Step 12 as the Drunk Squad of the Oxford Group – Sandy B.

About This Speaker Tape

Akron, 1935. A man is tied down in a hospital bed after blacking out both eyes and a nurse. He is a "real one." Sandy B. recounts how Bill and Bob didn't offer clinical advice, but shared their own wreckage to prove that one alcoholic can affect another in a way no non-alcoholic ever could. It was a gritty era of trial and error, where the "drunk squad" of the Oxford Group stood in corners smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, failing often—sometimes with patients falling over dead—while experimenting with sauerkraut juice and honey to fuel the body.

They sought to codify a program of action to prevent the message from becoming garbled, resulting in a book that failed to fund a chain of hospitals but succeeded in saving lives. Sandy B. warns against the modern drift toward "group depression meetings" and "cafeteria style" recovery, urging a return to the raw, uncompromising tools used by the first 100 and their Higher Power.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 The vital importance of one alcoholic talking to another to prevent relapse.
• 2:15 The story of Bill D. and the first successful recovery of a third alcoholic.
• 4:30 Laughter: The trial-and-error days of sauerkraut juice and honey treatments.
• 6:10 The 'drunk squad' and the struggle with the Oxford Group's four absolutes.
• 8:20 The first group conscience meeting in Akron to discuss carrying the message.
• 10:15 The motivation behind writing the Big Book to keep the recovery process pure.
• 13:00 The humorous process of naming the book and the fellowship.
• 15:40 The tension between the original program and the 'cafeteria style' approach to the steps.
• 17:20 The critique of treatment center language and 'group depression meetings'.