Product Description
Bound in black bonded leather, with gold gilding on the page edges.
The First 164 pages of The Big Book with lined pages opposite text for note taking.
Includes the original Foreword, The Doctor’s Opinion and Dr. Bob’s Story.
Paragraph numbers along side the text for easy reference.
Entire Original Manuscript (about) including the stories. Easy to read retyped version. Includes paragraph numbers corresponding to the modern text for easy comparison.
Footnotes explaining historical and obscure references in the text.
Footnotes documenting all 79 differences between the modern text and the original 1st printing text of the 1st 164 pages (about). Yes, believe it or not, the basic text has been changed 79 times since it was first published.
Two place keeping ribbons.
Special “lay flat” binding.
#1 by Zulu Warrior on November 14, 2009 - 10:32 pm
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1. The Twelve Steps do not work as a program of recovery from drug or alcohol problems.
The A.A. failure rate ranges from 95% to 100%. Sometimes, the A.A. success rate is actually less than zero, which means that A.A. indoctrination is positively harmful to people, and prevents recovery. Some tests have shown that even receiving no treatment at all for alcoholism is much better than receiving A.A. treatment:
One of the most enthusiastic boosters of Alcoholics Anonymous, Professor George Vaillant of Harvard University, who is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (AAWS), showed by his own 8 years of testing of A.A. that A.A. was worse than useless — that it didn’t help the alcoholics any more than no treatment at all, and it had the highest death rate of any treatment program tested — a death rate that Professor Vaillant himself described as “appalling”. While trying to prove that A.A. treatment works, Professor Vaillant actually proved that A.A. kills. After 8 years of A.A. treatment, the score with Dr. Vaillant’s first 100 alcoholic patients was: 5 sober, 29 dead, and 66 still drinking.
(Nevertheless, Vaillant is still a Trustee of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he still wants to send all alcoholics to A.A. anyway, to “get an attitude change by confessing their sins to a high-status healer.” That is cult religion, not a treatment program for alcoholism.)
The A.A. dropout rate is terrible. Most people who come to A.A. looking for help in quitting drinking are appalled by the narrow-minded atmosphere of fundamentalist religion and faith-healing. The A.A. meeting room has a revolving door. The therapists, judges, and parole officers (many of whom are themselves hidden members of A.A. or N.A.) continually send new people to A.A., but those newcomers vote with their feet once they see what A.A. really is. Even A.A.’s own triennial surveys, conducted by the A.A. headquarters (the GSO), say that:
81% of the newcomers are gone within 30 days,
90% are gone in 3 months, and
95% are gone at the end of a year.
That automatically gives A.A. a failure rate of at least 95%. But the GSO does not count all of those people who only attend a few meetings before quitting — they don’t qualify as “members”. (That amounts to “cherry-picking”.) If we included them, then the numbers would be much worse.
First there is the propaganda technique of “everybody’s doing it”: “AA or a similar Twelve-Step program is an integral part of almost all successful recoveries”.
That is a complete falsehood. The vast majority of the successful people recover without A.A. or any “support group”. It’s what “everybody” is doing.
Then they use the propaganda techniques of use of the passive voice and vague suggestions: “It is widely believed that not including a Twelve-Step program in a treatment plan can put a recovering addict on the road to relapse.”
It is widely believed by whom? And what do those unnamed people know? What are their qualifications? Are they doctors? Medical school professors? Or salesmen for a 12-Step treatment center? Why should we care what some unnamed invisible fools allegedly believe, anyway?
The authors also use the propaganda technique of fear-mongering: you will be “on the road to relapse” — you will probably die — unless you practice Bill Wilson’s Twelve Step cult religion.
And then the fluff-headed Pollyanna attitude is outrageous: Just going to the wonderful A.A. meetings is supposedly all that is needed to fix some alcoholics.
But since A.A. has a zero-percent success rate above and beyond the normal rate of spontaneous remission, that cannot possibly be true.
Rating: 1 / 5
#2 by E. Henry on November 15, 2009 - 1:24 am
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I have purchased many Big Books over the years. This is my third purchase of the Anonymous Press Study Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous. I use the Big Books myself and I give them away to friends. This purchase is for me. I am in a new study and having fresh pages to highlight and underline words and write definitions is delightful.
This book is absolutely elegant. It is leather bound and the pages are gilded in gold. I take it with me proudly.
Rating: 5 / 5
#3 by Anonymous on November 15, 2009 - 4:15 am
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The 12 Steps and the AA Big Book aren’t for everyone. I am, however, very glad that they have been a viable tool for me in my recovery from addiction and compulsive behavior. Those of us who are drawn to investigate AA or similar 12 Step groups do so because on some level, our progressively unmanageable lives are not working the way that we would like them to.
Anyone with an addict’s personality has an insatiable need, as I myself do – the physical craving/mental obsession – to fill themselves up with “something” that will numb our psychic pain…be it alcohol, drugs, food, sexual acting out, harmful and time-consuming relationships, and a myriad of other compulsive behaviors as a way to deal with our often painful, unmanageable life. Often we addicts suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders as well. I know this to be true first hand since I work in the healthcare field, and I also work my own 12 Step program. Observing the behavior and problem magnetism of alcoholics and addicts in a healthcare setting has been a real eye opener. I have much more compassion these days for anyone who suffers from an addiction.
12 Step programs assist us in reconnecting to our higher self, that aspect of ourself that isn’t an addict. The aspect of our personality that knows intuitively how to be patient, loving, tolerant, and kind…to ourselves and with others.
Several of the key characteristics of any addict’s personality are grandiosity and defiance. May I also add: extreme chaos. I know this well from my own personal experience. Partnering grandiosity and defiance with a mental disorder plus alcoholism, for example, can punch a double whammy. Think Borderline Personality Disorder or Bipolar Illness, for example. Grandiosity and defiance are components of many mental illnesses…including, but not limited to, corporate and financial greed and “mismanagement”.
I have been on the receiving end of the double whammy a few times myself. I have also wreaked havoc in my own way on others. My own illness flares based on my spiritual condition. But, I don’t hold these kinds of situations or relationships against the 12 Step movement because we all claim our seat in our 12 Step group so that we can get well, and thus be more useful to others. We addicts/alcoholics/and otherwise compulsive personalities have an illness that is spiritual, emotional, and physical. Our thinking can often be our biggest hurdle to overcome. Learning what a state of wellness means can be an ongoing process that takes years of disciplined self-examination, one day at a time.
Some of us who keep on coming back have learned the signs and symptoms we may see in our sponsees, AND IN OURSELVES, and we have learned to how to healthily distance ourselves from those behaviors – or how to manage them in ourselves. When we see these in ourselves, we know it’s time to do some deeper work. This is a time when we also rely on our sponsor’s experience, strength and hope. As a sponsor, it is our responsibility to work out any issue with a sponsee to a resolution that works for both of us. If we find that our sponsor-sponsee relationship has become unworkable or toxic – Life Happens…oh, well, it is what it is… then we both move on. Just as in Real Life 101. Only most of us never got as far at Real Life 101. Practicing our addictive behaviors prevented us from learning some of life’s most basic skills. Please…all of us need more compassion for each other’s journeys.
In practicing the spiritual principles and tools from my own recovery program, I am learning how, one day at a time, to be able to set better boundaries with people who behave in a manner that I do not understand, or whose behavior feels attacking, bullying, abusive. Yes, I have personally known members at large, and sponsors, who behave this way. It is unacceptable. Sometimes the behavior simply feels inappropriate to the situation. Sometimes the person I most need to ‘fear’ is myself. Flip the coin: there are also many, many more members who are wonderful, caring, loving, giving folks who are a delight. We work on attracting these kinds of people, with help from our Higher Power! Funny how it works: as we get healthier, we attract healthier people into our lives. Sometimes we are `the problem’.
After all, we have used our addictive substances or behaviors for most of our lives in order to numb ourselves to a life that has become too painful to endure. We haven’t learned appropriate behaviors because we’ve been too busy acting out: desperately guzzling, snorting, smoking, sexing, porning, watching too much TV, spending or binge eating, trying to control the behavior of the people in our lives….instead of learning more effective ways to live life on life’s terms.
I believe that anyone who writes a negative discourse on the 12 Step movement has most probably had an experience either as a sponsee or a sponsor, that has not been a positive one, to put it mildly. I want anyone like this to know that I walk in your shoes. It may have sent you all the way back to square one. I feel your pain. I am so sorry this may have hurt and frightened you. You may have post traumatic stress disorder, as many of us do. We can get triggered very easily. I want to encourage anyone who is disgruntled with – or has been traumatized by – their personal 12 Step program to give it another shot. Work with a therapist or other professional for some short term support to help you heal this rough spot, and then when you are ready to start moving forward again, give it another shot. Select a sponsor who has what you want. If you don’t see anyone who has what you want, keep looking. Trust your intuition, which may take a leap of faith because we addicts can lose the ability to connect with our intuition. Ask Higher Power to bring this sponsor to you. You may not resonate with any of what I have just said: this is my own belief and it may not be yours. I hope that you will find what works for you.
The way that I have learned to deal with this is to keep moving forward spiritually and emotionally, no matter how hard it gets. The only way out is through the fire. It sucks, it really does, at times. Now is not the time to go back to drinking, drugging, and bingeing on bags and boxes of junk food to numb our pain, our disappointment in others and ourselves. Our expectations get smashed. We are powerless over all of that. Life has given us a gift: a relationship with a Higher Power who will walk with us every day, who often gives me hope by exquisitely connecting me with people, places, and things that provide encouragement, comfort, and hope. My Higher Power is often the loving parent that I need to cheer me from the sidelines, encouraging me not to give up. I have my own loving sponsor who walks the walk that I want to walk. I have other members to reach out to in times of darkness and also times of joy and happiness, which happen more often now. We can all become stuck in our disease process and in compulsive negative thinking.
Recently, I have heard a lot of sponsor bashing/12 Step bashing. My own experience is this: Always, my sponsors – and I have had at least 15 sponsors over a 9 year period – have been very well intentioned role models, kind, and committed to helping me grow along spiritual lines. These sponsors have been committed to their own recovery process. They are working their own steps and tools in order to recover. They share their own experience, strength and hope with me, which has been very healing. I will admit that at times, I have either observed someone else, or have personally experienced an incident with my own sponsor – rarely, though – where things got a little bit out of kilter. I either worked things out with my current sponsor, or found a new sponsor. Or encouraged a friend to do the same with his/her sponsor. Remember: as addicts/alcoholics we have failed to learn positive ways to relate to others, so having a sponsor is a great way to “practice” being a better person in relationship with others. Sometimes our sponsor may encourage us to work outside our comfort zone in order to grow. Our sponsor is our coach and our mentor. It is our personal right to say yes or no to what our sponsor suggests that we do. But – we need to ask ourselves: am I in denial about what I need to do next in order to grow? Is someone else who knows me well in a better position to see my situation more clearly?
Some bashers may also be caught up in their own ego, unable to allow themselves to be vulnerable, to acknowledge that anyone else could contribute to their life in any way, shape, or form. This could be another form of grandiosity and defiance…qualities that prevent us from seeing value and moving forward. It is a very painful place to be. I know because I’ve been there.
This has been my experience in my 12 Step recovery.
There is a saying in 12 Step rooms as relates to doing our 4th Step inventory and that is when we ask ourselves”what was my part”? When I first heard that term a thought went screaming and clawing its way through my head: My part? My part????? What do you MEAN, My Part??????? This person did blah-blah-blah, and they are wrong, wrong, wrong. So, what in the WORLD do you mean by MY PART? I did nothing at all.” As you can see, my mind was closed and I was very defiant about looking at the possibility of my own behavior being a contributing factor. I was used to feeling shamed about who I was. I was used to getting nailed and being a target of the blame game….as well as blaming others for “my part”.
What I’ve learned since then is that looking at “my part” is not blame, shame or guilt. It is a VERY NEUTRAL PLACE to be where I can honestly assess my thoughts, actions, and behavior in a non-judgemental way to discern whether I inadvertently contributed to my own unhappiness with what occurred between myself and another person. Today, looking at “my part” is a routine that I practice regularly to look at the big picture. I don’t do it to beat myself up. It’s used it as a flashlight to illuminate the dark and hidden recesses of my psyche. My mind no longer screams at me nearly as much, although I must admit that sometimes I having feelings of shame and guilt, and then I must work through those to get to a more neutral place. By the time I finish evaluating ‘my part’ in a non-judgemental way, I am in a much better place than when I started. I am able to see my own words, actions, deeds, thoughts where I may have set myself up for this unfortunate incident. There are also an equal number of times where I see what part of my actions contributed, and it was not a right/wrong, good/bad thing…it just “was”. It is what it is. My part is to accept that and to move on. No one is to blame, no one needs to be reprimanded or even held accountable. We are human beings, living life, with our own wants, needs, opinions. As such, we may agree to disagree…and life goes on. No problem. Then I can heal and move forward. We always keep moving forward. We cannot afford to live in the past.
I want to encourage anyone who believes that they have had a bad experience with a 12 Step group or sponsor to be willing to examine their own behavior and motives. I don’t doubt that some of the negative incidents mentioned have happened. After all, 12 Step groups are a mirror of life in general. They’re just more intense, because the people in them already know that their lives are not working the way they would like for them to. They realize they need help…some of them desperately. Things are going to happen that mirror or project their `character defects’, as we say in program.
There is another angle that may help folks who are struggling to manage their own lives. Check out books by Stanislov Grof, particularly Spiritual Emergency (New Consciousness Reader) on Amazon.com. This book sheds a different light on our unmanageability and how to hold life in a different perspective.
My love to all of you fellow travelers…even those of you who have had some bad experiences…I have walked in your shoes, too, my friends.
Rating: 4 / 5
#4 by K. Russell on November 15, 2009 - 6:07 am
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As a person in recovery for some time, I found this book a real treasure. Nothing is added or taken away from the first part of the Big Book but it is presented with a concordance, glossary and a space for notes. Having gone through numerous Big Books in study meetings and just giving them away, this one is a real treasure for me. Some historical notes and a copy of the original manuscript make it a must for us AA History fans. Keep coming back to this one!
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by miranda j. on November 15, 2009 - 6:12 am
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i have found that i actually pick this version of the big book up alot more than the other one. with it’s indexes, dictionary, and journal pages i have more incintive to study my life through the program of alcoholics anonymous! after buying my first one i have bought 5 more for friends who have wanted it after looking at my book. if you want to stay sober this is a great book to help you on the happy road of destiny.
Rating: 5 / 5