did use it in 1947. I said this is, this is not to say, you know, this is not in any way to denigrate, uh, what Bob W- Bob Smith was doing. I mean, Bob Smith was getting way more people sober out in Akron than Bill Wilson was in, in New York City. Smith was certainly one of the key players in early history, and he had... But, but he had little or nothing to do with the writing of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Um, it's, it's just, it's just shocking to me, uh, how little input he actually had to that.

19:38

William You know, um, Bill kept sending him, uh, copies of these chapters and, uh, and, and he wasn't getting anything back. For instance, on November 9th, 1938, we're talking, we're talking- This is late in the game here. He says, complains to Dr. Bob and he says, uh, he wished that he would be more critical of the chapters, "For I think they could be improved a lot." You know, s- Bob, Bob's writing back and saying, "Well, that's really nice, Bill. We really like that." Uh, and then when Bill was talking about, um, uh, he, he ... There was a, a recording he made in 19, uh, 54 called, uh, he called it AA Main Events. He was prepping for, uh, writing, uh, Alcoholics of Age. He says, uh, "Despite the fact that each of these chapters was sent to Ohio for debate and inspection, Dr.

20:00

William Bob never passed them around very much, merely writing me saying he thought they were all right." Uh, and then in ACOA, A- Alcoholics Comes of Age, um, so he says, "Despite the, his repeated requests for checking and criticisms of the proposed c- chapters," Akron offered him, quote, "Nothing but the warmest support." Which means they weren't giving him any bloody feedback at all, and he was, uh, he was really not happy with that. Uh, this is not just my opinion about Dr. Bob. I did a formal interview with, uh, Kevin Hanlon and Dan Carracino, the two men who made the Bill W documentary that came out in 19, uh, 2012. Uh, we did that in 2013 with Ernie Kurtz. Ernie Kurtz, of course, is the dean of AA historians. He's a Harvard trained PhD, and his book, Not God, was written 41 years ago, published 41 years ago, and it's still selling. It's a great history of Alcoholics Anonymous. But he said, "Some people are going to shoot me for what I'm going to say right now, but Dr. Bob isn't really a co-founder of AA.

20:28

William Bill needed a co-founder so that he wouldn't be thought of as God, and he adopted Bob into this role, and I think Bob had the spirituality and the psychological smarts to realize this and to go along with it. A person with a much better claim to be a co-founder of AA would've been Hank Parkhurst. Hearing that, people in Akron are probably rending their garments right now, so I hope the tailors in Akron will send me a commission." And, uh, the, uh, the entire, uh, transcript of ... We, we filmed him for three and a half hours. We cut it down to 30 minutes, and that's called A Reverence For History, and you should be able to find that online. Over the years, this whole co-founder thing makes me nuts. Over the years, Bill Wilson constantly muddied the words by granting co-founder status to several people. Again, he's, he's doing this self-denigrating thing. He's trying to take the spotlight off himself. He's trying to, trying to, trying to lower his status in, in, in, in, in the eyes of the people he's dealing with constantly in Alcoholics Anonymous. So Dr.

20:56

Moderator Bob Smith, he, well, he was a, he was a co-founder. Anne Smith was a, Bob's wife, was a co-founder. Uh, Dr. Silkworth was a co-founder. Sam Shoemaker was a co-founder. Sister Ignatia was a co-founder according to Bill Wilson. William James, the guy who wrote The Varieties of Religious Re-, uh, Experience and died, I believe, in 1912, uh, but was a very important book for Wilson. He di- uh, he was a co-founder. I, I think it's really interesting and, and I would love to check with, I never asked Mike this question, uh, but I don't think Bill ever said that Lois was a co-founder, and I find that interesting that, that, that, uh, it's not in there. No Loi- no Lois in the co-founder list. And rightly or wrongly, there's several other people who claim co-founder stat- status for the ... Once this thing gets going, you know, you've got co-founders every place. Um, Henrietta Seiberling. She was very clear that she was a co-founder. Uh, Frank Amos called himself a co-founder. It, it actually says he was a co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous in the obituary that was published in The New York Times.

21:25

Moderator And we, anybody who knows anything about Clarence Snyder knows that Clarence Snyder said that he was definitely a co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. So let's just, I just got a little bit of time here. Let me go through some of the, some of the myths that I, that I encountered as I went through my research. Uh, one of them is that 100 men wrote the book. No, Bill Wilson wrote the book. Another myth is that the member, AA members fought over every paragraph. They even fought over every word of The Big Book as it was being written. Uh, yeah, were there big fights? Yeah. There were big fights over, uh, over this book, but it was really between Bill and Hank Parkhurst and Fitz Mayo. Hank was arguing for a philosophical book, a ps- a psychological book, and Fitz Mayo was, was looking for an explicitly religious book. And, uh, it was no contest. Hank Parkhurst was, uh, you know, he's often described as a high, uh, high-pressure salesman. You know, "One of the most high-pressure guys I, I've ever met," is what Jim Burwell said about him.

21:52

William And Fitz is a little bit on the, on the, you know, he gets, uh, he gets beat up and beat around. And, uh, it was, it was a no contest. I'm, I'm, I'm not sure just, uh, I'd like to have been a fly on the wall during some of those arguments. But they didn't happen in meetings. They happened in the Newark offices of Honor Dealers. Uh, this is a great one. Bill, Bill keeps saying, "Oh, I was, I, I was just the umpire. I was just the umpire." Wrong. I mean, Bill Wilson took suggestions from people before he started writing, I understand that, and I think he took suggestions for, for, you know, adding things into the book after chapters were, were read. But Bill, he hated, he hated to change anything once he had written it. Um, another myth. Dr. Bob and the Ohio AAs helped to write The Big Book. Again, I touched on this before. I was reading those direct comments and, from letters that Bill Wilson sent out to Bob in, uh, in, uh, 1938. The Ohio members contributed almost nothing to the front of the book. Almost nothing.

22:20

William And as a matter of fact, most of them were actively opposed to the front- The project. And there's really some great documentation on how actively opposed to the whole project they were, believe me. Um, here's another myth. Altruism was the primary driver for getting the book written and published. Bill Wilson, Bill Wilson was definitely on fire to get people all across the country sober. I mean, he was, he was almost messianic about it. But the fact of the matter was, money was the primary driver. Hank talked him into the first two chapters so that they could have a promotional package to raise some money, and he talked him into starting right again in September 15th of 1938 so that they would be able to get this money-making scheme with this magazine article that never got published and, uh, um, they, they, they never got those little trickle of one dollar bills that they were thinking they were gonna get so many of. Money was really the, the primary thing that actually drove the writing of the book. Um, and this is kind of what I want to close on.

22:47

Moderator Um, this is before, this is a myth. Before there were 12 steps, there was a six-step program. There is no, no contemporary evidence whatsoever for a six-step program. Uh, this was the most perplexing and difficult thing for me to unravel, uh, when, when I, when I wrote Bill's story about how he wrote the 12 steps. I mean, I started, I got to the point where Bill, he wrote, like, writes the 12 steps in the beginning of, uh, December 1938 and, uh, uh, it was just, it was, it was painful. It took me six full months just to write that one chapter. Um, and, uh, so you ask, what was the problem? It should have been easy. Bill famously told the story over and over and o- and over and over again about how he went upstairs. He had, he, he knew he had to do something. It was time. He went upstairs with, uh, one of his famous imaginary ulcers. This happened to him with some regularity during these years.

23:11

Moderator He picked up a yellow pad of paper, and he started with the original six steps, and he broke them down into the new 12 steps. The problem was that once I started looking for verified sources for that story, they were nowhere to be found in contemporary documents. Nowhere. Nobody was talking about six steps. Nobody was listing things that fit the six-step model. Uh, in fact, the first record I can find of Bill Wilson ever telling the story about there being six steps before there were 12 steps was May of 1949. That's over ten years after he actually wrote the steps. Worse yet, the first time he tells the story about the six steps, he says that Ebby delivered them to him, fully realized when they had their initial meeting in November of 1934. That was the first time he told the story in May of 1949. Subsequent stories, uh, he said he always claimed that those original six steps had gradually evolved within the fellowship.

23:34

Moderator So he's got these two storylines about where they came from, and he changed it from Ebby giving it to him perfectly packaged to, uh, to it being an evolu- evolutionary thing that, that came out through trial and error. Now, AA was in fact a trial and error program before the, the book was published, believe me. But, uh, as far as I can tell, if the six steps had been around since 1934, Ebby had delivered them to Bill in '34, or if they had evolved over time as more and more people stayed sober, then you could reasonably expect to find evidence of those six steps in, uh, in, in contemporary documents. And this is where I, this is where I started stumbling. I started looking for this thing, and it... not only were they not there, but there was contradictory evidence that there was never anything like that at all. Uh, you would imagine you could find it when Frank Amos, Frank Amos is one of the Rockefeller guys. Uh, they had the, they had the, the first time they meet the Rockefeller people is December of 1937.

24:00

William Following February, two months later, Frank goes out to Akron to check up on Dr. Bob, make sure that what they're hearing is, is true. And he sends a, sends a long report. It's called, you know, the Akron report. And, and, and in that, he talks a lot about how the meetings were run, and he, and he has a seven-point program for what these people are doing to stay sober. It doesn't correspond on any level whatsoever to, uh, any level whatsoever to the six steps. I mean, it hits a couple of them here and there. I mean, it mentions, mentions meditate. You have to meditate, for instance, according to this particular scheme they were running in Akron. If you're, if you don't meditate, you're gonna get drunk. Uh, they did mention that. So, I mean, does that qualify as, um, being, uh, a half a step of the 12 step? Uh, I don't know. Uh, there, there's multiple versions of Fitz. Fitz may have a story as, uh, our Southern friend, which is still being published in the Big Book, all four editions.

24:27

Moderator But the, there's a number of editions, there's a number of versions of, of Fitz's story at, at the Stepping Stones Archive, and it's just amazing how things got morphed around. Uh, the first time, first time Fitz tells a story about someone approaching him at Towns Hospital and telling him that there are people on the streets and drunks on the streets of New York working around sober. Uh, and he says, "How do they do that?" He gets straight Oxford Group. It's four absolutes and blah, blah, blah, blah. But by the time Fitz writes his story and it shows up in the Mukilith printing, all that stuff is gone, and it much close, much more closely reflects what's going on in the 12 steps. But there's no mention of the six steps Whatsoever in Fitz's story. Uh, Hank did this proposed Q&A chapter. I told you there was, like, 15 pages of that and 94 questions. No six, not even close to six steps. Uh, and then of course, in the back of the, in the back of the red book, when the book is first published, there's 30 personal stories.

24:56

William Guys talking about how they got sober. There's no evidence of the six p- that pro- any of those primary sources. Now, clearly people were staying sober in 1930, and the question then is how? A careful reading of those 30 stories reveal the following common elements of how people got sober. They say, "We admitted we were lit." A whole bunch of them, uh, um, I don't know why I didn't do a percentage on this, but, but, you know, if there's 30 stories probably 40% of the stories or 50% of the stories make mention of something, the, uh, the equivalent of surrender or, uh, being powerless over al- admit you're lit. You can't, you can't do it by yourself. And then surrender your life to God. Almost all the stories, about 90% of them actually say this almost very, very explicitly. And, and then there's all this mass of different things that people mention in passing. Prayer and meditation and helping others, but I don't know, I don't know how to characterize that. You know?

25:23

William So I just say, "So here's the things that people were doing." They admit you're lit, surrender your life to God, and act accordingly, whatever that is in your particular sphere and every particular light. Um, no evidence of six steps. Bill Wilson wrote the 12 steps in the first week of December 1939, and immediately after he finished the 12 steps, he wrote chapters five... He couldn't write chapters five and six until he had the 12 steps, 'cause that's what they're all about. I mean, it starts right off after the 12 steps with, you know, with, uh, three, and it runs all the way through, uh, 11 at, at the end of, uh, into action. So December '39, he writes the 12 steps, and then he writes chapters five and six immediately after that. The manuscript was done and went to the, went to the first editor at either on December 31st or January 1st, um, of the next year. Oh, I've got 39 there. It's 38. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Wow. Bad typo, Shaver. Okay. If that's the worst problem I got with this presentation, I'll be a very happy guy.

25:51

William So where did the 12 steps come from? If we didn't have six steps, where did 12 steps come from? Um, I'm missing a slide here, guys. Damn. Okay. I don't know what happened there. Um, I've got some notes here, so give me a second while I just, uh... In January of 1948, that's 16 months before Bill Wilson first told that story of six steps, uh, he was on the train going down to Washington, DC. They're doing a, um, a memorial for Fitz Mayo, who had died in 1943. Actually, I looked that date up today. He died on October 4th, 1943, which is my birthday. I didn't know Fitz died on my birthday. Uh, but they're going down there. Paul Hennessey, he's a lawyer. He's got his assistant with him, and, uh, they're talking and he says to Bill, uh, "So, you know, nobody's ever told me where the..." This is 1948. He's giving a talk on Fitz Mayo. And, and he says, "You know, nobody's ever told me where those 12 steps came from, Bill. Where did the 12 steps come from?" And Bill Wilson says, this is a quote.

26:21

William Now he, he types this thing up, sends it to Wilson for, for his approval, and in the approval letter that he sends him, he says, "Now, you and I have talked on the phone about this. I just wanna make sure. Somebody needs to write this down, how these 12 steps got formed, and here they are. So, uh, I, I'm, I'm keeping a copy here and here's a copy for you to put in the archives." Which is, that's what I found in the archives. So he says, um, Bill Wilson said, he explained, you get it in third person. This, uh, when this lawyer wrote this thing up, he said Bill Wilson explained, quote, "How the pioneers in AA thought and prayed their way through to recovery." And then he noted that some, uh, the noting that in those days, alcoholics were, this is quote, "Alcoholics were obliged, one, to admit they were powerless over alcohol. Two, to make the, an inventory of his own character. Three, to put trust in God. And four, to work with other alcoholics." Four step program.

26:48

William And this is continuing the quote, this document that Bill Wilson signed off that this is what he told, this is what he told Paul Hennessey about where the 12 steps came from. Bill said, quote, "As it stood, this program needed clarification. Bill sat down and began to figure out the various phases of his own recovery. Setting them down on paper." Setting down what? The various phases of his own recovery. "He found that there were 12 separate and distinct steps." This, to me, is not just credible, it's confirmed, it's confirmed by any careful reading of Bill's story in the Big Book. Where there's no evidence of anything like the six steps or the 12 steps in the other 30 stories, if you look at Bill's story, which was written seven months before he wrote the 12 steps, it was written at the end of May 1938. Bill wrote the steps in December '38. He wrote his story seven months before the 12- steps. And that story explicitly, exclusively mentions 11 of the 12 steps.

27:13

William And if you don't believe me, you know, go to pages 11 through 13 of Bill's story and have a pen in hand or a pencil in hand and you can start numbering them. They're all there. Um, the second step is missing because it was added at the last minute by Hank Parkhurst in his handwriting. So that may not be the stories that AA members are accustomed to hearing, uh, but they're the stories that get told once all the primary documents get fitted together. And that's the story you're gonna find in my book. I, uh... It's a long book. It's got a lot of stuff in there. There's a tremendous amount of detail. I was just skimming through it to try and, uh, try, you know, figure out what I could fit into this hour presentation, which I see I'm running over a little bit. Um, so if you'd like more information on my book, I've got a website called writingthebigbook.com. That should be easy to remember. Writingthebigbook.com. If you go there, there's a three and a half minute video of me talking about the book.

27:43

Moderator There's a table of contents you can take a look at and see exactly what's going on in the book and what, what timeframe it covers. Uh, there's a sample chapter of the book if you want to see if you, if it's the kind of thing you might want to read. I've got chapter eight in there. It's a nice long chapter about there is a solution. There's a lot of, uh, revolutionary, contradictory, myth-busting stuff in that particular chapter. I didn't want to put in something that was a little on the side for that. Uh, there's seven reviews by AA historians, and there's a handy link for Amazon so you can order the book. Him too. Um- Thank you. Thank you, Bill. I remember him saying he had a sponsor, and his sponsor wasn't a book. Right. You're on mute, Mike. You talking? Is that me? I was... I, am I- Mike- Hello? Patrick, you're still muted. All right. I, I'm trying to get un-muted. I think I'm good. Everybody else should be on mute, I hope. Thank you, Bill. Can you guys hear me? Can somebody wave and let me know if you're hearing me? Great.

28:14

Moderator Okay. Hey, thank you for joining us. We had 360 people on tonight. This meeting is recorded. It will be on Recovery Speakers later this evening if you want to share it with any of your friends. Bill will be back with us next week at 9:00 PM Eastern, 6:00 Central, to do Q&A. We've recorded some of the questions that you've asked through the chat, so we'll address those. Bill will get a copy of all of those. Any emails that you want to send, you can send to Tim at Recovery Speakers and he'll make sure that Bill gets that information ahead of time so that he can address your questions. Again, I want to let Bill know we appreciate him and his time tonight in sharing his work with us. I hope you will pick up a copy of his book if you haven't done so already. Um, and if you do it this week, you're gonna have more questions to ask him next week. I will guarantee that. And, uh, in closing, I just want to... You know, Recovery Speakers has a lot of rare, really cool recordings.

28:42

Moderator We're gonna be doing meetings like this every Friday night. We'd love to have y'all join, but we're gonna close this meeting with Bill Wilson and Mike Wallace sharing the Serenity Prayer. So Tim, can you play that for us, please? I wonder if he would be kind enough to repeat for us the Serenity Prayer used by AA, Bill. God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change. Courage to change the things we can. And wisdom to know the difference. Isn't that wonderful? Sure is. Not just for, not just for AA. God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change. Courage to change the things that we can and the wisdom to know the difference. I think the description of the prayer, as Bill said before, is that it's like a tent, that it encompasses and covers all of it. Thank you so much, Bill, for being with us. Again, our great thanks to you people. And God bless you in your work. All right. Thank you. I think you can still hear me.

29:09

Moderator And I just want to let you know that you can subscribe at Recovery Speakers or by sending Tim an email at tim@recoveryspeakers and we'll send you out a featured, uh, recording every day. Until, uh, next week, thank you for joining us. I think Tim's gonna unmute you so you can all kind of give, uh, Bill Shabergh a hand and thank him for being part of tonight. Thank you, Bill. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. Thank you. Great job, Bill. Thank you, Bill. That was amazing. Thanks, Bill. We'd love to have y'all join, but we're gonna close this meeting with Bill Wilson and Mike Wallace sharing the Serenity Prayer. So Tim, can you play that for us, please? I wonder if he would be kind enough to repeat for us the Serenity Prayer used by AA, Bill. God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change. Courage to change the things we can. And wisdom to know the difference. Isn't that wonderful? Sure is. Not just for, not just for AA. God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change.

29:36

Moderator Courage to change the things that we can and the wisdom to know the difference. I think the description of the prayer, as Bill said before, is that it's like a tent, that it encompasses and covers all of it. Thank you so much, Bill, for being with us. Again, our great thanks to you people. And God bless you in your work. All right. Thank you. I think you can still hear me. And I just want to let you know that you can subscribe at Recovery Speakers or by sending Tim an email at tim@recoveryspeakers and we'll send you out a featured, uh, recording every day. Until, uh, next week, thank you for joining us. I think Tim's gonna unmute you so you can all kind of give, uh, Bill Shabergh a hand and thank him for being part of tonight. Thank you, Bill. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. Thank you. Great job, Bill. Thank you, Bill. That was amazing. Thanks, Bill.

The following is an AI-generated transcript. Minor errors may occur. The audio is the authoritative source.

Writing the Big Book — William H. Schaberg — Tuesday Night History Workshop — June 5, 2020

Writing the Big Book — William H. Schaberg — Tuesday Night History Workshop — June 5, 2020

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