Welcome to Decoding the Big Book, a special limited series of the Sober Friends podcast.

Researched and sourced from writing the big book by William Sheaberg,

the purpose of each episode is to provide context and history for each chapter of the Big

Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, followed by a

reading of the chapter from the fourth edition. Each section is marked by chapters, so feel

free to skip ahead to what you're interested in and leave the rest. It may be easy to assume based on the chapter title, The Family Afterward, that a collective

group of alcoholics and family members wrote the text. However, the myths surrounding the

authorship of the big book is that it was a collective writing of the first 100 members.

This is not true. In fact, Bill Wilson is the sole author of the book, including to wives

and the family afterward. The fact is that with the exception of the input provided by Hank Parkhurst,

Bill Wilson wrote everything to this point in a vacuum.

Bill was frustrated by the lack of feedback he received.

Akron's response up to the middle of November 1938 was only that they liked what they read.

In New York, the feedback was a little different, but not substantially so.

So why was there a myth? No one was more

complicit in perpetuating the myth of the big book's collective authorship and Bill Wilson

himself. One reason was that Bill felt that saying the book was collectively written showed

the reader that the solution provided by the book was the result of 100 people

in recovery sharing their experience, strength, and hope rather than the writings of one man's

experience. One of the threads in Bill's writing of the book and later explaining the process

through parables was to help the newcomer get sober. If that meant bending the historical truth,

so be it. The other reason was Bill's increasing discomfort with being the leader of the movement.

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