What does the Big Book say about sex?

The sex inventory (pp. 68–70)

The passage follows the fear inventory and opens: "Now about sex. Many of us needed an overhauling there." (p. 68) Then, in order:

1. Stay sensible and out of the argument. "But above all, we tried to be sensible on this question." (p. 68) The book describes opinion running to "absurd extremes" (p. 68): one side calls sex "a lust of our lower nature" (p. 68), the other cries "for sex and more sex" (p. 69). "One school would allow man no flavor for his fare and the other would have us all on a straight pepper diet." (p. 69) Its answer: "We want to stay out of this controversy." (p. 69) "We all have sex problems. We'd hardly be human if we didn't." (p. 69)

2. Look at our own conduct. The questions are about how we treated people, not about rules (p. 69):

• "Where had we been selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate?" (p. 69)
• "Whom had we hurt?" (p. 69)
• "Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion or bitterness?" (p. 69)
• Where were we at fault, and what should we have done instead? (p. 69)

"We got this all down on paper and looked at it." (p. 69)

3. Shape an ideal. "In this way we tried to shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life." (p. 69) Each relation was put to one test: "was it selfish or not?" (p. 69) We ask God to mold our ideals and help us live up to them (p. 69), and remember that sex powers are "God-given and therefore good" (p. 69).

4. Grow toward it, and make amends. "Whatever our ideal turns out to be, we must be willing to grow toward it." (p. 69) We must be willing to make amends where we've done harm, "provided that we do not bring about still more harm in so doing" (p. 69). "In other words, we treat sex as we would any other problem." (p. 69) In meditation we ask God what to do about each specific matter: "The right answer will come, if we want it." (p. 69)

5. Who judges. "God alone can judge our sex situation." (p. 69) "Counsel with persons is often desirable, but we let God be the final judge." (pp. 69–70) "We realize that some people are as fanatical about sex as others are loose. We avoid hysterical thinking or advice." (p. 70)

6. If we stumble. Does falling short mean we'll get drunk? "Some people tell us so. But this is only a half-truth." (p. 70) "It depends on us and on our motives." (p. 70) If we are sorry and honestly want God to take us to better things, we believe we'll be forgiven and will have learned our lesson (p. 70). "If we are not sorry, and our conduct continues to harm others, we are quite sure to drink." (p. 70) "We are not theorizing. These are facts out of our experience." (p. 70)

7. The summing up. "To sum up about sex: We earnestly pray for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity, and for the strength to do the right thing." (p. 70) "If sex is very troublesome, we throw ourselves the harder into helping others." (p. 70) Thinking of their needs "takes us out of ourselves. It quiets the imperious urge, when to yield would mean heartache." (p. 70)

Sex in the resentment inventory (pp. 64–65)

Before the sex inventory proper, sex appears as one of the things resentment protects. When we asked why we were angry, it was usually because "our self-esteem, our pocketbooks, our ambitions, our personal relationships (including sex) were hurt or threatened" (pp. 64–65). The grudge list asks whether it was "our personal, or sex relations, which had been interfered with?" (p. 65) The book's sample list on page 65 has "Sex relations" in the "Affects my" column more than once. See: How does the Big Book say to do Step 4?

Affairs and amends (pp. 80–82)

Chapter 6 takes up a man "mixed up with women in a fashion we wouldn't care to have advertised" (pp. 80–81). "We doubt if, in this respect, alcoholics are fundamentally much worse than other people. But drinking does complicate sex relations in the home." (p. 81) Its advice on whether to tell a wife, and on not naming the other person, is given as experience: "we wish to lay down no rule of any sort" (p. 81). See: What does Step Nine's "except when to do so would injure them or others" mean? (Do I tell my spouse about an affair?)

Chapter 9 adds that couples who had forgiven each other's "love affairs" (p. 124) sometimes dug them up again, and "unless some good and useful purpose is to be served, past occurrences should not be discussed" (p. 125).

Impotence after drinking stops (p. 134)

Chapter 9 has a short, practical paragraph: "A word about sex relations." (p. 134) Alcohol is so sexually stimulating to some men "that they have over-indulged" (p. 134), and couples are sometimes dismayed to find "that when drinking is stopped the man tends to be impotent" (p. 134). Some members had this experience, "only to enjoy, in a few months, a finer intimacy than ever" (p. 134). "There should be no hesitancy in consulting a doctor or psychologist if the condition persists." (p. 134)

What the book doesn't say

The program text (pp. 1–164) gives no list of permitted or forbidden sexual conduct, and nothing on sexual orientation; the searches for "homosexual," "gay," "chastity" and "purity" found nothing in it. ("Gay" appears only in its older sense, as in "the gay crowd" in a hotel bar, p. 154.) The Oxford Group's "absolute purity" isn't in the Big Book either. See: What were the "Four Absolutes"? Are they in the Big Book? One of the members' stories in the fourth edition (2001), "Tightrope," is by a gay member, who writes that in his A.A. service jobs "I never felt obligated to conceal or deny my sexuality" (p. 367). That is a member's experience, not the program's teaching.

Later history (dated)

In 1957 Bill wrote that the early groups' "next big scare" after slips was "the out-of-bounds romance, the well-known triangle" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Whole groups got into uproars and some people got drunk, until "at last we woke up to the fact that we were not having any more sex difficulties than other societies, and possibly less" (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). Such situations, he wrote, often righted themselves when they were treated with patience and kindness (A.A. Comes of Age, 1957). See: What is the "Thirteenth Step"?

Read it yourself

• Chapter 5, "How It Works" (pp. 64–65, 68–70): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt5.pdf
• Chapter 6, "Into Action" (pp. 80–82): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt6.pdf
• Chapter 9, "The Family Afterward" (pp. 124–125, 134): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt9.pdf
• The full books are sold by A.A. World Services: https://onlineliterature.aa.org

Sources

Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book is © A.A. World Services, Inc.

These pages answer questions about A.A. from A.A.'s own published literature, read in full, with every quote checked word for word against the page it cites. Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. What we read, and when each source was written.