It's sort of strange that I turned out to be a Big Book Thumper.

Before I got to the Fellowship, I never read the directions for ANYTHING until I had to do so; in any endeavor, from putting together a toy on Christmas morning to raising children, I only looked for instructions when all of my attempts to "wing it" failed (and failed in such a way as to indicate that it was my mistake, and not the fault of the toy's packagers or the child's mother).

And when I did stumble into a meeting, desperate and willing, I still didn't do things the Book way. I knew that the Book was there - as I recall, I read the whole thing in the first few days - but I didn't realize that it was an INSTRUCTION book. I saw it more as a text or reference book than a "How To" guide or cookbook.

So I listened to folks in the meetings, and I sorta did things the best way that I could figure out - still trying to "wing it" to some extent, although darn willing to take any instructions that I could get.

As it happens, I worked Steps One and Two that I worked out of the Big Book which is interesting because those are the two Steps that don't have any instructions :)

I didn't do the Third Step prayer - I think that I thought that the Third Step was sort of an "attitude", in that "Okay, God, I'm willing now to turn my life over to You. Now what?" I didn't use the Big Book format for my first Fourth Step; I followed one of those "questionnaires" that was making its way around Texas in the mid 1980s.

My fifth Step - well, that was pretty much by the Book but only because there's not much speficity in the Book about that. Six and Seven also were pretty much out of the Book, but again that's not because I was reading the Book, but because the simplest implementation of those Steps (as read on the wall, not out of the text) is pretty darn close to the written instructions.

I think that Eight and Nine were where I started actually attempting to read the Book and do what it says, but I'm pretty hazy on that. And I'm sure that I got off track again when I got to Ten, Eleven and Twelve.

But near the end of that that first trip through the Twelve, I started to get the idea that there was actually a particular "path" that we are supposed to "thoroughly follow". And as time went on, I read the Big Book more and more, and looked to others in the Fellowship less and less for instructions.

I suspect that some of that had to do with the fact that - well, if you've been around any time at all, you've noticed that some folks simply do not stay sober. And the Book says that "rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path", so (except for corner cases) those who got drunk weren't following the path.

Dr. Silkworth said in his article on "Slips" that "The alcoholic "slip" is not a symptom of a psychotic condition. There is nothing "screwy" about it at all. The patient didn't follow directions. " Notice he didn't say that the patient didn't care about his recovery, or that he wasn't willing to do anything - he simply didn't follow the directions.

Darn hard to follow the directions if you don't know what they are.

And even harder to follow them if you have a definite apathy towards the book that contains them.

So I started paying more and more attention to that Book - not because I wanted to be a Big Book Thumper, but because I realized that a lot of folks in the meetings simply do not know what we are supposed to be doing, so following the dictum (that you hear at meetings) about "showing up at meetings and following the directions" is a pretty chancy way to stay sober.

I'm grateful that I was able to stay sober long enough - doing it that way - to allow me to find out that there is, indeed, a better way - a more exact way. A way that is guaranteed, if I attempt to "thoroughly follow" it.