Bill S – Working With Others – 9-8-2026

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Source Bill S - Working With Others - 9-8-2026.m4a File: bill-s-working-with-others-9-8-2026.mp3 Duration: 01:28:08

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Moderator Welcome to the Tuesday Night Recovery Speakers History Workshop. Thank you everyone for joining us tonight. My name is Tim, and tonight's presentation is led by author of Writing the Big Book, The Creation of AA, William S., and tonight's presentation is Big Book History number seven, Working with the Others, and we meet here every Tuesday night at the same time using the same Zoom ID number, and next week we will have JS returning, and he will be presenting live from Dr. Bob's home, and his presentation will be going through the coolest books in Dr.

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Moderator Bob's library, so looking forward to next week as well, and this meeting is being recorded. The audio from tonight's presentation as well as all of our past presentations are available through recoveryspeakers.org, and I'll be sharing a link in the chat to where you can find those recordings, and Recovery Speakers is a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to preserving and sharing the audio history of AA and the 12-step fellowships. Our archives include thousands of recordings, many transferred from original reel-to-reel tapes and cassettes, and this preservation project is made so the voices and stories are not lost, and they will continue on for the next generation, and if you would like to receive our special feature speaker of the day, please send me a message in the chat or send me an email at info at recoveryspeakers.com, and I will get you added to our email list, and for tonight's presentation, when Bill is done with his slideshow, we should have some time for questions. We'll see how late this runs, and if he cannot get to your questions, I'm sure he would be open to having any emails of any questions that you'd like answered, and so if you have questions, write them down and be ready to ask later on, and that is it for me. I am going to turn it right over to Bill for working with others. Thank you, Tim. Thank you. I appreciate being invited here tonight.

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Unknown Thank you, Mike, for the invitation. Today I want to do this presentation on the backstory and the history of working with others. I've been trying to build up a library of presentations on all of the chapters of the Big Book. I've still got a couple to go, but anyhow, this one is Big Book History No. 7, Working with Others, and it's a long presentation, so let's get going. I'm going to break this presentation down into five major parts.

2:32

Unknown The backstory of the chapter is No. 1. Then I want to talk about the changes that were made to the chapter before it was actually published. I want to talk about what it says in this particular chapter. It's always a fruitful thing, I think, to actually know what's going on in these chapters and how it's all put together. I want to talk about the fact that I believe this to be what I call the moral psychology chapter, and then I want to talk about what Bill Wilson thought once he had finished this chapter. Okay, so that's our layout for tonight.

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Unknown So the backstory for this chapter, we've already explored in the presentations I've already done the history of Chapter 4, We Agnostics, in Big Book History No. 6, and you might expect that following that, the next thing I'd be talking about is Chapter 5, How It Works. But Chapters 5 and 6 were the last two chapters that Bill Wilson wrote, and he wrote those in December of 1938. So once he had finished We Agnostics, the next chapter he wrote was Working with Others.

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Unknown So that's what we're going to keep it in that. The only way it makes sense to me is to do these things kind of chronologically. So that's why we're going from, we're skipping over 5 and 6. We're going from 4 to 7 here. So since Chapter 5 and 6 were the last two chapters written, I'm going to deal with those in a later presentation, the chapter that Bill wrote immediately after finishing We Agnostics in September of 1938 was Working with Others.

4:05

Unknown And there's a really good reason for why Wilson was immediately moved on to Working with Others as the next chapter in his book. What he wanted to do was to talk about and to add the third and final key element as he understood the key elements to be essential for any successful program of recovery from alcoholism. So as already noted in past presentations in this series,

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Unknown There is a Solution, which was written in early June of 1938, outlined the first two key elements of three in the program of recovery. Number one, Wilson's brilliant diagnosis of the problem. What's the problem? What's the alcoholic's problem? The alcoholic's problem is if you are a real alcoholic, you have no mental defense against the insanity of picking up the first drink. That's Wilson's brilliant diagnosis of our problem. Number two, the second key element, Wilson's proposed solution to that particular problem. He says, look, if you can get yourself, you got no mental defense, but if you can get yourself a spiritual defense against that first drink, and you need to do that to stay sober, you do that by establishing a personal relationship with a providential God of your choice. So he didn't start writing again. He wrote those things in June, early June of 1930. He didn't write anything else until mid-September of 1938.

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Unknown And then the next chapter he wrote was more about alcoholism. Well, there's a real logic to that because that chapter was entirely devoted to the first leg of this recovery stool, his diagnosis of the problem, with several examples showing the real alcoholic, how he has no mental defense against the first drink. That's the whole point and purpose of the chapter of mine, more about alcoholism, is to do a four-part harmony on that claim that he made in there is a solution. And Weagnostics builds four-part harmony on exploring the offered solution, explaining in detail how to obtain the necessary spiritual defense against the insanity of picking up that first drink by forming a personal relationship with the God of your choice. Again, that's what Weagnostics is all about, second leg of the stool. Going forward, it was essential for the recovering alcoholic to keep this dialogue, I'm sorry, this diagnosis of the problem firmly in mind. Remember, got to remember, you have no mental defense, no mental defense against the first drink, and it was equally important that the recovering alcoholic continued to enlarge his spiritual life.

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Moderator Let's not forget my favorite story in the entire big book about Jim who put the whiskey in his milks, and he supposedly had that slip because he quote-unquote failed to enlarge his spiritual life. But beyond this diagnosis of the problem and the spiritual solution to that problem, there's still one key element missing that needed to be added if, in fact, a newly sober man was going to stay continuously sober, and that was working with others. So that's what Wilson's going to talk about in the next chapter he writes. This was something that Bill had mentioned explicitly in his May 1938 story, which was written before there is a solution. And in that story, he said, I soon found that when other, all other measures failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day. Many times I had gone to my old hospital in despair. On talking to a man there, I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet. It is a design for living that works in rough going.

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Moderator Bill knew that it was now time to devote an entire chapter to this fail-safe element in the program of recovery. When all other measures fail, work with another alcoholic to save the day. In other words, when you know you've got no mental defense and you've been really working on your spiritual, you might have even had a white light experience a little while ago, when those two measures fail, what are you supposed to do? Go work with another alcoholic.

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Unknown That's what's going to save the day and keep you sober. So working with others was the essential part of the solution from the very start. This isn't something he invented when he got to writing this chapter in September of 1938. As Dr. Silkworth wrote in his 1927 letter, telling of Bill's early recovery, he said, as part of his rehabilitation, he commenced to present his conception to other alcoholics, impressing on them that they must do likewise with still others.

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Unknown And this was not just a New York belief. This was going on, and there's a whole bunch of stuff, dissimilarities between what was happening in New York. This wasn't one of them. In the Akron report in February of 1938, clearly stated, this is something Frank Amos put together after a visit to Akron, Ohio, he says, the alcoholic must be willing to help other alcoholics get straightened out. This throws up. Why are we doing this? Because this throws up a protective barrier and will strengthen his own willpower and convictions.

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Unknown And then he also stated, Frank Amos, who wrote that report in February of 38, he wrote a letter to Albert Scott in October 4 of 1938, and he says, every alcoholic to be sure of remaining permanently sober must keep active working with others for their emancipation. Otherwise, they definitely face a recurrence of the disease with death or the insane asylum as

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Unknown their destination. And again, as noted in Bill's story written in late May of 38, I soon found that when all other measures fail, work with another alcoholic would save the day. So finally, it should be, as it said in the opening lines of working with others. Now, this is as it appeared in the multilith copy. We'll talk about this in a minute or two, but this is the first opening line of the chapter. Oh, practical experience shows that nothing will so much ensure your own immunity from drinking as intensive work. Nothing will so much ensure your own immunity from drinking as intensive work with another alcoholic. It works when other spiritual activities fail, as we're going to see that word spiritual that appeared in the multilith copy was edited before the book was published. So if Wilson wanted to present a clear and complete picture of what the suffering alcoholic had to do to get sober and then stay sober, he most certainly had to write a chapter in this book devoted to working with others.

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Unknown Although claiming that Bill, he claims in coming, he says, you know, he wrote chapters five and six immediately after he finished Weigh Gnostic. This was not the case and is already noted. How it works and inaction were the last two chapters written, and Bill couldn't have written them until he wrote the 12 steps. And he didn't do that until early December of 1938. So after three months, but after three months of inactivity, he writes two chapters, Bill's story, there is a solution. Now he starts writing again on September 15th, 1938. And on September 27th, just less than two weeks later, he starts writing, man, Bill Wilson's cranking this stuff out.

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Unknown He sent a very rough original dictations, he called them, of more about alcoholism and Weigh Gnostics to Dr. Bob Smith. So these are the two things that go into four part harmony on two legs of that stool that are necessary for sobriety. But then on November 3rd, just five weeks after that, he sends Bill his heavenly revised versions of those two chapters. Unfortunately, we do not have copies of this. We just have his letter saying, I'm sending you these two revised chapters, along with first drafts of three new chapters. November 30th, he sent a new chapter, three new chapters. November 30th, sending them off to Dr. Bob, three new chapters. And what are those? Working with others, the family, to wives and the family afterwards.

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Unknown So I'd like to talk about the changes that are made to this chapter as we're going along. Now, because the earliest version that we have of working with others is to be found in the pre-publication multilith copy that was done in mid-February of 1939, just weeks before the book was published on April 10th of 1939. And we have no way of knowing what Bill wrote in those earliest versions. They just weren't saved. They got lost someplace in the shuffle. Or what changes he might have made after he sent those things to Dr. Bob and before the multilith copy was printed.

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Unknown But when we look at the marked up multilith copy, with all the suggestions made for changes to working with others, it's clear that the New Yorkers had quite a lot to say about what they wanted to see changed in this chapter. There's all kinds of suggestions made here. Less than two months before the book was printed, the multilith copy is released to ensure that they print this thing on a printing press, the kind of rough looking things, if you've seen copies of them, or perhaps even owned one, to ensure that no grave errors in the text of the big book would go out in the finished product. So they were sending it out for review, critique, and criticism. So the copies were distributed to all the sober alcoholics, to doctors, psychiatrists, ministers, priests, for review, comments, and corrections. Suggestions came in from many quarters, within and without the program, many of which were taken, and many of which were rejected.

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Unknown Hank Parker, Bill Wilson's right-hand man in New York City, with his office over, his honored dealer's office over in Newark, New Jersey, Hank gets all these suggestions coming into him. He's the consolidator. He writes them all down in one single multilith copy that's held in his Newark, New Jersey office. Now there was a tremendous amount of potential controversy between Akron and New York in relation to Bill's diagnosis of the alcoholics problem, and most especially in all his talk about the proposed solution. In there is the solution more about alcoholism and we agnostics. But New York and alcohol were pretty much in lockstep agreement on how to successfully approach a new prospect for the fellowship. So you would imagine there would be, there wouldn't be many suggested changes, whatever that Bill might find, you know, be suggested for his first pass on writing with others. But that would be completely wrong.

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Unknown I find it truly surprising, if not a little unbelievable, that so few suggestions were made to improve we agnostics comparatively. Suggestions Were Made to Improve We Agnostics Comparatively, a chapter in which the fellowship

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Unknown had very different views and very contentiously different views, while Working with Others, a chapter talking about something on which there was almost universal general agreement, generated a whole host of suggestions for changes. Working with Others takes up seven pages of the multilith copy, and there are many suggested changes made for changes, suggestions made for changes to this chapter. And this can be seen in the facsimile copy published in 2010 by Hazleton, the book that started it all.

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Unknown This is what that fabulous book looks like, just a treasure trove of reference for anybody interested in early Alcoholics Anonymous history. And this is what it looks like. So we're just going to run through these seven pages, and you can kind of note, you don't need to know the specifics, but just look at the changes on these. So there's a bunch of things here on the first page, Working with Others.

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Unknown The very bottom left-hand corner, it says HGP, that's Henry Giffen Parkhurst. He's in charge of this deal at this point, and he's approving that page, that's the way it stands. Here's the second page, the third page, lots of stuff going on. Oh, whoa, some stuff really going on here. Yep, yep, yep, yep. And then all kinds of notes that Hank sticks down at the very bottom here. That is all Hank Parkhurst's handwriting.

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Unknown Now the most prominent and certainly the largest suggested change to this chapter is noted by the word sugar written across the top of three pages. The first page, page 41, or in the green pencil, 45, Working with Others, says sugar. Two pages later, page 47, says sugar. Page 49 says sugar. So what's this sugar thing all about? What's going on with that? The handwriting is Hank's, and it refers to his belief that mention must be made about how helpful eating sweets can be to the new man.

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Unknown You got these cravings for some booze, man, go eat some chocolate or something. That's the whole deal. He clearly was pretty insistent on the need for adding this to the book, writing it across the top of three of those pages. But this isn't the only mention of sugar in the annotated multilith copy. On the blank page before the forward, there's a blank page before the forward to the book, Hank wrote some notes to himself on changes that needed to be made to the book.

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Unknown And this is what that looked like, you know, one, two, three, and then about how about the Alcohol Foundation set up. And this is what this is. So number one, these are the three important changes he wants made. Number one, business chapter should be rewritten. Number two, correct for minor errors. Number three, psychological urge or necessity urge to drink, eat chocolate, dash, indefinable urge to do something, grab a hunk of chocolate.

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Unknown So the three most important things he wants to change in the big book, he's going to rewrite his own chapter, the one to employers, he wants to correct for minor errors, and he's got to get this chocolate thing in some place. Later, at the very end, chocolate doesn't make it into working with others. At the very end of the multilith for two Ys, Hank's still harping on this sugar thing. And this is the last page of that, he says, go back on the sugar pages, we're going to be doing that sugar thing.

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Unknown Finally, he does get his way with an insertion that he insisted had to be added to the family afterwards. And this is what that looks like. You can see that word sugar, and there's a big carrot, an insert carrot on the left hand side. And then there's, and then it was going to go between those two paragraphs where sugar is written, but then he decided, no, it should go up one more paragraph, it should go in the middle of the next paragraph.

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Unknown So now there's no copy of a handwritten text for this sugar one insert. It's not anywhere in the corrections made in the multilith copy. But if you look at the bottom of page 133, in your big book, continuing to page 134, in exactly that right spot, you're going to find this text. One of the many doctors who had the opportunity of reading this book in manuscript form told us that the use of sweets was often helpful, of course, depending upon a doctor's advice.

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Moderator He thought all alcoholics should constantly have chocolate available for its quick energy at times of fatigue and thirst. He doesn't really say that explicitly. He added that occasionally in the night, a vague craving arose, which would be satisfied by candy. Many of us have noticed a tendency to eat sweets and have found this practice beneficial. So finally, finally, so he never did get his sugar advice included in working with others or to wise, but he did finally get it inserted two chapters later into the family afterwards.

18:59

Unknown But let's go back to the other changes suggested for working with others, many of which were taken and many, many, many of which were not. More than just a few of these were changing the very directive you that Bill had originally

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Unknown used throughout his writing of the book and for the more suggestive we. I froze up there. Sorry about that. More than just a few of these were changing the very directive you that Bill had originally used throughout his writings of the big book to to the more suggestive we that was insisted upon by Dr. Howard. Dr. Howard was all about it was like, you've got to stop telling people what to do. You just can't tell alcoholics what to do.

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Unknown You can tell them what you did that worked. You can make suggestions along the line of something that worked for you, but don't don't don't do that. You, you, you, you punching people in the chest with your finger, you, you, you. And there was a ton of changes made in that regard. Hank Parker forced those changes on Bill Wilson just weeks before the book was published. Others are much more substantive.

20:07

Unknown So I mean, here's the again, I told you that that the word spiritual was taken out of out of this thing. And I, quite frankly, of all the of all the edits that I see in the Methodist copy that were made to the text of our big book before it was published, this is the one I'm saddest about because I really I like the identification of working with others as being explicitly being a spiritual activity.

20:34

Unknown But book got edited out and why did it get edited out? And so at the very top of the page, what does it say at the very it's got a big arrow there from from the cross out of the spiritual. And because the 12th step, we're going to take it out of this this chapter because the 12th step on page 27 already says having had a spiritual experience as the result of this course of action. So whoever decided to take that out thought it was redundant with what was said in the 12th step.

21:06

Unknown Doesn't sound like a valid argument to me, mainly because I like the I like that identification of working with others as a spiritual activity. Just before this, remember they are fatally is changed to very ill because doctors will shoot. Okay, changes there. Doctors won't like that. And the wonderful the kick you will get is tremendous is deleted in the much more sober life will take on new meaning is put in its place.

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Unknown That's right. You see that's crossed right out. The kick you will get is tremendous. On the second page, we see where Dr. Howard says delete. Dr. Howard's kind of all over this thing. He really had a whole bunch of suggestions that were very important and very successfully incorporated into most of the text. And here's what he didn't. Dr. Howard says delete that. So what gets deleted? What Dr. Howard says get rid of if doctors or psychiatrists pronounce you incurable, be sure to let them know, let him know about it.

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Unknown What he's basically saying is, you know, you've been seeing a doctor, he says you're incurable, you go to AA, get cured. You got to go back and rub this doctor's nose in it. It's not a good ploy. Doctors don't want to be doing that. There's another interesting deletion on the fifth page. There's a whole sentence completely taken out. And what's the sentence? Burn the idea into the consciousness of every man that he can get well, regardless of anyone.

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Moderator And then this was taken out. No person on this earth can stop his recovery from alcohol or prevent his being supplied with whatever is good for him. Bang, gone. The only condition is that he trusts in God and clean house. Finally, on the sixth page, we see these substantive edits. There's all kinds of stuff going on there. Whoa. And it's like have any legitimate, they change it to good social business or practical reason for going to this place.

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Unknown Getting rid of completely this line, the sentence that says, am I going to be helpful to anyone there? Could I be more useful or helpful by being somewhere else? Boom, got rid of that. Hank's suggestion for what should be substituted for that deletion is found at the bottom of the final page. And here's Hank's, you know, Hank was a, he was a free thinking guy and a free writing guy. So this is what he wrote.

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Unknown And so, so Hank's much edited handwritten suggestion was taken. And the thing I just told you got deleted. Am I going to be helpful to anyone there? Could I be more useful or helpful by being somewhere else? Has now been replaced with, or am I expecting to steal a little vicarious pleasure from the atmosphere of such places? Which can still be seen on pages 101 to 102 of your big book today. As mentioned earlier, Parkhurst recorded many, many, many more possible edits to this chapter, which should be of interest to any serious student of how the text of the big book changed prior to its publication on April 10th, 1939.

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Unknown But I, I think those that we've already talked about provide a good idea of just how substantive several of those changes actually were. We're talking substantive changes, people. So I'd like to move on and talk about what it says in the chapter. I think it's important to note there are two very different, very, very clearly different sections in this chapter as it was printed in the big book. The first 37 paragraphs give explicit directions on how to approach a still drinking prospect,

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Unknown while the final 11 paragraphs shift gears completely and talk about what the newly sober man is capable of doing out there in the world. So there's really two massively different sections going on in this, in this chapter. When writing the chapter on working with others in my book, in my book, when I wrote writing, writing, you know, writing the big book, I had planned to open that particular chapter, working with others, with a story that I'd heard repeatedly, repeatedly over the years in Alcoholics Anonymous.

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Unknown As Bill was packing to go to Akron, sober five months in April 1935, he complains to Lois that in the past months, he hasn't been able to get even one person sober. To which Lois Wilson supposedly replied, well, that's not true, Bill, you stayed sober. I mean, could there be a better story to open a chapter called in Alcoholics Anonymous, working with others than that particular story? Man, unfortunately, there is no evidence, no evidence whatsoever, that this is that that lovely story is true.

25:39

Moderator But it's such a good story that it gets, I bet you I hear that in meetings six times a year, all the time. Both Bill and Lois report that Wilson's insight about working with others did not come from something she said when he was packing, it first came to him as he was pacing the floor of the Le Favre Hotel in Akron in April of 1938. Here's perhaps Bill's best retelling of that particular story. Alone, now in the hotel, I paced up and down the lobby.

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Unknown There was a bar at one end, a church directory at the other. Into the bar, I finally walked, actually walks into the bar with a vague idea that I'd buy a bottle of ginger ale. Maybe I could scrape up an interesting acquaintance. Suddenly I got scared to death. I realized this was the beginning of the usual rationalization which led me to the first drink. The insanity of picking up the first drink. Walking back and forth between the bar and the church directory, my panic increased.

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Moderator My panic increased. The pull of the bar became terrific. I was suddenly, I was really tempted this time, but still I could think straight. What should I do? What should I do? What should I do? I realized, I suddenly realized how much helping other alcoholics had helped me, even though none had got well of themselves. They didn't get sober, but I got sober. This is the essence of that story, supposedly the packing to go to Akron story.

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Unknown I'd have to find an alcoholic in Akron and find them quick, Bill said. Now this is arguably, in my opinion, the most seminal moment in AA history. I mean, Bill Wilson, I go to meetings and we read this out of the book. I mean, it's brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion. Bill Wilson's pacing the floor of the Mayflower Hotel and my life hangs in the balance. Wilson walks in the bar and gets drunk.

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Unknown We're not here to talk about any of this stuff, in my opinion, people. So Wilson's growing awareness that he might actually pick up a drink was followed by this startling new insight. I realized as never before how working with other alcoholics over the previous four months had played such a great part in sustaining my original experience. And I thought to myself, I must find another alcoholic and help him so that I can remain free.

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Unknown That realization grew and became a working cornerstone of recovery in both New York and Akron, leading to this dramatic opening sentence as it was published in Working With Others. Practical experience shows that nothing, nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking as intensive, intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail. Following that dramatic opening, the first three quarters of this chapter then presents a step-by-step guide for what someone should do when approaching a likely prospect.

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Moderator We've already seen the detailed example of this in the story about Fred, More About Alcoholism. The last story at the end of the More About Alcoholism, Fred, you know, Fred's in the hospital and they go talk to him and tell him he's got a problem and he says, I got it all figured out, goes to Washington, gets drunk, loses a bunch of time flying back to New York and getting in a taxi and driving around New York drunk.

28:55

Unknown So we've seen an example of this, the guy's talking to somebody in the bed, the man in the bed in Fred's story. And that same technique is clearly described in the story of AA number three, In A Vision For You. In both of those cases, what they're emphasizing over and over and over again, you want to go read those stories, is that you've got no mental defense against the first drink and you need a spiritual.

29:24

Unknown Bill goes into a full-blown elaboration on how to properly conduct one drunk talking

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Unknown to another drunk interview. This is basically a sales pitch. Note that in 1938, new prospects were almost always found in local hospital beds. So the first 75% of this chapter is devoted exclusively to that scenario. Remember that when this was written, there was no book. There were only two meetings in the entire world every week, along with no rehabs and no answering services direct to suffering alcoholic, AA.

29:50

Unknown And that informs and colors what's said in this whole chapter. Bill says to begin with, if you don't know any active drunks, ask your doctor, minister or priest to check in with your local hospital. Make sure to know a few people over there. And very important, be sure that when you find one of these people, don't start out as an evangelist or a reformer. This is all about one drunk talking to another drunk.

30:17

Unknown You must remember that, quote, to be helpful is our only aim. As many readers of the big book have noted over and over again, Bill Wilson was frequently in his full-blown salesman mode when he was writing the book. And there's no more obvious than in working with others, where he presents his step-by-step sales plan on how to best approach the still drinking prospect. The first step, according to Wilson, talking about how working with others is how to get to know your prospect.

30:46

Unknown Well, what's that? What's he talking about there? He suggested the best way to do that, get to know your prospect, is speaking with the prospect's wife. And then once you have some idea of the man's problem with alcohol, the second step is to qualify your prospect. So you get to know who the guy is, and then you want to qualify him by finding out from the family just how willing he is to quit drinking.

31:13

Moderator He's not willing to quit drinking, you're not going to waste any time on him. Once he admits that he wants to quit for good, and that he's willing to go to any extreme to do so, he's properly qualified now, have the family tell him about the recovered man who talked to them, who would like them, he'd like to help him as part of his own recovery. And then get your guy to the hospital, get him to the hospital.

31:43

Unknown Once the man's in the hospital, step three is to have the doctor suggest a visit from you, the AA guy, you're the AA guy, right? Hopefully this professional opinion would make the man willing to give it a try. If his wife or his kids were making this suggestion, he might, you know, he'd probably been suggesting stuff for him for years, but hearing it from a doctor and a professional, hopefully he's going to have some more impact and weight.

32:12

Moderator Then comes step four, the really beginning of the sales pitch so elaborately outlined in this chapter. It starts with a proven method of one drunk talking to another drunk, the essence of which goes back to the kitchen table story that Bill always told, to gain a new prospect's confidence. So how do you go about getting somebody's confidence? Bill says you should sit down with a man and tell him about your drinking career up to the time you quit.

32:40

Unknown Don't ask him about his drinking, tell him about your drinking. Once this guy sees that you know about the drinking game, candidly tell him about your struggles to stop. So you get your credentials gone by telling your story, your drinking story, and then you start telling him a story about how difficult it was for you to stop your slips and problems as that went. Most especially, you need to tell him about the mental twist that quote, the mental twist, which leads to the first drink.

33:09

Unknown Most important, that's what you got to talk to him about. And if he is a real alcoholic, you tell him that he's a real alcoholic. He's going to understand it once because real alcoholics get it when you tell him that story. Show him from your own experience, how the queer mental conditions surrounding that first thing prevents normal functioning of the willpower, end quote. Having shared all of this personal experience, we have now reached step five, where you should be careful not to brand him as an alcoholic.

33:40

Unknown Don't tell him that stuff. Let him draw his own conclusions. If he sticks to the idea that he can still control his drinking, tell him that possibly he can. Yeah, maybe you can. Maybe you're not a real alcoholic, dude. Maybe you can do that. But insist that if he is severely afflicted, there may be little chance that he can recover by himself. Having perhaps reached this impasse, step six advises a move in a slightly different direction.

34:07

Unknown Wilson says, quote, continue to talk about alcoholism as an illness, a fatal malady, but keep his attention focused mainly on your personal experience. Again, we're not going into this guy's drinking story and this guy's drinking problems. We're talking about me and what happened to me. That's what we're doing. We're sharing our story here over and over and over the emphasis on that particular thing.

34:33

Unknown Although doctors are frequently reluctant to be so blunt about their patient's conditions and saying, dude, you know, you are not going to make it here, you, the newly sober guy,

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34:44

Unknown may talk to him about hopelessness of alcoholism. Why? Why is it different coming from you than from a doctor? Because you can offer a solution and hopefully this level of candor will catch his attention and allow him to open up a bit more. Even though your protege may not have entirely admitted his condition, he has become very curious to know how you got well. All right. All right. I may not be buying into the fact that I'm one of these guys, but you know, you just told me this great story and you're, you look like you're doing good here.

35:19

Unknown So how did that happen? Let him ask you that question, if he will, if you can set it up to lead him by the nose. So he asked the question, you know, then you win. That's good. Tell him exactly what happened to you. Stress the spiritual features, spiritual feature freely, end quote. This of course may be a problem for your prospect, but quote, if a man be agnostic or atheist, make it emphatic that he does not have to agree with your conception of God.

35:48

Unknown He can choose any conception he likes, provided it makes sense to him. The main thing is that he'd be willing to believe in a power greater than himself and that he lived by spiritual principles. That's the main thing, end quote. While the new man may be spooked by some of the requirements of your suggested program of recovery, and Wilson says it does include a drastic house cleaning, you know, could be a little scary looking at all that stuff.

36:16

Unknown His recovery is dependent upon his relationship with God, quote unquote, and quote, the only condition is that he trusts in God and clean house. Wilson's final advice on how to conclude this sales pitch is never, never talk down to an alcoholic from any moral or spiritual high top. Simply lay out the kit of spiritual tools for his, the spiritual kit of tools that work for you, that got you sober and is keeping you sober.

36:42

Unknown Show him how they work for you and offer him friends and fellowship. Tell him that if he wants to get well, you will do anything to help. And what follows this, Wilson lists some of the things that the sober man should not do with his new prospect. Don't use any theological terms, he says, that guy may know more than you do. You'd be walking right into it doing that. Don't loan him any money. Don't promise him a job.

37:11

Moderator Don't get involved in his domestic problems. Don't let him get dependent on you. I love this quote. The minute we put our work on a service plane, the alcoholic commences to rely upon our assistance rather than upon God. That's not what we're trying to do here. And don't waste any time on someone who is not interested in your solution. Having so far devoted 75% of this chapter to telling the sober man what he should and should not do to make a successful sales pitch to this new prospect of his, something that we would later call a 12-step call, Bill then shifts, dramatically shifts gears and spends the final 25% of this chapter addressing the already recovered man directly.

37:53

Unknown So we're not talking about the man in the bed anymore. We're talking about the man, the sober guy coming to the hospital. That's the guy we're talking about right here. And he tells them what he himself can and cannot do now that he is sober. Personally, I suspect that this is one of those later additions to this chapter. Because it's so radically different from everything that comes before it, I suspect.

38:20

Unknown I suspect someone suggested that section like this to Bill be added, and he agreed, feathering it in here as the most likely place for it to appear in the book. So without any warning, no warning at all, Bill shifts in this dramatic opening sentence. He says, so now he's not, he's done giving instructions to this guy on how to handle the drunk on the bed. Now he's saying, bang, so assuming you are spiritually fit, we can do all sorts of things alcoholics are not supposed to be able to do.

38:52

Moderator This jarring shift of gears and some of the advice that follows in this chapter is frequently perplexing to modern AA people. Our rule, quote, our rule is not to avoid a place where there is drinking if we have a legitimate reason for being there, end quote. An alcoholic who cannot be around booze, quote, still has an alcoholic mind. There is something about the matter with his spiritual status, end quote.

39:16

Unknown You should not hesitate to visit the most sordid places on earth on such an errand. And oh, this is a great, many of us keep liquor in our homes. Some of us still serve it to our friends, provided they are not alcoholics. But however confusing some of these comments might sound and be for 21st century readers, that section that I just went through was easily understood and vitally important to

39:39

[00 40:00]

39:39

Unknown anyone reading it in 1939. Having survived decades and decades of the temperance movement and a dozen years of the failed prohibition experiment, Bill wanted to make it explicitly clear to the newly sober guy that being a non-drinker did not mean he had to remove himself from normal American society. In short, in short, in short, Bill saying, dude, our solution is different from those temperance people and those prohibition people, completely different.

40:03

Unknown You can do all those things. Bill emphasized that we are not witch burners, nor do we insist that the recovering alcoholic must isolate himself from alcohol to be safe. Quote, your job now is to be in a place where you may be of maximum helpfulness to others. Keep on the firing line of life with these motives and God will keep you unharmed. This final section, along with the chapter itself, closes with an italicized paragraph placing the new man's sobriety squarely on his own shoulders.

40:32

Unknown After all, he says, our problems were of our own making. Those are only a symbol. Besides, we have to stop fighting anybody and anything. We have to. We have to. OK, I want to talk about the fact that I consider this the moral psychology chapter. It's noted repeatedly in previous presentations, Bill Wilson and Hank Parkhurst had significantly different ideas of exactly what a man needed to do in order to get sober.

40:57

Unknown Bill Wilson put his primary emphasis on the providential God solution, while Hank Parkhurst objected to this and constantly lobbied for a moral psychology solution. Although they did acknowledge the importance of each other's position, they also insisted on the primacy of their own understanding of the proper solution to alcoholism. Bill said it started with your personal relationship with God, and Hank says it's about this all being helpful to other stuff.

41:21

Unknown That's where it starts. Helpful leads to helpful for Bill. Helpful leads to spiritual for Hank. Working with others is perhaps the most striking example of this dual approach. There are at least 72 references in the big book to being useful and helpful to others, which is moral psychology. That's the moral psychology Hank is talking about, Dr. Silkworth was talking about. And 18 of those 72 references, a full 25% of them appear in this one chapter.

41:47

Unknown I'm going to bore you by going through them. You can help where no one else can, to see them help others. You can be uniquely helpful to other alcoholics. To be helpful is our only aim, and we haven't even gotten off page 89 yet. Who, as part of their own recovery, try to help others? Be vital. Faith must become by itself an unselfish constructive action. Why are you now endeavoring to be helpful to him?

42:13

Unknown We will try to help other alcoholics when he escapes his own difficulties. Suggest how important it is that we place the welfare of other people ahead of our own. Offer him friendship and fellowship. If he wants to get well, you will do anything to help. Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery. Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery. Discuss in an atmosphere of helpfulness and friendliness.

42:36

Unknown The alcoholic continues to demonstrate that he can be sober, considerate, and helpful. You may spoil your chances of being helpful if you do some of these bad things that he said you shouldn't be doing. Your job now is to be at the place where you can be of maximum helpfulness to others, so never hesitate to go anywhere if you can be helpful. And a final experience shows that such an attitude is not helpful to anyone.

43:02

Unknown In short, this is the chapter where the primary emphasis is on how to be useful to others, the very essence of Hank Parker's moral psychology argument with Bill Wilson. So I don't think it's an exaggeration. I really don't think it's an exaggeration to say that in the end, Bill got his God solution chapter, which is we agnostics, and Hank Parker's got his moral psychology solution chapter, which is working with others.

43:30

Moderator That's a nice tidy package, people. I like that. So last section, what did Bill think once he finished this chapter? So I just, I started working on this working with others presentation a couple of years before I gave it the very first time. And I was just, man, I was just completely, I really struggled with it. I stalled out for a variety of reasons. But the primary reason was the more I looked into the history.

43:56

Unknown I became convinced that I had completely missed the full importance of what Bill Wilson thought

44:01

[00 45:01]

44:01

Unknown he was doing when he wrote Working with Others. I gradually became clear to me that having finished those three explanatory chapters on that three-legged stool I've been talking about, once he did that, once he had More About Alcoholism, We Agnostic, and Working with Others, the solution that he had promised, and there is a solution that Bill Wilson felt that he had now clearly and completely explained the pathway to recovery and sobriety to the suffering alcoholic.

44:28

Unknown He thought he was done based on what the people in New York and Ohio were actually doing to stay sober in 1938. He'd done a good job of talking about those things that they were doing. This is what we did to stay sober. One, two, three. What, what, what? Whoa, whoa. Do you mean to say that those three elements, that's all there was to the program of recovery in 1938? Well, yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. No 12 steps? Nope. Didn't have any 12 steps yet. Not when this chapter was written. There were no 12 steps in November of 1938. Just those three essential elements. Now, you won't find that striking claim in my book.

45:11

Unknown That's because something, you know, it's something that's become undeniably obvious to me since the book was published six years ago. When I was struggling with this presentation for a couple of years, I realized that this was my problem. I just hadn't seen with any kind of clarity what the devil I, what seems very clear to me what was going on here. Now, you would think that after 11 intensive years of research and writing that I wouldn't have missed something as important as that in my book. Well, you just have to realize that doing history, even in the most scholarly levels, there's doing nothing but primary document research here. It's like trying to finish a 500 piece jigwood puzzle without having all the pieces of the puzzle.

45:57

Moderator And there's always more to be revealed. Sometimes people find a new document. Sometimes I look at the stuff I've been looking at and I see it differently. I saw some stuff differently today when I was running through this presentation earlier in preparation for doing it tonight. You get a little, it's a long presentation. I'm not sure we'll get to that. But anyhow, more is always going to be revealed. Corrections and additions based on several later discoveries, at least one major one that Mike helped me with, we say, he helped me with it because I had it wrong. Most contemporary documents that I had not known about earlier got shown to me, have already been added to the latest printing of the Rigg book. But I want to be clear that this most recent insight about the program originally being just those three essential elements and having been successfully presented in those three chapters does not appear in my book.

46:53

Moderator Okay. However, as I dug more into the history of all the chapters written up to this point, it became 100% clear to me that Bill Wilson felt he had completely presented the program of recovery once he'd explained those three elements as they were then being practiced in Afrin and New York. Sometimes you got to take three steps back and you can suddenly see a new pattern in a way that fits the pieces of the puzzle together, presenting a much more accurate picture of quote unquote, what really happened. This new picture of what really happened is based on, so then I, is that true? I thought to myself, so I started going back and looking at the primary document that we're talking about pieces of paper that were written and typed up and sent to people in 1938. What really happened is based on solid contemporary evidence. What's the evidence?

47:44

Moderator What's the evidence for my claim that Wilson thought he was completely done when he finished with presenting the program of recovery when he finished working with others? First of all, there's several November 1938 letters. I'll talk about them one at a time. There's stories and all the stories in the back of the first edition of the big book and the chapters that Bill Wilson wrote immediately after he finished working with others. All those things taken together support this contention that Wilson thought he was done when he finished working with others.

48:17

Unknown There are, first of all, four November 1938 letters that only make sense, only make sense. I couldn't believe I drove by this stuff. They only make sense once we admit that Bill Wilson felt he had done explaining the program of recovery once he had finished writing, working with others. The 12 steps, as we shall see, were an afterthought that came to Bill in the first week of December. But in November 3rd letter to Dr. Bob, November 3rd, this is a month before he starts writing the 12 steps. He says to Bob, I hope to get out there on the first December for a week or two. I'm going to be done. I'm going to bring the manuscript out there. We're going to talk about it. We're going to get some feedback from you guys because you're not giving me any blind feedback. So I'm going to be out there in the first week of December. Well, that didn't happen because the first week of December he was writing the 12 steps and then he had to write chapters five and chapter six. This is one very striking, elusive piece of primary document evidence that Bill thought he would be finished before the end of November. But he wasn't finished until the very end of December, more than eight weeks after that. Hank Parkers also claimed that

49:35

[00 50:04]

49:35

Moderator they were just about done with all the writing of the big book at that same time. In a November 7th letter, four days after Bill's letter, he writes a letter to Janet Blair. She's one of the two book editors. Tom Usal is the big dude editor and she's the woman who's doing all this refining stuff. Janet Blair. He writes her a letter on November 7th and he wrote, according to the schedule, Mr. Wilson should be through with the first write of the book by December 5th.

50:07

Unknown Well, December 5th, 6, 7, 8, somewhere in there was the day Bill Wilson started writing the 12 steps. So in those two early November letters, both Bill and Hank said that the book would have been finished and the program of recovery would be fully explained by the end of November. Charles Townes also provided solid confirmation that he had been told by those two guys that all the chapters of the big book detailing the program of recovery were complete in November of 1938.

50:33

Unknown Two letters. November 16th, he writes to Henry Ford asking if he would be willing to write a forward to the book. And in that letter, Charles Townes tells Henry Ford that he notes that the manuscript of the book is November 16th. It's now ready for the press. We're ready to go to press, we're ready to go to press, dude. Charles Townes also wrote in November a letter to the American Medical Association setting forth his observations on our work and enclosing in his November letter, the enclosing the last chapter of the book, which is a vision for you.

51:08

Unknown So in November 1938, Bill Wilson, the author of the book, Hank Parker's the daily critic and editor of the book, and Charles Townes, the man who was funding the writing of the book, all agreed that the big book would be done by the end of the month. There's also a wealth of circumstantial evidence to support this. I mean, none of the stories in the back of the first edition printing of the big book, which were all written in late 1938, early 1939, say anything even remotely like the 12 steps. Or for that matter, like those mythical six steps. The program of recovery offered in those 29 stories in the back of the first edition of the book can be boiled down to three common elements. In my opinion, you read all those stories and pull out the stuff that what they said it was important to them to get sober. And it comes down to admit you're late. Oh, oh, no defense against the first drink. Yeah. Surrender your life to God. Get yourself a vital religious experience.

52:07

Unknown And number three, act accordingly. What's act accordingly? Help others pray and meditate. That's what I get out of those 29 stories. When I read them, I try to pull out what they're trying to tell me they did to stay sober and get sober and stay sober. And those are the things that I see in all of those stories over and over again. Sound familiar? The final piece of circumstantial evidence that Bill thought he had conclusively explained the program of recovery once he had finished writing with others is that he now felt free to move on to some other outside issues. I'm done with talking to the alcoholics. So now what do we do? Ah, oh, yeah. The other two new chapters he sent after working with others to Bill Bob were exactly that on November 3rd. He said, oh, now we're going to talk to the wives and now we're going to talk to the family afterwards.

53:03

Unknown So Bill Wilson really did believe that the big book presenting the program of recovery was completely and comprehensively done by November 1938. But, but, but, but, but by the first week of December 38, as I said repeatedly, Bill had begun to worry that his presentation of the three critical elements of the AA recovery program was just too loose, he called it, and easy for alcoholics to quote unquote wiggle out of. The program of recovery needed to be much more concrete and specific, he decided, than those three, about just those three essential elements he had so carefully elaborated and more about alcoholism, we agnostics and working with others.

53:38

Moderator If there was going to be any chance of people actually getting sober, something much more detailed was clearly needed. Now here's Bill's own story about what happened next. He says, that particular evening, this particular evening, as my mind ran over these developments, seemed to me that the program was still not definite enough. It might be a long time before readers of the book in distant lands, places and lands could be personally contacted. Therefore, our literature would have to be as clear and comprehensive as possible. Our steps would have to be more explicit. There must not be a single loophole through which the rationalizing alcoholic can wiggle out. And so, Bill Wilson expanded on his original presentation of the program of recovery by writing the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous,

54:22

[00 55:02]

54:22

Unknown along with how it works and into action, the two chapters explaining how to work those steps, you can't get chapters five and six without having the steps as the base of what they're talking about. Bill then shoehorned the 12 steps in those two new chapters into the big book between we agnostics and working with others. And he, you know, in chapter five, he says, well, now we've reached step three. Well, that's because one and two have already been covered in more about alcoholism and we agnostics. And then at the very end, we got working with others right after step 12. Unfortunately, that's only one third of the 12 step. He doesn't, nowhere in the book do they explicitly talk about having had a spiritual awakening that was originally experienced as a result of these steps or practicing these principles in all our affairs.

55:13

Unknown So, because he already had this ready-made chapter. And while that covers the 12 step, we're good. We're good. I think this is perhaps Bill Wilson's finest hour, personally. What had previously been a rather loose open-ended program of recovery centered on those three basic concepts now became a set of 12 very, very specific actions that people should take to get sober. And those 12 steps neatly incorporated the three essential elements that Bill and I so carefully articulated in more about alcoholism. You have no mental defense against the first drink.

55:44

Unknown 12 step, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. Powerless, powerless. Admit you have no defense, no mental defense. We agnostics, you need to get yourself a spiritual defense against the first drink. Made a decision to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God and having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. And in working with others, when all else fails, work with another alcoholic, we tried to carry the message to alcoholics.

56:10

Unknown But in these newly written 12 steps, these three essential elements were now greatly expanded into 12 specific actions that needed to be taken. Specific actions that were rather grandly prefaced by the claim that, well, here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery. Well, if you say so, Bill, the question of exactly where Bill got all those extra details that he put into the 12 steps is complicated, complicated in the extreme, and plays no direct part in today's story about working with others. But if you are interested, I've dealt with those complicated questions in another presentation that can be found online, Big Book History Number 16, Challenging the Six Step Story.

56:49

Moderator But what is of primary importance, or at least what is extremely important and of interest to me, is the shocking realization that when he finished writing with others in November of 1938, Bill Wilson thought he had fully explained the entire program of recovery with the three basic elements detailed in those chapters already written. And I consider that pretty bloody amazing. No? Thank you. Thanks so much, Bill. That was amazing. And we do have a few minutes here for any questions. If anyone has a question for Bill, please raise your hand, and I will call on you to unmute and ask your question. Please use this time for questions only and not comments. And our first for questions only and not comments. And our first question is from Maureen. You can unmute.

57:33

Moderator Thanks, Tim. Thanks. Thanks, Bill. Good to see you. My question is, on page 133 in the Big Book, who is the Dr. Hanks referring to with, and I was gobsmacked with sugar because I didn't know where sugar came from. I had no idea. And the other thing is with you honing in on the suddenly, and I don't know where the quote came from, but I once heard that suddenly is the sound the obsession makes when it strikes. Maureen, I would have to go get my book on page 133. I don't know what we're talking about here. Oh, where he talks about the candy.

58:09

Unknown Oh, the doctor, you mean the doctor that gives that advice, the sugar advice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no idea. No idea. I suspect Hank made that up just, but I don't know that for a fact. Please, please don't quote me on that. I'm just, I keep saying things off the top of my head, I get in trouble when people tell me I said that later. But my suspicion would be that Hank Parker's made that up. I have never.

58:38

[01 00:18]

58:38

Unknown But I think it's better, I will stand by this, I think it's a better than 50-50 chance that Hank Parker's just wrote that, you know? Maybe some doctor told him, maybe he didn't tell him, I don't know, but you know, I don't think it was beyond Hank to just make up a long paragraph like that and put it in somebody else's mouth, because he thought it was really important, thought it was really important, like, you know, go buy some Hershey's Candies, you know, and you know, get ready to pop them if you're getting thirsty, you know?

59:17

Unknown It does help, it does help, you know, alcohol is a, alcohol gets turned into sugar immediately in our bodies, and so it's, it's not, there's some, I think there's some crazy advice, especially in two employers, medical advice, but I mean, I don't think that candy thing is a bad piece of advice at all, I think it's important that it's in there, I agree with it, my experience. Thank you. Thank you for the question, Maureen, and our next question is from Zoe, you can unmute and ask your question.

59:51

Moderator Thank you, Tim. Hey, Bill. Hello, Azell, you're my guy, go for it. Yeah, you know, I was thinking through that, some say that the Oxford group knew that Bill was in Akron, and it is sometimes characterized or compared to the kitchen table story with Abby. What are your, what are your thoughts on that? Well, there's no direct evidence that, that they were waiting for him when he got to Akron, but I got to tell you, in my area, there was a sober guy named Townsend Conn, he had 25 years when I came in, got sober in 56, finally, but he was around, he was, he was, he was around, he got sober, supposedly with Abby, you know, he was, he was, he was engaged to Roland Hazzard's daughter, and he was, but he was in and out, in and out, in and out, but he always said that the New York people had called the Akron people and they were laying in wait for Bill Wilson when he showed up there.

60:49

Unknown So I mean, I don't have any documentation to prove that, but this was a guy, this was a guy who probably didn't know what he was talking about. And he said they were just, man, they, they, it was a setup. It was a complete setup. But of course, Wilson doesn't tell this story now, because from his perspective, it wasn't a setup. It was, if he walked into a trap, it looked like a nice trap to him. He wasn't drinking, it kept him from not drinking.

61:21

Unknown So he was okay with that. But yeah, I, because Townsend, Townsend Conn, we just called him Townie, he kind of walked on water, had a lot of sobriety at 25 years when I came in. And I was always just, just between you and me, Hazel, I was always happy that he was way older than I was, because my wife was madly in love with him as an old guy. And if he was the same age as me, I would have been in trouble with a Lady Sarah.

61:50

Moderator Thank you, Hazel. And our next question is from Dick. You can unmute. Oh, thank you. I really appreciated the emphasis on the first three areas that maintain recovery. When I came in, in early 71, the steps weren't pushed at all, at least not in the area that I was at. It was, it was strictly working with others, did a lot of 12-step calls. And because there was no hospitals at the time. What the main thing, my question is, is how long do you think this pursued that the steps were not really pushed?

62:21

Unknown And also, the main thing that we were given was a little thing of why we were chosen. And we would read that before we went on a 12-step call. Any comments about historical value of those? No, not really, Dick. The problem here is, I have to say repeatedly, is I spent 11 years researching and writing this book. And my focus was the 18-month period between October 37, when they said, oh, let's write a book and 18 months later.

62:47

Unknown So when you start talking about the 40s and the 50s and the 60s, I've heard the same apocryphal stories you've heard. But you've got your experience about the way it worked when you came in in 1971. I came in in 81. And I mean, my home group, they were the strongest, they were, they were literally, I can say

63:08

[01 05:00]

63:08

Unknown with a smile, we were the epicenter of sobriety in Southern Connecticut. You know, I mean, we were just, but it was a fellowship deal. Nobody was reading the book. Nobody was doing the steps. It was just, it just wasn't happening. We were staying sober because we were hanging together. And it was tight, man, you know. Both of my parents died. My dad died when I was 14 years sober and my mother died 10 years later.

63:34

Moderator And you know, 125 guys showed up at that, at those wakes, those wakes. I mean, we did those things, you know, that's what we did. We supported each other all the time, up, down and sideways. And I, I didn't, I hate to say, when I tell my story, I'm always embarrassed to tell this, but it's my story, so I have to do it. I didn't really read the big book. I started really reading the big book for the first time when I was 19 years sober.

64:05

Unknown And I never completely did any of the 12, all of the 12 steps until I was 21 years sober. And that included no meditation, which I didn't start until I was 26 years sober. So you know, they talk about, you know, the gradual trend line. I got a real slow, long, gradual trend line going here. That's the way it goes. And really I do, when I tell my story, I got to say, look, I'm not recommending anybody else do this.

64:33

Unknown This is how it worked for me. We stayed sober on fellowship. It was a fellowship program and it worked really, really, really well for me and the other 150 guys that showed up on my home group every Monday night. Thank you. And next is George. You can unmute. Yeah. Hi, George. Alcoholic. Don't have a question, but have a huge gratitude to you for really doing wonderful, wonderful work. Not only writing it, but making it available on YouTube.

64:59

Moderator I watched many of those. And thank you for organizers. Don't want to take a lot of time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll be celebrating, God willing, 25 years soon. So. Thank you, George. Thank you. Thank you, George. And next is Bob. You can unmute. You bet. Hey, Bill. Good to see you again. You know, my question is, I know that Silkworth at least may have had an effect on Bill before he met Dr. Bob.

65:27

Unknown And that was when he said, when Bill said, why is nobody accepting what I'm doing? And Silkworth said, you're preaching to him, you know. And I think along with that, and with what Lois said, when he goes to Akron, he comes at Bob with the medical side, just like Silkworth said, and then with what his experience is. And so, you know, I think that I look at Silkworth as being one of the helpers that helped Bill maybe make his decision when he was walking that hall.

65:57

Moderator Yeah, yeah. Bob, I think you're 100% right. I mean, what we're talking about here is packaging. How are you going to package this message of recovery that you got? I mean, it's working for you, but you got to figure out, pull out the things that were important so that you didn't drink again. And then you got to package them in a way that people can hear them. You know, I mean, every time I, you know, Sarah and I, the lady Sarah and I saw a couple of therapists for about two and a half years, he taught us how to talk to each other so that I could say things.

66:36

Unknown And, you know, she could hear what I wanted her to hear, kind of, you know, same sort of thing here. And really, Dr. Bob actually says in his story, because the story is, you know, I don't know, it's like seven and a half pages of drunkologue, and there's three quarters of a page of, and then I, and then this guy showed up and I never drank again, you know. But what he says there is exactly what Wilson says, what Silkworth told him, to hit him hard with the medical facts first.

67:09

Unknown And Dr. Bob, in his story, literally says this guy showed up and he didn't say hit me hard with the medical facts, but that's what he says. That's kind of what turned it for him. You know, it wasn't, he'd been going to the Oxford group, the Oxford group people did not like that medical group stuff. They thought they had a religious solution. They thought Jesus could cure you of your alcoholism. And if you thought otherwise, they had a problem with you.

67:39

Unknown So in one way, I think that was, that was the first kind of step away from the OG for Bill, you know, that, that he, he like, he flew in the face of, you know, of course he wasn't happy with a whole bunch of the guidance he was getting from the groups anyhow. But anyhow, anyhow, yeah, yeah, I think, I think that's, that's, that's really a great, really thing, Bob. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. And next is Mark.

68:08

Unknown You can unmute. Well, thank you. My name is Mark. I'm a real alcoholic. I'm very happy to be here and listen to you, Bill. I, my copy of your book was printed in 2019. So you're saying that later editions have some different interpretations on some things?

68:25

[01 10:00]

68:25

Moderator Was that, did I hear? I mean, corrections had to be made. There's been six printings in the hardback. Although I hate to get into this at the moment, but I'm having huge difficulties with my publisher. I've been suing them since January. And sometime in the foreseeable future, there's going to be the completely revised second edition published by me and perhaps some other people we know here. So you could form works publishing, maybe.

68:52

Moderator I have one other question. Yeah. You mentioned the talk that Ebi and Bill had at the kitchen table. I understand they had a renter, a female who lived upstairs at the time. Is that correct? Oh, yeah. Has anyone found her or found letters from her or something where she mentioned these crazy people or? No. Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But no, we haven't found those. So many times I would like to be a fly on the wall, you know, or have somebody's diary where they went in all the details about what happened that day.

69:26

Moderator But no, unfortunately not. Yeah, she was whenever he came over the first time, she was definitely there. She joined him for dinner and for the talk. Thank you, Mark. And our next question is from Chili Charlie. You can unmute. Thank you, Tim. And thank you, Bill. Mind blown. A presentation. It was amazing. And I just subscribed to your YouTube channel. So my question is, I'm involved in area service.

69:50

Unknown And of course, there was a big brouhaha over the general service conferences vote to change the word Eskimo in the first hundred and sixty four pages. And I know at this next, you know, go around, there's going to be an agenda item about the sanctity of the original writings. And I just wanted to kind of get your viewpoint on that. Well, you know, Mark asked me about the changes to the book. One of the changes that happened in the last printing of the book is I had like four or five pages at the end.

70:23

Moderator I was in one of my Zoom meditation meetings that I go to with regularity. And we were reading out of as Bill sees it. And whatever the reading was that somebody picked that day, I read it and I was like, well, that's not what it says. It was a quote out of the big book. I was like, that's not what it says in the big book, not what it says in the big book. So I spent a bunch of time with the help of a couple of people like Randy E., who's always a great helper for these kind of nitpicking kind of things.

70:59

Unknown But there's like, don't call me, I can't remember the exact numbers. There's like 72 quotes out of the big book and as Bill sees it. And 67 of them aren't accurate. Now a lot of it's just cosmetic changes that he made to those things, just cosmetic changes. I mean, first of all, you know, the brainstorm in the grouch, nobody knows what the hell brainstorm doesn't mean today what it meant in 1938. So he wrote the rage in the grouch.

71:30

Unknown He just changed it because he thought it needed to be clarified, you know? And oh yeah, the whoopee party is gone as Bill sees it. It's gone, baby, you know? And if he had quoted Eskimo, Eskimo probably would have been gone too, but I don't know about that. And he literally edited what I think is a significant edit to the third step prayer and as Bill sees it. So you know, when you come down to the sanctity of the original text, as it was published in April 10th of 1939, of course they made all kinds of changes, there were 16 printings.

72:04

Moderator The 11th printing had a whole bunch of changes to it. You know that they were saying ex-alcoholic, there was like seven references in the book to ex, well, or ex-alcoholics. By the time we get to 1948 and the 11th printing, alcoholics are like, there's no such thing as an ex-alcoholic. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. So they, I froze up again. So they changed it. They changed it. They changed all those things, you know?

72:30

Moderator It's not a sacred text, in my opinion, but then you get into like, well, if you're going to change something, what are you going to change? Now that's just like punching the tar, baby, you're in trouble now, you know? It's just, you just went down that rabbit hole with Alice, you know? And I understand that, I mean, Charlie, I've gotten into the ring with this thing a couple of times, and I'm like, now we got the plain language book, and I'm backing off on it.

73:04

Unknown But, but, but, but, it's, it's, yeah, Wilson, Wilson. the Twelve and Twelve is written saying the Big Book is frozen, and if he were to change one word, he would be excommunicated from Alcoholics Anonymous, that's what he wrote

73:19

[01 15:02]

73:19

Unknown to a guy. And then he said, I'm writing some stuff, and I'm hoping to change that, what's the stuff he's writing is those things he was putting in the grapevine that he finally put together and edited and turned into the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. And then that book comes out, so he's like looking to change it. And then he writes a letter about five years after that and says, that damn thing is frozen, it's frozen, they won't let me change anything in that thing.

73:52

Unknown But sneakily, and as Bill sees it, which is like, I think five years before he died, I think it's 65 or 66 that came out, he made a bunch of, and in the forward to that book, he says, I changed a few things to smooth things out, I changed a few things. He literally admits to doing it. Now why, you know, nobody's ever noticed that or pointed that out in this argument about the sanctity of the original big book, that Wilson bitched and moaned about it being frozen.

74:22

Unknown And then when he got himself a chance of doing it, and he could slip it under the rug, you know, and nobody would see it, he did it. So anyhow, the last five or six pages of the most recent printing of the book, and it will certainly be included in the second edition that hopefully is going to be out before the Christmas holiday. That that's the you know, there's there's good examples of that. And I talk about that. So it's it's it's a yeah, I think it's a real problem for AA.

74:57

Unknown I mean, we could I don't I've given up. We should not change a thing in the 1939 book. I've given it up. I've given it up. Just OK, whatever it is, just leave it the way it is. Now we got the plain language book. But I still think, you know, we need a book for the 21st century and the 22nd century if we want to if we want to if we want to go out there that long, you know. And I mean, I've talked to different people and other people have come up with decent proposals. I thought of my friend Joe came up with like we should have like an exposition chapter in the front, about 15 or 20 pages, and then just have stories, all kinds of different stories, real life stories, you know, people doing it all kinds of different ways, people doing 12 steps and not doing 12 steps, people staying sober.

75:51

Unknown That's you know, that was just one suggestion. And, you know, so many problems with the, you know, two wives so dated and the family afterwards. And, you know, two employers makes no sense in the economic climate we're living in today. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense at all. And when we read the we had a group we put together and we read the plain language book because I owned it for about five or six months, but didn't read it, you know.

76:21

Unknown So we put together a group so I could read it and we and we read it. And as we were reading those problematic chapters, the wives, family and the employers, somebody commented that, you know what we should have done? We should have just left those chapters out. We shouldn't just because those are about those are about Al-Anon issues. Let's just leave those stuff to Al-Anon and the HR people in corporations.

76:46

Unknown And just why get into those arguments? You know, what we need to do is deliver the message of what you need to do to get sober. Those those those chapters about other people helping you get sober or other people that are affected once you get sober and maybe what they should be doing. You know, one of the reasons people, my opinion, alcoholics hate to sit through readings of those chapters is it's not about them.

77:12

Moderator No, it's about her and it's about those kids. It's about that stupid guy I work for. It's not about me. Let's hear about me. I'd like to hear more about me. Selfishness, self-centeredness, that we think is the root of our problem. OK, OK, OK. Thank you. Thank you, Charlie, for the question. And next is Elizabeth. You can unmute. Oh, thank you, Tim. Oh, thank you, Bill. But I disagree about the to the wives.

77:41

Unknown It saved my marriage that I didn't want anymore. Actually, just save it. It got me high. I got the hell out of there. Anywho. Yeah. But something I want to point out that you that you pointed out, make notice of when you talk about the one, two, three steps per se steps, you want to call it that. There are things that happened, actually. As I tell people, the steps work us, you know, when I talk about working the steps because these things that they lacked before they got to, you know, a which being a lot of the spiritual experience that come into their own fruition, their own desire, you know, they think they're on their own.

78:21

Unknown A lot of people here love it here. I'm I'm just happy about that. It's not many spiritual experiences going on. So but anyway. The words that you highlighted were built suddenly realized. And the hallway in Akron. I have been following, for lack of a better word, studying the works that the Akron that Bill and the gang were following with them at Fox. And I've been studying those works for the last five years.

78:48

[01 20:02]

78:48

Unknown And I see the program all over it. I see where Bill got all the material for the big book and these other publishings. And I think it's a beautiful thing. And I agree, too, that the book should not be changed just for the integrity of the fact that it was written by one man, by this man. Leave his works alone. Get your own. You need something more. Get your own book. Write your own damn book. Quit picking on somebody else's stuff.

79:17

Unknown And I also know it comes from the historical problems that I'm going to bring up and issues we've had with the Bible. What's been tampered with and messed with over the centuries to become something that's not that it was never intended to be. And that's where this all comes from, is that same issue with us and that big book. But pushing that aside, thank you so much for coming out this book. I've turned it on to quite a few people.

79:48

Unknown I even got our central office to pick up a copy so that I'm hopefully getting someone to get into this book and realize that the truth about the book and the truth about what's going on, what really happened. And I spread it all I can because I'm a truth person. You know, I tell people, if you had an experience, a spiritual experience, I can't help you. It's going to be something that happened. And finally, I got girls that are coming back to me that now have had these experiences and they're going, oh, you were so right.

80:24

Unknown I'm like, yes, I told you, you know, but thank you again. And thank you so much for this presentation. Thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you. Thank you, Elizabeth. And we will do one more question for the night. And Jean, you can unmute and ask your question. Hi, everybody, I'm Jean, I'm an alcoholic. Just a quick question, Bill, great presentation. Can you tell us a little bit more about Dr. Howard and what was Bill's reaction to those those comments when when he sent him back? Because those were really substantial and don't you hear a lot about Hank, but I haven't heard a lot about Dr.

81:03

Unknown Howard. I know he was chief psychiatrist in New Jersey and and kind of Montclair area, something like that. But yeah, I didn't realize that that his his corrections were so powerful in what we have now. Tell me a little about that. Yeah, yeah, certainly, Jean. First of all, I cover it in four part harmony in the book. I mean, you know, there's a big mystery about who Dr. Howard was. And there's all over the years, people have made all kinds of different suggestions. I think John B., the great historian from New Jersey, has nailed it.

81:37

Moderator I'd say that in the book. The changes he made were just amazing. The thing the thing. So I'm up, I tell the story every so I'm up at Stepping Stones, I'm talking to Sally and what I'm looking for is the first time that A.A. got mentioned publicly was in a newspaper article in the in the Courier. I can't think of the name of it. I'm an old guy. I can't remember names in January. And the copy in New York is all torn.

82:10

Unknown You can figure out what the words are, but there's letters and bits of pieces missing. So I said to Sally, I said, do you have a copy of this thing? And she says, well, yeah, I think I do. So she finds it. So we're in the folder and there's a beautiful copy of the article. So I thank you very much, Sally. Please send a copy to Michelle in New York because she'll want to see that. But in that same folder.

82:40

Unknown Same folder, there's there's a memo from Hank Parkers to Bill Wilson saying, Bill, look, this this stuff that Howard says, we got to do this and we got to do this. And you're telling me you're not going to change anything. And I'm telling you that we have to do this. And if you don't agree to change the things that Dr. Howard suggested, I am going to put together a committee. And he puts in about seven or eight names of the guys he's going to have on this committee. And we're going to take the book away from you and we're going to make Dr.

83:20

Unknown Howard's changes. If you won't do it, I'm taking the book away from you. And Jimmy Burwell has two wonderful recordings that I'm talking about. He says Bill Wilson went into a tizzy. Oh, my God. He was just he blew his stack and he went crazy. If some crazy psychiatrist doesn't know Jack about alcoholism is making me do this. But. Hank Parkers makes his power play and it's like he makes it like, I don't know, like March 27th and the book gets published on April 10th.

83:53

Moderator So that last minute they're making and really when we get to we get to chapter five, like everything that everybody reads, you know, the page and a half to an hour pages, you know, they get read at meetings all the time. That stuff was all you, you, you, you, you have to do this and you have to do this and you have to do that and you have to do that. And it's just all changed the ways they're all changed the ways.

84:23

Unknown And this is what we did. You know. I mean, where would we be if this was a you program and not a we program?

84:31

[01 25:02]

84:31

Moderator I just I'm not sure we'd be here. You know, I really don't. So, yeah, that's. I kind of got lost in the weeds myself here. Gene, did I did I did I cover what you asked? I can't remember now. Eighty two and failing quickly. Thank you so much, Bill, and thank you, everyone, for your questions and so appreciate you taking the time tonight to share this presentation with us and that's going to wrap it up for this evening.

85:01

Moderator Oh, go ahead. Tim, I want to say, because we do have just a couple of seconds here. I told I said when I was doing this presentation today, I had some kind of new insight that's not in the presentation, and that is in working with others. As I said, there's two thirds in the front. There's two thirds in the front. That's all about talking to somebody. Then all of a sudden there's this big shift in the back.

85:31

Unknown The back 25 percent is talking to the recovered guy, telling him all this wonderful stuff he can do. And it ends with that beautiful quote. And as I was running through the presentation today, I thought if Bill Wilson thought that this was the last chapter. That he didn't you know, he didn't have a vision of writing chapter five and six and on the 12 steps at this point, if that was going to be the last chapter, then OK, so he had articulated there is a solution.

86:00

Unknown And he mentioned in his story and in their solution, these three things he had explained the first one and more about alcoholism in detail. And he explained the second one in more all kinds of detail in chapter four. And now he explained the third one in more working with others. So if he thinks he's basically done, we need a little coda here on the solutions that have been presented to the alcoholic. And one thing we tell him is, listen, our deal here is different. So I all of a sudden I thought maybe it was his coda.

86:33

Unknown You know, it was it was the way he was going to wrap the whole program up by saying, you know, if you do those three things, you can do anything you want in your life. You can be around views. You can do this. We are not we are not those kind of people. So all of a sudden it didn't seem so much like something that somebody squirreled in at the last minute. I was like, oh, it was going to be the end of the end of the message to the alcoholic. And then I was like, that makes sense.

87:07

Moderator It makes lots of sense to me. But I didn't have I mean, I didn't realize that at five fifty two this afternoon. So there was no way I could just go back and modify all that stuff. But again, more gets revealed, man. You know, the different pieces of the puzzle fit. And all of a sudden you see how something would fit differently and would make more sense. So I'm glad I got to say that out loud because it's the first time I've said it out loud to anybody because I only realized that late this afternoon.

87:43

Unknown Thank you. Thank you so much, Bill. And I will now allow everyone to unmute and thank Bill and. And just a reminder, we got J.S. coming back next week presenting from live from Akron. So looking forward to that and everyone should be able to unmute now. Thank you, Bill.

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

Bill S – Working With Others – 9-8-2026

Bill S – Working With Others – 9-8-2026

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