Aa history Lovers 2010 moderators Nancy Olson and Glenn F. Chesnut page
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alcoholics to one of three popular therapies used at professional treatment centers. The first was called 12-step facilitation, in which a licensed therapist guides patients through Bill Wilson's method. The second was cognitive behavioral therapy, which trains alcoholics to identify the situations that spur them to drink, so they can avoid tempting circumstances. And the last was motivational enhancement therapy, a one-on-one interviewing process designed to sharpen a person's reasons for getting sober. Project Match ultimately concluded that all three of these therapies were more or less equally effective at reducing alcohol intake among subjects. But 12-step facilitation clearly beat the competition in two important respects: It was more effective for alcoholics without other psychiatric problems, and it did a better job of inspiring total abstinence as opposed to a mere reduction in drinking. The steps, in other words, actually worked slightly better than therapies of more recent vintage, which were devised by medical professionals rather than an alcoholic stockbroker. AA is still far from ideal. The sad fact remains that the program's failures vastly outnumber its success stories. According to Tonigan, upwards of 70 percent of people who pass through AA will never make it to their one-year anniversary, and relapse is common even among regular attendees. This raises an important question: Are there ways to improve Wilson's aging system?
a few alterations that would almost certainly make the program work for more people, starting with better quality control. Since no central body regulates the day-to-day operations of local groups, some meetings are dominated by ornery old-timers who delight in belittling newcomers. Others are prowled by men looking to introduce nubile newcomers to the "13th step"-AA slang for sexual exploitation. Finding a way to impose some basic oversight of such bad behavior would likely reduce the dropout rate. Some AA groups would also do well to shed their resistance to medication. There is nothing in the Big Book that forbids the use of prescription drugs, but there are plenty of meetings where such pharmaceutical aids are frowned upon. Perhaps this sentiment made sense back in AA's formative years, when a variety of snake oils were touted as alcoholism cures. But today there are several medications that have been proven to decrease the odds of relapse. One such drug, acamprosate, restores a healthy balance between glutamate and GABA, two of the neurotransmitters that get out of whack in the brains of alcoholics. Naltrexone, commonly used to treat heroin addiction, appears effective at preventing relapse by alcoholics who possess a certain genetic variant related to an important mu-opioid receptor. Both can be valuable aids in the recovery process. But the best way to bolster AA's success rate may be to increase the personalization of addiction medicine. "We're starting to get an inkling that something about the initial state of the brain prior to therapy may be predictive as to whether that therapy will be a success," says Grant of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. In other words, certain brains may be primed to respond well to some therapies and less so to others. NIDA and other government agencies are currently funding several studies that aim to use neural imaging technology to observe how various therapies affect addicted brains. One alcoholic might have a mesolimbic pathway that normalizes quickly after receiving a certain type of therapy, for example, while another will still suffer from dopamine disregulation despite receiving the same care. The hope is that these studies will reveal whether neurobiology can be used to predict a person's odds of benefitting from one treatment over another. Perhaps there is one sort of mind that is cut out for the cognitive behavioral approach and another that can be helped only by the 12 steps. A person's openness to the concept of spiritual rebirth, as determined by their neural makeup, could indicate whether they'll embrace the steps. Last September, researchers from the National Institutes of Health found that people who claimed to enjoy "an intimate relationship with God" possess bigger-than-average right middle temporal cortices. And a Swedish study from 2003 suggests that people with fewer serotonin receptors may be more open to spiritual experiences.
by AA. And often, the people who become Wilson's most passionate disciples are those you'd least expect. "I always thought I was too smart for AA," a bespectacled, Nordic-looking man named Gary shared at a meeting in Hell's Kitchen this past winter. "I'm a classical musician, a math and statistics geek. I was the biggest agnostic you ever met. But I just wrecked my life with alcohol and drugs and codependent relationships."
says. "I'm so happy I found AA." Maybe one day we'll discover that there's a quirk in Gary's genetic makeup that made his prefrontal cortex particularly susceptible to the 12 steps. But all that really matters now is that he's sober.
York, Cleveland, Akron From: jax760 . . . . . . . . . . . . 6/25/2010 4:30:00 PM
the
hospital on Feb 10, 1938. Not long after Dr Bob got him down on his knees (while
in the hospital) for his surrender and that same night took him to his first Oxford Group meeting at T. Henry's Regards --- In AAHistoryLovers@yahoogroups.com, Roy Levin > > According to what Clarence says in his talks, in February of 1938 he would still be in Akron City hospital being "interviewed" by Paul Stanley, Bill Van
Horn, Bill D., and other early members of the "alcoholic squadron" of the Akron
Oxford Groups. > > - - - - > > On Thu, 6/17/10, John Barton > > Clarence came into the group in February of 1938 and was not one of the "members" reported to Frank Amos by Dr Bob in that second week of February 1938.
> IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 6669. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Re: Big Book Page 100 to do with sponsorship From: Roy Levin . . . . . . . . . . . . 6/26/2010 9:54:00 AM
the
talks on AA history at the upcoming Interntational on Friday, I believe.  Jay is an expert on early Oxford Group history and has collected first editions of their literature ("What Is The Oxford Groups?") and heard recordings or interviewed older members.  He even went so far as to join the vestigial remnant of that organization which I believe is now known as "Christian Initiative" or something like that. I forget the name, but Jay showed me pictures of his retreat at their headquarters in Switzerland where they rendezvous annually.  Jay says he's heard or read accounts by early members which indicated that the word "sponsor" was indeed in common usage by the O.G. members. Yes, it did sometimes mean that one person might pay for the hospital stay ( about $50 in depression era ) for an alkie's detox if we're talking about the "alcoholic squadron" of the O.G.  But for the non alcoholic members of the O.G. which you realize were numerically superior to the drunks ( we were in a minority ) the term "sponsor" was used commonly much in the same way we use it today, i.e. as someone who introduces you to the the group and undertakes your early training in spiritual practice. A sponsor is a "mentor" in definition and practice, and note the word "protege" is used in our Big Book. The opposite of a protoge is a patron or mentor in common usage, i.e. a "sponsor."  To sum it up, O.G. expert Jay says the term comes from the Oxford Groups. If you're attending the convention catch his talk or Friday and query him in person. I plan to be there myself.  Roy L. ( class of `78 ) --- On Thu, 6/24/10, Roy Levin From: Roy Levin Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] Re: Big Book Page 100 to do with sponsorship To: AAHistoryLovers@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, June 24, 2010, 8:20 AM  Where is this reference to the use by Oxford Group members of the word "sponsor" in the same sense of a baptismal Godfather term? Is it in any of their literature? - - - - From: J. Lobdell Subject: Re: Big Book Page 100 to do with sponsorship <<... the OG used the term "sponsor" more or less in the sense used of Godparents in Sacramental Baptism -- and btw at Calvary, Bill was Ebby's sponsor.>>
From: Glenn Chesnut . . . . . . . . . . . . 6/27/2010 12:13:00 PM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII I'm writing this in a campground at Bardstown, Kentucky, where I don't have access to my books. On the OG and sponsorship: they did not use the word "sponsor" to describe this,
but an essential part of their method was the concept of one-on-one individual evangelism. If you get my book "Changed by Grace" you can see that the idea of replacing mass evangelism (i.e. preaching big revivals in the 19th century frontier revival style) with the concept of individual evangelism first appeared
towards the end of the 19th century. It was Henry Drummond who first proposed
this idea in 1873 (he was the one who wrote "The Greatest Thing in the World" in 1887, which later became, along with Emmet Fox's "Sermon on the Mount," one of the standard books recommended to AA newcomers, in Akron and elsewhere). Drummond's ideas on individual evangelism were further developed as the idea of the 5 C's, about which you can also read more in my book. H. A. Walter, a Protestant missionary to India, talked about this in his book "Soul-Surgery: Some Thoughts on Incisive Personal Work" (the phrase "personal work" meant one-on-one individual missionary work). In order to evangelize you, I have to first Confess my own sins to you in order to win your Confidence. Only then will I be able to move on to bringing about your Conversion and your Continuance in the faith. This idea became extremely important in early 20th century Protestant missionary work in places like China and India, which is where Frank Buchman picked it up.
He left China and went to England, where he tried this kind of foreign-missionary-to-the-heathens approach on students at Cambridge University and later at Oxford University. The OG did not CALL this "being a sponsor," but when an OG member made his first
call on someone whom he was trying to convert, it was a lot like the initial relationship between an AA sponsor and a raw newcomer to AA. But as far as I can tell, there was no major notion of CONTINUING one-on-one sponsorship in OG in the later AA fashion. Once you had joined an OG group, the entire group sat around and prayed and received "guidance" about you, i.e., told you what to do -- and you had to do whatever they said, because God had revealed those instructions to them. And ANY individual OG member could come up to you and "check" you, i.e., take your inventory and tell you how to run your business, because that person claimed to have received "guidance" from God. In the OG, once you had been a member for a while, you were "sponsored" (in the
AA sense) by a group conscience of the entire Oxford group which you belonged
to, and also by any self-righteous, know-it-all busybody in your group. The OG was widely criticized back at the time for its heavy handed authoritarian domination over its members. The AA understanding of the continuing personal relationship between a sponsor
and his pigeon, which was well developed by the middle to latter 1940's, was very different from anything in Oxford Group practice. Read Sgt. Bill Swegan's book for example, and Jimmy Miller's story in "The Factory Owner and the Convict" (which is going to be part of the play put on at the San Antonio International), to see how the modern concept of AA sponsorship was simply taken for granted within early AA by the last half of the 1940's. And the BEST early account of how really good AA sponsors did their job, is in Father Ralph Pfau's autobiography "Prodigal Shepherd" (which is still in print). The good sponsor in this case was Ralph's sponsor, the sainted Doherty Sheerin, and this was very early in AA history -- November 1943, only three and half years after the publication of the Big Book. For a short account, see http://hindsfoot.org/PfLou3.html but you really need to read the book to see how smoothly and effectively Dohr did his job. And not just with Father Ralph -- Dohr teamed up with J. D. Holmes, one of the original Akron AA's, to spread AA all over Indiana (from whence it spread across the river to Louisville, Kentucky, etc.). Dohr did everything right. And maybe this is a hint as to one possible source of the early A.A. idea of sponsorship -- Dohr was a good Irish Catholic, and it is assumed in the Catholic tradition that anyone who wishes to make real spiritual progress needs to choose someone as his or her spiritual director. (Even an extraordinary saint like St. Teresa of Avila had a good priest whom she used as her spiritual director.) In Akron A.A., Sister Ignatia was active by this time, and in Cleveland, a majority of the early AA's at that time were of Roman Catholic background.
ideas by
1938, when they started writing the Big Book. They had either stopped using the
OG ideas completely, or had greatly modified and transformed them, because those
particular OG ideas didn't work that well, particularly with alcoholics. We all need to remember that the enormous spread and growth of AA came, NOT during the first couple of years, when the alcoholics were part of the Oxford Group, and trying to do everything the Oxford Group way -- look at the membership figures from 1935 to 1949 -- the extraordinarily rapid spread and growth of AA was the spread and growth of BIG BOOK A.A., which began in 1939 with the publication of that extraordinary book.
alcoholics ever gained permanent sobriety within the Oxford Group. Rowland Hazard went back
to drinking again, and so did Ebby Thacher. Richmond Walker (of the 24 hour book) was only able to stay sober for a couple of years or so within the Oxford Group, and didn't get permanently sober until he joined AA. When Bill W. arrived in Akron in 1935, trying to stay away from the booze by using OG methods alone, "white light" experience or not, he was in fact only hanging onto his sobriety by the skin of his teeth. And Dr. Bob was never able
to get sober at all within the OG alone, in spite of long effort -- it took Bill
Wilson, and the new ideas which Dr. Bob and Bill then began developing once they
got together, to get Dr. Bob sober, and to KEEP Bill Wilson sober. Or in other words, everything good in A.A. didn't come from the Oxford Group -- Bill W. and Dr. Bob were religious geniuses, innovative and creative, and not simply blind copiers of other people's ideas. And Doherty Sheerin, Ed Webster, Richmond Walker, Ralph Pfau, and many of the other early AA people were extremely bright and creative people themselves -- the good old timers didn't
turn off their minds and stop thinking and figuring out additional new good ideas after the Big Book came out in 1939. Glenn IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 6671. . . . . . . . . . . . RE: Secret of AA: After 75 Years, We Don''t Know How It Works From: ricktompkins . . . . . . . . . . . . 6/26/2010 5:13:00 PM
[mailto:AAHistoryLovers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Fiona Dodd Sent: Saturday, June 26, 2010 2:02 AM To: AAHistoryLovers@yahoogroups.com Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] Secret of AA: After 75 Years, We Don't Know How It Works
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