Stools and Bottles

The booklet Stools and Bottles uses the concept of a barstool (the seat and three legs) and eight bottles to represent the importance of the first four steps (of the Twelve Steps) of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The author began using this concept in a prior book called The Little Red Book and it got so popular that the concept was expanded into its own book.

The Stool

The author begins the book by talking about the “seat” of the stool. The seat, by itself, is “as useless, incomplete, and undependable as the shaky alcoholic it upholds”. For the seat to function, it needs three legs to uphold it, just like the alcoholic needs the first three steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) for support. The author says that the three legs represent the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of recovery for the alcoholic.

The first leg of the stool represents the First Step: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. This is the physical aspect, and the physical illness is what usually brings the alcoholic to Alcoholics Anonymous. In this chapter, the author discusses how alcohol is actually a poison for the alcoholic, not a beverage because “when we drink it, we get sick”.

The second leg of the stool represents the Second Step: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. This is the mental aspect. The author discusses the insanity of drinking alcohol: “Drinking, we lack the natural instinct of self-preservation, which violates the first principle of sanity: namely, the will to survive”. The second leg of the stool, like the Second Step of A.A., is still incomplete but will stand if propped against something more powerful and stable than itself.

The third leg of the stool represents the Third Step of A.A.: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. This is the spiritual aspect. The author discusses A.A.’s philosophy of finding a power greater than ourselves and states than unless an alcoholic finds something more important than alcohol, then there is nothing to live for.

The Bottles

Now the stool is complete as a support system to hold the alcoholic up, but the alcoholic must also take action for him- or herself. The author uses the visual aid of eight bottles to represent the Fourth Step of A.A., which is: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. The author discusses A.A.’s belief that the alcoholic must put their character defects on paper because these are what has separated them from God and made their lives unmanageable. The author lists the eight most common character defects, which lead to mental drunkenness, which then leads to physical drunkenness. In the book, each of the eight character defects are listed on the eight bottles as follows: