Giday AB and thanks for your response. I am assuming in your response you are using valid and legitimately as the same meaning. This may seem semantics but I do see a difference between valid and legitimate.

Guess for me the crux of this discussion are the last two paragraphs on page 101. The second last paragraph talks about legitimate reason which for me means providing what I am doing is not illegal I can go. The BB then in the last paragraph adds the riders being for social, business or personal as being good reason. For me the scope of this definition is enormous and for me basically means there is no reason provided I do not have a bit of vicarious pleasure. This to me means obsessive behaviour (spiritually unfit).

For me to have a valid reason I need to have a sound reason, therefore, if I am walking down the street and decide I want to walk into a bar for no reason other than i wanted to I can so because I can do so legitimately. Here I do not have a valid reason, I could not justify why I wanted to go into a pub I would not have a valid reason.

Therefore to not enter for a valid reason would mean I would be tempted which on the BB page 101 second last paragraph states "To a person who has had experience with an alcoholic, this may seem like tempting Providence, but it isn’t." BB page 84 last paragraph "And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone-even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality—safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition."

For me this is summed up on page 26 last paragraph "But this man still lives, and is a free man. He does not need a bodyguard nor is he confined. He can go anywhere on this earth where other free men may go without disaster, provided he remains willing to maintain a certain simple attitude." I am reading "simple attitude" as being spiritual fit. Nothing about valid reason just anywhere a free man can go and of course a free man can go to a bar legitimately.

Having said this I do not go out preaching to people go the the pub especially newcomers but I do believe people who are spiritually fit can go wherever and whenever they want to and like any other free person I do not need a valid reason.

Just some very lengthy thoughts G8