The Nicolette Group’s Hardline Approach to the Real Alcoholic – Kesting C.

Welcome to the Tuesday night Recovery Speakers History Workshop. Thank you everyone for joining us tonight. My name is Tim and tonight we have Kesting C presenting on The Little Red Book and the Nicolette Group's Long Range Sponsorship. And we meet every Tuesday night at the same time and at the same Zoom ID number and next week will be Gary N presenting on Bobby B and the Traditions that is July 15th and then on July 22nd we have Nancy K from California and she will be coming back with some friends of hers that went to the International Convention in Vancouver and they'll be sharing their experience of what they did in Vancouver and the atmosphere of it all and sharing it all with us. And then on the 29th, it is the last Tuesday of July, so it is our night for a conversation with the long-timer. So that is the rest of July there. And this meeting is being recorded. The audio from tonight's presentation as well as all of our past presentations can be found at recoveryspeakers.com. 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If you are able to, we accept contributions which allow us to continue our work and you can make contributions by using the QR code that is up on the screen or you can click the link that I will be sharing in the chat in a moment and that brings you to our donation page as well. And we really appreciate all of your support. And now for tonight, for casting, we have his presentation tonight. Hopefully we have some time for questions at the end. So if you have any questions for casting about The Little Red Book, please write them down and be prepared to ask questions at the end of the meeting. And that is it for me for tonight. I am going to go ahead and turn it right over to Kesting and really appreciate you coming on to share all your research and presentation that you've put together and you can take it away. All right, great. Thanks, Tim. Let me go ahead and share my screen. share sound, boom. Beginning. All right. So yes, my name is Kesting. Some of you may have seen this presentation before. I'm going to try to do something a little bit different and spend some more time talking about elements which have struck me, right? You know, the same way that the big book is a diamond where if I shift it a little but I look at it from a new angle, the light refracts differently, and I hear, see, read something else and have an interpretation for that. So there was one section that I added in this that I discovered recently that I wanted to share, which if you own a really early version of The Little Red Book, you won't see it. And if you own A Later version of the Little Red book, you Won't See It either. So it's not accessible And it's very much aligned with the spirit of long-range sponsorship. It's an essay called Working With Others, which they subsequently removed. So I'd like to spend some time talking about that. I'm probably going to fly through a lot of slides. It's very painful for me to delete any slides to try to shorten it up. So many of them I might go through fairly quickly. If you are looking for a more in-depth, like very detail oriented, you can certainly listen to one of the previous times that I shared this slide deck before as well. so there may be some folks who are unfamiliar with the little red book while this is quite detailed I'll also try to provide a little bit of context for this book it is also not AA conference approved literature although it was offered to be that and also proceeds from the book were also offered or a portion of them both of which AA graciously declined but this book would continue to be published. Hazelden publishes it today. It's had widespread notoriety as well as people utilizing it, and so I hope to fill in some gaps, answer some questions at the end, and share a little bit more than perhaps I typically do, and also introduce this essay that I found, which I thought really captured a lot of AA's struggle with unity as well as like the beauty of unity and just 12-step work in general and how that can be an individual and group responsibility and how they might look different across different settings, different areas and communities, groups and individuals alike. So let's get through some setting the stage first. so why study the little red book it's really the first book that was published after the big book of AA material though it was again not published by AA there was one other booklet published before which does predate from Richmond W I think it was called for drunks only but it was really kind of more of like a pamphlet booklet but this is the first hardcover book that you could purchase It also gives us some insight into what was early AA like. And I think there's a good argument that this is the closest book we have to perhaps what Dr. Bob's interpretation would have been. We also have those early Akron pamphlets as well. however like this would probably be the most comprehensive and Dr. Bob did read it he did enjoy it and it is written in a more accessible simpler language than say opening up like the doctor's opinion or some parts of the big book which are really sort of like ostentatious in some of its verbiage and how it influenced sponsorship so I hope to talk a little bit about that tonight Here's some of the sources I use. We'll just fly through that. So, in order to set the stage, we're going to talk about specifically three Minnesota pioneers. We have Barry C., who was actually AA number one in Minnesota. we have pat c who was a number two some people mistakenly believe he was number one he was not and then our primary author of the little red book and also other cole web literature ed w here is barry c and have some statistics on him spouse when he was born when he passed away his gravestone and he was borne and buried in minneapolis but also lived in wisconsin he was a salesman like a lot of the early aas um and a little bit about him and so he's one of the individuals who published a little red book that's why we're spending a little bit of time. Was he an author? No. Did he have input and edits, and was he very much Ed's partner in publishing? Absolutely. So, he is important to talk about. In 1940, Barry received a letter from a friend, Chan F., in Chicago, and in that letter, he was also given what would have been the first AA pamphlet, so this is April 1940, that would have been the Larry J. Pamphlet. And actually, Barry's wife replied saying it was too late that Barry was beyond help, which I think is not uncommon among us. However, Barry was ready for change and he did sober up while he was in the hospital. And he became close friends with our author, Ed W., who would later published the Little Red Book with him. And Barry would go on to become an integral part of the Alano Club Society and become a founder of the Nicolette Group with Ed W. So they founded that AA group. And here's actually that letter, Chan F writing to Barry and sending the pamphlet. And we're going to talk a little bit about Pat C. And he went by Pat even though you can see his first name was Bernard. Okay, when did he sober up? Ah, November 11th, 1940. He has an interesting getting sober story. He'd read about AA in a magazine in 1940. I'm not sure which magazine this was. It could have been a Times article. He, like a lot of the early AAs, was exposed to the Oxford group, Richmond W., author of The Little Black Book or 24 Hours a Day. Another example, of course, Bill and Bob separately. And it really just goes to show how big the Oxford group was in the 30s and 40s, even though they would change their name. And if you don't know what Keeley or Keeleelig is, I'm not going to go into that. I am not the best person to speak on it. But Pat was also exposed to that. pat accidentally discovered the big book in the public library with a stolen library card he checked it out and he returned it three years later actually and in august 1940 he wrote a letter to the alcohol alcoholic foundation so he wrotea letter to aa received a reply and it included the aa pamphlet assuming it's the same pamphet and then later in the year november 9th 1940 he would be 12-stepped by chan f who also wrote the letter to barry and bill l because back in that day like they you know would give out 12 step work to people to essentially go visit or when you were traveling uh people who reached out for help you know later they would ask groups like here's a list of people who outreached in your area so this is very much an example where chan F and Bill L went there. And they went there on Armistice Day, it was a blizzard. And because of the blizzard, they had two more days to work on Pat and sobering him up. And November 11th, 1940, Pat C became AA number two, although he was entirely unaware of Barry C. Because we're not going to talk a lot about Pat tonight, I won't go through all of these, but he's in a lot of ways the star of Minnesota, Minneapolis AA. He would serve as a trustee to AA.He worked professionally on the alcoholic treatment realm, substance use realm with alcohol and he even asked Bill if it was okay if you know he were a counselor kind of director at pioneer house. And Bill capturing the spirit of the eighth tradition was like, yes, you'd be filling the role more of a social worker in the letter that I read. So it wasn't professionalizing the 12th step. It wasn't AA having a professional class. It was you as a person are doing this and might be well-equipped to do this based on your lived experience and your knowledge of alcoholism. and one of these suggestions that pat got because he encountered a lot of the same struggles that many of the pioneers encountered was you know finding sober people to form a group and so suggested that he go find a captive audience and that was the minnesota sanitarium there there are some talks that he gives that are on recovery speakers wonderful speaker And vocationally and avocationally, it's estimated he helped about 30,000 alcoholics and 600 people attended his funeral. Here's a nice picture of his wife and him. Now we're going to talk about Ed W., who is our author of The Little Red Book. As you can see displayed here, we have actually, there are four books that he wrote. I'm not going to go into detail so much on the other three, but just to summarize what they were. We had The Little Red Book first, which was August 1948, Stools and Bottles, Barroom Reveries, and Our Devilish Alcoholic Personalities. Some more pictures of him, his statistics. He served in the Navy twice, and he was very, very handy, and also a businessman. and he actually functioned quite well while he was drinking and was employed up until the end of his drinking when he actually lost his job as a result. So that was toward the end OF 1941, and I might mention it later, but the Jack Alexander article, his wife came across that. She was actually the one that made the call, and two men came in 12-step Ed. And essentially like he would detox in the meeting room while Barry arranged a hospital stay and Ed would go on to help facilitate these beginners classes and he became lifelong friends with Barry and of course Pat as well he would be close to and go on to publish three additional books after The Little Red Book 2. So this is the Alano Club, also called the Original Group or the Mother Club. And I'm not going to go into a ton of detail on this, but this essentially would become the first clubhouse which would hold the original group and groups. They would sometimes call them squads, right? But they all shared the same location, which was incorporated separately like our clubhouses are in connection to our sixth tradition. Okay. So this first Minneapolis group, it moved several times. I have some of that there. And it would become incorporated in 1942. So, this is, you know, shortly after a lot of these folks got sober here. But Pat C would be the president. Barry C would be the vice president and some other folks here's some pictures inside of the club from look magazine and bill uh bill wilson did a few visits to minnesota his first one was in 1941 according to the book courage to change not to be confused with the um the kind Al-Anon related literature. And this is a picture of him from June 1943 at 2218 Fetolano Club. This is another picture of them. It's a great picture. And this was a more contemporary picture of what it looks like in the 2000s. So there was a split. We talked about three pioneering members. They're all, you know, at this club. And there was a split that would then go on to form another group. And this other group would become the Nicolette group. And that is a group that would be started by Ed and Barry, and very much like that group would, you know, essentially, you know, adopt a lot of the 12-step style that Ed and Berry had, right? So in some ways, even though it was Ed doing the writing and Barry helping with the publishing and maybe some of the editing, the Little Red Book and some of the other literature that came out are very much an extension of the Nicolette group. And they were a bit more conservative in their approach and who would be a member and talk a little bit about that as well. The reasons for the split, not entirely clear, but a little Bit of Speculation is warranted. And here is a quotation from the book, The Story Behind the Little Red Book by Damian McElrath, which was one of the sources that I used. It is not easy to get a handle on precisely why the break occurred. There are many sources that point to some general dissatisfaction about the way that Alano Club was run. It also appears that the members who were divorcing themselves from the ilano club were unhappy with what they felt was the lenient manner in which new members were accepted into the club some of whom they felt were not truly alcoholic and so here we encounter right as i said we can speculate a little bit here we encounter third tradition stuff who is a member and this the these are early days this is 1940s the uh the 12 points to assure right? You know, the traditions, all that. That didn't appear until 1946 and that was in the grapevine and our traditions would not be adopted until 1950. And so, you know, there's a trial period going on here. And there was a lot of communication with New York, specifically with Bobby B. And here's a letter, Pat C to Bobby B, and talking about that split. And it was maybe be a more amicable break from the mother group from the Alano Club than might otherwise be suggested. So here's Pat writing to Bobby in New York. It becomes my duty to advise you that there are now two AA groups in Minneapolis, like all other group members, mostly in one squad who have definite views of their own. The dissenting crowd are headed by Barry C. There are no hard feelings on our part. I do not know the attitude of the 12 to 15 who went with Barry. So Bobby B is at the Alcoholic Foundation replying to letters, of course. So he had about a dozen plus people who were in a squad at the original Alano Club who broke off to form the Nicolette group. And Bobby B actually writes back. He says life in AA holds many surprises and incidentally is never dull. The phase you people are now going through is a common one, but somehow I just never thought it would hit Minneapolis. So she has an affection here. But it is understandable we do all huddle together when first joining AA and our common problem keeps us from holding forth too much on individual rights and ideas. And in any group of human beings there are bound to be conflicting ideas, such as who is a member? Who is to say who is right and who wrong? Often it takes experiment and trial to settle this question. And that was January 14, 1944. Beautiful example of Bobby capturing the spirit of the first and fourth traditions. And she would be a big part of Bill's formulating the traditions because they're getting all this correspondence from all around the country and all these problems emerging and they're trying to figure out how to respond to them. And this is really how the traditions are forged, right? Like through experience, but they're getting it indirectly through all these groups in this aggregate fashion that helped shape what these traditions might look like for our long-term survival, which translates into how do we keep unified? Okay, there's some other letters about treasury stuff. More correspondence between Pat and Bobby. And a little bit more about the split. With the exception of one or two members, I have no quarrel with the Nicolette group. The thing I consider very unfair and underhanded is the practice which continues of these one or two member's proselytizing among our members to induce them to make the switch. The original group dried these people up, and now when they are in a position to do some work, the other group tries to entice them away. And that was Pat again writing to Bobby several years later. This is in the summer of 1944. So what we notice here is a little bit of Pat is begrudging some of the behavior of a few individuals in the Nicollet group, you know, referring to that approach from his perspective as proselytizing, basically coming in and preaching and trying to poach these folks going, hey, we know the way. These other folks are maybe not doing it well, not doing het the right way or maybe even flat out doing it wrong and they're more than just inviting saying, hey, why don't you come over here and see what we have but more really trying to actively recruit is the spirit of what I'm getting from this letter and Pat doesn't love that. I don't have really much of a problem with it. And for those who are sober in a fellowship, AA or otherwise, maybe you've had similar events or experiences where people come in and they judge the clubhouse and they go, we're the perfect in sobriety group, right? So here are some of the shortcomings from individual and groups kind of manifesting here is what I read from it. So what are some potential factors in the break? Because the Nicollet group would, you know, then go on to have their own group and be organized the way that they would like to be organized. And shortly after that, we get the publication of The Little Red Book and subsequent publications. So, there were certainly some differences in how to direct funds and for what purposes. Money can be one of those delicate topics in groups. Sometimes it's as simple as what coffee to get. There were disagreements on how to run the club at the Alano Club. There were likely conflicts of personality, such as the letter that I just read. possibly there was political infighting also mentioned in that letter and philosophical differences on who could become a member so there was clearly the strong sentiment that from from the folks who'd go on to form the nicolette group that we are here to qualify and help the real alcoholic, essentially. And if you're not the same type of alcoholic we are, not only do we believe we can't be so effective in helping you, we don't even believe necessarily that you should be a member in AA. And again, context and the setting, the time period that they were in. And some of these same sentiments exist today. So on the other hand, the Alano Club was much more ecumenical, universal. Sorry, I stumbled on that word. So a very universal approach where it was very much more open, right? If you think about the short form of the third tradition, it's like, hey, do you have a desire to stop drinking? Right. So they weren't there grilling people, qualifying them to make sure that, oh, are you the real deal the same way described in the big book? And in fact, I would argue that the bigbook describes alcoholism in a dimensional way where there is a spectrum and it's less so much as a cucumber and a pickle, although that is talked about as well in the big book to some degree. So Nicolette was much more exclusive than it was inclusive. They qualified members. They were also very much an example of a family group, right? Spouses were expected to attend. It was invitation only. You did not just show up. You didn't just look them up on your inner group website. Although they were not reclusive, they did have visitors come. They were quite book-centric and the Nicollet group, they really only wanted to deal with the real alcoholic. Additionally, they revered Dr. Bob and they tried to model themselves somewhat on the King's School group, which was AA group number one, if you don't count kind of the alcoholic squad stuff in New York. So our author at W, he became a stalwart member of the Nicollet group and which, and he and Barry were, I say this with a lot of love, like kind of hardline AAs, very book centric, very solution focused in it. Nicollett employed the term real alcoholics and introduced themselves as alcoholics in meetings. So that's an early example. And don't know who said this or where this quotation comes from. The book, the story behind the Little Red Book is not especially rich in citations, but I will share this. It says, slipping is unnecessary and will not be tolerated at Nicolette. Doesn't sound like something that Ed would say though based on reading what he's written and hearing his talks. This is also from that history book on the Little Red Book, AA is for alcoholics only. We cannot help others, potential alcoholics, heavy drinkers, et cetera, who are only looking for a means to get off the hook. And that is one of the ideas that's offered in the Little Red Book was originally they had a list of people who this, we really haven't had great success if you fall into any one of these categories. And maybe there were nine of them. And one of them was like the potential alcoholics or the heavy drinkers, like those who were just like got into trouble and were looking to evade consequences. They were really interested in who had an honest desire to stop drinking, were doing it for that reason, and had really conceded to their innermost self that they are powerless. so this is from 1964 it's an unpublished draft from nicolette's 20th anniversary i think it captures again some of the spirit of nicolete we talk about the big book in our brand of aa if they want to water it down they're welcome to go to other groups where this is the practice all answers are in the bigbook with help from the little red book these are the only references to be used when conducting a group meeting. The proper indoctrination of the new members occurs through step classes, generally two sessions a year, spring and fall. And I don't know who wrote that or where that came from, but we're seeing a couple of ideas spring out of just the short paragraph, which is this idea of AA's message being watered down. This is not a new idea. When we talk about weak T and strong T AA, that was something Tom P would write about. When you think about the white paper that was written anonymously, but if you listen to a lot speaker tapes, you kind of know who that is. This is not something that happened in AA in 1980 and all of a sudden like all the big books disappear. This isn't something, you know, this has existed essentially since the beginning. And I'm sure that similarities could be extrapolated from even the early days, like with the Oxford group and like, what are you doing working on those drunks. They're not going to be able to create the change in the social movement that we're really looking to do. Like this is the Oxford group message. What are you doing wasting your time with them? So I think you can go as far back as you need to, to really see that there are different, not just opinions, but philosophies on the message. Okay. So that was one idea, the weak T, strong T, watered down. Also this idea of big book and little red book. These are the only references to be used, and this is also what was available, keeping in mind that the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions was not published until, you know, 1953-ish, spring, summer. and the proper indoctrination of new members through step classes. And we'll talk a little bit about step classes, this also occurred early on and was very useful early on. Think about back to basics, that's an example of step classes so we'll talked a little bit more about that. all right some letters about how nicolette did support alcoholics anonymous as a whole they made contributions they registered their group with new york and i'd like to share the soundbite because it's enough of me talking already this is ed w speaking in chicago in 1965. It's an anniversary meeting, it's their intergroup anniversary meeting Let me go ahead and play that And please turn up your volume if it's not very loud because I do not have control there Providentially for us, the members of our group decided that this authority should be an orthodox interpretation of the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous particularly of the 12 steps of our program and that's exactly what it has been for me a supreme authority over the years the big book should be it was written by alcoholics for alcoholics it was taken by the experience from the experience rather of the first 100 members in aa it is the only authoritative source of information that you and i dare trust but we may trust our lives too safely it is the only book that contains all of the answers to our daily problems now these answers are there but they are not always obvious to the occasional reader of the book but they are quite apparent to the member who is a daily student of the both you can believe that provident ed is not claiming to be a founder he is not claiming that i've written a book better than the big book he showed perpetual deference to the big book and really viewed it as the authority and in approaching the little red book and reading it the way it's described right it's the working mechanic mechanics it's The Practical Application the little red book is really not that in the sense that i think of the working mechanics like working mechanics i think you know the fourth step in the big book that talks about here the three columns this is what we this is why we write right we go back to the list and we write some more stuff and then we inventory our fears that is practical application those are the working mechanics. What the Little Red Book does more is maybe, well, it's an interpretation of the 12 Steps. And that was essentially its original title before it got the appellation of the Little Red Book. And they were more essays talking about the principles as Ed and Barry and the Nicolette group understood them. It was their interpretation of it and that these essays were to be helpful in applying these principles, in going through this work, in taking an inventory, going out making amends, cleaning house the whole nine yards. So some Nicollet group locations. I think this is still their current location. They're still around. A lot of groups, a lot of old, old groups are not still around they are. So I mentioned the step classes briefly, and it didn't arise out of someone going, oh, wouldn't this be cool if we made some simplified classes to teach people stuff? It really arose out of a need to introduce the program quickly to a lot of people because of the rapid growth that occurred after the publication of this article by Jack Alexander, non-alcoholic, who is a journalist. Published March 1st, 1941 in the Saturday Evening Post and it brought in many thousands of people, right? It just prompted a flood of people to come in. so it was really out of necessity. And this is how it relates to the Little Red Book. So, this is from the author's note in the first printing of the Little red book. It reads, This book was originally prepared as a series of notes for 12-step discussions for new AA members. It proved to be very effective and helpful. Many groups adopted it using mimeographed copies. So all these people flooding in, right? These classes seem like a good idea. I'm not going to tell you that Minneapolis, you know, was the first place to have these beginners classes. It's somewhat likely, but regardless, they were very, very early because they needed to find a way to be effective in their 12-step work when there are only so many people who'd been through the process, who'd bin through the work. and so this was you know the kind of origin story of the little red book were these classes so and again these classes they occurred all over the place here is a list of some early examples so i think minneapolis was around 1941 1942 though the four class format probably happened a little bit later i don't think that happened in 1941 at all but i am not an authority on this some grapevine articles about it some saint paul saint paula has a rich history as well these beginners classes are also mentioned in the handbook to the secretary and here are the pamphlets which you know very much these these classes were somewhat based on or given to participants here's some early examples so we're talking about the mid 40s here and i could go down a severe rabbit hole with these but we're not going to do that tonight but here are some examples okay so there are probably some informal classes by Pat, maybe in 1941. And then after moving to the Alano Club in April of 1942, that beautiful house I showed some pictures of earlier, these classes maybe became more formalized, taking place one day a week for four weeks, maybe around this time. These classes would lead to the development of what Minneapolis did have called the instructor's outline, which is similar to those pamphlets I just shared, but not the same at all. So what kind of connection they have, I don't know. Some people believe that Minneapolis were the first ones that really have that pamphlet. Others will say, nope, that material came from Detroit and Washington DC were the First Ones to print it. I don t have definitive answers for you, but everyone was looking to see how they could help the new people get introduced to this program. So Pat is one man and he's been, you know, trying to get this thing going off the ground and he needed to find someone with leadership skills, with speaking skills like Ed. And so he asked Ed to assist in leading with classes probably in the early 1940s. So possibly the instructor's outline was maybe the first instruction manual for beginners classes and was probably put together by Pat. He was sober longer. This might have been one of his 12-step missions, but there are similarities between the instructor's outline and other early beginner's pamphlets. So these are a few pages of the instructors outline. If you'd like to hear someone giving a talk on one of these sections, there's one on recovery speakers. No, it's not from the 40s, but it is from 1952, so pretty early on. And you'll see it's really just someone sharing their experience, right? It's not so formalized, at least in this talk at the Alano Club in Minneapolis in the early 1950s. and this is a pamphlet from the ilana club actually that does look the same as the other pamphlets so this is different from the instructor's outline similar but okay so the nicolette group they had their own beginners meetings like from what i read in that 1964 draft so ed definitely did some first step classes and some other ones potentially there were the outline, the instructor manual like we talked about, and this became required for new members at the Nicollet group. This was your introduction, part of your indoctrination. And so this is Ed. The book Alcoholics Anonymous suggested the steps should be lived since one cannot impart to another something he does not understand himself. I compiled notes from which I gave lectures on all of the 12 steps. So Ed is looking to see how he can become more effective. He's putting together notes, and all of this is going to become expanded into the Little Red Book. I'm going to skip that tonight. We're not going to have a conversation about success rates. I can go down a rabbit hole on that. Okay, so these beginners classes and the notes that they use actually became kind of popular. I don't know what these notes look like at this time, but copies were shared. And as early as 1945, some of these notes were being used in Canada. They acquired a copy and were using it by January 1945. And I have some notes there. So these mimeographs of Ed's expanded class notes, right? And those probably look pretty similar to what the Little Red Book would read as when it's finally published. And here is a letter to the Nicollet group from a group in Canada saying like, hey, can we get some kind of bound up copies of this? We find this effective. This was perhaps the most challenging part for me to put together as far as accuracy in this presentation, which is what was the evolution of The Little Red Book until it was published? This is a guess. Really, really, it's a guess because there's so many holes and they're just, I don't have a mimeograph copy that I've looked through. I don'T have a manuscript that I'VE looked through there is an early 1945 version of the book that Hazelden has in their archives. I have a picture of the first page of it. So there's probably a lot more to be revealed if someone gets access to that stuff. So here's my best guess, that Ed who was recruited by Pat C at 2218 started teaching classes. And this was maybe sometime in 1942, possibly after April and the Alano Club is formed, begins to teach these four sessions, maybe using the instructor's outline or perhaps his own version. That gets expanded into kind of these class outlines, right? Nicolette group, once they split in the early 40s, you know, they have maybe their own version. And Ed has these class notes, which he didn't think made sense in their current form to just share with other groups. So felt that they needed to be expanded and stand alone so that someone else who's sober six months or a year could read the notes and go, oh, this is a great approach, right? I can follow this outline and help introduce this program in a simple way, what these principles are and how to apply them in a very practical way in your life and stay sober so ed writes what is essentially a manuscript of the little red book at some point this is more of a book form and it's possible that this was sometime in 1944 so this is a full two years possibly or at least a year and a half before the book is published we have mimeographed copies which are produced they're shared they're purchased right we talked about that 1945 example and it was further edited and printed as title, An Interpretation of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous Program. And that would be August 1946, and that is the first official first printing of The Little Red Book. Before then, right, it's kind of informal. They have these mimeograph copies. There may be sharing, selling them, putting them together in an informal way. The book would not adopt its official name, the Little Red Book, until 1949. And here's page one of one of the mimeograph typescript. Oh no, it's not at Hazelden. I apologize. It's at Brown University and it's dated June 5th, 1945. There were also founder retreats that Nicolette had. I have all that information here. I've covered it before. I'm going to skip through this but there's some wonderful pictures. Here's Bob, Earl T., Barry C. You have family members. You have early members. There's Ann Smith. It's just really nice to see. So Dr. Bob's influence, right? Ed and Barry knew Dr. Bob. They visited, they wrote to each other. Dr. Bob went to at least two of the four founders retreats that they had where they invited. Again, it was a little bit more exclusive than inclusive. There was an invitation list. Did he have direct input into the manuscript? This is a little bit contested, but, and this is not contemporary in the 1940s, but in 1970, Ed W. Setter wrote, in 1946, my friend Barry C. drove to Akron, Ohio, leaving the manuscript of The Little Red Book with Dr. Bob, who wrote shortly afterward that he thought the book would be most helpful to our members. Maybe that was a manuscript, a mimeograph copy. Maybe it was actually the first printing, It is around that time in 1946. I think it's unlikely that Dr. Bob wrote letters with detailed input or underlined things. Someone made that claim that there were some underlines in a manuscript copy by Dr. Bob, I haven't seen it. I can't tell you. But for those of you who've read Writing the Big Book, you'll notice that Dr. Bob doesn't give a lot of input into the big book and his style of speaking and writing is a bit more concise. So I don't think it's likely that outside of conversations about spirituality in the program that Dr. Bob was sitting down talking about editing. But they kept in touch with Dr. Bob about the progress of it. Here is a W and Barry C. And the publishing company, Cole Web, abbreviated. It's not their full last names, but I will say their last names. Barry C, that's the Cole, and then Ed W., that's the Webb part. So it was Cole-Webb, and they would go on to publish three of the four books that Ed wrote. Okay, well I'm not going as fast as I wanted to. Here's the first printing of the little red book. We'll go through these quickly. They made a mistake in the P.O. box. You can see that they crossed that out and wrote in the correct P.o. box, and it was published in minneapolis in 1946 in august here and you might see some versions that have two stamps one that has one stamp one that have no stamps it does not indicate the the order in which they were were printed but um i couldn't tell you why there were stamps and here's dr bob and his laconic style saying thought it was quite all right enjoyed your little book very much and know that it will prove to be a lot of help to many he did very much like the book though and Dr. Bob insisted that New York keep a supply at the New York office, and he also suggested it to other groups who would purchase it, and Ed and Barry would just send Little Red Books to Dr. Bob and say, you know, free of charge. Here's a copy, a first printing of the Little Red Book signed by Dr. Bobby. So he was certainly a fan. There was wholesale endorsement by him. I'm going to skip through some of this. In 1946, at the end of the year in December, Ed wrote to Bob, The purpose was long-range sponsorship. It started in a small way with the boys in our group, but has extended beyond that as a few other clubs seem to be using the little book as an outline for the study of the AA book. The demand is not great, but the satisfaction is, as I feel that others are getting a little help because of my cooperation with God who saw fit to permit it. Initially, the Little Red Book, they operated at a loss, but they considered it a form of sponsorship or long range sponsorship. Dr. Bob was a fan. It was likely a favorite in Ohio based. I wish I knew more about like, were they using it in Cleveland? I would very much guess yes. Glenn C., who made some really great contributions to AA history research, he said, we could describe the Little Red Book as the best compendium around of what Dr. Bob and his circle in the upper Midwest regarded as the most important things to teach newcomers. And Dr. Bob's death would be a great loss. You can see Ed attended his funeral. And there was a special thanks to Bobby B. with Third Book Off the Press that Ed and Barry sent to her. And I'm not going to go through all the printings. There are some differences. There's some things that I found. I mean, it is the messiest, I would say even more messy in some ways than the 24-hour a day book figuring out printings The book that you can purchase today from Hazelden resembles, but is very much a different creature than what was first printed in 1946. And if I had every copy, maybe we could get them scanned and look at the changes. I'm only going to mention a few. And there are people who know The Little Red Book much better than I do and have probably noticed lots of different changes. But the language begins to soften in 47 and 48 and very much aligns with the big book where they talk about illness and sickness rather than saying disease. That was a word that I believe Phil intentionally avoided, but had his own opinions on as well. But if you read the first printing of the book, it's very directive. This is not a suggested program. It is a very much directive, like take direction. These are musts. These are not voluntary. which later Ed would talk about voluntary musts and have an appendix on that. So he's really trying to align with AA vernacular there. 1949, as I mentioned, it's now called The Little Red Book. Here's one of Barry C.'s copies in the later 1940s where he's making suggestions to format editing. It went through many iterations and some of which I'm very confused by. But the 1949 printing is a benchmark because after that, right, and Dr. Bob passes away in 1950, but after that they start to, I think, more heavily edit and then also add material. We're going to talk about some of that tonight. And this was all over the place. I mean, Australia was using it. I mean, 100 copies were sent to London. Let me skip through that because I don't want to get to what I want to get to. And this split between the Alano Club and Nicollet Group, Patsy continued to recommend this book and other books throughout. This is what I wanted to get through tonight, where the major additions, revisions that occurred in 1950. So there are a handful of printings. And when I say printings, they're making changes. They're actually making changes, like in some ways you can consider them additions. But in 1950, here's a letter from Ed to different groups saying like, we made some changes. We really thought about this for four years before including this and really the most controversial of which was, do we really want to address sponsorship in a way that is more, that's expanded from what they already had in the three divisions of Step 12? and eventually they arrived at, yes, we want to do that. So here's Ed talking about where you can find those changes and kind of their thought process on changing them. So they had eight new pages, a bunch of revisions. Each section, so this is where most of the new pages come from, are summarizations of the steps, trying to kind of distill down some of the principles and takeaway points from the essay that you just read. And then the two appendix, in the appendix there were two sections that they added. One was basically sponsorship and the other was we don't have to but, and also refer to these as the voluntary musts. all right so this is what's new and this is what I'm going to read it's long the reason why I want to share this the 1950 book that specific printing is tough to find 51 52 not so much a problem it seems that in 1957, these appendixes were completely taken away. I don't know why, but I looked at my 1957 version. They were later re-added, but this whole essay on working with others was taken away, so even though they kept this appendix of working with Others, the format of it was they just retained questions and where to refer to in the big book for the answers. So I really wanted to read this because this connects to traditions, it connects to 12-step work and sponsorship and all of that. So please bear with me that it is about six slides of reading. So AA usage of the word sponsorship has evolved from the rehabilitative work recovered AA members have done with other alcoholics. The following quotation from the book Alcoholics Anonymous commends this service by a frank statement from our founders. Practical experience shows that nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics, it works when other activities fail. AA groups are in agreement with this advice, they have been quick to realize their need for 12-step work. It not only ensures immunity from drinking, it is the lifeblood of AA, the motivating factor of our growth. By zealous, humble effort, the members of our fellowship have established strong chapters throughout the world. Favorable publicity has helped new groups in the making and increased the larger ones. Sponsorship stands out as a most important integrating function to the welfare and stability of all AA members. Today's sponsorship problems, although easier in many respects, present complexity. I can't see it because the window's in the way. Complexities that did not confront our founders. We are obligated to thousands of alcoholics who have entrusted their lives in our hands asking for competent supervision of their recovery from alcoholism. Our response, although diversified in procedure, has met this demand with tangible evidence of success which can be measured in terms of reclaimed lives, health, sanity and contented sobriety. Of necessity, there has been variance in group ideology and success in approach and indoctrination. However, the record of accomplishment by Alcoholics Anonymous is the only worldwide record of mass recovery from alcoholism. To consider our enviable accomplishment is to concede a job well done. To apply a philosophy, however, is to ask God's help for improvement. Where have we been lax in those cases that failed? Have we fallen short of the sponsorship suggestions so providentially placed in our hands by our founders? Since the book Alcoholics Anonymous contains a successful, proved method of both approaching and working with other alcoholics, we believe it should be adopted for more universal application. Does it seem unwise to contemplate the benefits of AA? Could gain by unified acceptance of an orthodox interpretation of the chapter working with others. Would it not simplify sponsorship and aid the newcomer if the gin hound from Manhattan and the alky from California met on the same general grounds as sponsorship procedure? We should place more emphasis on our need for such achievement. Many will honestly answer that they are already doing this. Some see no reason for it. Others are indifferent. Members who visit many AA groups in their travels report the need of a standard outline for sponsorship activities. Since we have the outline in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, perhaps we should meditate our great need for its general acceptance. It is easy to sit back and believe that there is nothing we can do about this or to arrive at the conclusion that each group is too well entrenched in its own ideologies to make changes. Is this rationalization or is it the truth? Do we wish to improve our AA service to the prospective member or will we settle for the job we are doing? Are we right or are we wrong? No one is to judge but ourselves. Step 10 suggests that if we are wrong, we admit it and promptly. This brings up other questions pertaining to organized groups sponsoring younger groups. Are we obligated to pass on the know-how of sponsorship to them or should we let them learn the hard way? Should we offset frothy emotional appeal with example and sound AA instruction and advise them to surrender self-centeredness and start practicing step 12 as our founders recommended it? Many of us work with other groups. Have we questioned our motives? Do we seek personal recognition or are we humbly trying to bring understanding and help to them. These and other questions form the basis upon which we judge our own AA progress. Again, we alone are the judges. Sponsorship stripped of all controversial issues has two purposes. One, it helps us to keep sober. Two, it brings the example of our contented sobriety to alcoholics who seek it and ask us for help to recover from alcoholism. How we sponsor is a personal matter. AA does not dictate, we alone decide. The fact that we make a call merely to keep ourselves sober has its rewards. Our chances for sobriety might be greater, however, if we followed through with complete sponsorship. Those of us who engage in sponsorship change our pattern or procedure with experience which we enlarge upon from day to day. The sage wisdom that was ours at three months is hardly adequate a few months or years later. Many of us are soon willing to agree that sponsorship under the terms other than those described in the chapters working with others, the doctor's opinion there is a solution. We agnostics and more about alcoholism fall short of success. When we follow these chapters, we have success with our prospects. When мы deviate, we invite AA headaches. If this is true, we find a simple answer in the study of these chapters. Failure to help those to whom we carry the message makes as two-time losers. We lessen the prospect's immediate chance for recovery and lose the benefits of working with them. Checking ourselves, we often wonder why we failed. That our emotions over the family plight obscure our knowledge of the fatal, incurable malady of our alcoholic prospect. Did we try to rush him in for the family's sake? Did we fail through lack of information about our prospect? Are we trying to administer AA therapy to a person whose basic illness was other than alcoholism? Do we believe that all alcoholics can recover? Our answers to these and other questions are to be found in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. For members who are interested in further consideration of the matter, the following list of thought-provoking questions, which I'm not going to read, may prove helpful. No attempt to answer them has been made except by reference to pages, paragraphs, and lines in the books. We realize the list does not comprise complete sponsorship data but believe that it touches on many fundamentals. We hope it may prompt you to enlarge upon your fund of AA knowledge by reviewing the advice of our founders have given us for working with others. That's the end of what I'm going to read. The rest of this appendix one are questions, as you can see on the bottom, with page number references to the big book he this would really be the time where if this were like a class i would say all right what did people notice um what questions do you have like what's going on here and there's not enough time to talk about all of them but part of what i read here is this um that this is really sort of a a self-confession of this dissonance of you know i've noticed that other groups and other individuals have not been as effective in sponsorship and yeah this is a personal individual matter and groups are going to have their ideologies around it but might we benefit from a unified approach and so there's kind of this dialogue arguing both sides of this. And I would imagine that this essay was removed. You can't read it unless you get a 1950, 51, 52, 53, kind of in that range, which is why I wanted to share it tonight. But very much speaks to like the purpose of why this book was even written as well as what were some of the problems that individuals and groups encountered as far as how to be effective. Again, kind of weak T, strong TAA. I'll also note that Ed W. doesn't just reference the basic text, which would have been the first 179 pages in the first edition, but also some of the stories. This man knew the book very, very well. Very, very, très bien. And he talked about daily study of it, that the Little Red Book and the Big Book, that group discussion should really revolve around these. Again, emphasizing the idea of book-centric was effective, and of course that lives today and serves good purpose. So I really wanted to share this because, you know, unless you have one of these sort of middle era books, you won't, you will not have read it, and also you won t even notice it s missing because these two appendixes exist, but they don t have this essay anymore. And the second appendix is kind of more like where the voluntary must in the big book, and it just has page numbers. It's interesting, but I'm not going to go through it. I'm going to skip the bulletin stuff. But another part of Cole Webb and the Nicolette group was they had their own mailing list and they sent out bulletins and they would have updates and talk about the new upcoming book stools and bottles right there'd be communication order forms right usefulness in that way i will play this talk because i have spoken enough so this is ed w at the ilana club at 2218 speaking in 1962 giving a talk on stools and bottles which was originally a talk he gave and then put into book form because again i can't be in all places um uh at you know at once and same reason that some of bill's talks were started to become recorded on vinyl actually because bill just simply couldn't be all places oh i'm not an authority on aa i sure i i put down some things on paper in a book not because i thought i was so great but because i collected a lot of fine opinions from other people i've read the book alcoholic synonymous i'd studied it and i tried to get the working mechanics of each step down so that the new man or the new woman coming in wouldn't be at a loss to know what to do and do it right because not because i put it down i took my notes from bill wilson from dr bob smith from pat crowland from many fine aas nationally and internationally how they did these steps how they benefited and studying the book the big book those were the things that i summed up finally and what you will find in the little red book as a guide to the working mechanics Okay. I'm not going to go through Ed and Bill and all that. I've covered that previously. You know, Bill was very grateful to anybody who is making a contribution, of course, to AA's success. And, you know, bill loved the drunk probably more than he loved AA and anything that would help people. Of course, his sentiment kind of changed on what approach AA as a whole should have when it came to literature and becoming more uniform there. So I've spoken about that at length in the past, but so we're going to skip this. Oh, I know what that is. That's cool. Okay. And the 12 and 12, and the 12 and 12 was not written for financial reasons, and it was not written to, you know, counteract the Little Red Book. There were multiple reasons for it and it wasn't just the traditions either. There are a lot of good reasons why Bill wrote it and me personally, I believe it filled an identified need in a similar way that the Little Red Book did too. More accessible, easier language, trying to boil down these concepts and principles, which may be not so easy for the drunk who's still a bit befog-walking in the door to get from the big book, could get that in sitting down at a little red book study or hearing someone share their experience in these beginner's classes. We'll skip that. Skip that. We'll keep that. he had a lot of reverence for bill and bob and i would say especially bob um maybe as an individual he didn't know bill in the in the same way that he knew bob but but even above that just so much reverence for the big book subsequent printings you can see there were the dust jackets all of that i mean by the 19 by 1964 had been translated into eight languages and i talked about the whole hazelden thing and the you know they were going to stop publishing all in the royalties kerfuffle it's not going to go through that you can listen to one of the earlier talks here's a joke book called barroom reveries that he wrote in 1958 only a thousand copies were published. It was not popular. Maybe Ed wasn't as funny as he thought he was, but very nice to have a copy. It's kind of like a, not like a grapevine. They're more kind of one and two liner things, I believe. And if you'd like to read Ed W.'s story toward the end of his life, he would pass away. And I guess, oh God, I don't remember. I want to say 70 or 71. I might be confusing with Bill, but he did write his story in Our Devilish Alcoholic Personalities as well as some other content. That was the last contribution he would make among the four books. Don't have time to go through stools and bottles, but here it is. There's actually a smooth first printing version as well that has smooth boards. It's more rare than the one you see on the far left. And that's a great picture of him giving his stools and bottles talk, and that's in Canada in 1966. That's Ed W., and you can see he'd literally bring these bottles that represented the character defects or the shortcomings or the devilish alcoholic personality traits. And very much, you know, I, in listening to him, I was surprised at hearing a lot of humility and like, yes, he had his beliefs. And like this is the way that, you know, our group did it in the way that I carry out my 12 step work. But it was carried out with a lot more humility than I anticipated after reading the little red book in the beginning because it's very, very directive. But he was not a hit you over the head kind of guy. It was wrapped in a lot of love. So we're going to close with him talking in 1965 and be done for the evening. Now it has been very pleasant, very inspirational for me to again review some of these early experiences before AA and also experiences after coming in AA. It keeps me from becoming complacent. See, I think such reflection also brings to mind many fine AAs who once sat in the chairs that we now occupy. As I reflect and think back to those days, there was Belt Summers, there was any number of fine Don Davidson, all those fine fellows who used to be in this room. We occupied the same space as we. And I wonder how they would live the A program for another day if they could be brought back and given the chance to live it. I can't answer that, but you and I are here and we can live it and to each of us God has given a little wisdom and he has given us a little strength and surely he has left the door to our recovery ajar so that by the practice of our 12-step principles we may keep opening in ever widening circles this door until that last day when we would stop when we can live our program no more that last day what will it be like then will we be able to thank God for the a way of life like many departed members of this group have done before us and ask him to judge us perhaps as he judged them not by the perfection they have attained or that we have attained but by our honest efforts to succeed and i wonder thank you very kindly god bless you all right it's very hard for me to not be able to see myself for an hour and 15 minutes or see you all for an hour and 50 minutes and i'm wondering if my internet has gone down so it's not my wheelhouse doing presentations on zoom or talking on zoom but i did my best and i will defer to tim if we have time for a few questions thanks thank you so much casting great job and we do have a few minutes here so if anyone does have a question please uh use the raise hand function and i we'll call on you to ask your question and a reminder uh gary who is going to be our first question is presenting next tuesday on bobby b in the traditions so join us again next week and gary you can go ahead and unmute and ask your questions testing uh i just absolutely love how you uh and end up including bobby early on in your uh in your talk it's it's uh i appreciate that i am holding a book up in my hand which is a 1947 version and i think it's the second of the third of the three 1947 it's got the right cover but on the front of it can you see bobby yeah All right. You know, it has been a I actually bought this from the grandchildren of Bobby. But have you ever heard of a 1947 being stenciled with anybody's name like that? Or I just I've never known how in the world this copy ever got a name on. yeah i really good question i mean i don't think that was commonplace in the 1940s i would be surprised if it happened then and it looks really beautiful and really professionally done and has not had wear for many many many decades but what i know some people have done is if they use a book love a book or just you know have it in a place where it gets damaged is that at some point they may go you know they'll get a rebound and they might have it customized so i don t know when that happened, but I know Bobby had a really positive relationship and affection for Barry and Ed. And that comes through in the correspondence that they had together. And thank you for your contribution with your book on Bobby. It was great. I'm sorry, I can't answer your question better than that. But I'm in New York. So if you found her grave, I'd be more than happy to go with you in Brooklyn. But incidentally, this is some thunder. We just found out Bobby's grave site at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, we've never known that until the last week. Happy to go with you, let me know if you come to New York. All right. all right thank you gary and any other questions tonight all right victor you can unmute hi folks what a great night yeah uh this this is a lot of fun you know you know what really strikes me like you're absolutely correct about the gentleman's humility like that that was very endearing but um i don't know like i thought i was at the beginning i was talking about carl young's book but i am an idiot so it's okay i catch up eventually but um yeah i was just wondering like why is aa all about control right it's kind of like to me that's what strikes me it's about control a like do it this way or else like you know coffee pot and a resentment yeah yeah so the groups spring out other groups and i want to thank very very much this uh platform for aa and uh thank you again no question just want to look at myself yap and love it love it very much thank you keep up the great work thank you thank you i will typically defer to bill when it comes to disarming rigidity but what I do know is that lots of different groups, lots of different styles, 12 step work, and my 12 step work does not look the same now as it did a bunch of years ago too. I defer to Bill. He seemed to be the most open-minded AA if you read a lot of his letters and the literature he wrote. So that helps disarm my rigidity with what I think is the right way. And I try to remember that those who maybe I don't agree with wholeheartedly are helping the people that they're meant to help, that maybe I can't help. Thank you. And next is Lynn. You can unmute. Thank you, Kirsten. Beautiful. Was there a coincidence that Bill wrote the 12 and 12 in 1946? Is that correct? And then- 50, what? Sorry, what- Was published in 53. oh okay so he was published in 1946 yeah so you're right on that year that was the little red book 12 and 12 is 53 okay all right thank you no no but you're but you okay like some people have like theories around it uh bill did say in one of the letters that i skipped that he i don't know if he actually read the little red book but he definitely thumbed his nose into it one point and he said i hope to like it fills a need and i hope to write something that makes a similar contribution because they're both similar in that way they're really kind of interpretations they're religious essays expanding on what these steps are and what they could mean and trying to have them become more accessible so so there's similarities yes were they a direct call and response where bill wrote no Not in my view. Thank you, Lynn. And next is Andrew. You can unmute. Hello. My name is Andrew and I'm an alcoholic. Can you guys hear me? Yes. Yes. First of all, I want to thank you for your presentation. It was very informative. I had no idea there was a connection with Nicolette and Minneapolis. I actually lived in Minneapolis and the AA is really good there. And I had no idea that this presentation was about that area. And I appreciate your deliverance. I'm also real interested that Dr. Bob, he endorsed the Little Red Book to the degree where he would suggest that New York would have copies of it. And what happened? And how come AA never sanctioned it or approved it, especially after the endorsement by AA's co-founder, Dr. Bopp, which I very much lean more towards because of the quality of sobriety that came from the Midwest? What happened in that regard? Great question. I attempted to answer that in previous times I did this presentation. The problem with not using a slide deck is it's very easy to make mistakes, even with information I know, because I can just very simply misspeak, say something backwards. Bill had a concern about precedent that he wrote about where... Because anybody could publish a book, create a pamphlet. and early on Bobby B referred to them as can openers were really helpful to groups right especially his introductory material and like you will see online and everywhere there's so many old like local sort of just you know small pamphlets about it and initially I believe that based on the little bit that that I've seen of him write about it was like this is all to the good it's helping folks. Great. Like, why should I be the sole author? Why should I be the soul voice in essence of Alcoholics Anonymous? He got a little bit wiser later because he saw that there was danger in that. And he had some experiences that are actually very well documented in the book that Gary wrote about Bobby where like you could say kind of anything, right? You can give your interpretation and maybe that interpretation could harm AA as a whole in a way that, you know, Bill certainly would not like, right? And those other folks who had more experience, like saw the dangers of. So Bill recognized that and it started to concern him a little bit. And so there was talk prior to the first general service conference before that, even before that. I'm trying to think. No, no, no. It was during the trial period of the General Service Conference. See, this is where I can make mistakes. So this idea of having AA-approved literature was probably coming up around sometime in, I would imagine, the late 1940s, early 1950s. And there was discussion around how do we actually have actual AA literature? And that turned out to be, I believe, a really wise choice because, again, anyone could print anything and claim that it was AA. As I mentioned really, really briefly, the Little Red Book was offered to Alcoholics Anonymous and it was declined. The 24-Hour-a-Day book was also offered to alcoholics anonymous and was declined, so the lesson being there is like general service conference usually has got to be the one to make the request or give the approval, So I couldn't tell you what the thought process was on those general service conferences or AA or disorganized organization that said no, but I hope that gives a little bit of insight. Thank you for the question, Andrew, and we'll do one more for tonight. Greg, you can unmute. well thank you very much casting and tim and everybody uh this has been a lot of fun love this group and my name is greg i'm an alcoholic and i'm involved with several different aa historians and one of them some of you may have never heard of his name is matt d matt d um was with tom powers who helped bill wilson write the um the 12 and 12 and alcoholics anonymous comes of age he was with him every day for like five years he was with him when he died he still runs tom power's fellowship called triple a which is actually alcoholics anonymous um big book 12 steps and oxford and long story short my point is this that supposedly according to the family tom power's family he actually was a ghost a ghost writer Have you ever heard that he contributed to, he got credit for Alcoholics Anonymous comes of age, but that his contribution to the 12 by 12 was the inventory section. And it's, I don't know if he was being humble. It wasn't documented, but according to Matt D who was with him every day and runs his fellowship, he did more than people realize. Have you never heard of that? tom powers uh yes so i've never heard any contribution about a comes of age i don't remember when tom p's split was with bill i don'T KNOW OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD WHAT YEAR THAT WAS BUT A COMES OF AGE WAS PUBLISHED I WANT TO SAY IT WAS AUGUST 1957 I THINK IT WAS THAT MONTH THEIR SPLIT MIGHT HAVE OCCURRED BEFORE THEN I DON'T REALLY REMEMBER THAT IS TOTALLY I'VE NEVER heard that before, that Tom P had anything to do with AA comes of age. No, I was talking about the 12 by 12 that some people don't know. Yes, you mentioned both. So the first one, AA comes of age? No, have not heard of that. 12 and 12? Yes. There's some things I'm not going to share that I know. What I can tell you is it's a little bit unclear. Does it sound like Tom made a contribution? Yeah, it really does. Specifically, what could they be? I don't know, often you would find that his son became kind of a mouthpiece for his father and weren't coming directly from Tom P himself. So what, you know, according to Tom P, did he write with Bill and have input and did they trade ideas? Yes, absolutely. To what extent I do not know. And that's about what I'll say on that topic. But yeah, yeah, Tom P was important. There are people who know a lot more about them than i do well thank you i appreciate everything y'all do thank you thank you for the question greg and thank you again casting for your great presentation and now i will allow everyone to unmute and thank casting