One Drunk to Another A Daily Reprieve
Watch The Kitchen Table
Illustration · A front room on a December evening, set up for a meeting at home: six seats that don’t match, from a kitchen chair to an armchair and a footstool, turned in one ring to a small table, with snow falling past the window. Not drawn from a photograph.

Daily Reflections · December 12

A Common Solution

Before the Big Book was printed, the first two chapters Bill W. wrote, the second of them today’s, had already found readers: would-be donors, a doctor, an editor and a drinker in the far West.

Today’s reading

The reading for December 12 in Daily Reflections, AA’s book of short readings by members. Its passage comes from Alcoholics Anonymous, the Big Book, page 17: the third paragraph of “There Is a Solution,” the chapter after Bill W.’s own story.

This page doesn’t reprint it. Read it free at aa.org, then come back for the asks.

Read it at aa.org

Themes and asks

  1. What holds

    The page around the passage says members come from many walks of life, people who wouldn’t otherwise have met, and that a danger they all came through wasn’t enough on its own to hold them together. What does, the passage says, is something they hold in common and can all stand behind.

    • Who in your group would you never have met anywhere else?
    • What do you agree on with them, even on days you agree on nothing else?

  2. The news

    The passage says this is what the book has to tell anyone still drinking. When AA answered a worried mother’s letter in 1938, as the history below tells, its reply led with the same news: men in the East had found something that worked.

    • When did you first believe it might work for you, and what made you believe it?
    • Who in your life still hasn’t heard that it works?

  3. A book that travels

    To the member who wrote the reflection, the Big Book is itself a messenger, and the farthest-traveled one. Read beside that, the history below finds the book at work months before it was printed, as two chapters in the mail.

    • Which page of AA’s literature has done the most for you, and when did it reach you?
    • Who could you hand a book, or one page of it, this week?

  4. Unasked

    For the member who wrote the reflection, the small jobs around a meeting count as Twelfth Step work too, and they come early to do them.

    • What job at your meeting gets done by whoever comes early, and could that be you?
    • Who came in last week that nobody spoke to?

Behind the words

Two chapters

Today’s lines are on the first page of “There Is a Solution,” the second chapter of the Big Book, and that chapter was one of the first two the book had. Bill W. began the book in the spring of 1938, at an office in Newark, standing behind the office’s secretary, Ruth Hock, and dictating while she typed. By the time an appeal for money got going that summer, he had finished his own story and, as he put it, “roughed out what is now the second chapter.”

The two chapters went out long before the book did. Copies went with that appeal to the wealthy, and it came to nothing. Bill also sent them to Dr. Esther L. Richards of Johns Hopkins Hospital, who wrote on July 18 that she had “read through the first two chapters without stopping.” She suggested getting a doctor to write an introduction. Nine days later Dr. William D. Silkworth wrote a letter of support, and it became part of The Doctor’s Opinion, at the front of the book.

Another copy went west. A mother there had written to a doctor about her son’s drinking, and her letter was passed on to the men writing the book. Their reply told her that about a hundred men in the East “have found a solution for alcoholism that really works,” and a rough copy of the first two chapters went with it. Her son read them on a binge, then spent most of the time from September 1 to mid-January in a sanitarium. Home again, he found the whole manuscript waiting, and six weeks later he wrote back: “I’m sure I have found the solution.” His letter became the heart of “Lone Endeavor,” in the first edition.

In the early fall the trustee Frank Amos sent Bill to Eugene Exman, the religious editor at Harper & Brothers. Exman read the two chapters while Bill waited, then asked, as Bill remembered it, “Could you do a whole book in this style?” Harper offered an advance of $1,500. Bill and Hank P. chose instead to publish the book themselves, through a company of their own, Works Publishing, and it came out in April 1939.

Ten years later, describing the book in a paper for the American Psychiatric Association, Bill called its second chapter “a chapter of hope.”

More on Harper’s offer, and the company Bill and Hank started instead: Par value $25, in By the Carload. On the letter Dr. Silkworth wrote: The Doctor’s Opinion, in The Little Doctor. On the son who read the two chapters on a binge: Lone Endeavor, in Jittery and Alone.

Four readers, 1938

Four of the first readers of Bill W.’s first two chapters from outside the fellowship, as AA’s histories name them, in about the order they read them, and what each reading brought back to the book of April 1939. The short lines and tags are this page’s.

  1. SummerWould-be donors

    Copies go out with an appeal for money from the wealthy.

    NothingThe appeal comes to nothing.

  2. By July 18Dr. Esther L. Richards

    A doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital reads both at a sitting, and asks for a doctor’s word up front.

    At the frontDr. Silkworth’s letter of July 27, now part of The Doctor’s Opinion.

  3. By SeptemberA son in the far West

    Sent to his mother, who had written about him. He reads them on a binge.

    Near the backHis sober letter of early 1939, the heart of “Lone Endeavor.”

  4. Early fallEugene Exman, Harper

    Reads them while Bill waits, and offers an advance.

    On the title pageHarper’s offer turned down. The book comes out from Works Publishing.

April 1939 Alcoholics Anonymous comes off the press, with today’s passage, nearly word for word, near the start of its second chapter.

Threads

Each one opens the calendar with its days lit up.

Sources
  • Alcoholics Anonymous. Works Publishing, 1939; fourth edition, AA World Services, 2001. “There Is a Solution” (the reading cites page 17), and in the first edition, “Lone Endeavor.”
  • Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. “Service: The Third Legacy” (the first two chapters, the appeal for money and Harper’s offer).
  • Pass It On. AA World Services, 1984. Chapter 11 (Ruth Hock at the typewriter, the two chapters, Harper’s offer and Dr. Esther L. Richards’s letter).
  • Arthur S., A Narrative Timeline of AA History, 2009. The entries for July 18 and July 27, 1938.
  • Bill W., “The Society of Alcoholics Anonymous,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 1949, read to the American Psychiatric Association in Montreal, May 1949, as transcribed at silkworth.net.
  • Daily Reflections. AA World Services, 1990. December 12 · aa.org

Something wrong here? A date, a name, a quotation? Let me know

Daily Reflections is AA’s book of readings for every day of the year, each written by a member about a favorite passage from AA’s literature. A Daily Reprieve gives each day questions to sit with and the story behind its words.

Printed from One Drunk to Another, an independent AA history · onedrunktoanother.org/today/december-12/