SOLUTION BASED RECOVERY: The Big Book is a storybook

We have often heard it said, in some 12 step programs, that the Big Book is a storybook. People in these programs are told the Big Book was designed to allow people to identify with pain and suffering of the founders. In fact, this view even made its way into the Big Book. In the last paragraph of the Preface that was added in 1976, on page xii, it says, "If you have a drinking problem, we hope that you may pause in reading one of the forty-four personal stories and think: 'Yes, that happened to me'; or, more important, 'Yes, I've felt like that'; or, most important, 'Yes, I believe this program can work for me, too.

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