Joe and Charlie
 

Hi guys.
I have heard lots of people speak of the Joe and Charlie tapes, etc.
I was wondering if anyone had a link to them or transcripts?
Also, what do you think of them?
Talk, talk, talk! :)

xaspeakers.org
has quite a few downloads of them.You can download them to your computer or burn CD`s of them.
Joe and Charlie do about a good a job on the program as I have heard.I believe they are good for newcomers.

http://xa-speakers.org/pafiledb.php

try this link and type in Joe and Charlie in the search box

Downloads & mp3's from silkworth.net

I personally find these to be a life saver; over and over!

Thank you SO much!
I am excited to listen to them!
And I am a newcomer (DOS 5-9-08), so this will be great for me!!

I learned the program from these tapes. That' s AFTER over 2 1/2 years in the program.

And that's how I brought the program to my sponsee. We both went through tapes together.

IMHO that's the way to go with sponsees. That way, you know they know the program and you're both working from the same script.

Not a huge fan of them myself. Full of lots of opinion masked as "the program" Also I have seen those tapes used as a means for people to sound off in meetings, parrotting Joe and Charlie

What are some examples of opinions masked as the the program. I know the part about the acetone is not AA, but it is identified as such.

Well for one that AA once had a 75 percent recovery rate

Yeah , I'm skeptical about that stat
On the other hand, I think it's impossible to calculate any real recovery rates in AA.

Wilson put a great loophole in " How it works' has that base covered. " Rarely have we seen antybody fail who has thoroughly followed our path' .

Any failure could be attributed to not following the program. ;) No program could be responsibel for relapse rates of those who don't follow it.

But intuitively, what would you guess the recovery rate is for those who thoroughly follow the path ?

And it is more likely or less likely that an oldtimer would have followed the path outlined in the Big Book?

one thing they did I disagree with is the false recovery rate they claim.I mean the 2% or whatever it is..

One of the biggest problems I have with the Joe and Charlie series is:

Why do we need them? Why can't we study the Big Book ourselves and get our own spiritual awakening? What we get from Joe and Charlie is second hand

I like Joe and Charlie. Over here in the UK they're very popular. I think sometimes people underestimate how important it is to be close to the "source" of the programme! We don't have no great great great grand sponsees of the first 100 or anything.

Anyway Steve, isn't your avatar of a, er, guide to the 12 steps?

:)

Yes it is,
It is simply a written guide and it is just an avatar. I frequently change them. I have nothing against Joe and Charlie. What I see over here in the U.S. is that more people tend to simply mimic what they say as opposed to learn anything from them. If I want to stay close to the Big Book I can open it. It is right here next to me.

I have heard hundreds of people say how fantastic the Joe and Charlie tapes are in England, very rarely do I hear anyone say they did what Joe and Charlie were trying to encourage them to do, people pay lip service to AA to the Big Book and to the program, its nice to look into the water but its too damn scary to jump in.

We don't have no great great great grand sponsees of the first 100 or anything. Paul, Oh yes we do!

Yes we do Paul. My sponsor knew Clarence Snyder ( who was sponsored by Dr Bob). My sponsor himself is second generation AA. He got sober when the first 100 were still very much alive. What folks like Joe and Charlie do, whether intentionally or not, is romanticize those pioneers. Joe and Charlie ( and many like them) paint pictures of the first 100 as being saintly ( minus Bill W. who usually gets the role of devil amongst the Akronites). Most Big Book workshop step studies I have been to at some point begin contrasting what they call "Old School AA" to contemporary AA of today. The avatar I use is from a step study guide which simply suggests a weekly reading format and a timeline to study the steps in. It offers no opinion ( some of the questions it ask are at wors "filler questions") You can see it here:

An Unofficial Guide to the Twelve Steps, Edited by Dr. Paul O.

The idea there is to get a group of people together to work the steps, not sit around and listen to someone speak about the Big Book. I found it works well and kinda keeps people on task instead of veering off.

Dr Paul's story was in the Big Book under Dr Alcoholic Addict and the famous 449 page.

I meant we don't have great great grand sponsees (or whatever degrees of separation!) in the UK -but I see that Dave's going to make a liar of me!

Joe and Charlie are almost exotic to my ears. And around where I go to AA I meet a lot of people who're seeking out a "closer to the source" type of AA which, yes, they're taking into little groups and trying to work what's suggested rather than just being passive recipients of tapes. I haven't really encountered anyone who would give Joe and Charlie any kind of authority over the BB, but they often seem to be a "route in" to the 12 steps for people where sponsorship isn't so strong - that includes parts of the North West where I live. The likes of SR has given me huge amounts of insight into AA - far more than I got from the people I met at the 20 or so meetings which I visit around my area. Joe and Charlie seem to provide a similar point of access.

I followed up your reference to Doctor Paul and I look forward to receiving the infomration!

I got sober in the North West, the part where I got sober sponsorship is almost non existent, there is heavy emphasis on meeting attendance and fellowship, step four is mainly done as a life story, up there where I was the word sponsor interprets as agony Aunt, the brand of AA I encountered up there was nearly fatal for me.

Gotta disagree with you on this Steve. While I know of a few who have did the steps on their own, most of us needed a guide, or a sponsor.

Well, I needed a sponsor to guide me through the steps and Joe & Charlie have guided many through the steps.

My old home group was formed by a man & his wife that had been sober many years without doing the steps and were dying in AA. In 1988, someone gave them a set of the original Joe & Charlie tapes and they did the steps with Joe & Charlie. Then they started sponsoring people through the steps and group was born. That group is 200 members strong now and has helped many. It is an active, healthy AA group.

As far as agreeing with them, I don't agree with everything Bill Wilson said either. He was known to embelish the truth a bit, you know.
Jim

I don't believe in "AA pedigrees," but I know where my roots are.

I was sponsored by a man named John who moved here from L.A. John was soponsored by a man named Joe who got sober in Denver and was sponsored by Don P. Don's sponsor is sponsored by a man in Chicago who got sober in 1944. His sponsor was Earl Treat ("He Sold Himself Short"), who got sober in Akron with Dr. Bob as his sponsor. Earl founded AA in Chicago and sponsored a woman, Sylvia K., whose story is "Keys To The Kingdom." Sylvia started the first intergroup in AA, in Chicago out of her home.

Don was a member of The Denver Young People's Group. At the 1975 International in Denver, a man from Toronto named Mac C. spoke about how he had got a bunch of guys together as a group and took them through the steps. The Denver people got this idea and started doing it and it spread across the country. We've been doing the workshops up here for nearly twenty years now. There is a good set of cd's Joe H., from Santa Monica taking some people through the steps in a workshop at The Salvation Army in Long Beach, CA. I believe this was recorded in 1985.
Jim