Alcoholics Anonymous Beginners & Refresher Class Sessions Prepared by Mike & Kathy L, West Orange, NJ Revision 1.0 May 5, For additional copies visit http://back.to/aabasics on the Internet ____________________________________________________________________________________ 2 members) learned the principles of AA, took and retook the Twelve Steps, and had life-changing spiritual experiences. During November 1995 Wally Pan AA member and archivist, after having done nearly two years of research about the early AA Beginners’ Meetings, led the Copper Valley Group in San Manual, Arizona, through the Twelve Steps as part of their regularly scheduled AA meeting for four successive Friday nights. This was the spark that was to flare the Alcoholics Anonymous Beginners Meetings from the sands back into existence. Now, about five-and-a-half years later there are over groups and meetings teaching the Steps in 4 one-hour to one-and- a-half-hour formats similar to the way our early pioneers did in the sands. These meetings grew in popularity so fast in the s mainly because of the publication of Wally’s book in 1997 entitled Back to Basics: The Alcoholics Anonymous Beginners Meetings -- Here are the Steps we took. in Four One-Hour Sessions We encourage each of you who are interested in teaching these classes the way our founders did to purchase a copy of Wally’s book. You can order it from his website. There is also a group in Texas who makes their format available online for free. Visit B2BnTexas on AOL for their format and a copy of this weekend’s format is also available on the World Wide Web for free at back.to/aabasics. See us after this session or anytime during the weekend and we can give you these website addresses again. In the past year, groups teaching the Beginners Meetings have started in Hong Kong, Thailand, Sweden and Israel. Wally’s book is in the process of being translated into Chinese, Swedish and Spanish. We have regular email correspondence with members of a group that just started teaching the classes within the past month in Vancouver British Columbia. Some of you maybe thinking that the approach of taking the 12 Steps in four weeks, much less in two days, drastically goes against what we hear in many of our AA meetings today give examples of just don’t drink and go to meetings, take it slow and easy, wait until you feel better before you do a 4 th Step, and the greatest myth of them all work a- step-a-year”]. Well, we’re going to point out some examples to you in the Big Book which go drastically contrary to the message we often hear today. The Steps were taken quickly in the early days of AA. There was
