+ Last updated:
 May 21, 2008

Alcoholics Anonymous History
GOD AND ALCOHOLISM
Our Growing Opportunity in the 21st Century

By Dick B.

For almost 12 years, A.A.'s leading scholar and historian has researched to find, document, specify, and make known the real early A.A. program developed between 1935 and 1938, primarily at A.A.'s birthplace in Akron. The work has resulted in Dick's eighteen published titles.

This new volume takes a different and challenging turn. The proposition could be called "So what!" So early A.A. had a simple 7 point program that produced astonishing results among 40 medically incurable alcoholics. So those simple elements--called in three words "love and service"--have been replaced by a totally different fellowship with totally different language and a host of totally new "nonsense gods." So the recovery results have become dismal. So what!

Dick answers with the ignored specifics of the 1930's program. He shows the tremendous impact the A.A. ideas from medicine, religion, and experience have had on the alcoholism and many other problems. Then he shows the real product of early A.A. -- reliance upon God and a focus on the complexity of alcoholism. With this followed by the need to remember exactly what our Creator Yahweh can do and why no "self-help" ideas should ever be allowed to limit Him, His power, or His Word.

The conclusion is not that today's widely revised, diverse, and "universalized" fellowships are not surviving the cut. The appropriate conclusion, contends the author, is that the unique discovery in the 1930's, the widespread need for, and appeal for, A.A. in the 20th Century, and the forgotten importance of the Creator hold the key to spiritual recovery, success, deliverance, and a changed life in this new century. If only they are trumpeted loud and clear.

Paradise Research Publications, Inc.; 190 pp.; 6 x 9; perfect bound; 2002; $17.95; ISBN 1-885803-34-6.

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The Rev. Howard J. Clinebell, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus of Theology, Pastoral counseling educator, author of more than a dozen books on pastoral counseling, and long-time authority in the alcoholism/addiction research field.

Ozzie Lepper

The Wilson House (birthplace of A.A. co-founder Bill Wilson)

Colonel Mel Schulstad, U.S.A.F., Retired; CCD (NCAC II) Counselor; Author; Co-Founder and Past President of the National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors.

Contact:
Dick B.
P.O. Box 837
Kihei, Hawaii
96753-0837
Ph/fax: 808-874-4876
dickb@dickb.com

© 1999.
Paradise Research
Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

Trademarks and Disclaimer: ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS®, A.A.®, and Big Book® are registered trademarks of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. Dick B.'s web site, Paradise Research Publications, Inc., and Good Book Publishing Company are neither endorsed nor approved by nor associated or affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.