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.
"Bill's Story," "Doctor Bob's Nightmare," and one other personal history from the first edition were retained intact; three were edited and one of these was retitled; new versions of two stories were written, with new titles; thirty completely new stories were added; and the story section was divided into three parts, under the same headings that are used now.
2.
No -- not now.
3.
But that was over now.
4.
5.
My old manner of life was by no means a bad one, but I would not exchange its best moments for the worst I have
now.
6.
7.
Our stories disclose in a
general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like
now.
8.
May you find Him now!
9.
Showing others who suffer how we were given help is the very thing which makes life seem so worth while to us now.
10.
Here were three exceptional men lost to this world because I did not understand alcoholism
as I do now.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
I can't say upon what occasion or upon what day I came to believe in a Power greater than myself, but I certainly have that belief
now.
16.
17.
18.
Though he is now a most effective member of Alcoholics Anonymous, he
still smokes and drinks coffee, but neither his wife nor anyone else stands in judgment.
19.
Now about health: A body badly burned by alcohol does not often recover overnight nor do twisted thinking and depression vanish in a twinkling.
20.
Now about sex.
21.
22.
If we are now about to ask forgiveness for ourselves, why shouldn't we start out by forgiving them, one and all?
23.
24.
He had also been greatly helped by the late Dr. William D. Silkworth, a New York specialist in alcoholism who is now accounted no less than a medical saint by A.A. members, and whose story of the early days of our Society appears in the next pages.
25.
26.
It ought to be followed by
a good look at where we stand now, and a further look at what might happen in our lives were we able to move closer to the ideal we have been
trying to glimpse.
27.
28.
If he says yes, does he really mean it, or down inside does he think he is fooling you, and
that after rest and treatment he will be able to get away with a few drinks now and then?
29.
Now and then a serious drinker, being dry at the moment says, "I don't miss it at all. Feel better. Work better. Having a better time."
30.
Now and then, A.A. members have bought farms or rest homes where badly beat-up topers could find needed care.
31.
32.
The notion that we would still live our own lives, God helping a little now and then, began to evaporate.
33.
Now and then, grateful benefactors had endowed
clubhouses, and as a result there was sometimes
outside interference
in our affairs.
34.
Now and then the family will be plagued by spectres from the past, for the
drinking career of almost every alcoholic has been marked by
escapades, funny, humiliating, shameful or
tragic.
35.
36.
37.
(This address is now available in pamphlet form at nominal cost through most A.A. groups or from Box 459, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163, under the title "Three Talks to Medical Societies by Bill W." -- formerly called "Bill on Alcoholism" and earlier "Alcoholism the Illness.")
38.
39.
If all our lives we had more or
less fooled ourselves, how could we now be
so sure that we weren't still self-deceived?
40.
You feel he should now be yours.
41.
I was between Scylla and Charybdis now, because if I did not drink my
stomach tortured me, and
if I did my nerves did the same thing.
42.
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.
43.
This established identification with alcoholic readers and proved to them that the virtually impossible had
now become possible.
44.
Alcohol, now become the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all self-sufficiency and all will to resist its demands.
45.
Therefore our problem
now becomes just how and by what specific
means shall we be able to let Him in?
46.
The fledgling society,
which had been nameless, now
began to be called Alcoholics Anonymous,
from the title of its own book.
47.
Where humility had formerly stood for a forced feeding on humble pie, it now begins to mean the nourishing ingredient which can give us
serenity.
48.
The immense resources
now being harnessed promise such a quantity of material blessings that many have come to believe that a man-made millennium lies just ahead.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
We now clearly see that we have been making unreasonable demands upon ourselves, upon others, and upon God.
54.
55.
56.
57.
Having carefully surveyed this whole area of human relations, and having decided exactly what personality traits in us
injured and disturbed others, we can now commence to ransack memory for the people to whom
we have given offense.
58.
I now conceive the psychiatrist's job to be the
task of breaking down the patient's inner resistance so that
which is inside him will flower, as under the activity of the A.A. program."
59.
60.
Having reduced us to a state
of absolute helplessness, you now declare that none but a Higher Power can remove our obsession.
61.
62.
He and his wife would leave elated by the thought of what
they could now do for some stricken acquaintance
and his family.
63.
"Now do tell!
64.
Outline the program of action, explaining how you
made a self-appraisal, how you straightened out your past and why you are now endeavoring to be helpful to him.
65.
66.
So, you see, there were three alcoholics in that town, who
now felt they had to give to others what they had found, or be sunk.
67.
The alcoholic, realizing what his wife has endured, and now fully understanding how
much he himself did to damage her and his children,
nearly always takes up his marriage responsibilities with a willingness to repair what
he can and to accept what he can't.
68.
69.
Alcohol being no respecter of persons, we are an accurate
cross section of America, and in distant lands, the same democratic evening-up process is now going on.
70.
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.
71.
He visits preachers, doctors, editors, policemen, and bartenders ... with the result that Middletown
now has a group, and he is the
founder.
72.
In either case, the group now has a so-called rotating committee, very sharply limited in its authority.
73.
74.
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.
75.
Alone now, he reflects that he may not be able to stay sober, or even alive, unless he passes on to other alcoholics what was so freely given him.
76.
77.
'Now I get it!
78.
Now I had what it takes!
79.
So that was it -- last summer
an alcoholic crackpot;
now, I suspected, a little cracked about religion.
80.
81.
82.
To those now in its fold, Alcoholics Anonymous has
made the difference between misery and sobriety, and often the difference between life and death.
83.
Part III now includes twelve new stories; eight were removed (in addition to the
two that were transferred
to Part I).
84.
85.
Your job now is to be at the place where you may be of maximum helpfulness to others, so never hesitate to go anywhere if you can be helpful.
86.
87.
88.
89.
Now let's ponder the need for a list of the more glaring personality defects all of us have in varying degrees.
90.
91.
He relies upon the assurance that his many troubles, now made more acute because he cannot use alcohol to kill the pain, can be solved, too.
92.
Women now make up more
than one-fourth of the membership; among newer members, the proportion is nearly one-third.
93.
As we shall see, he now means a great deal to his community, and the major liabilities of thirty years of hard drinking have been repaired
in four.
94.
It is the most natural thing
in the world, once his liquor problem is solved, to feel that he will now measure up to that cherished vision.
95.
96.
It is really saying to us
that we now ought to be willing to try humility in seeking the removal of our other shortcomings just as we did
when we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, and came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves
could restore us to sanity.
97.
98.
But the prospect of actually visiting or even writing the people concerned now overwhelmed us, especially when we remembered in what poor favor we stood with most of them.
99.
But I think I speak for everyone here when I say that what you now propose bothers us an awful lot more.'
100.
101.
102.
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.
103.
I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in
the way of my usefulness to
you and my fellows.
104.
As beginners in meditation, we might now reread this prayer several times very slowly, savoring every word and trying to take in the deep meaning of each phrase and idea.
105.
Nor does it mean that the members of Alcoholics Anonymous, now restored as citizens of the
world, are going to back away from their individual responsibilities to act
as they see the right upon issues of our time.
106.
He now returned home, leaving behind his first acquaintance, the lawyer
and the devil-may-care chap.
107.
But the head of the house has
spent years in pulling down the structures of business,
romance, friendship, health -- these things are
now ruined or damaged.
108.
109.
We ought to sit down with the family and frankly analyze the past as we now see it, being very careful not to criticize them.
110.
Then, in this eastern city,
there are informal meetings such as we have described to you, where you may now see scores
of members.
111.
We now see that when we began to drink deliberately, instead of
casually, there was little
serious or effective thought during the period of premeditation
of what the terrific consequences might be.
112.
113.
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
It is significant, now
that almost no A.A. in our Fellowship breaks anonymity at the public level, that nearly all these fears have subsided.
121.
122.
123.
124.
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?
125.
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.
126.
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.
127.
128.
(*) In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation,
Inc., was changed to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous, Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office.
129.
(*) In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation,
Inc., was changed to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous, Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office.
130.
(*) In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation,
Inc., was changed to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous, Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office.
131.
(*) In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation,
Inc., was changed to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous, Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office.
132.
(*) In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation,
Inc., was changed to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous, Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office.
133.
(*) In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation,
Inc., was changed to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous, Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office.
134.
By now the newcomer has probably arrived at the following conclusions:
that his character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary
cause of his drinking and
his failure at life; that unless he is now willing to work hard at the elimination of
the worst of these defects,
both sobriety and peace of mind will still elude him; that all the faulty
foundation of his life will have to be torn out and built anew on bedrock.
135.
136.
To a degree, he has already
done this when taking moral inventory, but now the time has come when he ought to redouble his efforts to see how many people he has hurt, and in what
ways.
137.
But now the words "Of myself I am nothing, the Father doeth the works" began to carry bright promise and meaning.
138.
139.
140.
Now, this house will hardly accommodate its weekly visitors, for they number sixty or eighty as a rule.
141.
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.
142.
It was now time, the struggling groups thought, to place their message and unique experience before the world.
143.
Let us look now upon the sea
and ponder what its mystery is; and let us lift our eyes to the far horizon, beyond which we shall seek all those wonders still unseen.
144.
So it is by circumstance rather than by any virtue that we have been driven
to A.A., have admitted defeat, have acquired the rudiments of faith, and now want to make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to a Higher Power.
145.
The persistent use of meditation and prayer, we
found, did open the channel so that where there had been a trickle, there now was a river which led to sure power and safe guidance from God as we were increasingly
better able to understand Him.
146.
147.
148.
149.
150.
151.
152.
153.
Understand he was once a
well-known lawyer in town, but just now we've got him strapped down tight.(*)
154.
155.
Now, what of prayer?
156.
When ready, we say something like this: "My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad.
157.
Now willing to commence the search for his
own defects, he will ask, "Just how do I go about this? How do I
take inventory of myself?"
158.
By now the newcomer has probably arrived at the following conclusions:
that his character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary
cause of his drinking and
his failure at life; that unless he is now willing to work hard at the elimination of
the worst of these defects,
both sobriety and peace of mind will still elude him; that all the faulty
foundation of his life will have to be torn out and built anew on bedrock.
159.
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?
160.
161.
162.
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.