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Introduction

Since the first edition of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, came off press in 1939, there have been three revised editions—a second published in 1955, a third in 1976, and a fourth in 2001. In all four editions, the first 164 pages have remained unchanged, preserving A.A.’s message just as it was originally recorded by the founding members. The impetus for change has been the need for revisions to the section of personal stories, as suffering alcoholics of many different ages, occupations, lifestyles, and ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds have learned about the Fellowship and come to knock on its doors.

The importance of these personal stories cannot be overstated. Co-founder Bill W. articulated it in a 1954 letter, written when he was immersed in collecting new stories for the second edition: “The story section of the Big Book is far more important than most of us think. It is our principal means of identifying with the reader outside of A.A.; it is the written equivalent of hearing speakers at an A.A. meeting; it is our show window of results. To increase the power and variety of this display to the utmost should be, therefore, no routine or hurried job. The best will be none too good. The difference between ‘good’ and ‘excellent’ can be the difference between prolonged misery and recovery, between life and death, for the reader outside A.A. . . . The main purpose of the revision is to bring the story section up to date, to portray more adquately a cross section of those who have found help—the audience for the book is people who are coming to Alcoholics Anonymous now.”

As stories were added to new editions, others were removed. Difficult as it must have been to take out any A.A. story, hard decisions were integral to the process of making space for A.A. experience that reflected the growing diversity of the membership. And since there is no such thing as a “bad” A.A. story, every time a new edition came off press the General Service Office received calls and letters asking why some member’s “favorite” had been removed.

The idea of developing a separate publication to make these slices of A.A. history and experience available once again came up periodically over the years, but for quite some time it did not receive substantial support. By 1997, however, when members of the General Service Conference called for preparation of a fourth edition of the Big Book, they asked concurrently for development of a volume of the stories that had been dropped from the first three editions. Alcoholics Anonymous had grown from the original struggling band of 100 members, living primarily in Ohio and New York, to a multifaceted, worldwide Fellowship, estimated at more than two million strong. Changes from the third edition to the fourth were the most extensive yet, and more than half the stories had to be taken out to make room for those of contemporary members. Thus, in the pages that follow, you will meet a large number and variety of A.A.s from earlier times, whose stories are no longer part of our basic text, but are most emphatically part of our common experience.

All but ten of the stories in this volume were published in either the first or the second edition of Alcoholics Anonymous. As a collection, therefore, they greatly enrich our knowledge of “what we used to be like” as a Fellowship. Most of the A.A. writers got sober before the Twelve Traditions had been adopted, many of them in that chaotic period when A.A. was “flying blind” and learning from its many mistakes. For the most part, they stopped drinking, and stayed stopped, without the numerous A.A. meetings and other resources so readily available. Yet they demonstrate powerfully that A.A. experience is timeless. They tell us, as clearly as the speaker we heard last night, “what we are like now”—sober, grateful alcoholics who with the help of the A.A. program will continue to stay that one crucial drink away from a drunk.