AA's text is called the Big Book. It's real name is simply Alcoholics Anonymous. It's a fairly well organized book, but it takes time to really understand what it is saying. It not only helps the alcoholic diagnose him/herself, but it also prescribes what the alcoholic needs to do to achieve sobriety.
The book was written by the first 100 people to work The Steps. Actually, the real number of folks who composed the book is around sixty, not 100, but alcoholics seem to like to exaggerate. The Rockefeller Foundation provided a grant for AA to publish and begin distribution of the book and from there AA as we know it today was born (more or less).
The Big Book is comprised of two parts: the first 180 pages describe the disease and The Steps the alcoholic needs to do if they want to be well. The second half of the book contains personal stories of illness and recovery. Personally, I don’t find the second portion relevant because they were inserted before meetings were established and served to twelve-step people who couldn’t attend meetings for whatever reason, back in the day. The meat of the book is in the first 180 pages.
Without discussing all the details of those 180 pages, it’s important to realize a few things the book says about the disease of alcoholism. First, there is a physical component to the disease. Once an alcoholic begins to drink, they can’t stop. It’s pointless to think that they can have just one beer, or only drink once in a while. That is not something the alcoholic can do. It’s like asking a person with Giardia to stop having diarrhea—they just can’t stop having diarrhea.
Knowing that the alcoholic really has no choice with respect to their reaction to alcohol is meant to relieve them of the shame of their disease. No one blames a woman with breast cancer for having cancer, yet that is precisely what society does to alcoholics. And because alcoholics are shamed for being sick, they go to extraordinary lengths to deny their disease or hide it. The fact is, alcoholics have a disease and illness is nothing to be ashamed of.
Knowing that the alcoholic really has no choice with respect to their reaction to alcohol is meant to relieve them of the shame of their disease. No one blames a woman with breast cancer for having cancer, yet that is precisely what society does to alcoholics. And because alcoholics are shamed for being sick, they go to extraordinary lengths to deny their disease or hide it. The fact is, alcoholics have a disease and illness is nothing to be ashamed of.
Secondly, the book makes clear that the alcoholic is not sane, which is downright off-putting. Step Two says, “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Simply put, that step sucks because the alcoholic has to believe that their mind is the problem. Who the hell would want to believe that? I don’t think anyone does, but the alcoholic seems to have more trouble than most seeing that his mind is the center of the disease.
It’s kind of obvious, and seems intuitive to the “normie” (that’s what we call people who can drink normally) but to the alcoholic, it’s an epiphany when they suddenly realize they’ve been trying to drink normally for two decades but never once did, and that it's crazy to keep trying to drink normally when they’ve never been able to.
It’s kind of obvious, and seems intuitive to the “normie” (that’s what we call people who can drink normally) but to the alcoholic, it’s an epiphany when they suddenly realize they’ve been trying to drink normally for two decades but never once did, and that it's crazy to keep trying to drink normally when they’ve never been able to.
It’s like going to the top of a cliff every day for twenty years and jumping off, flapping your arms wildly like a bird, and expecting to fly. You are simply not going to fly and it would be insane to try again tomorrow but that’s exactly what the alcoholic does, year after painful year.