What Are Slips?

This is from AAs General Service Office Website:

“What are ‘slips’?

Occasionally a man or women who has been sober through A.A. will get drunk. In A.A. a relapse of this type is commonly known as a “slip.” It may occur during the first few weeks or months of sobriety or after the alcoholic has been dry a number of years.
Nearly all A.A.s who have been through this experience say that slips can be traced to specific causes. They deliberately forgot that they had admitted they were alcoholics and got overconfident about their ability to handle alcohol. Or they stayed away from A.A. meetings or from informal association with other A.A.s. Or they let themselves become too involved with business or social affairs to remember the importance of being sober. Or they let themselves become tired and were caught with their mental and emotional defenses down. In other words, most “slips” don’t just happen.”

Notice some of GSO’s characterizations or “reasons” for a “slip”:
“they let themselves become tired and were caught with their mental and emotional defenses down”

CRIKEY! (A moment of silence please) – In the Big Book we learn that “Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power.” (43:3)

AND

“They had said that though I did raise a defense, it would one day give way before some trivial reason for having a drink. Well, just that did happen and more, for what I had learned of alcoholism did not occur to me at all.” (42:0)

AND

“We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn’t control our emotional natures” (52:2)

If mental defenses and emotions are things we CANNOT CONTROL, as our co-founders tell us, then how can our “letting down” these defenses be responsible for a “slip”?

If we could control these things and if they were responsible for our problem, would we not have solved our problem long ago? So you see what we are up against folks – when our own Central Office has a website that proposes concepts 180 degrees opposite to our own Program.

GSO does not speak for AA as a whole. Please remember that. But unfortunately someone’s voice at GSO often apparently does, if unofficially, represent the thinking of the fellowship as a whole, even when it contradicts our Program of recovery.

Crap like this ought to be brought to the attention of your Area Delegates folks. You do know who that is, right? You have his/her number. Right?

Right!

Peace,

Danny S