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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.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Be determined that your husband's drinking is not going to spoil your relations with your children or your friends.
8.
If your husband is a drinker, you probably worry over what other people are thinking and you hate to meet your friends.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
There are the same fast friendships, there is the same helpfulness to one another as you find among our western friends.
14.
15.
Going to the extreme, he can
become a miser, or even a recluse who denies himself both family and friends.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
How could we know that thousands of these sometimes frightening
people were to make astonishing recoveries
and become our greatest workers and intimate friends?
21.
On almost every newsfront, the men and women of the press have attached themselves to us
as friends.
22.
23.
He also wanted to tell others who had tried to help him -- his doctor, his minister, and close friends.
24.
25.
We commenced to make many fast friends and a fellowship has grown up among us of which it is a wonderful thing to feel a part.
26.
There is the manic-depressive type, who is, perhaps, the least understood by his friends,
and about whom a whole chapter could be written.
27.
Now that we're in A.A. and sober, and winning back the esteem of our friends and business associates, we find that we
still need to exercise special vigilance.
28.
It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children, sad wives and parents -- anyone can increase the list.
29.
To clergymen, doctors,
friends, and families, the
alcoholic who means well and tries hard is a heartbreaking riddle.
30.
If he does not argue about religion, he will make new friends and is sure to find new avenues of usefulness and
pleasure.
31.
I used to promise my wife, my friends, and my children that I would drink no more -- promises which seldom kept me sober even through the day, though I was very sincere when I made them.
32.
(*) 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.
33.
But it is from our twisted relations with family, friends, and society at large that many of us have suffered the most.
34.
Consequently, many groups began to hold meetings which were open to interested friends and the public, so that the
average citizen could see for himself just what A.A. was all about.
35.
36.
37.
In a weak moment he may take your dislike of his high-stepping friends as one of those insanely trivial excuses to drink.
38.
39.
40.
When by devoted service to
family, friends, business, or community we
attract widespread affection and are sometimes singled out for posts of greater responsibility
and trust, we try to be humbly grateful and exert ourselves the more in a spirit of love and service.
41.
The founder and his friends
channel spirituality
to newcomers, hire halls, make hospital arrangements,
and entreat their wives to
brew gallons of coffee.
42.
Obviously, A.A. had to be publicized somehow, so we
resorted to the idea that it
would be far better to let our friends do this for us.
43.
Change of scene, the best efforts of family, friends, doctors, and clergymen got no place
with my alcoholism.
44.
Speaking at a dinner given by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to introduce Alcoholics Anonymous to some of his friends, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick remarked:
45.
I used to get terribly upset when I saw my friends drink and knew I could not, but I
schooled myself to believe that though I once had the same privilege, I had abused it
so frightfully that it was withdrawn.
46.
47.
Many of our friends encourage us by saying that
this is but a beginning, only the augury of a much larger future ahead.
48.
49.
Another reason for the wide acceptance of A.A. was the ministration of
friends -- friends in medicine, religion, and the
press, together with innumerable others who became our able and persistent advocates.
50.
51.
When told that our Society
has no president having authority to govern it, no treasurer who can compel the payment of any dues, no board of directors who can cast an erring member into outer darkness, when indeed no A.A. can give
another a directive and
enforce obedience, our
friends gasp and exclaim, "This simply can't
be. There must be an angle somewhere."
52.
53.
I now remembered what my alcoholic friends had told me, how they prophesied
that if I had an alcoholic mind, the time and place would come -- I would drink again.
54.
Our friends have counseled
chucking the men and we have
done so with finality, only
to be back in a little while hoping, always hoping.
55.
Ever since, these friends have
reported A.A. with an enthusiasm which the most ardent members would find hard to match.
56.
If the founder and his friends have served well, they may -- to their surprise -- be reinstated
for a time.
57.
58.
Another reason for the wide acceptance of A.A. was the ministration of
friends -- friends in medicine, religion, and the
press, together with innumerable others who became our able and persistent advocates.
59.
60.
61.
62.
While you need not discuss your husband at length, you can quietly let your friends know the nature of his illness.
63.
64.
65.
66.
People have said we must not go where liquor is served; we must not have it in our homes; we
must shun friends who drink; we must avoid moving pictures which show drinking scenes; we must not go into bars; our friends must hide their bottles if we go to their houses; we mustn't think or be reminded about alcohol at
all.
67.
68.
In recent years some members and friends of A.A. have asked if it would be wise to update the language, idioms, and historical references
in the book to present a more contemporary image for the Fellowship.
69.
This is a world clearing house for the Al-Anon Family Groups, composed largely of the wives, husbands and friends of A.A. members.
70.
We hope that the collective spiritual experience of the A.A. pioneers captured in these
pages continues to help alcoholics and friends of A.A. understand the principles of our program.
71.
(*) In adapted form, the Steps are also used by Al-Anon Family Groups. Not a part of A.A., this worldwide fellowship consists of spouses and other relatives or friends of alcoholics (in A.A. or still drinking). Its headquarters address is 1600 Corporate Landing Pkwy, Virginia Beach, VA 23454-5617.
72.
73.
They will tell how they tried to carry the load alone; how much they suffered of irritability, anxiety,
remorse, and depression; and how, unconsciously seeking
relief, they would sometimes accuse even their best friends of the very character defects they themselves were trying to
conceal.
74.
These were plausible arguments, but happily our
friends of the writing profession disagreed
with them.
75.
Can we now, with the help of God as we understand Him, handle them as well and as bravely as our nonalcoholic friends often do?
76.
It is worth noting that people of very high spiritual development almost always insist on checking with friends or spiritual advisers the guidance they feel they have received from God.
77.
In this prodigy of service, he was well assisted by Sister Ignatia at St. Thomas Hospital in Akron, Ohio, one of the greatest friends our Fellowship will ever know.
78.
Then, for good measure, we add dramatic descriptions of that part
of our drinking behavior
which our friends probably
know about anyhow.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
In a vague way their families and friends sense that these drinkers are
abnormal, but everybody
hopefully awaits the day when the sufferer will rouse himself from his lethargy
and assert his power of will.
84.
The two friends spoke of their spiritual experience and told him about
the course of action they carried out.
85.
86.
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.
87.
Frequently, you have felt
obliged to tell your husband's employer and his
friends that he was sick, when
as a matter of fact he was tight.
88.
Though the essays which follow were written mainly for members, it is thought by many of A.A.'s friends that these pieces might arouse interest and find application outside A.A. itself.
89.
90.
To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends -- this is an experience
you must not miss.
91.
92.
93.
We've repeatedly strained the patience of
our best friends to a snapping point, and have brought out the very worst in those who didn't think much of us to begin with.
94.
We have not once sought to be
one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society.
95.
96.
I failed to persuade my broker friends to send me out looking over factories and managements, but my wife and
I decided to go anyway.
97.
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.
98.
In the spring of 1940, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. gave a dinner for many of his friends to which he invited A.A. members to tell their stories.
99.
100.
Strangely enough, wives, parents and intimate friends usually find us even more unapproachable than do the psychiatrist and the doctor.
101.
102.
As we look over the list of business acquaintances and friends
we have hurt, we may feel diffident about going to some
of them on a spiritual basis.
103.
104.
People have said we must not go where liquor is served; we must not have it in our homes; we
must shun friends who drink; we must avoid moving pictures which show drinking scenes; we must not go into bars; our friends must hide their bottles if we go to their houses; we mustn't think or be reminded about alcohol at
all.
105.
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.
106.
107.
Among us are wives, relatives and friends whose problem has been solved, as well as some who have
not yet found a happy solution.
108.
109.
Some of the recommendations of A.A.'s early medical and religious friends will be found further on in this book.
110.
Barriers which have sprung
up between you and your friends will disappear with the growth of
sympathetic understanding.
111.
But all alcoholics who have drunk themselves out of jobs, family, and friends will need to cross-examine themselves ruthlessly
to determine how their own
personality defects
have thus demolished their
security.
112.
113.
We had failed to see that though adult in years we were still behaving childishly, trying to turn everybody -- friends, wives, husbands, even the world itself -- into protective
parents.
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