AA History -- Gresham's Law & Alcoholics Anonymous

My Sponsor sent me the following link the other day:

http://www.barefootsworld.net/aagreshamslaw.html

It was an excellent read!! 

I believe myself to have started out with medium-coffee and gradually moved toward strong-coffee. So I know full well that he's right when he says that not applying the full measure of the program, in the best case, only got me abstinence and, in the worst case (as happened to me before), instead of graduating to strong-coffee I could've slipped back into active alcoholism. Thankfully my sponsor likes his coffee BLACK!!! lol

I'd be willing to bet that there is a strong correlation in group size and the strength of their "coffee". Larger groups tend to dilute the message a lot in hopes of avoiding controversy. I tried going to a 100+ AA group in Miami (The Coral Group) and couldn't find sobriety there (that's where I had the sponsor who had me call him every single day and NEVER ONCE picked up the phone). 

Small groups have more control & prudence over the message being given to the newcomer. Having said that, it's like he said at the end, there is no going back.

I've always thought the program is like watching a masterful art of spiritual jujitsu - it absorbs the skeptical paranoid blows given by newcomers and in return offers them no target to grasp at (We find no one need have difficulty with the spirituality of the program). 

In that sense, the velvet gloves as an early approach is particularly tactful and effective. The problem arises when we fool ourselves into thinking it's anything more than a tool meant to warm-up the newcomer and avoid the action outlines in the steps. "Faith without action is dead"

Thanks for sharing, I think my writing for monday's e-mail is done!! hahaha

David t.