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

Disraeli

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

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

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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.

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

Twenty-Four Hours a Day

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

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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.

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

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

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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"

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

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

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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

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

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

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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