Tales from the Last House on the Block

When he turned 50 - with 10 years of sobriety - the author became curious as to why he had succeeded in staying sober when so many others had failed. He was convinced that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous worked, and yet he recalled having broken more rules than he had followed. He got back into the book and studied it. He came to the conclusion that his success was due to which rules he had followed; he had followed the suggestions that were made in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, and unconsciously ignored suggestions that were not supported by A.A. literature. It occurred to him that extraneous suggestions floating around A.A. may not just be "harmless" and "derived from treatment centers, not A.A."; some of them could actually be dangerous. After all, ideas as simple and seemingly sensible as "empty your liquor cabinet" and "don't go to bars" - ideas he had never followed - fly in direct contradiction to the Big Book, which says: "In our belief any scheme of combating alcoholism which proposes to shield the sick man from temptation is doomed to failure." So it became his mission to take every suggestion he had heard in Alcoholics Anonymous that was not "from the book" and subject it to scrutiny. These essays chronicle his ongoing development of a new belief system with the help of A.A. Today his creed is: "Don't believe everything you think."