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From the books ... Alcoholics Anonymous (Big Book) and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (12 & 12)
Click the page number or the book cover icon
to view that page in the literature.1.
2.
After a few such experiences, often years before the onset of extreme difficulties, he
would return to us convinced.
3.
4.
If this kind of approach
does not catch your husband's interest, it may
be best to drop the subject, but after a friendly talk your husband will usually revive the topic himself.
5.
After three years of trial and error in selecting the most
workable tenets upon which the Society could be
based, and after a large amount of failure in getting alcoholics to recover, three successful groups emerged -- the first at Akron, the second at New York, and the third at Cleveland.
6.
7.
This went from bad to worse until sophomore spring when, after a prolonged period of drinking, I made up my mind that I could not complete
my course, so I packed my grip and went South to spend a month on a large farm owned by a friend of mine.
8.
Friends who have reasoned
with him after a spree which
has brought him to the point
of divorce or bankruptcy are mystified
when he walks directly into
a saloon.
9.
An exceptional man, he remained bone dry for twenty-five years and retired at the age of fifty-five, after a successful and happy business career.
10.
The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they
cannot after a time differentiate the true
from the false.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
He will perceive that his spiritual growth is lopsided, that for an average man like himself, a spiritual life which does not
include his family obligations may not be so perfect after all.
18.
19.
20.
21.
Those who did would sometimes assure us that,
after all, a lively bender was only a good man's fault.
22.
23.
24.
Under these conditions we
can employ our mental faculties with assurance,
for after all God gave us brains to use.
25.
26.
27.
Upon hearing this, our friend was somewhat relieved, for he reflected
that, after all, he was a good
church member.
28.
After all his pleas for help had been rebuffed, these
words rang in his fevered mind: "They have deserted me. I have been deserted by my own kind. This is the end ... nothing is left."
29.
30.
31.
So it doesn't behoove me to squawk about it for, after all,
nobody ever had to throw me down and pour liquor down my throat.
32.
Of course the sponsor points out that our friend's life is still unmanageable even though he is sober, that after all, only a bare start on A.A.'s program has been made.
33.
34.
35.
36.
After all, we are experienced.
37.
After all, your family is reunited, alcohol is no longer a problem and you and your husband are working together toward an undreamed-of future.
38.
As matters get worse, the husband becomes a sick and irresponsible child who
needs to be looked after and extricated from endless scrapes and impasses.
39.
40.
One dramatic experience after another clinched this determination until it became our universal tradition.
41.
But if a willing start is made, then the great advantages of doing this will so quickly reveal themselves that the
pain will be lessened as one obstacle after another melts away.
42.
Maybe there are serious domestic or romantic difficulties, or perhaps
that boy we thought God was looking after becomes a military casualty.
43.
There is the type who always
believes that after being entirely free from alcohol for a period of time he can take a drink without danger.
44.
After coming from our first meeting, or perhaps after we have finished reading the book "Alcoholics Anonymous," we usually want to sit down with some member of the family and readily admit the damage we have done by our drinking.
45.
After consulting with his
wife and partner he came to the conclusion that
it was better to take those risks than to stand before his Creator guilty of such ruinous slander.
46.
In country after country where the A.A. seed was planted, it has taken root, slowly at first, then growing by leaps and bounds when literature has
become available.
47.
48.
For example, we may set our hearts on getting a particular person sobered up, and after doing all we can for months, we see him relapse.
49.
50.
As animals on a treadmill, we have patiently and wearily climbed, falling back in exhaustion after each futile effort to reach solid ground.
51.
52.
53.
54.
After high school came four years in one of the best colleges in the country
where drinking seemed to
be a major extra-curricular activity.
55.
56.
57.
Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to
the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:
58.
After making our review we ask God's forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken.
59.
60.
After many painful discussions, they
finally gave me my credits and I migrated to another of the leading universities of the country and entered as a Junior that Fall.
61.
I say this after many years' experience as Medical Director of one of the oldest hospitals in the country treating alcoholic and drug addiction.
62.
We feel, after many years of experience, that we have found nothing which has contributed more to the rehabilitation of these men than the altruistic movement now growing up among them.
63.
64.
65.
I seemed to be able to snap back the next morning better than most of my fellow
drinkers, who were cursed
(or perhaps blessed) with
a great deal of morning-after nausea.
66.
67.
It then occurred to me that after one was all smelled up with beer nobody could tell what had been drunk, so I began to fortify my beer with straight alcohol.
68.
69.
After reading this book, a junior executive can go to such a man and say approximately this, "Look here, Ed.
70.
We are like the passengers
of a great liner the moment after rescue from shipwreck when
camaraderie, joyousness and democracy
pervade the vessel from steerage to Captain's table.
71.
If he says yes, does he really mean it, or down inside does he think he is fooling you, and
that after rest and treatment he will be able to get away with a few drinks now and then?
72.
After satisfying yourself that your man wants to recover and that he will go to any
extreme to do so, you may suggest a definite course of action.
73.
74.
75.
Of alcoholics who came to
A.A. and really tried, 50% got
sober at once and remained that way; 25% sobered up after some relapses, and among the remainder, those who stayed on with A.A. showed improvement.
76.
77.
78.
After taking this preliminary trial at making amends, we may enjoy such a sense of relief that we conclude our task is finished.
79.
I got tight that night, stayed sober Monday till after the dinner, and then proceeded
to get tight again.
80.
After the husband joins A.A., the wife may become discontented, even highly resentful that Alcoholics Anonymous has
done the very thing that all her years of devotion had failed to do.
81.
Not long after the man with the double stigma knocked for admission, A.A.'s other group received into its membership a salesman we
shall call Ed.
82.
83.
We can be the ones who take on
the unspectacular but important tasks that make good Twelfth Step work possible, perhaps arranging for the
coffee and cake after the meetings, where so many skeptical, suspicious newcomers
have found confidence and
comfort in the laughter
and talk.
84.
If he temporizes and still thinks he can ever drink again, even beer, he might as well be discharged after the next bender which, if an alcoholic, he is almost certain to have.
85.
The secretary sees that literature is on the table,
looks after the phone-answering service, answers the mail, and sends out notices of meetings.
86.
87.
88.
How often have some of us begun to drink in this nonchalant way, and after the third or fourth, pounded on the bar and said to ourselves, "For God's sake, how did I ever get started again?"
89.
This may hang on for months,
long after their mother has accepted dad's new way
of living and thinking.
90.
91.
92.
After they have succumbed
to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon
of craving develops, they
pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with
a firm resolution not to
drink again.
93.
94.
(*) The fellowship of Al-Anon Family Groups was formed about thirteen years after this chapter was written. Though it is entirely separate from Alcoholics Anonymous, it
uses the general principles of the A.A. program as a guide for husbands, wives, relatives, friends and others close to alcoholics. The foregoing pages (though addressed only to wives) indicate the problems such people may face. Alateen, for teen-aged children of alcoholics, is a part of Al-Anon.
95.
After three years of this, I wound up in the local hospital where they attempted to help me, but I
would get my friends to smuggle me a quart, or I would
steal the alcohol about the
building, so that I got rapidly worse.
96.
After three years of trial and error in selecting the most
workable tenets upon which the Society could be
based, and after a large amount of failure in getting alcoholics to recover, three successful groups emerged -- the first at Akron, the second at New York, and the third at Cleveland.
97.
Time after time, my instructors held up to me the basic principle of all scientific progress: search and research, again and again, always with the open mind.
98.
99.
What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic
who repeats time after time the desperate experiment of
the first drink?
100.
101.
Time after time, this apparent calamity has been a boon to us,
for it opened up a path which led to the discovery of God.
102.
After two weeks of drinking, he had placed his toe on the trigger of a loaded shotgun -- the barrel was in
his mouth.
103.
104.
After we come into A.A., if we go on growing, our attitudes and
actions toward security -- emotional security and financial security -- commence to change profoundly.
105.
After coming from our first meeting, or perhaps after we have finished reading the book "Alcoholics Anonymous," we usually want to sit down with some member of the family and readily admit the damage we have done by our drinking.
106.
After we have made the list of people we have harmed, have reflected carefully upon each instance, and have tried to possess ourselves of the right attitude in which to proceed, we will see that the making of direct amends divides those we should approach into several classes.
107.
108.
I rather appreciated
your ideas about the subtle
insanity which precedes
the first drink, but I was confident it could not happen to me after what I had learned.
109.
But whenever we had to choose between character and comfort, the
character-building was
lost in the dust of our chase after what we thought was happiness.
110.
We admit we have some of these symptoms, but we have not gone
to the extremes you fellows did, nor are we likely to, for we understand ourselves so
well after what you have told us that such things cannot happen again.
111.
This worked nicely until my wife and I went to see Wallace Beery in "Tugboat Annie," after which the pant-leg and stocking racket were out!
112.
After your man has gone along without drinking for a few months, you may be able to make use of his services with other employees who are giving you the alcoholic run-around -- provided, of course, they are
willing to have a third party in the picture.
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