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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 were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from
which there is no return through human aid, we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of
our intolerable situation as best we could;
and the other, to accept spiritual help.
2.
3.
As to two of you men, whose stories I have heard, there is no doubt in my mind that you were 100% hopeless, apart from divine help.
4.
We had to have God's help.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Dr. Harry M. Tiebout, psychiatrist:
"As a psychiatrist, I have thought a great deal about the relationship
of my specialty to A.A. and I
have come to the conclusion that our particular function can
very often lie in preparing the way for the patient to accept any sort of treatment or outside help.
13.
14.
It is a step in the development of that kind of
humility that makes it possible for us to receive
God's help.
15.
He feels a spiritual and
ethical compulsion, because hundreds may be suffering within reach of his help.
16.
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.
17.
Prior to his journey to Akron, the broker had worked hard with many alcoholics on the theory that only an alcoholic could help an alcoholic, but he had succeeded only in keeping
sober himself.
18.
Almost from the beginning, we have been positive that face-to-face work with the alcoholic who suffers could
be based only on the desire
to help and be helped.
19.
All this should be very encouraging news for those who recoil from prayer because they don't believe in it, or because
they feel themselves cut off from God's help and direction.
20.
Do we lay the matter before our sponsor or spiritual adviser, earnestly asking God's help and guidance -- meanwhile resolving to do the right thing when it becomes clear, cost what it may?
21.
Nearly every modern employer feels a moral responsibility for the well-being of his help, and he tries to meet these responsibilities.
22.
If we have obtained permission, have consulted with others, asked God to help and the drastic step is indicated we must not shrink.
23.
24.
Volunteer committeemen and assistants could be of great
help, but they could not be expected to carry this load day in and day out.
25.
26.
... help ensure
that various elements of A.A.'s ...
BB
Appendix VII, Twelve Concepts (Short Form), p.574
Written by co-founder Bill W. in 1962, the Twelve Concepts for World Service provide a group of related principles to help ensure that various elements of A.A.'s service structure remain responsive and responsible to those they
serve.
27.
28.
Alcoholics Anonymous
is a worldwide fellowship of more than one hundred thousand(*) alcoholic men and women who are banded together to solve their common problems and to help fellow sufferers in recovery from that age-old, baffling malady, alcoholism.
29.
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."
30.
31.
32.
He also wanted to tell others who had tried to help him -- his doctor, his minister, and close friends.
33.
Perhaps your story will help him see where he has failed to practice the very precepts he knows so well.
34.
He did not design man to destroy himself by alcohol, but He did give man instincts to help him to stay alive.
35.
The Episcopal magazine,
The Living Church, observes editorially:
"The basis of the technique of Alcoholics
Anonymous is the truly Christian principle that
a man cannot help himself except by helping others.
36.
Even the newest of newcomers finds undreamed rewards as he tries to help his brother alcoholic, the one who is even blinder than he.
37.
38.
We'd have to have outside help if we were surely to know and admit the truth about ourselves -- the
help of God and another human being.
39.
A spot-check inventory taken in the midst of such disturbances can be of very
great help in quieting stormy emotions.
40.
41.
(*) Written in 1939, when
there were few women in A.A., this chapter assumes that the alcoholic
in the home is likely to be
the husband. But many of the
suggestions given here may be adapted to help the person who lives with a woman alcoholic -- whether she is
still drinking or is recovering in A.A. A further source of help is noted on page 121.
42.
Showing others who suffer how we were given help is the very thing which makes life seem so worth while to us now.
43.
44.
45.
Men have cried out to me in sincere and despairing appeal: "Doctor, I cannot go on like this! I have everything
to live for! I must stop, but I cannot! You must help me!"
46.
About this time a lady called up my wife one Saturday afternoon saying she wanted me to come over that evening to meet a friend of hers who might help me.
47.
48.
"Still dubious, he demanded, 'Do you really mean the only reason you are here is to try and help me and to help yourself?'
49.
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.
50.
Our very lives, as ex-problem drinkers, depend upon our constant thought of others and how we
may help meet their needs.
51.
I wanted to throw up my hands in discouragement, for I saw
that I had failed to help my
banker friend understand.
52.
But as time passed we found that with the help of A.A.'s Twelve Steps we could lose those fears, no matter what our material prospects were.
53.
Just saying it over and over will often enable us to clear a channel choked up with anger, fear, frustration, or misunderstanding, and permit us to return to the surest help of all -- our search for God's will, not our own, in the moment of stress.
54.
We'd have to have outside help if we were surely to know and admit the truth about ourselves -- the
help of God and another human being.
55.
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?
56.
Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life.
57.
58.
In any meeting, anywhere, A.A.'s share experience, strength, and hope with each other, in order to stay sober and help other alcoholics.
59.
Can we love the whole pattern of living as eagerly as we do the small segment of it we discover
when we try to help other alcoholics achieve sobriety?
60.
Though they knew they must help other alcoholics if they
would remain sober, that motive became secondary.
61.
62.
Make it plain he is under no obligation to you, that you hope only that he will try to help other alcoholics when he escapes his own difficulties.
63.
64.
Our immediate temptation will be to ask for specific solutions to specific problems, and for the ability to help other people as we have already thought they should
be helped.
65.
66.
You should be described to him as one of a fellowship who, as part of their own recovery, try to help others and who will be glad to talk to him if he cares to see you.
67.
A.A. Preamble -- Alcoholics Anonymous is
a fellowship of people
who share their experience, strength and
hope with each other that they may solve their
common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.
68.
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.
69.
... help others
with similar problems ... In this ...
BB
Appendix III, The Medical View on A.A., p.570
They help others with similar problems ... In this
atmosphere the alcoholic often overcomes his excessive
concentration upon himself.
70.
How then shall we help our readers determine, to their
own satisfaction, whether they are one of us?
71.
Just as firmly bound by obligation are the
members of Alcoholics
Anonymous, who have demonstrated that they can help problem drinkers as others seldom can.
72.
Then Jack Alexander wrote a feature article in the Saturday Evening Post and placed such a compelling picture of A.A. before the general public that alcoholics in need of help really deluged us.
73.
They often jeopardize
their own positions by trying to help serious drinkers who should
have been fired long ago, or else given an opportunity to get well.
74.
75.
Perhaps I could help some of
them.
76.
77.
Service, gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved with God's help, the knowledge that at home or in
the world outside we are partners in a common effort, the well-understood fact that in God's sight all human beings are important, the proof that love freely given surely brings a full return, the certainty that
we are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, the surety that we need no longer be square pegs in round holes but can fit and belong in God's scheme of things -- these are
the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes.
78.
Nothing will help the man who is off on a spiritual tangent so much as the wife who adopts a sane spiritual program, making a better practical use of it.
79.
We A.A.'s are active folk, enjoying the satisfactions of dealing with the realities
of life, usually for the first time in our lives, and strenuously trying to help the next alcoholic who comes along.
80.
(*) Written in 1939, when
there were few women in A.A., this chapter assumes that the alcoholic
in the home is likely to be
the husband. But many of the
suggestions given here may be adapted to help the person who lives with a woman alcoholic -- whether she is
still drinking or is recovering in A.A. A further source of help is noted on page 121.
81.
Some day we hope that Alcoholics Anonymous will help the public to a better realization of the gravity of the alcoholic problem, but we shall be of little use if our attitude is one of bitterness or hostility.
82.
83.
With those we dislike we can
begin to practice justice and courtesy, perhaps going out of our way to understand and help them.
84.
The problem is to help them
discover a chink in the walls their ego has built, through which the light of reason can shine.
85.
86.
87.
Here we need only recognize that we did act or think badly, try to visualize how we might
have done better, and resolve with God's help to carry these lessons over into tomorrow, making, of course, any amends still neglected.
88.
We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn't control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we
couldn't make a living, we had
a feeling of uselessness, we were full of
fear, we were unhappy, we
couldn't seem to be of real
help to other people -- was not a basic solution of these bedevilments more important than whether we
should see newsreels of lunar flight?
89.
90.
Questions like these, more of which will come to mind easily in each individual case, will help turn up the root causes.
91.
92.
We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we
would cheerfully grant a
sick friend.
93.
We forgot that most alcoholics in A.A. have an earning power considerably above average; we forgot the immense goodwill of our brother A.A.'s who were only too
eager to help us to better jobs when we deserved them; we forgot the
actual or potential financial insecurity of
every human being in the world.
94.
95.
To be sure, we feel it is something that might help us
to meet an occasional emergency, but at first many of us are apt to regard it as a somewhat mysterious skill of clergymen, from which we may hope to get a secondhand benefit.
96.
When, with God's help, we calmly accepted our lot, then we found we could live at peace with ourselves and show others who still suffered the same fears that they could get over them, too.
97.
But if you really and truly
want to quit drinking liquor for good and all, and sincerely feel that you must have some help, we know that we have an answer for you.
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
"Still dubious, he demanded, 'Do you really mean the only reason you are here is to try and help me and to help yourself?'
The 164 and More™ Book, eBook, and Web Site
are all CONCORDANCES which display passages from the Big Book
Alcoholics Anonymous, the
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,
and the A.A. Grapevine (A.A. Preamble only).
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164 and More concordance does not in any way imply
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Inc., or the A.A. Grapevine, Inc. Further A.A.W.S. Inc. and the A.A.
Grapevine Inc. have no objection to the use of this material in the
164 and More concordance.
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