The 164 and More book is sold on this website at the Publisher List Price of $20.00 plus postage.
The book may also be sold by Intergroup/Central Offices or recovery book stores at List Price
or slightly higher. But beware of others that sell the book marked up 400% or more.
For the same money, you could buy 4 books and use 3 as sponsee gifts.
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.
Having opened our channel
as best we can, we try to ask for those right things of which we and others are in the greatest
need.
2.
3.
4.
When I need a mental uplift, I often think of another case brought in by a physician prominent in New York.
5.
Our present anxieties
and troubles, we cry, are caused by the behavior of other people -- people who really need a moral inventory.
6.
Eleven -- Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we
need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films.
7.
Tradition Eleven -- "Our
public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the
level of press, radio and films."
8.
"Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the
level of press, radio, and films."
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
Psychiatrists and psychologists point out the deep need every human being has for practical insight and knowledge of his own personality flaws and for a
discussion of them with an understanding and trustworthy person.
14.
15.
Now let's ponder the need for a list of the more glaring personality defects all of us have in varying degrees.
16.
We temporarily cease to
grow because we feel satisfied that there is
no need for all of A.A.'s Twelve Steps for us.
17.
Therefore, no society of men and women ever had a more urgent need for continuous effectiveness and permanent unity.
18.
Need for discretion.
19.
Though he could not accept
all the tenets of the Oxford
Groups, he was convinced
of the need for moral inventory, confession of
personality defects,
restitution to those harmed, helpfulness to others, and the necessity of
belief in and dependence
upon God.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
If we were pretty nice people all along, except for our drinking, what
need is there for a moral inventory now that we are sober?
29.
Cried Ed, "I can't stand this God stuff! It's a lot of malarkey for weak folks. This group doesn't need it, and I won't have it! To hell
with it!"
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
If a sufficiently strong reason -- ill health, falling in love, change of environment, or
the warning of a doctor --
becomes operative, this
man can also stop or moderate, although he may find it difficult and troublesome and may even
need medical attention.
35.
36.
37.
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.
38.
39.
40.
To some people we need not,
and probably should not emphasize the spiritual
feature on our first approach.
41.
42.
43.
We need not be discouraged when we fall
into the error of our old ways, for these disciplines
are not easy.
44.
Experience has taught us
that these are matters about which, for our purpose, we need not be worried.
45.
While you need not discuss your husband at length, you can quietly let your friends know the nature of his illness.
46.
47.
48.
49.
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.
50.
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.
51.
52.
Unless they actually need protection from their father, it is best not to take sides in any argument he has with them while drinking.
53.
In all these situations we need self-restraint, honest analysis of what is involved, a willingness
to admit when the fault is ours, and an equal willingness to forgive
when the fault is elsewhere.
54.
Although these attitudes are common enough, we A.A.'s find we need something much better in order to keep our balance.
55.
56.
We all need the light of God's reality, the nourishment of His strength, and the atmosphere of His grace.
57.
We're going to need them."
58.
You need this information
to put yourself in his place, to see how you would like him to approach you if the
tables were turned.
59.
It is clear now that we ought never to name boards to govern us, but it is equally
clear that we shall always need to authorize workers to serve us.
60.
They need to be as sure as possible that no deep-lying emotional handicap in either will be likely to rise up under later pressures to cripple them.
61.
The prospective partners need to be solid A.A.'s and long enough acquainted to know that their
compatibility at spiritual, mental, and emotional levels is a fact and not wishful thinking.
62.
We sometimes hurt those we love because they need to be "taught a lesson," when we really want to punish.
63.
64.
65.
I need to concentrate not
so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what
needs to be changed in me
and in my attitudes.
66.
67.
By this time, at Step Ten, we had begun to get a basis for daily living, and we keenly realized that we would
need to continue taking personal inventory, and that when we were in the wrong we ought to admit it promptly.
68.
If you both show a willingness to remedy your
own defects, there will be little need to criticize each other.
69.
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.
70.
Human beings are never quite alike, so each of us, when making an inventory, will need to determine what his individual character defects are.
71.
We see that we have no right or need to discourage A.A.'s who wish to work as individuals in these wider
fields.
72.
73.
74.
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.
75.
76.
77.
78.
If we would gain any real advantage in the use of this Step on problems other than alcohol, we shall need to make a brand new venture into open-mindedness.
79.
80.
81.
If we have swept the searchlight of Step Four back and forth over our careers, and it has revealed
in stark relief those experiences we'd rather not remember, if we
have come to know how wrong thinking and action have hurt us and others, then the need to quit living by ourselves with those tormenting ghosts of yesterday gets more urgent than ever.
82.
83.
Perhaps we shall need to share with this person facts about ourselves which no others ought to know.
84.
We usually conclude the
period of meditation
with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems.
85.
They did not need to tell me.
86.
And as we grow spiritually, we find that
our old attitudes toward our instincts need to undergo drastic revisions.
87.
88.
89.
This being so, we think it logically follows that sobriety -- first, last, and all the time -- is the
only thing we need to work for.
90.
They live today in the Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous,
which -- God willing -- shall sustain us in unity for so long as He may need us.
91.
We learned that if we were seriously disturbed, our
first need was to quiet that disturbance, regardless of who or what we thought caused it.
92.
Good judgment, a careful sense of timing, courage, and prudence -- these are the qualities we shall need when we take Step Nine.
93.
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."
94.
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).
Sorting and rendering passages in the proprietary format of the
164 and More concordance does not in any way imply
affiliation with or endorsement by either Alcoholics Anonymous World Services
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.
Copyright © 2005-2023, Recovery Press LLC; All Rights Reserved.