My name is and I’m an alcoholic

Session #1 – Overview, Steps 1, 2, & 3 (Day 1)
Session #1 – Overview, Steps 1, 2, & 3 (Day 1)
My name is __________ and I’m an alcoholic. [Both leaders introduce
themselves] Before we begin, let’s have a moment of silence to invite the
God of our own understanding into our hearts and ask for an open mind and the willingness to have anew experience followed by the
“Serenity Prayer”…
WELCOME to the _______________ Back to Basics Beginners’
Classes. During the next 2 days, you will learn how to recover from alcoholism by taking the Twelve Steps as outlined in the book
“Alcoholics Anonymous. The Program of AA is a spiritually based plan of action that will remove the compulsion to drink and enable you to live a life that is happy, useful, and whole.
AA instructional meetings date back to the early s. After the publication of the seven Cleveland Plain Dealer articles in October and
November 1939 and the March 1941 Saturday Evening Post article about Alcoholics Anonymous, AA started growing so rapidly it became impossible for the early members to individually take new prospects through the Steps. This was especially true in Cleveland where Clarence
Snyder, the 40
th sober member of AA, and the other Cleveland AA’s had the highest success rate with sobering up drunks. So they began to take people through the Steps in a class-like environment. Beginners Classes
(as they are sometimes called) were held for the purpose of acquainting both the old and new members with the 12 steps upon which our program is based. So that all twelve steps could be covered in a minimum amount of time, they were divided into four classifications,
and one meeting each week was devoted to each of the four subdivisions. One of the most well-known “Twelve-Step Beginners’
Classes” originated in the Minneapolis, Minnesota Nicollet Group,
which was founded in 1943 by Ed Webster, author of the book Stools and Bottles, and Barry Collins. Members of this group published the original Little Red Book which is a compilation of notes used to teach the Nicollet group’s Beginners Meeting.
Each group developed its own guidelines for teaching the “Beginners’
Classes.” However, all these groups had something in common. They provided a safe, structured environment in which newcomers (and older