# 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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-33/)). It also says "We are not cured of alcoholism." ([p. 85](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-30/)) and what happens when a sober man drinks again ([p. 33](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-64/)). Everywhere else in [pp. 1–164](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-1/) the book says "illness" or "malady" (and twice "sickness," [pp. 18](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-18/), 140). "Disease" is a word of the members' stories (for example [p. 187](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-30/)). Intervals of seeming control were "inevitably followed by still less control" ([p. 30](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-30/)). The image that follows is a man who has lost his legs and never grows new ones ([p. 30](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-30/)), and every remedy tried gave at best "brief recovery, followed always by a still worse relapse" ([p. 31](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-30/)). 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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-32/)). He "remained bone dry for twenty-five years" ([p. 32](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-32/)), retired, and believed his long sobriety "had qualified him to drink as other men" ([p. 32](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-33/)), and sums it as "Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic" ([p. 33](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-33/)). So the book's claim is that sobriety doesn't earn immunity ([p. 33](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-33/)), and that drinking again picks up as bad as before and quickly ([p. 33](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-85/)), and in the same breath, "That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition." ([p. 85](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-85/)). What the member has instead is "a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition" ([p. 85](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-30/)), drinking again after years sober is as bad as ever and fast ([p. 33](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-33/)), and no one is cured ([p. 85](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-85/)) and keeping "no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol" ([p. 33](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-33/)). See: *Does the Big Book say willpower doesn't work?*

## Read it yourself
- Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism" ([pp. 30–34](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-30/)): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt3.pdf
- Chapter 5, "How It Works" ([p. 64](https://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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://recoverystarts.com/big-book/page-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.*