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Comparative Table of Contents

DISCLAIMER: Cogniventus.com has not been approved of, nor endorsed by, and is not affiliated with, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. or any service entity of A.A.W.S., Inc. This website’s currently Featured Project, “FINISHING WHAT BILL WILSON STARTED,” is not A.A. Conference-Approved Literature; it is non-fiction commentary submitted here for non-commercial single-use, and gives Fair Use citations, for educational purposes, of limited sections of the 2nd Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, 1955, which has been in Public Domain since 1983.

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ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS (Second Edition, 1955)

The story of how many thousands of men and women
have recovered from alcoholism
   

The Doctor’s Opinion

  1. Bill’s Story 1
  2. There is a Solution 17
  3. More About Alcoholism 30
  4. We Agnostics 44
  5. How it Works 58
  6. Into Action 72
  7. Working with Others 89
  8. To Wives 104
  9. The Family Afterward 122
  10. To Employers 136
  11. A Vision for You 151

APPENDICES

The AA Tradition
Spiritual Experience
The Medical View on AA
The Lasker Award
The Religious View on AA
How to get in Touch with AA
Twelve Concepts

FINISHING WHAT BILL WILSON STARTED (Second Edition, 2022)

The story of how the New Founders Group (1991-2014)                                    brought Alcoholics Anonymous into the 21st Century

A Scientist Speaks Out

1: You Can’t Go Home Again
2. A Sponsor’s Lament
3. Higher and Lower Powers
4: What Works Poorly
5: What Works Better
6: Relapse or Research?
7: Best by Test!
8: To Alcoholism Professionals
9: The Fellowships Afterward
10: To The Chronically Human
11: A New Vision for a New Generation

APPENDICES

Bill’s Biggest Big Book Blunders
Before or After Belief & Faith?
On Anonymity
On “Rewriting” the Big Book
What does it mean to be a “New Founder”?

The Navigator’s Notes:

“While I thank God that I was privileged to be an early member of A.A., I honestly wish that the word `founder’ could be eliminated from the A.A. vocabulary…When you get right down to it, everyone who has done any amount of successful Twelfth Step work is bound to be the founder of a new life for other alcoholics.” from As Bill Sees It, # 67: Thousands of “Founders” 1967

—Most of the material in in the 11 Chapters that are presented here as “FINISHING WHAT BILL WILSON STARTED” functioned as an exploratory Oral Tradition within The New Founders Group of A.A. between 2006 and 2014, and was formalized as a Written Tradition in abbreviated form on the 75th anniversary of the 1939 publication of “Alcoholics Anonymous.” Although originally intended for internal use within the Fellowship as a new Basic Text from which to recover from A.A. sobriety that has gone awry, whatever the reason, we at Cogniventus became increasingly aware of its applications for alcoholic and non-alcoholic alike and, with the legal transfer of intellectual property to us before the organic, voluntary, and glorious dissolution of the New Founders Group, decided to release it in a broadened and deepened form for your approval, disapproval, or indifference.

“A Scientist Speaks Out” functions as a semi-respectful counterpoint and arguable update to “The Doctor’s Opinion.

—In their 1939, 1955, 1979, and 2001 Prefaces & Forwards, each corresponding Edition of the Big Book gave what it believed to be interim updates in those 62 years of A.A.’s history. We reject those updates—and the politically correct introductions and juggling of diverse stories following the 164 page Basic Text—as irrelevant and immaterial. Since every group in A.A. is autonomous, there is no such thing as “Alcoholics Anonymous” as a coherent political or historical entity even though, by necessity and convention, we must continue to refer to it by the only name we have.

“So long as there is the slightest interest in sobriety, the most unmoral, the most anti-social, the most critical alcoholic may gather about him a few kindred spirits and announce to us that a new Alcoholics Anonymous group has been formed. Anti-God, anti-medicine, anti-our recovery program, even anti-each other—these rampant individuals are still an AA group if they think so!” Bill Wilson, 1946.

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