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.
Some of us once had great self-confidence, but it
didn't fully solve the fear problem, or any other.
2.
If you both show a willingness to remedy your
own defects, there will be little need to criticize each other.
3.
As generous as Charlie
has been to us, don't you see that we can't tie this thing up with his hospital or any other?
4.
5.
6.
7.
It occurred to us that we could take what we had into the factories and cause laborers and capitalists
to love each other.
8.
We do talk about each other a great deal, but we almost invariably temper such talk by a spirit of love and tolerance.
9.
10.
Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.
11.
So confident of this had we become that the original statement of A.A. tradition carried this significant sentence:
"Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group provided that as a group they have no other affiliation."
12.
Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.
13.
14.
To spend too much time on any one situation is to deny some other alcoholic an opportunity to live and be
happy.
15.
We shall be interested to
hear from those who are getting results from this book, particularly from those who have commenced work with other alcoholics.
16.
In any meeting, anywhere, A.A.'s share experience, strength, and hope with each other, in order to stay sober and help other alcoholics.
17.
Practical experience
shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics.
18.
19.
Ministers and doctors
are competent and you can learn much from them if you wish, but it happens that because of your own drinking experience you
can be uniquely useful to
other alcoholics.
20.
Even if he displays a certain amount of neglect and irresponsibility towards the family, it is well to let him go as far as he likes in helping other alcoholics.
21.
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?
22.
23.
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?
24.
He may wish to do a lot for other alcoholics and something of the sort may come up during business hours.
25.
26.
Father will necessarily spend much time with other alcoholics, but this activity should be balanced.
27.
And with such good effect that the doctor agreed to a test among his patients and certain other alcoholics from a clinic
which he attends.
28.
Learning to depend upon a higher power and absorb himself in his work with other alcoholics, he remains sober day by day.
29.
Though they knew they must help other alcoholics if they would
remain sober, that motive became secondary.
30.
As part of his rehabilitation he commenced to present his conceptions to other alcoholics, impressing
upon them that they must do likewise with still others.
31.
32.
My wife and I abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution
of their problems.
33.
34.
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.
35.
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.
36.
In the radiance of such a miraculous discovery, any doctor would set his other ambitions aside, at whatever personal cost.
37.
38.
This means trouble, unless the family watches for these tendencies in each other and comes to a friendly agreement about
them.
39.
40.
With one arm around the shoulder of religion and the other around the shoulder of medicine, we'd resolve their
differences.
41.
42.
4. With respect to its own affairs, each A.A. group should be responsible
to no other authority than its own conscience.
43.
Four -- With respect to its own affairs, each A.A. group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience.
44.
Then, as year by year we walk back through our lives as far as memory will reach, we shall be bound to construct a long list of people who have, to some
extent or other, been affected.
45.
Their treasurer, strictly accountable, takes money from the hat that is passed, banks it, pays the rent and other bills, and makes a regular report at business meetings.
46.
There will be other cases where action ought to be deferred, and still others in which by the very nature of the situation we shall never be able to make direct personal contact at all.
47.
We conceive the survival
and spread of Alcoholics
Anonymous to be something of far greater importance than
the weight we could collectively throw back of any other cause.
48.
Besides these, there were scattered alcoholics who
had picked up the basic ideas in Akron or New York who were trying to form groups in other cities.
49.
Already," continues the
early text "twos and threes and fives of us have sprung up in other communities."
50.
Little clusters of twos and threes and fives of us have sprung up in other communities, through contact with our two larger centers.
51.
Except for their guzzling,
and the unfortunate results thereof, they could
have no other complications.
52.
The story he told is most instructive, for here was a
chap absolutely convinced he had to stop drinking, who had no excuse for drinking, who exhibited splendid judgment and determination in all his other concerns, yet was flat on his back nevertheless.
53.
Here again we are presented with the temptation to overmanage things, and sometimes this results in
rebuffs and other consequences which are hard
to take.
54.
55.
56.
57.
Many a razor-edged question can arise in other departments of life where
this same principle is involved.
58.
59.
Many people, nonalcoholics, report
that as a result of the practice of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, they have been able to meet other difficulties of life.
60.
61.
Having been granted a perfect release from alcoholism, why then shouldn't
we be able to achieve by the
same means a perfect release from every other difficulty or defect?
62.
Or we may be tipped over in
the other direction when,
in rare cases, we get a cool and skeptical reception.
63.
64.
65.
After your man has gone along without drinking for a few months, you may be able to make use of his services with other employees who are giving you the alcoholic run-around -- provided, of course, they are
willing to have a third party in the picture.
66.
In our drinking time, we acted as if the money supply was inexhaustible, though between binges we'd sometimes go to the other extreme and become almost miserly.
67.
We are all perfectionists who, failing perfection, have
gone to the other extreme and settled for the
bottle and the blackout.
68.
Or, going to the other extreme, we had wallowed in
emotionalism and had mistaken it for true religious feeling.
69.
70.
We do not decry professionalism in other
fields, but we accept the sober fact that it does not work for us.
71.
But when we had declared that our Fellowship couldn't hire service workers nor could any A.A. member carry our knowledge into
other fields, we were taking the counsel of fear, fear which today has been largely dispelled in the light of experience.
72.
If you think you are an atheist, an agnostic, a skeptic, or have any other form of intellectual pride which
keeps you from accepting
what is in this book, I feel sorry for you.
73.
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.
74.
75.
Not long after the man with the double stigma knocked for admission, A.A.'s other group received into its membership a salesman we
shall call Ed.
76.
Four -- Each group should be autonomous
except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.
77.
Tradition Four -- "Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole."
78.
79.
Half the people in this country would think we'd signed up with the drys, the other half would think we'd joined the wets.
80.
On the other hand -- and strange as this may seem to those who do not understand
-- once a psychic change has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of
ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol, the only
effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules.
81.
82.
83.
84.
For these minutes and sometimes hours spent in self-examination are bound to make all the other hours of our day better and happier.
85.
86.
In no deep or meaningful sense had we ever taken stock of ourselves, made amends to those we had harmed, or freely given to any other human being without any demand for reward.
87.
Since defective relations with other human beings have nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes, including our alcoholism, no field of investigation
could yield more satisfying and valuable
rewards than this one.
88.
An illness of this sort --
and we have come to believe
it an illness -- involves
those about us in a way no other human sickness can.
89.
90.
91.
"The American Public Health Association presents a Lasker Group Award for 1951 to Alcoholics Anonymous in recognition of its unique and highly successful approach to
that age-old public health and social problem, alcoholism ... In emphasizing alcoholism
as an illness, the social
stigma associated with
this condition is being blotted out ... Historians may one day recognize Alcoholics Anonymous to
have been a great venture in
social pioneering which
forged a new instrument for social action; a new therapy based on the kinship of common suffering; one having a vast potential for the myriad other ills of mankind."
92.
In any meeting, anywhere, A.A.'s share experience, strength, and hope with each other, in order to stay sober and help other alcoholics.
93.
94.
They took a drink a day or so prior to the date, and then the phenomenon
of craving at once became paramount to all
other interests so that the
important appointment was not met.
95.
96.
It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there.
97.
The next three years I spent in Boston, Chicago, and Montreal in the employ of a
large manufacturing concern, selling railway supplies, gas engines of all sorts, and many other items of heavy hardware.
98.
99.
100.
101.
What has become of the common sense and will power that he still sometimes displays with respect to
other matters?
102.
But suppose that instinct
still cries out, as it certainly will, "Yes, respecting alcohol, I guess I have to be dependent
upon A.A., but in all other matters I must still maintain my independence.
103.
This sometimes nearly drove me back to drink, but I soon found that when all other measures failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day.
104.
We know that while the alcoholic keeps away from drink, as he may do for
months or years, he reacts much like other men.
105.
Neither does there appear
to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men.
106.
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.
107.
108.
You have been starving for his companionship, yet he spends long hours helping other men and their families.
109.
Our loyalty and the desire
that our husbands hold up their heads and be like other men have begotten all sorts of predicaments.
110.
111.
I personally know scores of cases who were of the
type with whom other methods had failed completely.
112.
Yet, in other moments, we found ourselves thinking, when
enchanted by a starlit
night, "Who, then, made all
this?"
113.
114.
The girl we wanted to marry had other notions; we prayed God that she'd change her mind, but she didn't.
115.
116.
We think that each group should soon achieve this ideal; that any public solicitation of funds using the name of Alcoholics Anonymous is
highly dangerous, whether by groups, clubs, hospitals, or other outside agencies; that acceptance
of large gifts from any source, or of contributions carrying
any obligation whatever, is unwise.
117.
We think that each group should soon achieve this ideal; that any public solicitation of funds using the name of Alcoholics Anonymous is
highly dangerous, whether by groups, clubs, hospitals, or other outside agencies; that acceptance
of large gifts from any source, or of contributions carrying
any obligation whatever, is unwise.
118.
119.
Later, he requested the privilege of being allowed to tell his story to other patients here and with some misgiving, we consented.
120.
If these thoughts occur,
they are hazy and readily supplanted with the old threadbare idea that this time we shall handle ourselves like other people.
121.
Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been
characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people.
122.
123.
124.
125.
126.
127.
128.
Though in some cases we
cannot make restitution
at all, and in some cases action ought to be deferred, we should nevertheless make an accurate and really exhaustive survey of our past life as it has affected other people.
129.
130.
131.
132.
We followed this up in Step Nine by making direct amends to those concerned, except when it
would injure them or other people.
133.
Our demand for emotional
security, for our own way, had constantly thrown us into unworkable
relations with other people.
134.
We threw money about in every direction with the purpose of pleasing ourselves and impressing
other people.
135.
Let us reemphasize that
this reluctance to fight
one another or anybody else is not counted as some special virtue which makes us feel superior to other people.
136.
Some of us have taken very hard knocks to learn this truth: Job or no job --
wife or no wife -- we simply do not stop drinking so long as we place dependence upon other people ahead of dependence on God.
137.
138.
This is a condition which, in ordinary life, would produce untold grief; there might be scandalous gossip, laughter at the expense of
other people, and a tendency to take advantage of intimate information.
139.
When, and how, and in just what instances did my selfish pursuit of the sex relation damage other people and me?
140.
141.
142.
If your husband is a drinker, you probably worry over what other people are thinking and you hate to meet your friends.
143.
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.
144.
145.
Still another difficulty is that you may become jealous of the attention he bestows on
other people, especially alcoholics.
146.
Demands made upon other people for too much attention, protection,
and love can only invite domination or revulsion
in the protectors themselves -- two emotions quite as unhealthy as the demands
which evoked them.
147.
148.
149.
Our present anxieties
and troubles, we cry, are caused by the behavior of
other people -- people who really need a moral inventory.
150.
Most of us sense that real tolerance of other people's shortcomings and
viewpoints and a respect for their opinions
are attitudes which make us
more useful to others.
151.
When an individual's desire for prestige becomes uncontrollable, whether in the sewing circle or at the international conference table, other people suffer and often revolt.
152.
153.
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?
154.
155.
156.
In these ways we are set in conflict not only with ourselves, but with other people who have instincts,
too.
157.
Everywhere there arose threatening questions
of membership, money, personal relations, public relations, management of groups, clubs, and scores of other perplexities.
158.
Though a situation had
not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely.
159.
"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.
160.
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.
161.
But hospitals, as well as
other places of recuperation, ought to be
well outside A.A. -- and medically supervised.
162.
But hospitals, as well as
other places of recuperation, ought to be
well outside A.A. -- and medically supervised.
163.
164.
If that degree of humility
could enable us to find the grace by which such a deadly obsession could be banished, then there must be hope of the same result respecting any other problem we could possibly
have.
165.
166.
167.
Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be
on other questions.
168.
(*) 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.
169.
It relieved me somewhat
to learn that in alcoholics the will is amazingly weakened when it
comes to combating liquor, though it often remains strong in other respects.
170.
171.
However intelligent we may have been in other respects, where alcohol has been involved,
we have been strangely insane.
172.
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.
173.
We shall want to speak with someone who is experienced, who not only has stayed dry but has been able to surmount other serious difficulties.
174.
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.
175.
They will approach still other sick ones and fellowships of Alcoholics Anonymous may
spring up in each city and hamlet, havens for those who must find a way out.
176.
And as he came out the other side of that painful experience, this
prayer was his expression of what he could then see, feel, and wish to become:
177.
As soon as we admitted the
possible existence of a
Creative Intelligence, a Spirit of
the Universe underlying the totality
of things, we began to be possessed of a new sense of power and direction, provided we took other simple steps.
178.
A.A. has to function, but at
the same time it must avoid those dangers of great wealth, prestige, and entrenched
power which necessarily
tempt other societies.
179.
But just like all other societies, we do have sex and marital problems, and sometimes
they are distressingly acute.
180.
181.
182.
If he thinks he can do the job
in some other way, or prefers some other spiritual approach, encourage him to follow his
own conscience.
183.
184.
Then it is explained that other Steps of the A.A. program can be practiced with success only
when Step Three is given a determined and persistent trial.
185.
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.
186.
187.
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.
188.
The moment we saw that we had
an answer for alcoholism, it was reasonable (or so it seemed
at the time) for us to feel that
we might have the answer to a lot of other things.
189.
It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there.
190.
191.
These stem from causes which
sometimes seem to be within us, and at other times to come from without.
192.
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.
193.
194.
These are the growing group's hierarchy of service -- self-appointed, of course, because there is no other way.
195.
If he thinks he can do the job
in some other way, or prefers some other spiritual approach, encourage him to follow his
own conscience.
196.
Cleaning up old scrapes, helping to settle family differences, explaining the disinherited son to his irate parents, lending money and securing jobs for each other, when justified -- these are everyday occurrences.
197.
Yet we do go to great extremes to provide each other with these very things, when such action is warranted.
198.
In the midst of such pandemonium they may have rushed out threatening to live with the
other woman forever.
199.
200.
201.
To those of us who have hitherto known only excitement, depression,
or anxiety -- in other words, to all of us -- this newfound peace is a priceless gift.
202.
203.
One school would allow man no
flavor for his fare and the
other would have us all on a straight pepper diet.
204.
Today's life is measured against that of
other years and, when it falls short, the family may be unhappy.
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.