Aa history Lovers 2004 moderators Nancy Olson and Glenn F. Chesnut page

Disraeli

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

++++Message 1995. . . . . . . . . . . . RE: Recovery Rates & chips

From: t . . . . . . . . . . . . 8/25/2004 12:58:00 PM

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Peter,

made

to compare number of chips sold as a elementary attempt to compare numbers of

those

who start the program to numbers who achieve sobriety ... unfortunately, in

AA

life there are complications inherent in that ...

claim

a

'desire chip' each day/meeting for first week/month or more? ...And that

even

pick

[How many desire chips have I taken during my time in the program? Many more

than the

number of yearly chips. I can quickly count at least three that I have right

now. To

me personally, a desire chips mean so much more than any other I might have no

how many X's, V's or I's it might have] ...

How many folks stay sober but have quit picking up yearly/birthday chips? How

many

yearly

buy

a new one? There's also the question of whether to count all yearly chips or

just the

1-year chips?

The underlying assumption that a one-to-one correspondence between chips

-- members starting the program, or achieving a year's sobriety-- just is not

there

in practice in our groups [at least not anywhere I've attended meetings]. And

sure how one could come up with quantifying just what sort of number

relationship

there might be between those two chips.

There's an added problem of comparing desire chips to yearly chips --the

growth

... [if we could really compare them] you would not compare desires chips

given

this

compare

given

As far as the decline in numbers of desire chips ... how much of that is based

on

folks not qualified for the program being referred, or going 'on their own',

more

quit

practice of offering them to sober members for 'a little extra emotional

support'?

[remember when groups did that?]

Probably not all the decline is due to those or other similar reasons, but I

personally believe that a rather large part are.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

++++Message 1996. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Re: Earliest Printing of

Twenty-Four Hours a Day

From: Arthur Sheehan . . . . . . . . . . . . 8/25/2004 6:33:00 PM

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Hi Dennis

I found 3 references in the listings of Conference Advisory Actions.

1953:

Conference feel it should depart from its purely textbook program by printing

non-textbook literature such as the "24 Hour Book of Meditation"? (Literature

Committee)

1954:

The publication rights of Twenty-Four Hours a Day not be accepted. (Floor

1972:

(Literature Committee)

Cheers

Arthur

From: Dennis Mardon

To: AAHistoryLovers@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 6:29 AM

Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] Re: Earliest Printing of Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Thanks to Glenn C. for posting that history of the early writing, printing

and distribution of the Twenty-Four Hours a Day book by Richard W.

I seem to remember that prior to or maybe concurrent with the Hazelden

opportunity there was consideration given to the book becoming the property

of AA publishing. In fact, I believe it may have been considered more than

once by the General Service Conference in the early 1950's. I don't have a

copy of Advisory Actions handy. Can anyone shed more light on this?

Dennis M.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

++++Message 1997. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Recovery rate.

From: Arthur Sheehan . . . . . . . . . . . . 8/25/2004 6:38:00 PM

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

This doesn't make sense and it comes across a lot more as mythology rather

than history. We are supposed to be a history group. The data circulated are

not even subjected to the barest minimum of analysis and scrutiny. The mere

fact that a Group puts something on a web site, or that an Intergroup Office

publishes a paper, does not automatically endow the data with accuracy and

relevance.

Flawed data gathering techniques, and flawed assertions of cause and effect,

remain flawed regardless of where they reside or who constructed them.

Historical analysis is supposed to consist of some measure of scholastic

scrutiny coupled with some minimal attempt at verification or refutation of

the accuracy of the data observed.

The example cited for the Houston data illustrates its own flaws. Desire chips

sold in 1996 are used to represent the number of members coming into the

Fellowship that year. Ten year chips are used to represent the number of

members who have stayed in the Fellowship for ten years. This then is used in

a formula where the number of 24 hour desire chips sold that year are divided

into the number of ten year medallions sold that year and that somehow

produces a "success rate" for Houston, TX for that year.

Aside from a dubious premise, the rounding of the results of the arithmetic

performed is flawed. 707 divided by 24,246 yields .029 (which would

approximate 3% not 2%). Also 707 divided by 40,000 yields .0176 (which would

approximate 2% as opposed to 1.5%). It seems that the numbers are rounded down

to exaggerate failure.

Other considerations that make what the data are purported to reflect quite

suspect are:

1. Members picking up desire chips are presumed to pick up one and only one.

This serves to exaggerate the presumed number of people coming in (perhaps

exponentially). How many AA folks have you heard say "I have drawer full of

desire chips."

2. The number of members presumed to be celebrating ten years is likely

substantially understated. If someone who stayed sober for a decade moved away

from the Houston area, and didn't purchase a ten year medallion in Houston, it

would be inferred as a failure even though they may be quite happily sober

wherever they moved to.

3. Likewise, if someone stayed sober without attending AA any longer it would

also be inferred as failure. There are other little factors such as mortality

rates where over the ten year period someone dies (sober) of natural causes it

too would be inferred as failure. In addition, if someone who started ten

years ago slipped and sobered up again, and is counted in one of the other

annual groups, it would also reflect as a failure for the 10 year group.

Many of the postings of "success rates" in AAHistoryLovers seem to have a

flair for the dramatic and notions of impending doom. A number of people seem

hell-bent on knocking down the success achieved by AA by using flawed data,

flawed arithmetic and flawed presumptions and conclusions.

When AA started in 1935 it did so with two members. Today, after almost 70

years, world-wide membership is conservatively projected at 104,589 groups and

2,066,851 members (per the 2004 Conference report). Instead of celebrating the

obvious (i.e. a rather remarkable demonstrated track record over seven

decades) there seems to be a fixation of pursuing both the morbid and obscure

(i.e. using the sale of chips and medallions to infer how many people are

failing to stay sober).

Cheers

Arthur

From: R. Peter Nixon

To: AAHistoryLovers@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 5:32 PM

Subject: RE: [AAHistoryLovers] Recovery rate.

Hello,

article entitled, "Don't Drink and Go to Meetings". The entire article may

be found on the Primary Purpose Group of Dallas, Texas' website:

http://www.ppgaadallas.org/aa_articles.htm

In love and service,

Peter N.

..."Let's take a look at what appears to be happening as is reported in one

of our major cities in the Southwest (Houston).

NUMBER OF CHIPS SOLD BY THE INTERGROUP OFFICE IN 1996

Desire---------------------24, 246-----------------100%

30 days---------------------8,839-------------------36%

60 days---------------------5,960-------------------25%

90 days---------------------5,019-------------------21%

6 mos.-----------------------3,370-------------------15%

1 yr.--------------------------2,102---------------------9%

2 yr..-------------------------1,170---------------------5%

5 yr..----------------------------707---------------------3%

10 yrs.--------------------------560---------------------2%

20 yrs.--------------------------143-------------------0.6%

30 yrs.---------------------------26--------------------0.1%

For the year 1997, the number of "desire chips" sold was reduced to 22,191.

For 1998, the number dropped to 19,504. For 1999, 16,285 Desire Chips were

sold. The other statistics remained the same. So how well is your group

doing?

A very disturbing observation from the 1998 statistics is that 592

total number of folks taking "desire chips" in 1988 was in excess of 40,000.

Did only about 1.5% apply our Program?"

-----Original Message-----

From: Johnny Hughes [mailto:drofjoy@nc.rr.com]

Sent: Sunday, August 22, 2004 7:56 PM

To: AAHistoryLovers@yahoogroups.com

Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] Recovery rate.

Hello all you history lovers....

Somewhere I read an article about someone doing research on the present

recovery rate and they had secured information from a large intergroup

source concerning the number of white chips purchased by local groups and

the number of blue chips purchased by local groups which gave some

indication.

Does anyone know of this article or any other source concerning the present

recovery rate experienced by AA?

Thanks....

In His Service

Johnny H.

Fayetteville, NC

"Remember, Bill, let's not louse this thing up. Let's keep it simple"

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

++++Message 1998. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Dates on the 20 questions

From: Glenn Chesnut . . . . . . . . . . . . 8/27/2004 12:21:00 AM

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Dear JP,

they came from the medical faculty at Johns Hopkins. I don't know when the

earliest version was drawn up at Johns Hopkins, but the Test Questions began

appearing in A.A. literature at a very early date.

In terms of the dates when they first began to be used in A.A., these Test

Questions, which were always credited to Johns Hopkins University Hospital to

the best of my knowledge, appeared for example in the Detroit Pamphlet

entitled Alcoholics Anonymous: An Interpretation of the Twelve Steps, also

known as the Washington D.C. Pamphlet (editions were also published in

Oklahoma and on the west coast of the U.S.). See

http://hindsfoot.org/Detr0.html and especially http://hindsfoot.org/Detr1.html

The Detroit/Washington Pamphlet gives 35 Test Questions, a longer version than

the 20 Test Questions that you have discovered.

This pamphlet was clearly not used in Detroit until after they began holding

their first beginners meetings on June 14, 1943. Bobby Burger at the New York

A.A. office refers to the pamphlet in its Washington D.C. version in a letter

to Barry Collins in Minneapolis dated November 11, 1944. See pages xiii-xiv of

Bill Pittman's Foreward to Hazelden's 50th Anniversary Edition of The Little

Red Book for the full text of her letter.

I believe on the basis of my own research so far that the Detroit A.A. people

originally wrote the pamphlet (presumably using it at first in a mimeographed

version) but it seems fairly clear that Washington D.C. published the first

printed version. If this is so, the Detroit/Washington Pamphlet was written

somewhere in the year and a half period between June 1943 and November 1944,

although closer to the beginning of that period than to the end.

Jack H. (Scottsdale, Arizona) emphatically disagrees with me on this. He

believes that pamphlet originally came out of Minneapolis, just like The

Little Red Book.

Jack does have a mimeographed Instructor's Manual from the Nicollet Group in

Minneapolis which gives one of the short versions of these Test Questions, and

he believes strongly that this version went back almost to the very beginning

of A.A. in Minneapolis, since beginners meetings were conducted there, he

says, even before the Nicollet Group was formed. The first group in

Minneapolis was formed in November 1940, and the Nicollet Group was not

founded until December 1943.

So in terms of the dates you asked for, we have one A.A. version which I know

of which probably went back to the second half of 1943 (or not much later) and

another A.A. version which may have been used as early as 1941.

Other members of the AAHistoryLovers may be able to come up with earlier

examples of these Test Questions being used in A.A. writings prior to that

time. Hopefully someone could come up with some sort of date for when someone

at Johns Hopkins first drew up these questions.

Modern mental health professionals scoff at these Test Questions and do not

regard them as scientifically valid. At the practical level though, it is

quite amusing to see a newcomer who is still in partial denial about being an

alcoholic take this test, noting the expression on the person's face when the

person comes to the end of the test and realizes how it is scored. Many A.A.

people like the test because they take a kind of humorous pleasure in having a

test where they can point proudly to a score of 100% without even having to

study for it.

Glenn C. (South Bend, Indiana)

butterfly2479 wrote:

The 20 questions are often sited and used

in various re-written forms...I am aware

that AA has Its' use of them copyrighted now,

and contained in one of its' pamphlets.

But it appears to have been used by varying

sources for many years before this.

Can anyone verify the ORIGINAL date on the

JOHN HOPKINS TEST FOR ALCOHOLISM.

And what are your sources please?

thanks JP

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->

Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar.

Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free!

http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/219olB/TM

--------------------------------------------------------------------~->

Yahoo! Groups Links

to:

AAHistoryLovers-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

++++Message 1999. . . . . . . . . . . . Richmond Walker and New York 1953-1954

From: Glenn Chesnut . . . . . . . . . . . . 8/26/2004 11:30:00 PM

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Dennis M. and Art S. have both written about the decision in New York in

1953-4 not to help Richmond Walker publish and distribute Twenty-Four Hours a

Day, and Art cited the Conference Advisory Actions involved, which was the

ultimate outcome of Rich's request. In fact it was never even seriously

considered in New York at that time for financial reasons. It was an

impossibility.

New York was so desperate to come up with the money to publish the Twelve

Steps and Twelve Traditions in 1953, as we remember, that they had to make a

deal where a commercial publisher published some of the books on the

commercial market in return for printing other copies for the New York A.A.

office.

I have heard people try to explain why this did not really violate the Twelve

interests, particularly outside commercial interests, but I have never found

it truly convincing. At any rate, the New York office was absolutely desperate

to somehow get Bill Wilson's book out in print. They certainly didn't have the

money to take on any additional books even if they had wished to do so.

I'm sure the feeling in New York at that point was that Richmond Walker was

doing a whole lot better than they were, by far, because he had managed to

keep Twenty-Four Hours a Day in print since 1948. Not only had he not gone

into serious debt, he was sometimes making a slight profit (which he of course

promptly figured out how to send to the New York office to help keep it

going). Why was he asking them, of all people, for help?

If I understand correctly, there is speculation that Bill Wilson called the

First International Convention to meet in Cleveland in 1950, in part to

preempt plans which were being laid elsewhere (in Texas, if I remember

correctly) to hold an international AA convention there.

At any rate, it is clear that in the early 1950's, Bill W. was working very

hard to try to establish New York as the international A.A. center. Dr. Bob's

death in 1950 meant that Akron A.A. could no longer claim to be headed by one

of the two co-founders. It seems pretty clear that, by the early 1950's, Bill

W. was not interested in being too helpful to anyone who might appear to be

competition to New York's primacy.

In fairness to Bill, there were in fact forces at that point, when the A.A.

organizational structure was still almost wholly anarchic, which were

threatening to fragment A.A. into numerous rival recovery groups by a kind of

centrifugal force. It was in fact necessary to pick somewhere to be the

central office, and to fight (if necessary) to keep A.A. unified around some

viable center. The one surviving co-founder was in New York City, so that

seemed the obvious choice at that time.

Things did change though in all sorts of ways once past the year 1950. In the

late 1940's, for example, the New York A.A. office regularly bought numbers of

copies of The Little Red Book from Ed Webster in Minneapolis (according to

Jack H. in Scottsdale, Arizona, who found the invoices among Ed Webster's

papers). We must assume that these were then sold from the New York A.A.

office. The Little Red Book of course was Dr. Bob's baby -- he gave Ed Webster

lots of help in phrasing parts of the book, sent copies of it various places

(e.g. a number of copies to Florida A.A. people at one point) -- and otherwise

tried to promote it everywhere. And as Bill Pittman discovered, we also have

letters from the New York office all the way down to November 1950 saying that

The Little Red Book was a very good and helpful book for A.A. people

everywhere.

Ed Webster had also figured out ways to print and distribute copies of The

Little Red Book all over the United States and Canada without going in the

red. It was the New York A.A. office at that point which couldn't figure out

the financial side of how to get a book published.

After the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions was finally published in 1953,

Bill Wilson still had to worry about selling enough copies to break even. So I

don't think he was in any kind of mood to do anything to help "the

competition" at that point, such as Twenty-Four Hours a Day, and particularly

The Little Red Book, which was a straight rival to Bill's new book. Did Bill

Wilson go a little bit overboard at that point in trying to squeeze out any

possible competition to his own book? Opinions among modern A.A. historians

seem to vary greatly on that question. Those A.A. historians who identify

themselves with Akron A.A., or Cleveland A.A., frequently feel that Bill was

going to great and sometimes unfair lengths to squeeze out any competition and

to minimize the contributions of anyone who had not been part of his own

narrow circle in New York.

If this were so, it would be a great shame, for this was totally unnecessary.

I don't see how anyone who has worked the Twelve Steps could deny that the Big

Book and the Twelve and Twelve represent the inspired core of A.A. thought. If

we don't read those two books over and over again, all our lives, we will

never be able to truly grasp the really profound depths of the program. In my

own estimation, the other twelve-step groups (N.A., O.A., Emotions Anonymous,

and so on) are greatly weakened by not having anything truly equivalent to the

Big Book and the Twelve and Twelve. But this doesn't mean that nobody in A.A.

is allowed to read anything other than those two books.

The important thing to remember is that the traditional understanding in

genuine old-time A.A. was that any book which was sponsored by one A.A. group

(the Daytona Beach groups sponsored Twenty-Four Hours a Day and the Nicollet

Group in Minneapolis sponsored The Little Red Book) was automatically

considered O.K. for any other A.A. groups to read from and use in their

meetings, if they chose to do so. The question of exactly why New York refused

to take over the responsibility for keeping the former book in print in 1953-4

is not in fact an important issue. People today who want us to stop reading

these books are trying to cut A.A. off from its historical roots in a way

which will ultimately be very dangerous to the program -- like trying to go to

sea on a sailing ship without enough ballast in the bottom -- the first high

wind will capsize the vessel for it has no weight of tradition to keep it

upright in the face of the stormy

blasts.

That is what is important about the Archival Movement which sprang up in the

which saw that it was necessary to keep the traditions of good old-time A.A.

alive if we were to be a vital force in the present. The AAHistoryLovers, the

National Archives Workshops (the ninth one is going to be held in

Murfreesboro, Tennessee, next month), the annual conference in Bristol,

England, and so on, were the product of this new awareness which began

developing all over the world, an awareness that we have to keep A.A. firmly

grounded in its foundational period, the era of the Good Old-Timers, in order

to keep it healthy in our own period.

Glenn C. (South Bend, Indiana)

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

++++Message 2000. . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Questions

From: Jim Blair . . . . . . . . . . . . 8/27/2004 9:02:00 AM

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Here is an email posted some time ago by an archivist in Northern CA.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--

Juliet from our local Intergroup has come up with some interesting facts about

Below is a snippet from an e-mail I received from a contact from Johns

Hopkins' media relations department:

This is from a faculty member in our Psychiatry dept.

"The Johns Hopkins Twenty Questions: Are You An Alcoholic? was developed in

the 1930s by Dr. Robert Seliger, who at that time was a faculty member in the

Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was intended for

use as a self-assessment questionnaire to determine the extent of one's

alcohol use. It was not intended to be used by professionals as a screening

tool to help them formulate a diagnosis of alcoholism in their patients. We do

not use this questionnaire at any of the Johns Hopkins substance abuse

treatment programs. To the best of my knowledge, there have never been any

reliable or validated studies conducted using the Hopkins Twenty Questions. I

advise you to consider using other instruments such as the Michigan Alcoholism

Screening Test or the CAGE -- both of which have proven reliability and

validity as reported in the scientific literature."

So, the questions should be attributed to Dr.Robert Seliger of Johns Hopkins

(in the 1930s), not to Johns Hopkins itself as they no longer advocate their

use. I note as well that the e-mail I sent to you all earlier from the

Literature Desk at GSO stated that the hospital had requested that GSO not

attribute those questions to their institution in the pamphlet "Memo to an

Inmate Who May Be an Alcoholic."

If you know anyone who would like permission to reprint this piece, I have a

contact at Johns Hopkins to whom I can refer them. I have been in contact with

the faculty member who knew the history of this document and who recommended

that we not use it. She was very adamant about it--in a second e-mail to me,

she said that she'd grant permission to any AA group who wanted to use it, but

that she really recommended that we don't.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

++++Message 2001. . . . . . . . . . . . Rule 62

From: Jack Frost . . . . . . . . . . . . 8/27/2004 7:10:00 AM

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Anyone know in what literature are there references to Rule 62, and

when it was originally used? Thanx!

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

++++Message 2002. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Dates on the 20 questions

From: Dean @ e-AA . . . . . . . . . . . . 8/27/2004 10:18:00 AM

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

butterfly2479 wrote: "The 20 questions are often

sited and used ... Can anyone verify the ORIGINAL date on the JOHN HOPKINS

TEST FOR ALCOHOLISM. And what are your sources please?

Somewhere, and I can't put my finger on it now, there was a post about this.

It could have been on another list. However, the substance was that there

was correspondence between GSO and Johns Hopkins University about this

questionnaire. The university replied that a faculty member had developed

the questionnaire but it was not approved or used by the university -- and

the university doesn't/didn't use it. (Additionally, they suggested using

something other than the questionnaire.)

I'll try to find that email. I know I still have it ... somewhere.

-- Dean Collins

Monterey Peninsula, California

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

++++Message 2003. . . . . . . . . . . . RE: Rule 62

From: Russ S . . . . . . . . . . . . 8/28/2004 9:31:00 AM

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

"When A.A. was still young, lots of eager groups were forming. In a town we'll

call Middleton, a real crackerjack had started up. The townspeople were as hot

as firecrackers about it. Stargazing, the elders dreamed of innovations. They

figured the town needed a great big alcoholic center, a kind of pilot plant

A.A. groups could duplicate everywhere. Beginning on the ground floor there

would be a club; in the second story they would sober up drunks and hand them

currency for their back debts; the third deck would house an educational

project - quite noncontroversial, of course. In imagination the gleaming

center was to go up several stories more, but three would do for a start. This

would all take a lot of money - other people's money. Believe it or not,

wealthy townsfolk bought the idea.

There were, though, a few conservative dissenters among the alcoholics. They

wrote the Foundation * , A.A.'s headquarters in New York, wanting to know

about this sort of streamlining. They understood that the elders, just to nail

things down good, were about to apply to the Foundation for a charter. These

few were disturbed and skeptical.

Of course, there was a promoter in the deal - a super-promoter. By his

eloquence he allayed all fears, despite advice from the Foundation that it

could issue no charter, and that ventures which mixed an A.A. group with

medication and education had come to sticky ends elsewhere. To make things

safer, the promoter organized three corporations and became president of them

all. Freshly painted, the new center shone. The warmth of it all spread

through the town. Soon things began to hum. To insure foolproof, continuous

operation, sixty-one rules and regulations were adopted.

But alas, this bright scene was not long in darkening. Confusion replaced

serenity. It was found that some drunks yearned for education, but doubted if

they were alcoholics. The personality defects of others could be cured maybe

with a loan. Some were club-minded, but it was just a question of taking care

of the lonely heart. Sometimes the swarming applicants would go for all three

floors. Some would start at the top and come through to the bottom, becoming

club members; others started in the club, pitched a binge, were hospitalized,

then graduated to education on the third floor.

It was a beehive of activity, all right, but unlike a beehive, it was

confusion compounded. An A.A. group, as such, simply couldn't handle this sort

of project. All too late that was discovered. Then came the inevitable

explosion - something like that day the boiler burst in Wombley's Clapboard

Factory. A chill chokedamp of fear and frustration fell over the group.

When that lifted, a wonderful thing had happened. The head promoter wrote the

Foundation office. He said he wished he'd paid some attention to A.A.

experience. Then he did something else that was to become an A.A. classic. It

all went on a little card about golf-score size. The cover read: "Middleton

Group #1. Rule #62." Once the card was unfolded, a single pungent sentence

leaped to the eye: "Don't take yourself too damn seriously."

Thus it was that under Tradition Four an A.A. group had exercised its right to

be wrong. Moreover, it had performed a great service for Alcoholics Anonymous,

because it had been humbly willing to apply the lessons it learned. It had

picked itself up with a laugh and gone on to better things. Even the chief

architect, standing in the ruins of his dream, could laugh at himself - and

that is the very acme of humility."

* In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation, Inc., was

changed to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous,

Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office.

pgs 147-149 Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Jack Frost [mailto:jfrostburien@yahoo.com]

Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004 8:11 AM

To: AAHistoryLovers@yahoogroups.com

Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] Rule 62

Anyone know in what literature are there references to Rule 62, and

when it was originally used? Thanx!

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

++++Message 2004. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: 20 Questions

From: Mel Barger . . . . . . . . . . . . 8/28/2004 8:11:00 PM

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Since the 20 questions were used for years and atrributed to Johns Hopkins,

it's rather embarrassing to learnh that they didn't really have backing from

the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

But we no longer need them. AA has 12 questions in the pamphlet "Is AA for

You?" which should suffice very well. Just walk a newcomer through those 12

questions and it should be immediately clear whether there's a serious

drinking problem there.

Mel Barger

~~~~~~~~

melb@accesstoledo.com

----- Original Message -----

From: Jim Blair

To: AA History Lovers

Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004 10:02 AM

Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] 20 Questions

Here is an email posted some time ago by an archivist in Northern CA.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

----

about the 20 questions.

Below is a snippet from an e-mail I received from a contact from Johns

Hopkins' media relations department:

This is from a faculty member in our Psychiatry dept.

"The Johns Hopkins Twenty Questions: Are You An Alcoholic? was developed in

the 1930s by Dr. Robert Seliger, who at that time was a faculty member in

the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was intended

for use as a self-assessment questionnaire to determine the extent of one's

alcohol use. It was not intended to be used by professionals as a screening

tool to help them formulate a diagnosis of alcoholism in their patients. We

do not use this questionnaire at any of the Johns Hopkins substance abuse

treatment programs. To the best of my knowledge, there have never been any

reliable or validated studies conducted using the Hopkins Twenty Questions.

I advise you to consider using other instruments such as the Michigan

Alcoholism Screening Test or the CAGE -- both of which have proven

reliability and validity as reported in the scientific literature."

So, the questions should be attributed to Dr.Robert Seliger of Johns Hopkins

(in the 1930s), not to Johns Hopkins itself as they no longer advocate their

use. I note as well that the e-mail I sent to you all earlier from the

Literature Desk at GSO stated that the hospital had requested that GSO not

attribute those questions to their institution in the pamphlet "Memo to an

Inmate Who May Be an Alcoholic."

If you know anyone who would like permission to reprint this piece, I have a

contact at Johns Hopkins to whom I can refer them. I have been in contact

with the faculty member who knew the history of this document and who

recommended that we not use it. She was very adamant about it--in a second

e-mail to me, she said that she'd grant permission to any AA group who

wanted to use it, but that she really recommended that we don't.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This message was scanned by GatewayDefender [4]

9:55:16 AM ET - 8/28/2004

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

++++Message 2005. . . . . . . . . . . . 1940 AA/mexicanMemberCleveland

From: Gilbert Gamboa . . . . . . . . . . . . 8/29/2004 9:04:00 PM

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

This question is for anyone who can direct me in the direction of info on Dick

P the

recall all this,but I believe him to be the key figure in the translation of

the Big Book into spanish words???..all info on this would be greatly

appreciated,and although the hard work has been done in translating this book

to spanish,there is yet a harder piece Ive encountered and that is to

pronounce the words correctly and put an exact definition to the meaning in

spanish....

seek,Trust,and serve

Gilbert G.-Dallas,TX.

Mel Barger wrote:

Since the 20 questions were used for years and atrributed to Johns Hopkins,

it's rather embarrassing to learnh that they didn't really have backing from

the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

But we no longer need them. AA has 12 questions in the pamphlet "Is AA for

You?" which should suffice very well. Just walk a newcomer through those 12

questions and it should be immediately clear whether there's a serious

drinking problem there.

Mel Barger

~~~~~~~~

Mel Barger

melb@accesstoledo.com

----- Original Message -----

From: Jim Blair

To: AA History Lovers

Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004 10:02 AM

Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] 20 Questions

Here is an email posted some time ago by an archivist in Northern CA.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

------

Juliet from our local Intergroup has come up with some interesting facts

Below is a snippet from an e-mail I received from a contact from Johns

Hopkins' media relations department:

This is from a faculty member in our Psychiatry dept.

"The Johns Hopkins Twenty Questions: Are You An Alcoholic? was developed

in the 1930s by Dr. Robert Seliger, who at that time was a faculty member

in the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was

intended for use as a self-assessment questionnaire to determine the

extent of one's alcohol use. It was not intended to be used by

professionals as a screening tool to help them formulate a diagnosis of

alcoholism in their patients. We do not use this questionnaire at any of

the Johns Hopkins substance abuse treatment programs. To the best of my

knowledge, there have never been any reliable or validated studies

conducted using the Hopkins

Twenty Questions. I advise you to consider using other instruments such as

the Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test or the CAGE -- both of which have

proven reliability and validity as reported in the scientific literature."

So, the questions should be attributed to Dr.Robert Seliger of Johns

Hopkins (in the 1930s), not to Johns Hopkins itself as they no longer

advocate their use. I note as well that the e-mail I sent to you all

earlier from the Literature Desk at GSO stated that the hospital had

requested that GSO not attribute those questions to their institution in

the pamphlet "Memo to an Inmate Who May Be an Alcoholic."

If you know anyone who would like permission to reprint this piece, I have

a contact at Johns Hopkins to whom I can refer them. I have been in

contact with the faculty member who knew the history of this document and

who recommended that we not use it. She was very adamant about it--in a

second e-mail to me, she said that she'd

grant permission to any AA group who wanted to use it, but that she really

recommended that we don't.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This message was scanned by GatewayDefender [108]

9:55:16 AM ET - 8/28/2004

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Do you Yahoo!?

Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now [106] .

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

++++Message 2006. . . . . . . . . . . . Re: 1940 AA/mexicanMemberCleveland

From: Mel Barger . . . . . . . . . . . . 8/30/2004 1:16:00 PM

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Hi Gilbert,

I called the Cleveland Central Office re your request. The gentleman was Dick

Perez and he and his wife both translated materials into Spanish. Dick passed

away in 1988, about seven years after retiring from the Central Office. His

wife is also deceased. My source for this information is Elvira A., who has

worked at the central office in Cleveland for 28 years. She is getting

together information about Dick. You may call her at (216) 241-7387.

I do recall talking by phone with Dick in 1980, a short time before he

retired. I was trying to interview Cleveland oldtimers for "Pass It On," and

he gave me some leads.

Mel Barger

~~~~~~~~

melb@accesstoledo.com

----- Original Message -----

From: Gilbert Gamboa

To: AAHistoryLovers@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2004 10:04 PM

Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] 1940 AA/mexicanMemberCleveland

This question is for anyone who can direct me in the direction of info on

Dick P the

mexican AA member who joined in 1940 in Cleveland I believe..Mel B you might

recall all this,but I believe him to be the key figure in the translation of

the Big Book into spanish words???..all info on this would be greatly

appreciated,and although the hard work has been done in translating this

book to spanish,there is yet a harder piece Ive encountered and that is to

pronounce the words correctly and put an exact definition to the meaning in

spanish....

seek,Trust,and serve

Gilbert G.-Dallas,TX.

Mel Barger wrote:

Since the 20 questions were used for years and atrributed to Johns

Hopkins, it's rather embarrassing to learnh that they didn't really have

backing from the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

But we no longer need them. AA has 12 questions in the pamphlet "Is AA for

You?" which should suffice very well. Just walk a newcomer through those

12 questions and it should be immediately clear whether there's a serious

drinking problem there.

Mel Barger

~~~~~~~~

melb@accesstoledo.com

----- Original Message -----

From: Jim Blair

To: AA History Lovers

Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004 10:02 AM

Subject: [AAHistoryLovers] 20 Questions

Here is an email posted some time ago by an archivist in Northern CA.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------

about the 20 questions.