What does "like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others" mean?
In short:
- It is a picture of the damage an alcoholic's drinking does to the people at home: "The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others." (p. 82). The next lines name the damage: broken hearts, dead relationships, uprooted affections, a home kept in turmoil by "Selfish and inconsiderate habits" (p. 82).
- It is there to answer one idea: the alcoholic who says that staying sober is all he needs to do. The book agrees he must stay sober, "for there will be no home if he doesn't" (p. 82), but calls a man "unthinking when he says that sobriety is enough" (p. 82).
- What it asks for instead is amends at home: "there is a long period of reconstruction ahead" (p. 83), and "A remorseful mumbling that we are sorry won't fill the bill at all" (p. 83). The alcoholic is to sit down with the family and go over the past, without criticizing them, and then live the change (p. 83).
Where it is
The line is in Chapter 6, "Into Action," in the part of the chapter about amends (Steps Eight and Nine, pp. 76–83). The pages just before it deal with the hardest cases at home: an affair, and whether to tell a wife about it (pp. 80–82). Then the book turns to everyone else: "If we have no such complication, there is plenty we should do at home." (p. 82). So the tornado is not about a special case. It is about the ordinary alcoholic home.
The passage, in order (pp. 82–83)
- The excuse. "Sometimes we hear an alcoholic say that the only thing he needs to do is to keep sober." (p. 82). The book doesn't dismiss sobriety; it says he certainly must keep sober (p. 82). "But he is yet a long way from making good to the wife or parents whom for years he has so shockingly treated." (p. 82).
- The families' patience. Before the tornado comes a line about the people who stayed: "Passing all understanding is the patience mothers and wives have had with alcoholics." (p. 82). Without it, the book says, many members would have no homes today and might be dead (p. 82).
- The tornado. The alcoholic tears through other people's lives. "Hearts are broken. Sweet relationships are dead. Affections have been uprooted." (p. 82).
- The farmer. A man who says sobriety is enough "is like the farmer who came up out of his cyclone cellar to find his home ruined" (p. 82). The farmer tells his wife he doesn't see anything the matter, and isn't it grand the wind has stopped blowing (p. 82). The joke is that the storm stopping doesn't rebuild the house, and the farmer can't see the wreck around him.
- What to do. "Yes, there is a long period of reconstruction ahead. We must take the lead." (p. 83). Not a mumbled apology but a frank talk with the family about the past "as we now see it, being very careful not to criticize them" (p. 83). "Their defects may be glaring, but the chances are that our own actions are partly responsible." (p. 83). So "we clean house with the family," asking each morning to be shown "the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness and love" (p. 83).
- Living it, not preaching it. "The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it." (p. 83). Unless the family wants it, he shouldn't urge spiritual principles on them or talk about them constantly: "Our behavior will convince them more than our words." (p. 83).
What the picture means, read in its place
The book doesn't explain the image beyond the lines around it, so the safest reading is the one those lines give:
- The damage is to other people. The tornado roars "through the lives of others" (p. 82). The list that follows is all about the family: hearts, relationships, affections, the home (p. 82). Chapter 2 says the same of the illness itself: it "engulfs all whose lives touch the sufferer's" (p. 18).
- Stopping the storm isn't repairing it. That is the point of the farmer (p. 82). The wind stopping is sobriety; the ruined house is still there.
- The repair is the alcoholic's job, and it is slow. "We must take the lead." (p. 83). The book calls it "a long period of reconstruction" (p. 83), and a few lines later it allows that some wrongs can never be fully righted (p. 83).
The same idea elsewhere in the book
- Chapter 8, to wives: "Your husband knows he owes you more than sobriety. He wants to make good." (p. 118).
- Chapter 9, "The Family Afterward": the alcoholic "has spent years in pulling down the structures of business, romance, friendship, health," and "It will take time to clear away the wreck." (p. 123). Chapter 9 also calls the end of drinking "but the first step away from a highly strained, abnormal condition" (p. 122).
- The book's last page: "Clear away the wreckage of your past." (p. 164).
What cuts the other way
The book is not telling families to hold sobriety cheap. In Chapter 7 the helper is to ask a newcomer's family to remember, when they are impatient, "the blessed fact of his sobriety" (p. 100), and to warn them that his defects of character "are not going to disappear over night" (p. 100). The tornado passage is aimed at the alcoholic who thinks sobriety settles his debt, not at the value of being sober.
The passage is also written for the homes of 1939: it speaks of "the wife or parents" and of "mothers and wives" (p. 82). The program text doesn't apply it any more narrowly than that; it is about whoever lived with the drinking.
The only other "tornado" in the Big Book is in the introduction to a member's story, "It Might Have Been Worse," where alcohol is a cloud in a banker's sky that "could become a tornado" (p. 348); another member's story mentions spotting "tornados" as a radio storm chaser (p. 453). Those are different uses, and not program text.
See: How does the Big Book say to make amends?, What happens to the family after the drinking stops? and What does "the spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it" refer to?
Read it yourself
- Chapter 6, "Into Action" (pp. 72–88; the tornado on p. 82): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt6.pdf
- Chapter 7, "Working With Others" (p. 100): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt7.pdf
- Chapter 8, "To Wives" (p. 118): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt8.pdf
- Chapter 9, "The Family Afterward" (pp. 122–123): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt9.pdf
- The full book is sold by A.A. World Services: https://onlineliterature.aa.org
Sources
| Source | Pages | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 2, "There Is a Solution" | 18 | 1939 |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 6, "Into Action" | 76–83 | 1939 |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 7, "Working With Others" | 100 | 1939 |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 8, "To Wives" | 118 | 1939 |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 9, "The Family Afterward" | 122–123 | 1939 |
| Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 11, "A Vision for You" | 164 | 1939 |
| "It Might Have Been Worse" (introduction to a member's story); "Safe Haven" (a member's story) | 348, 453 | fourth edition (2001) |
Big Book page numbers are from the fourth edition (2001). The Preface says the program chapters have been "left largely untouched" since 1939 (p. xi).
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.