A First Class Prospect

The first A.A. group began with two sober drunks asking a hospital for the worst case it had. The Big Book tells it (p. 156): "One day they called up the head nurse of a local hospital. They explained their need and inquired if she had a first class alcoholic prospect." A prospect is someone you hope to win over. She had one: a lawyer who had been in eight times in six months and was strapped down in his bed. There was no meeting for him to find. They went to him and told him their own drinking stories until he recognised himself in every one. Within days he walked out of that hospital, and he never drank again. Then the three of them went looking for the next one. The Big Book (p. 158): "there were three alcoholics in that town, who now felt they had to give to others what they had found, or be sunk." Be sunk means be finished. That was a group before any Tradition named it: alcoholics going out to the one still drinking, because their own lives depended on it. The Long Form later gave every group "but one primary purpose" (Big Book, p. 563). Test it tonight: ask whether anyone in your group has ever asked a hospital, a detox or a shelter where the drinkers are.