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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.
Each day my friend's simple talk in our kitchen multiplies itself in a widening circle of peace on earth and good will to men.
2.
We know that while the alcoholic keeps away from drink, as he may do for
months or years, he reacts much like other men.
3.
4.
Neither does there appear
to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men.
5.
Then he fell victim to a belief which practically
every alcoholic has --
that his long period of sobriety and self-discipline had qualified
him to drink as other men.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
We could not be all things to all men.
15.
When the phrase "We are people who normally would not
mix" (page 17 of this book) was written in 1939, it referred to a Fellowship
composed largely of men (and a few women) with quite similar social, ethnic, and economic backgrounds.
16.
Alcoholism may be causing your organization considerable damage in its waste of time, men and reputation.
17.
18.
You have been starving for his companionship, yet he spends long hours helping other men and their families.
19.
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.
20.
21.
Free of marital responsibilities, they can participate in enterprises which would be denied to family men and women.
22.
To 1950, the year of his death, he carried the A.A. message to more than 5,000 alcoholic men and women, and to all these he gave
his medical services without thought of charge.
23.
24.
Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women, desperately in need, will see these pages, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems
that they will be persuaded
to say, "Yes, I am one of them too; I must have this thing."
25.
If men and women didn't exert themselves to be secure in their persons, made no effort to harvest food or construct shelter, there would be no survival.
26.
27.
Therefore, no society of men and women ever had a more urgent need for continuous effectiveness and permanent unity.
28.
Seeing much of each other, scarce an evening passed that someone's home did not shelter a little gathering of men and women, happy in their release, and constantly thinking how
they might present their discovery to some newcomer.
29.
We won't have far to seek; the great men and women of all religions have
left us a wonderful supply.
30.
On almost every newsfront, the men and women of the press have attached themselves to us
as friends.
31.
Learning how to live in the
greatest peace, partnership, and brotherhood with all men and
women, of whatever description, is a moving
and fascinating adventure.
32.
To watch the eyes of men and women open with wonder as they move from darkness into light, to see their lives quickly fill with new purpose and meaning, to see whole families reassembled, to
see the alcoholic outcast received back into his community in full citizenship, and above all to watch these people awaken to the presence of a loving God in their lives -- these things are the substance of
what we receive as we carry
A.A.'s message to the next alcoholic.
33.
When men and women pour so much alcohol into themselves
that they destroy their lives, they commit a most unnatural act.
34.
35.
But how many men and women speak love with their lips, and believe what they say, so that
they can hide lust in a dark corner of their minds?
36.
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.
37.
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.
38.
Those who do not recover are
people who cannot or will not
completely give themselves to this simple
program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.
39.
We have also seen men and women who go power-mad,
who devote themselves to
attempting to rule their
fellows.
40.
41.
We, of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.
42.
We, of Alcoholics Anonymous, know thousands of men and women who were once just as hopeless as Bill.
43.
This self-insurance has resulted in the restoration of physical,
mental and spiritual health and self-respect to hundreds of men and women who would be hopelessly down and out without its unique but effective therapy."
44.
45.
46.
Wherever men are gathered together in business there will be rivalries and, arising out of these, a certain amount of office politics.
47.
Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the
guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.
48.
We realize some men are thoroughly bad-intentioned, that no amount of patience will make any
difference.
49.
50.
51.
The unselfishness of these men as we have come to know them, the entire absence of profit motive, and their community
spirit, is indeed inspiring to one who has labored long and wearily in this alcoholic
field.
52.
53.
54.
If there were no social instinct, if men cared nothing for the society of one another, there would be no society.
55.
I have seen men come out of asylums and resume a vital place in the lives of their families and communities.
56.
I pointed out that I had had
nothing to drink whatever for three years, and this in the face of difficulties that would have made nine out
of ten men drink their heads off.
57.
We have begun to learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people.
58.
59.
I reasoned I was not so far
advanced as most of you fellows, that I had been usually successful in licking my other personal problems, and that
I would therefore be successful where you men failed.
60.
61.
He entered a political
campaign, making speeches, frequenting
men's gathering places of all sorts, often staying up all night.
62.
63.
64.
In a matter of fact way he told how two men had appeared in court, persuading the judge to suspend his commitment.
65.
66.
But once these men had hit upon a cure, once it became apparent that only by
their united effort could
this be accomplished, then all of them would feel bound to devote themselves solely to the relief of cancer.
67.
68.
These distinguished men
had the nerve to say that most
of the alcoholics under
investigation were still childish, emotionally sensitive,
and grandiose.
69.
70.
Our loyalty and the desire
that our husbands hold up their heads and be like other men have begotten all sorts of predicaments.
71.
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!"
72.
The distinguished American psychologist,
William James, in his book "Varieties of Religious Experience,"
indicates a multitude
of ways in which men have discovered God.
73.
74.
Since that time, editors and
rewrite men have repeatedly deleted names and pictures of members from A.A. copy; frequently, they have
reminded ambitious individuals of A.A.'s anonymity policy.
75.
76.
So, for one reason or another, they cover these men, hoping matters will take a turn for the better.
77.
There is every evidence
that women regain their health as readily as men if they try our suggestions.
78.
Even greater furors were provoked when A.A. members began to run rest homes and farms for alcoholics, when
some hired out to corporations as personnel men in charge of the alcoholic problem in industry, when
some became nurses on alcoholic wards, when others entered the field of alcohol education.
79.
You would suppose that men in
the fourth classification would be quite hopeless, but that is
not so.
80.
When a few men in this city have found themselves, and have discovered the joy of helping others to face life again, there will be no stopping until everyone in that town has had his opportunity
to recover -- if he can and will.
81.
Students of ancient history tell us that the intellect of men in those days was equal to the best of today.
82.
So the difference between "the boys and the men" is the difference between striving for a self-determined objective and for the perfect objective which is
of God.
83.
Though it is infinitely
better that he have no relapse at all, as has been true
with many of our men, it is by
no means a bad thing in some cases.
84.
85.
(*) This refers to Bill's first visit with Dr. Bob. These men later became co-founders of A.A. Bill's story opens the text of this book; Dr. Bob's
heads the Story Section.
86.
Here were three exceptional men lost to this world because I did not understand alcoholism
as I do now.
87.
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.
88.
89.
In the realm of the material, men's minds were fettered by superstition, tradition, and all sorts of
fixed ideas.
90.
91.
92.
93.
We had long talks when I would
still her forebodings by
telling her that men of genius conceived their best projects when drunk; that the most majestic
constructions of philosophic thought were
so derived.
94.
Neither does A.A. take any particular medical point of view, though we cooperate widely with the men of medicine as well as with the
men of religion.
95.
I fancied myself a leader, for had not the men of my
battery given me a special token of appreciation?
96.
Neither does A.A. take any particular medical point of view, though we cooperate widely with the men of medicine as well as with the
men of religion.
97.
How we loved to shout the damaging fact that millions of the 'good men of religion' were still killing one another off in the name of God.
98.
99.
100.
Several of our crowd, men of thirty or less, had been drinking only a
few years, but they found themselves as helpless as those who had been
drinking twenty years.
101.
102.
Hence the two men set to work
almost frantically upon alcoholics arriving in the ward of the Akron City Hospital.
103.
We live in the imminent possibility of a fresh holocaust to determine
how men shall be governed, and how the products of nature and toil shall be divided among them.
104.
One of these men, staff member of a world-renowned hospital, recently made this statement to some of
us: "What you say about the general hopelessness of
the average alcoholic's
plight is, in my opinion,
correct.
105.
106.
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.
107.
108.
109.
The expression on the faces of the women, that indefinable something
in the eyes of the men, the stimulating and electric
atmosphere of the place,
conspired to let him know that here was haven at last.
110.
111.
In partnership with others -- women and men -- they can devote themselves to any number of ideas, people, and constructive
projects.
112.
There are many situations
which arise out of the phenomenon of craving
which cause men to make the supreme sacrifice rather than continue to fight.
113.
114.
115.
116.
These men were not drinking
to escape; they were drinking to overcome a craving beyond their mental control.
117.
118.
119.
120.
I have had many men who had, for
example, worked a period of months on some problem or business deal which was to be settled on
a certain date, favorably to them.
121.
Men who had liquor shipped in from Boston or New York by express were looked upon with great distrust and disfavor by
most of the good townspeople.
122.
Convincing testimony
must surely come from medical men who have had experience with
the sufferings of our members and have witnessed
our return to health.
123.
124.
125.
126.
127.
But what about his responsibilities -- his
family and the men who would
die because they would not know how to get well, ah -- yes, those other alcoholics?
128.
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.
129.
130.
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