Click image to see full size picture | alcoholics anonymous Pamphlet Tablemate reprint
Alcoholics Anonymous: An Interpretation of the Twelve Steps,the Detroit/Washington D.C. Pamphlet, the most successful early A.A. beginners' lessons, reprinted by A.A. groups all over the United States,
also known as the Tablemate
, the Table Leader's Guide,
and the Seattle Pamphlet
THE TABLEMATE
was an early A.A. set of beginners lessons entitled "Alcoholics Anonymous: An Interpretation of the Twelve Steps," put out in the form of a little pamphlet. It was (and still is) the most successful set of A.A. beginners lessons ever devised. It breaks the twelve steps down into four groups, which are studied over a period of four weeks:
Discussion No. 1. The Admission. Step No. 1.
Discussion No. 2. The Spiritual Phase. Steps 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 11.
Discussion No. 3. The Inventory and Restitution. Steps No. 4, 8, 9 and 10.
Discussion No. 4. The Active Work. Step No. 12.
This little pamphlet was printed and published by A.A. groups all over the United States, where it became known under a variety of local names: The Tablemate, the Table Leader's Guide, the Detroit pamphlet, the Washington D.C. pamphlet, the Seattle pamphlet, and so on. The basic text always remained the same. The only local variants came in the little poems and readings which were sometimes printed inside the front and back covers, or between the pages of the four sections.
A.A. oldtimers who knew that period say that everyone acknowledged that it was the A.A. group in Detroit which originally wrote the lessons and used them, probably in mimeographed form. They began giving beginners lessons in Detroit in June 1943. The first printed version was produced by the A.A. group in Washington D.C., which sent a copy to Detroit. The A.A. people there sent that copy to a Detroit printer with instructions to set the type for an exact duplicate (except for putting a Detroit A.A. mailing address on the front cover).
pamphlet (in the form in which it appears on this website) was passed around the table, with each person in turn reading aloud a small portion of one of the four lessons. Then there was a group discussion. By using a different lesson each week, by the end of the year each lesson had been read through and discussed thirteen times. Busloads of people from treatment centers and halfway houses started being brought in, as news spread of the marvelously successful new beginners lessons.** Bobby Burger, the secretary at the New York A.A. headquarters (then called the Alcoholic Foundation) wrote a letter on November 11, 1944, making it clear that the New York office heartily approved of A.A. groups using the little pamphlet. And if we want real oldtime A.A., we must read and study the actual words of the good oldtimers in our A.A. meetings. Little pamphlets from the modern New York G.S.O. are not designed to be the kind of good solid meat-and-potatoes literature which must be read and studied and discussed in meetings in order to keep the spirit of original old time A.A. alive and still saving alcoholics from destruction today.
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