Alcoholics Anonymous - Big Book 4th Edition by AA Services Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Alcoholics Anonymous - Big Book 4th Edition
Book Review: Alcoholics Anonymous - Big Book 4th edition
Summary: 5 Stars
A must read for anyone on the road to recovery. A life saver.Book Review: Timeless Wisdom
Summary: 5 Stars
As a family member affected by alcoholism, I have kept a copy of the Big Book around for the last 12 years. From time to time I pass my copy on to an alcoholic who wants to read it. If it doesn't come back, it has found a home and I get another one.
It took a couple of "hopeless" drunks to create a program so simple in spiritual directions, yet so rich in practice, to remind us all that, to be healthy, we need to attend to our spiritual selves to lead meaningful lives. That self centered willfulness leads only to destruction of self and others. And, for alcoholics, it can lead to physical death.
1930's style, timeless direction.
Book Review: AA Big Book's big impact
Summary: 5 Stars
The book reeks of the authentic, the real, the possible. I was much encouraged about a family member's chances of recovery from alcohol as I read it.Book Review: very powerful book that needs to watch it's religious tone
Summary: 4 Stars
i started to read Alcoholics Anonymous because five of my close friends are alcoholics and i wanted to better understand what they were going though...
now i'm a prime candidate for Al-Anon because my loved one is a heroin addict... funny how the world works...
but i'm not going to write about my personal story but about the book itself...
it took me a very long time to get though the book... half of my struggle to get through the book was it's language... being a non religious person and having to see every male pronoun capitalized (Him or His) is hard... the program promises that the steps are not religious but more spiritual... but the text does not reflect this promise... sometimes i wonder if i was reading the bible (funny because everyone asked me if i had the Book of Mormon when they seen my copy of The Big Book)...
the very Christian overtone made it very hard for me to take the program seriously in the first half of the book...
there is a chapter called We Agnostics that tried to sooth the soul of us non worshipers... but it only made me angry because whoever wrote that chapter did a very poor job with the soothing... i came away feeling that the reason that my life is bad is because i didn't believe in Him... i hated the accusing, guilty feeling the book put upon me...
the first half of the book was hard to get into but once i started the second half i became interested...
the stories are amazing... at the point i didn't mind the religious overtones... at parts i was crying for how low some of these people got and how they turned everything around...
there is a beauty to hear about how helpful this program has been to the people who were selected to share their stories for this book...
some of the stories that stood out were Jim's Story (one of the first African American in the program), Window of Opportunity (about a young man who jumped out if a second story window), My Bottle, My Resentments and Me (about a man who lost everything ending up on the streets), and Vision of Recovery (about a Native American man who lost everything and found his way back)...
i think the book would be pointless without the personal stories... to hear people confess all their dark secrets is very comforting... it made we feel that i'm not alone with my problems... i'm not an addict of drinking or drugs but i still felt a connection with what it's like to be human... we all make horrible mistakes in our lives... no one is perfect... but the book teaches us that we are not alone... i like that...
the main reason i'm a proponent for the group is that it works for my friends... my close friend celebrated her 7 month sober... to see her happy and in control of her life is all that i need to know how important AA is...
and after struggling thought The Big Book my friend informed me that there were other Books written that didn't have as much as a religious overtone like this one had... after hearing that my love for the program grew even more... it's nice to see that they took the time to embrace everyone that wants to enter their program!
Book Review: Big Voodoo Spiritual Work
Summary: 5 Stars
This little book is written in a style that contains a dreadful dilating force. Bill W.'s voice is the voice of what Freud called the reality principle; it is the voice of death and as you listen to it it takes a sledgehammer to the glass and tinselly rubbish of your life. The prose style is profoundly quirky, funkadelic, and throbs to the rhythms of an iron heart as it pushes and shoves new blood into your abused and decrepit veins. Sobriety is not a tea-chat. It is not a milk run or a tupper-ware party. It is life and death locked in an rutheless struggle for the future of your body and soul.
This book is not just for alcoholics. It's for any honest spiritual seeker who wants to get blasted into mental health by one of the premier spiritual texts of the twentieth century.
Worthy to stand alongside the great spiritual works of humanity: The Bible, the Koran, the Tao Te Ching, the Dhammapada, the Talmud, the Bhagavad Gita.
I'd give it ten but I'm reduced to giving it only five stars.