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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.
We find the more one member of the family demands that the others concede to him, the more resentful they become.
2.
Any willing newcomer feels sure A.A. is the only safe harbor for the foundering vessel he has
become.
3.
And as he came out the other side of that painful experience, this
prayer was his expression of what he could then see, feel, and wish to become:
4.
If an A.A. member acting as a citizen can become a better researcher, educator, personnel officer, then why not?
5.
6.
7.
He may start off as a moderate drinker; he may or
may not become a continuous hard drinker; but at some stage of
his drinking career he begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption, once he starts to drink.
8.
9.
Going to the extreme, he can
become a miser, or even a recluse who denies himself both family and friends.
10.
11.
If any feel that as psychiatrists directing a hospital for
alcoholics we appear somewhat sentimental, let them stand with us a while on the firing line, see the tragedies, the despairing wives, the little children; let the solving of these problems become a part of their daily work, and even of their sleeping moments, and the
most cynical will not wonder that we have accepted
and encouraged this movement.
12.
13.
And at length our inventories become a regular part of everyday living, rather than something unusual or set apart.
14.
15.
Dad may feel that for years his drinking has placed him on the wrong side of every argument, but that now he has
become a superior person with God on his side.
16.
When your husband is bad, you
become a trembling recluse, wishing the telephone had never been invented.
17.
When a man or a woman has a spiritual awakening, the
most important meaning
of it is that he has now become
able to do, feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his unaided strength and resources alone.
18.
In our drinking time, we acted as if the money supply was inexhaustible, though between binges we'd sometimes go to the other extreme and become almost miserly.
19.
20.
It will become more and more evident as we go forward that it is pointless to become angry, or to get hurt by people who, like us, are suffering from
the pains of growing up.
21.
Unreasonable fear that
our instincts will not be
satisfied drives us to covet the possessions of others, to lust for sex and power, to become angry when our instinctive demands are
threatened, to be envious when the ambitions
of others seem to be realized while ours are not.
22.
Then, and only then, do we become as open-minded to conviction and as willing
to listen as the dying can
be.
23.
These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve.
24.
For we can neither think nor act to good purpose until the habit of self-restraint has become automatic.
25.
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.
26.
Both were severe cases of alcoholism and were
destined to become co-founders of the A.A. Fellowship.
27.
But when self-will had driven everybody away and our isolation had
become complete, it caused us to play the big shot in cheap barrooms and then fare forth alone on the street to depend upon the charity of passersby.
28.
29.
30.
31.
By now, though, the chances are that he has become
convinced that he has more
problems than alcohol,
and that some of these refuse to be solved by all the sheer personal determination
and courage he can muster.
32.
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.
33.
When your mission is carefully explained, and
it is seen by the recipient
of your confidence how helpful he can really be, the
conversation will start easily and will soon become eager.
34.
35.
So in a very complete and literal way, all A.A.'s have "become entirely ready" to have God remove the mania for alcohol from their lives.
36.
37.
Some of them may sink and perhaps never get up, but if our experience is a criterion, more than half of those approached will become fellows of Alcoholics Anonymous.
38.
... become, for
nearly every practical purpose, the ...
BB
Appendix VII, Twelve Concepts (Short Form), p.574
II. The General Service Conference of A.A. has become, for nearly every practical purpose, the active voice and the effective conscience of
our whole Society in its world affairs.
39.
40.
Once this healthy practice has become grooved, it will be so interesting and profitable that the time it
takes won't be missed.
41.
A.A.'s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritual in
their nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole.
42.
43.
Moreover, at the slightest intimation to
the general public from our
trustees that we needed money, we could become immensely rich.
44.
If you draw this fallacious reasoning to
the attention of an alcoholic, he will laugh it off, or become irritated and refuse to talk.
45.
Still another difficulty is that you may become jealous of the attention he bestows on other people, especially alcoholics.
46.
It will become more and more evident as we go forward that it is pointless to become angry, or to get hurt by people who, like us, are suffering from
the pains of growing up.
47.
48.
When our drinking had become
much worse, money was only an urgent requirement which could supply us with the next drink and the temporary comfort of oblivion it brought.
49.
If I keep on turning my life and my will over to the care of Something or Somebody else, what will become of me?
50.
If strong people were stalemated in the search
for peace and harmony, what
was to become of our erratic
band of alcoholics?
51.
What has become of the common
sense and will power that he still sometimes displays with respect to other matters?
52.
53.
Maybe this sounds as though the alcoholics in A.A. had suddenly gone peaceable, and become one great big happy family.
54.
55.
How could we know that thousands of these sometimes frightening
people were to make astonishing recoveries
and become our greatest workers and intimate friends?
56.
Could we then foresee that troublesome people were to
become our principal teachers of patience and tolerance?
57.
They have become persuaded,
and rightly so, that many problems besides alcohol will not yield to a headlong assault powered by the individual alone.
58.
This established identification with alcoholic readers and proved to them that the virtually impossible had
now become possible.
59.
There will be those who have drifted into indifference, those filled with self-sufficiency who have cut themselves off, those who
have become prejudiced against religion, and those who are downright defiant because God has failed to fulfill their demands.
60.
61.
62.
Drinking occasionally, and understanding your own reactions, it is possible
for you to become quite sure of many things which, so far as the alcoholic is concerned,
are not always so.
63.
64.
Therefore, it seems plain that few of us can quickly or easily become ready to aim at spiritual and moral perfection; we want to settle for only as much perfection as will get us by in life, according, of course, to our various and sundry ideas of what will get us by.
65.
There will be those who ought to be dealt with just as soon as we become reasonably confident that we can maintain our sobriety.
66.
They pointed out that the irresponsible had become
responsible, and that by making financial independence part of its tradition, Alcoholics Anonymous had
revived an ideal that its era had almost forgotten.
67.
If outside donations weren't declined, absolutely cut off, then the
Foundation would one day become rich.
68.
69.
70.
Though none of these principles had the force of
rules or laws, they had become so widely accepted by 1950 that they were
confirmed by our first International Conference held at Cleveland.
71.
Her husband may become so wrapped up in A.A. and his new friends that he is inconsiderately away
from home more than when he drank.
72.
73.
When A.A.'s Traditions were
first published, in 1946, we had become sure that an A.A. group could stand almost any amount of battering.
74.
So confident of this had we become that the original statement of A.A. tradition carried this significant sentence:
"Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group provided that as a group they have no other affiliation."
75.
Because this book has become the basic text for our Society and has helped such large numbers of alcoholic men and women to recovery, there exists strong sentiment against any radical changes being made in it.
76.
77.
And if these are facts of life
for the many alcoholics
who have recovered in A.A.,
they can become the facts of life for many more.
78.
79.
80.
Very gradually, and usually without any realization of the fact, the wife is forced to become the mother of an erring boy.
81.
Alcohol, now become the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all self-sufficiency and all will to resist its demands.
82.
83.
They become the voice of the group conscience; in fact, these are the true voice of Alcoholics Anonymous.
84.
When they become too dangerous, we think the kind thing is to lock them up, but of course a good doctor should always be consulted.
85.
86.
87.
Do we instantly confess
our irregularities to the firm, in the practical certainty that we will be fired and become unemployable?
88.
89.
90.
91.
Since Step One requires an admission that
our lives have become unmanageable, how could people such as these take this Step?
92.
We had refused to learn the
very hard lesson that overdependence upon people is unsuccessful because all people are fallible, and even the best of them will sometimes let us down, especially when our demands for attention become unreasonable.
93.
94.
Even though your protégé may not have entirely admitted his condition, he has become very curious to know how you got well.
95.
To those who have made progress in A.A., it amounts to a clear recognition of what and who we really are, followed by a sincere attempt to become what we could be.
96.
And the facts seem to be these:
The more we become willing to depend upon a Higher Power, the more independent we actually
are.
97.
But when we have taken a square look at some of these defects, have discussed
them with another, and have become willing to have them removed, our thinking about
humility commences to
have a wider meaning.
98.
Let us become willing to partake and be strengthened and lifted
up by the sheer spiritual power, beauty, and love of which these
magnificent words are
the carriers.
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