Around 35 years ago I was in a meeting in Edmonton at the local Alano Club. If you've never been at an Alano club, they are usually a restaurant owned or managed by an AA member which also hosts meetings for Alcoholics Anonymous.

On this day, as usual for most meetings, an individual is asked to read the beginning of the Chapter known as "How it Works".

This particular day a relative newcomer was invited to read it in front of the group. He was obviously nervous because you could tell by his speech that he was intimidated to stand in front to 40 or 50 people attending this meeting. He introduced himself as a new member and began to read the opening statement of the Chapter for How it Works.

For reference, the opening sentence reads: "Rarely have we seen a person fail who thoroughly followed our path".

However he read it this way: "Thoroughly have we seen a person fail who rarely followed our path".

The whole room gasped. I don't know for sure if it was dyslexia or just nervousness that caused him to invert these two words but the impact of the statement hit me like a ton of bricks! It seemed to be an even deeper warning than the original statement from our Big Book.

I'll never forget it.