The Tablemate, whose official title is "Alcoholics Anonymous:  An Interpretation of the Twelve Steps," was known under a variety of different local names in early A.A. circles. It is sometimes also called the Table Leader's Guide, the Detroit pamphlet, the Washington D.C. pamphlet, and so on. It was based on the four-week Beginners Lessons that began to be used in early Detroit A.A. in June 1943. It is the best surviving set of A.A. beginners lessons, and can be used with enormous effectiveness today. In spite of its deceptively short length, it in fact not only leads beginners into an understanding of how to work the steps, but also gives them a quiet introduction to the spirit of some of the early recommended literature (Emmet Fox, James Allen, and so forth) which went more deeply into the underlying spiritual foundations of the early program. In fact, if you are charge of introducing a group of A.A. newcomers to the program, there is nothing else which even begins to be as effective.

Although there are people who are almost fantically devoted to Wally P.'s Back to Basics: The Alcoholics Anonymous Beginners' Meetings, the only parts of that long book which actually work effectively are the parts which he took over and quoted verbatim from the Tablemate. But the original Tablemate pamphlet from Detroit is far shorter and easier to understand, far less expensive to provide to the newcomers, and far less confusing to them. Our experience in A.A. in northern Indiana in recent years has been that people who go through lessons based on Wally P.'s book do no better in fact than people who go to any other kind of A.A. meetings, but that if you take a group of newcomers and have them spend an entire year working through the Tablemate over and over, at the end of that year, 90% of the newcomers who have attended each week without fail will still be sober. And even some years later, 90% of those are still sober today, which is around an 80% success rate overall. This is one of the ways which can be used today to achieve the kind of success rate that was reported in early A.A. (there are also other successful methods).

The Tablemate also gives a far more sophisticated and useful set of virtues than the Four Absolutes. The four Oxford Group virtues -- Absolute Honesty, Absolute Purity, Absolute Unselfishness, and Absolute Love -- are certainly worthy goals, but as Bill W. warned, the alcoholic ego does not do well trying to be absolutistic about anything (except not drinking). In fact one central problem in dealing with alcoholics is in trying to get them to quit being so absolutistic about every single thing they believe!

Even more importantly, the typical alcoholic in fact has a good many other virtues that he or she also ought to be striving for in addition to those four:  as the Tablemate points out, Humility for starters (!!!), along with Generosity, Simple Justice, Honest Pride in work well done, Simplicity, Patience, Industry (go to work and really work), Faith, Hope, Trust, Willingness, Open-Mindedness, and so on.

And as the Detroit Pamphlet warns, we also need to avoid a whole series of common alcoholic vices: Egotism, False Pride, Impatience, Jealousy, Envy, and Laziness. The Tablemate can serve as one of the best guides to doing the Fourth Step ever written, and discusses a set of character defects which "fit" a good many more alcoholics than the seven deadly sins or breaches of the four absolutes, if we restrict ourselves to either of those two short lists and look at those four (or seven) issues alone. (http://hindsfoot.org/archives.html)

More from Hindsfoot:

Note by G.C.  This introduction to the steps was originally published in Detroit as a twenty-page pamphlet when A.A. first began, when the newcomers were gathered in large sessions and allowed to ask questions of a panel of people with longer sobriety - - it is a marvellous example of early old-time A.A. teaching. The original version is still obtainable from Alcoholics Anonymous of Greater Detroit, 380 Hilton Road, Ferndale MI 48220.

The twelve steps are divided up so they can be dealt with in four separate discussion sessions: Admission (Step 1), Spiritual (Steps 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 11), Inventory/Restitution (Steps 4, 8, 9, 10), and Active (Step 12). If the group meets once a week, all twelve steps can then be covered in a month.

An edition with reset type was prepared in 1995 for use in A.A. discussion meetings in northern Indiana, where it proved equally successful in providing worthwhile topics, not only for the newcomers, but for the oldtimers too. After going through the pamphlet several times in a row over a period of three or four months, it was surprising how the apparently simple language led you deeper and deeper into profound spiritual insights. In this discussion-meeting format, the pamphlet was passed around the table, with each person reading a few paragraphs of that week's section of the pamphlet, and then after all of that section had been read, each person in turn around the table was given an opportunity to talk about the topics that had been raised.

Parts of this pamphlet have also been used in recent years for Saturday morning beginners' meetings in Elkhart, Indiana, where the teacher reads from and then talks about the material on one or another of the steps for the newcomers. It seems to many of the oldtimers to work better than anything else they have tried for getting raw beginners into serious thought about the way the program works.

This material was first assembled in Detroit in 1943. A copy of their material was later borrowed and used by the A.A. groups in Washington D.C., so it is sometimes also referred to in the early A.A. literature as The Washington D.C. Pamphlet. In fact, the first printed version (although probably only by just a few months, according to one knowledgeable archivist) seems likely to have been published in Washington D.C. This pamphlet was also published later over on the West Coast, where it is sometimes known by the name of one place or another in that part of the country. But it was originally the product of the early Detroit A.A. groups, as is substantiated by Detroit's history of the way A.A. began in that city (see below) and the two most knowledgeable old-timers whom I have consulted: Mel B. (now in Toledo, Ohio), the well-known A.A. author who came into the program in 1950, spent a good deal of time in the Detroit area when he was a newcomer. Larry W. (now in South Bend, Indiana), who has a good many years in the program himself, originally got sober in Detroit and knew many of the good old-timers, including his sponsor Ernie G. the second of Toledo, one of the original Akron A.A. group, who was by then living in Adrian in southeastern Michigan, and knew all the real old-timers in the Detroit area

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I thought it would be interesting to post the lessons in this and hopefully get some interaction from the rest of you out there reading and go through this literature.  I will post the first discussion today, then the other 3 one at a time the next three Saturdays. 

Hi guys, I thought it would be interesting to read this together.