Newcomer and Retreads

On the4thdimension.ca website, we have many requests for a list of Dr. Bob’s Five Essentials and Two Optionals.

Dr. Bob used the Five Essentials to screen potential AAs; if a newcomer did not commit to the Five Essentials, he would wish them well and end the conversation. He suggested the Two Optionals but demanded the Five Essentials.

We can use this test with anyone, but let’s focus on those coming back after a slip.

Some slippers come back after discovering a deeper bottom, and they are afraid. Others come back with a confidence that is puzzling in the circumstances.

The confident fellows can link the sayings and cliches of our Program into entire paragraphs at AA meetings. We welcome them, but if we listen carefully, looking for the quality of desperation and fear that promises success in the Program, we don’t find it.

I recall a recent share at our AA meeting. The shareer was coming back; he had five days of sobriety and was going through his sixth treatment center. He was confident that he had it licked this time, saying, “I know now I cannot drink again.”

Of course, he could drink again. He might not want to drink again, and he should not drink again; but drinking is always a possibility.

He continued, stating, “I am feeling good and strong. I am sure I have it licked this time.”

After the meeting, we talked with him. One of the guys raised Dr. Bob’s Five Essentials.

He posed the Five Essentials, and we listened carefully to the answers.

1. “Do you admit that you are an alcoholic and cannot drink again?”

2. “Have you any sense of God? Do you have any sense that God will help you and that you need that help?”

3. “Are you prepared to help and carry the message to others?”

4. “Do you promise that you will clean up your past and make good all the harms and wrongs you have caused?”

5. And “do you commit here and now to a daily meditation and prayer practice of not less than 15 minutes a day?”

Our confident friend replied to each question: His counsellors had told him not to worry about stopping drinking forever, just don’t drink today. He struggled with the whole God ‘thing.’ He wanted to focus on his own recovery; he had no time to help others. He had made all his amends in his first attempt in the Program. And he did not like meditation.

My heart sank as I listened. Did he want what we had, and was he willing to go to any length to get it? I thought — maybe.

But with our condition, ‘yes’ is much better than ‘maybe.’