The first 100
I hear reference to the first 100 all the time as proof positive of the program.
Page xiii –- Foreword to the First Edition
"We, of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body."
AA membership was 74 members from 1935 through 1938 as the original manuscript went to press, 41 known to have achieved permanent sobriety, so is there a slight exaggeration ?
There was a woman who got sober with the first AA's then went back to the bottle in 1939 and died some time after.
I also did some reading in Alcoholics Comes of Age and on page 74 it talks about alcoholics not wanting to get too well too soon. How they clung onto their defects until they were ready to let go of them.
"Drinkers could not take pressure in any form" (direct quote)
I don't post this to question the validity of the AA program, any of us who have recovered can look in the mirror and see how it works. But I think it is important to know where we come from and how it really was in the beginning. We have romanticized the good ole days and use it as a means to separate certain AA's from others.
Our fellowship has had problems from the get go, the miracle of God is that it works at all.