It Pays To Fact Check

Please folks, before you find yourself spreading misinformation as someone here has done, check your facts.

And don’t forget that alcoholism is a subtle foe – some who spread the wrong facts are doing so with an agenda that has been deviously supplied by our disease – big-shot-ism. One upmanship. Uniqueness. “I’m better than you.”

Friday I said something that I’m sure some thought I’d lost my marbles. I said “Did you also know that Valium wasn’t invented until 1963?” Clicking on that link will take you to the news that the inventor of Valium died recently.

I’m pointing this out because one of our members has mentioned, in situations where newcomers can hear, that Dr. Bob’s last drink was a beer taken with a valium. That Bill W. gave him this beer and valium so that he might perform surgery without the shakes right before he was to become sober.

In one form or another, the basics of this appear to be true from information supplied at the AA History Lovers Group at Yahoo! Except that it seems Bill gave Bob a barbiturate rather than valium. Well, he couldn’t have given Bob a valium, it didn’t exist yet! Dr. Bob got sober in 1935…

Take a moment and check that link out at Yahoo! Notice that it is possible that AA’s Founders’ Day ought to be June 17th rather than June 10th. Doesn’t matter what day to me, it works! It really does!

Oh, and – check your motives!