Thursday Big Book Step Study

One Response to “Recording for January 14, 2010”

• Suzanne Says:
  January 20th, 2010 at 12:50 am

  Dear Stephanie,

  I came across your website/workshop today and just wanted to remark on its effect on me. Your approach, though of course well-meaning, is, to my eyes and ears, a subversion and a watering-down of the Big Book Step Study “movement” that is now 25+ years old.

  A BBSS sponsor works one on one with another alcoholic—not as teacher or facilitator or workshop leader but simply as one drunk with another. Furthermore, the originators of BBSS (several of whom I have met and attended meetings with) do not give writing assignments. Such exercises are poor substitutes for actual 12-Step work: one recovered alcoholic, book in hand, to the one who still suffers. Further, and just as important, Step 1, etc., writing exercises are not part of the directions. Your workshop and site give the impression that the study and practice of the work as outlined in the BB is not enough. Presumably people who come in contact with your message pass these creative exercises and interpretations along to still others. And that is how the original message of A.A. (the one in the Book) has been watered down and here you are doing the same—in the name of Big Book Step Study.

  Recordings of my home group’s weekly speakers are posted at http://bbstepstudy.org. These files support “loners” and others without benefit of local BBSS meetings (though meant to substitute for working with a sponsor). One does not hear these speakers talk about a “set-aside prayer” (which I believe originated from a traveling speaker named Joe H.) or other add-on instructions. Collectively, these recordings attest to the fact that the message has transformative power carried the old-fashioned way: one alcoholic to another.

  I myself was long-distance sponsored and have done the same with women in Hawaii, California, New Mexico, and St. Petersburg, Russia. (And I work with women who have addictions of many stripes. I am not against the all-addictions approach and don’t feel that it threatens A.A. in any way. That’s not my point and I hope it isn’t taken that way.) Also, my home group has put on several hall-filling 4th-step workshops as well as the first BBSS Convention, but these are simply a gathering of speakers, in a speaker-meeting format, discussing their experience (also may be found on the site too).

  This site, your exercises, and yourself as sole messenger appear to me to be setting yourself up as some kind of a guru. A few people, inspired by the Book’s power, have succumbed to “absurd actions and ideas” (page 87). But with such action the focus stays on one messenger and one voice. Please take down this site, and join up with your real-time fellows—in brotherly and harmonious action—to carry the message, one drunk at a time.

  If you are open to other voices and ideas, I urge you to publish this comment on your site.
  –
  Suzanne T.
  Asheville Big Book Step Study Group, est. 1999

  “After ecstasy, the laundry.” -Zen saying