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Review:Twelve Steps and Twelve TraditionsIf the sheer amount of dogmatic death threats within the book Alcoholics Anonymous wasn't bad enough along comes the sequel. Written during his 11-year crippling bout of depression, William Griffith Wilson with some help from Tom P. wrote a guide which, in Wilson's words, "...to become happily and usefully whole." Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (12x12) is an expanded guide on how one should "work" the Steps and Traditions. The standout piece within this twisted text is The Story of Ed as related within the discussion of the Third Tradition (pp. 143-145). It is a tale of how Wilson and his wonderful Gang Of Drunks kicked Ed out to die an alcoholic death just because he wouldn't submit to Wilson's idea of what God was. It is the sick fantasy made real which Wilson offered as mere conjecture within the Fourth chapter of the book Alcoholics Anonymous ("We Agnostics") and shows as to what length Wilson's cult would go just to get someone to hit bottom just because of such blasphemy. In retrospect, I don't believe Ed was an atheist. To correlate this story with "We Agnostics" proves that Wilson deemed anyone as an either an atheist or an agnostic if they disagreed with any of Wilson's ideas of God. In the hundreds of meetings that I have participated in there is a distinct idea of God that A.A. defines within its image. From the 12x12: "Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant." (pp. 174) Even worse, in spite of the Traditions, all of Wilson's dreams have come true as listed within the discussion of Tradition Six (reformatted in list form with additional commentary for emphasis from pp. 155-156):
Nevermind the fact that A.A. will never hold itself accountable to the Traditions which are nothing more than an unenforcable facade. The Traditions look wonderful to an outsider but they will NEVER be enforced by the leadership of A.A. for one reason from the 12x12 itself (pp. 192): They derive no real authority from their titles; they do not govern. No one within the membership is held accountable. No one ever will, that is, unless A.A. members "carry the message" with their own translated versions of the book Alcoholics Anonymous and distribute them outside the auspices of A.A. World Services. Nevermind the abuses as documented not only within with 12x12 via the story of Ed but through Rebecca Fransway's "A.A. Horror Stories", those books should never be distributed lest the message becomes diluted within Mexico and Germany! That kind of activity will net'cha a lawsuit! Hypocritical, twisted and sick. If there's anything which is so dark and perverse it would be this book. It is not just documentation of tragedy and despair projected from one man's sick mind upon alcoholics, it is a darkly unfunny farce of what A.A. has aspired and devolved into today. It's everything Wilson ever dreamed of. For shame! --dr.bomb
Download Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
in WinHelp format.
Download Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
in ASCII plaintext format. Note: Both files above are distributed in .ZIP archive format. Download a .ZIP utility to decompress them. Both .ZIP files are unmodified and presented as-is from their original pro-A.A. download sources. Consider this my own idea of 12-Step work put into action. ARID Media .PDF version of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
Last updated 2005/09/04 - Added link to ARID Media .PDF version Updated 2005/06/24 - Added link to "The Story of Ed" First posted 2005/04/18 |
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