Stop Preaching

Turn an A.A. meeting into a class and it has been captured, because A.A. learned at the very start that lecturing drunks does not sober them. In his first months sober, Bill W. preached at alcoholics in a New York hospital and a mission. He wrote (A.A. Comes of Age): "At the end of six months nobody had sobered up." Dr. Silkworth, the doctor at that hospital, told him why: "you're having nothing but failure because you are preaching at these alcoholics." When Bill finally sat down with Dr. Bob, he did not lecture. It was one drunk telling another what had happened to him. Today the class comes from outside. A facility runs a meeting where a counsellor picks the topic, hands out worksheets, and keeps the talk on the program's lessons. The words A.A. and Big Book may be on the board, but it is a lecture, and the drinker gets what Bill's first prospects got. The Long Form (Big Book, p. 563) gives the group its own message to carry: "having but one primary purpose—that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers." That message is one alcoholic's own story told to another, not a lesson handed down to a class. Test it tonight: ask whether the person at the front of your meeting is telling their own story or teaching somebody else's lesson.