Is "your disease is doing push-ups in the parking lot" in the books?
In short:
- No. The saying isn't in the Big Book, and it isn't anywhere else in our sources: not in the pamphlets, the history books, the Service Manual or the members' stories.
- The main text does say the illness is progressive, "Over any considerable period we get worse, never better." (p. 30), and it tells of a man who stayed dry twenty-five years and, drinking again, "found he was just where he had left off at thirty" (p. 33). It also says "We are not cured of alcoholism." (p. 85). That is as close as the book comes.
- The book's own picture is set by drinking, not by a disease exercising on its own. The worsening it describes is what happens over a drinking career (pp. 30–31) and what happens when a sober man drinks again (p. 33). It doesn't say the illness grows while a man is sober. Its words for alcoholism in the main text are "illness," "malady" or "sickness," not "disease."
What the search found
All our sources were searched for "push-ups," "push ups," "pushups," "doing push," "parking lot," "disease is doing," "disease is," "disease never sleeps," "disease progresses" and "getting stronger." The push-ups saying turned up nowhere. "Parking lot" appears only as an ordinary place in three members' stories (pp. 285, 331, 409) and once in Experience, Strength and Hope (2003). "Disease is" is in no sentence in our sources.
The word "disease" itself is in the program text once, and not about alcohol: resentment, "From it stem all forms of spiritual disease" (p. 64). Everywhere else in pp. 1–164 the book says "illness" or "malady" (and twice "sickness," pp. 18, 140). "Disease" is a word of the members' stories (for example p. 187, where Bill D. recalls being told "you have a disease"), and of the later books. See: What does the Big Book mean by alcoholism as an illness?
What the book does say about the illness over time
Chapter 3 opens with the book's picture of the illness as it runs. Alcoholics "have lost the ability to control our drinking" and "no real alcoholic ever recovers control" (p. 30). Intervals of seeming control were "inevitably followed by still less control" (p. 30). Then the line the saying is usually reaching for: "We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better." (p. 30). The image that follows is a man who has lost his legs and never grows new ones (p. 30), and every remedy tried gave at best "brief recovery, followed always by a still worse relapse" (p. 31).
Read in its paragraph, "we get worse, never better" is about the drinking career: the attempts to control it, the shrinking intervals, the relapse after each remedy (pp. 30–31). The book doesn't here describe anything happening while a man isn't drinking.
The nearest it comes is the man of thirty (pp. 32–33). He "remained bone dry for twenty-five years" (p. 32), retired, and believed his long sobriety "had qualified him to drink as other men" (p. 32). In two months he was in hospital; he could not regulate it and then could not stop; "he went to pieces quickly and was dead within four years" (p. 33). The lesson the book draws is exact and worth reading as written: "here is a man who at fifty-five years found he was just where he had left off at thirty" (p. 33). Where he left off: not further along. The book then says "Commencing to drink after a period of sobriety, we are in a short time as bad as ever." (p. 33), and sums it as "Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic" (p. 33). So the book's claim is that sobriety doesn't earn immunity (p. 33), and that drinking again picks up as bad as before and quickly (p. 33). The push-ups saying adds a step the book doesn't take: that the illness is getting stronger in the meantime. See: Who is the man who stayed sober twenty-five years and drank again ([p. 32](/big-book/page-32/))? and Does the Big Book say "once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic"?
"We are not cured of alcoholism"
Chapter 6 is where the book says what a sober alcoholic is living with. The recovered man finds that "the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us." (p. 85), and in the same breath, "That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition." (p. 85). Then: "It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism." (p. 85). What the member has instead is "a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition" (p. 85).
This is the thought the saying shares, said the book's way: the condition hasn't gone, and letting up on the program is where the trouble starts (p. 85). The difference is in what is doing the work. The book doesn't picture the illness training; it says the alcoholic is safe "so long as" he keeps at the spiritual program (p. 85), and that the danger is in his own letting up. See: What is the "daily reprieve," and what is it "contingent on"?
Where the saying fits and where it doesn't
The saying is a meeting-room way of saying three things the book says: alcoholics don't recover control (p. 30), drinking again after years sober is as bad as ever and fast (p. 33), and no one is cured (p. 85). It isn't in the literature, and its own image, an illness growing stronger during sobriety, isn't a claim the book makes. The book's warnings about sobriety are about what the sober man does: resting on his laurels (p. 85) and keeping "no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol" (p. 33). See: Does the Big Book say willpower doesn't work?
Read it yourself
- Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism" (pp. 30–34): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt3.pdf
- Chapter 5, "How It Works" (p. 64, the one "spiritual disease"): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt5.pdf
- Chapter 6, "Into Action" (p. 85): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt6.pdf
- The full book: https://onlineliterature.aa.org
Sources
| Source | Pages | Date |
|---|---|---|
| All our sources (searched): Big Book, pamphlets, history, stories, service | — | various |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapters 3, 5, 6 | 30–34, 64, 85 | 1939 |
| "Alcoholic Anonymous Number Three," Part I (a member's story, the word "disease") | 187 | fourth edition (2001) |
| Members' stories, Part II (ordinary use of "parking lot") | 285, 331, 409 | fourth edition (2001) |
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.