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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.
Six of the stories in Part II have been carried over, eleven new ones have been added, and eleven taken out.
2.
3.
I have seen hundreds of families set their feet in the path that really goes somewhere; have seen the most
impossible domestic situations righted; feuds and bitterness of all
sorts wiped out.
4.
We doubt if many of them can do
it, because none will really want to stop, and hardly one of them, because of the peculiar mental twist already acquired, will find he can win out.
5.
6.
7.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our
conscious contact with
God as we understood Him,
praying only for knowledge of His will for us
and the power to carry that
out.
8.
9.
You, as well as your husband,
ought to think of what you can
put into life instead of how much you can take out.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
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.
15.
The two friends spoke of their spiritual experience and told him about
the course of action they carried out.
16.
This worked nicely until my wife and I went to see Wallace Beery in "Tugboat Annie," after which the pant-leg and stocking racket were out!
17.
It was the day before Mother's Day and I had come home plastered, carrying a big potted plant which I set down on the table and forthwith went upstairs and passed out.
18.
19.
Step Eleven -- "Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying
only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out."
20.
21.
"Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying
only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out."
22.
And we think that the whole range of our needs is well defined by that part of Step Eleven which says: "...knowledge of His will for us
and the power to carry that
out."
23.
We ask simply that throughout the day God place in us the best understanding of His
will that we can have for that day, and that we be given the grace by which we may carry it
out.
24.
How do they come out?
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
So beggars, tramps, asylum inmates, prisoners, queers, plain crackpots, and fallen women were definitely out.
30.
31.
32.
Under these compulsions
of self-preservation, duty, and love, it is not strange that our Society has
concluded that it has but one high mission -- to carry the A.A. message to those who don't know there's a way out.
33.
34.
Volunteer committeemen and assistants could be of great
help, but they could not be expected to carry this load day in and day out.
35.
Groups have tried to expel members, but the banished have come back to sit in the meeting place, saying, "This is life for us; you
can't keep us out."
36.
37.
38.
4. Because every time I do it I take out a little more insurance for myself against a possible slip.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
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.
45.
46.
47.
We have been talking about problems because we are problem people who have found a way up
and out, and who wish to share our knowledge of that
way with all who can use it.
48.
49.
Neither its General Service Conference, its Foundation Board,(*) nor the humblest group committee can issue a single directive to an A.A. member and make it stick, let alone mete out any punishment.
50.
51.
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.
52.
At first many of these feel lonely, hurt, and left out as they witness so much domestic happiness about them.
53.
More often, though, we had met up with some major calamity, and to our way of thinking lost out because God deserted us.
54.
We could not be invited out
because I would surely get tight, and my wife dared not invite people in for the same reason.
55.
If we are now about to ask forgiveness for ourselves, why shouldn't we start out by forgiving them, one and all?
56.
But soon the sense of His presence had been blotted
out by worldly clamors, mostly those within myself.
57.
58.
In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like.
59.
They struck the children,
kicked out door panels, smashed treasured crockery, and ripped the keys out of pianos.
60.
Nowadays, when oldtimers who know Ed foregather, they exclaim, "What if we had actually succeeded in throwing Ed out for blasphemy?
61.
He had a desperate desire
to stop, but saw no way out, for
he had earnestly tried many avenues of escape.
62.
63.
When by devoted service to
family, friends, business, or community we
attract widespread affection and are sometimes singled out for posts of greater responsibility
and trust, we try to be humbly grateful and exert ourselves the more in a spirit of love and service.
64.
65.
Finally my father had to send a doctor out from my home town who managed to get me back there in some way, and I was in bed about two months before I could venture out of the house.
66.
The Seventh Step is where we
make the change in our attitude which permits us,
with humility as our guide,
to move out from ourselves toward others and toward God.
67.
68.
A great wave of outraged resentment engulfed the meeting, sweeping every member to a single resolve: "Out he goes!"
69.
70.
"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."
71.
72.
It may turn out, however, that
you'll choose someone else for the more difficult and deeper revelations.
73.
Our friend's gorge rose as he bitterly cried out: "If there is a God, He certainly hasn't done anything for me!"
74.
75.
76.
Aided by such instruction and example
as we can find, it is essentially an individual adventure, something which each one of us works out in his own way.
77.
I would sometimes hide
out in one of the clubs of which I was a member,
and had the habit at times of
registering at a hotel
under a fictitious name.
78.
If my wife was planning to
go out in the afternoon, I would get a large supply of liquor and smuggle it home and hide it in the coal bin, the clothes chute, over door jambs, over beams in the cellar, and in cracks in the cellar tile.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
I failed to persuade my broker friends to send me out looking over factories and managements, but my wife and
I decided to go anyway.
85.
86.
87.
Surveys of groups in the United States and Canada indicate that A.A. is reaching out, not only to more and more people, but to a wider and wider range.
88.
The secretary sees that literature is on the table,
looks after the phone-answering service, answers the mail, and sends out notices of meetings.
89.
Caretakers who swept floors, cooks who fried hamburgers, secretaries in offices,
authors writing books -- all these we have seen hotly assailed because they were, as their critics angrily remarked, "making money out of A.A."
90.
91.
More often than not, these onslaughts were spearheaded by the cry "Professionalism! That guy
is making money out of A.A.!"
92.
Physicians who are familiar with alcoholism
agree there is no such thing as making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic.
93.
94.
I have seen men come out of asylums and resume a vital place in the lives of their families and communities.
95.
96.
This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has
been revealed to us out of
bitter experience.
97.
When such thoughts break in, we might recall, a little ruefully, how much store we used to set by imagination as it tried to
create reality out of bottles.
98.
By going back in our own drinking histories, we could show that
years before we realized it we were out of control, that our drinking
even then was no mere habit, that it was indeed the beginning of a fatal progression.
99.
100.
He will also report that out of every season of grief or suffering, when the
hand of God seemed heavy or even unjust, new lessons for living were learned, new resources of courage were uncovered, and
that finally, inescapably, the conviction came that God does "move in a mysterious way His wonders to perform."
101.
102.
103.
We thought "conditions"
drove us to drink, and when we
tried to correct these conditions and found that we
couldn't to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of hand and we became alcoholics.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
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.
113.
When thus out of joint, man's natural desires cause him great trouble, practically all
the trouble there is.
114.
115.
Not being a man of means, I knew that if I did not stay sober enough to earn money, I would run out of liquor.
116.
117.
118.
When I got the fog out of my brain, I decided that quitting school was very foolish and that I had better
return and continue my work.
119.
120.
121.
Could we still say the whole thing was nothing but a mass of electrons, created out of nothing, meaning nothing, whirling on to a destiny of
nothingness?
122.
Were our contentions true, it would follow that life originated out of nothing, means nothing, and proceeds nowhere.
123.
We attempt to sweep away the debris which has accumulated out of our effort to live on self-will and run the show ourselves.
124.
125.
126.
127.
With those we dislike we can
begin to practice justice and courtesy, perhaps going out of our way to understand and help them.
128.
129.
They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn't think so.
130.
131.
Our eyes begin to open to the immense values which have come straight out of painful ego-puncturing.
132.
They struck the children,
kicked out door panels, smashed treasured crockery, and ripped the keys out of pianos.
133.
As we surveyed the wreck of
that movement, early A.A. members resolved to keep our Society out of public controversy.
134.
135.
Without a searching and
fearless moral inventory, most of us have found that the faith which really works in daily living is still out of reach.
136.
137.
She sees she was wrong to make a burning issue out of such a matter when his more serious ailments were being rapidly cured.
138.
139.
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.
140.
141.
In fact, it came right out of the Bible -- a voice kept saying to me, 'The laborer is worthy of his hire.'
142.
143.
Finally, when all our score
cards read 'zero,' and we saw that one more strike would put us out of the game forever, we had to look for our
lost faith.
144.
Finally my father had to send a doctor out from my home town who managed to get me back there in some way, and I was in bed about two months before I could venture out of the house.
145.
146.
Outsiders are sometimes shocked when we
burst into merriment over a seemingly tragic experience out of the past.
147.
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.
148.
As long as we placed self-reliance first, a genuine reliance upon a Higher Power was out of the question.
149.
And do not his actions make
each of them wish to retaliate, snatching all
they can get out of the show?
150.
151.
We took this violent new tack because here and there members had tried to make money out of their A.A. connections, and we feared
we'd be exploited.
152.
The dammed-up emotions of years break out of their confinement, and miraculously vanish as soon as they are exposed.
153.
We think each family which has been relieved owes something to those who have
not, and when the occasion requires, each member of it should be only too willing to bring former mistakes, no matter how grievous, out of their hiding places.
154.
155.
156.
Wherever men are gathered together in business there will be rivalries and, arising
out of these, a certain amount of office politics.
157.
Out of this alloy of drink and speculation, I commenced to forge the weapon that one day would turn in its flight like a boomerang and all but
cut me to ribbons.
158.
159.
But out of this frightening and at first disrupting experience
the conviction grew that
A.A.'s had to hang together or die separately.
160.
It was out of this vast welter of explosive experience that A.A.'s Twelve Traditions took form and were first published in 1946 and later confirmed at A.A.'s First International Convention, held at Cleveland in 1950.
161.
Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well?
162.
There had been no real infidelity, for loyalty to
my wife, helped at times by extreme drunkenness, kept me out of those scrapes.
163.
164.
165.
I had been out of town before during this particular dry spell, so there was nothing new about that.
166.
This does not mean that we expect all our character defects to be lifted out of us as the drive to drink was.
167.
168.
169.
Next we launched out on a course of vigorous action, the first step of which is a personal housecleaning, which many
of us had never attempted.
170.
171.
We have a way out on which we can
absolutely agree, and upon which we can join in brotherly and harmonious
action.
172.
Already a willingness
has been achieved to cast
out one's own will and one's own ideas about the alcohol problem in favor of those suggested by A.A.
173.
174.
Relentlessly deepening our dilemma, our
sponsors pointed out our increasing sensitivity to alcohol --
an allergy, they called it.
175.
176.
Though we work out our solution on the spiritual as well as an altruistic plane, we favor hospitalization
for the alcoholic who is very jittery or befogged.
177.
While the internal difficulties of our adolescent period were being ironed out, public acceptance of A.A. grew by leaps and bounds.
178.
179.
180.
181.
182.
And how shall he ever straighten out that awful jam that cost him the affection of his
family and separated him
from them?
183.
184.
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.
185.
Of course the sponsor points out that our friend's life is still unmanageable even though he is sober, that after all, only a bare start on A.A.'s program has been made.
186.
If your man accepts your offer, it should be pointed
out that physical treatment is but a small part of the picture.
187.
They pointed out that the Foundation board already knew of a total of half a million dollars set aside for A.A. in the wills of people still alive.
188.
They pointed out that the irresponsible had become
responsible, and that by making financial independence part of its tradition, Alcoholics Anonymous had
revived an ideal that its era had almost forgotten.
189.
The sponsor probably points out that the newcomer has some assets
which can be noted along with
his liabilities.
190.
Why was it, when these dangers
were pointed out that they agreed, and then got drunk again immediately?
191.
But point out that we alcoholics have much in common and that you would like,
in any case, to be friendly.
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.
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.
194.
195.
196.
Never talk down to an alcoholic from any moral or spiritual hilltop; simply lay out the kit of spiritual tools for his inspection.
197.
198.
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:
199.
Simply we tell him that we will never get over drinking until we have done our utmost to straighten out the past.
200.
We have listed the people we
have hurt by our conduct, and
are willing to straighten out the past if we can.
201.
Beginning with Step Four, we commenced to search out the things in ourselves which
had brought us to physical, moral, and spiritual bankruptcy.
202.
We've repeatedly strained the patience of
our best friends to a snapping point, and have brought out the very worst in those who didn't think much of us to begin with.
203.
204.
205.
206.
207.
We'd gather up derelicts from skid rows, sort out those who could get well, and make it possible for the rest to earn their livelihood in a kind of quarantined confinement.
208.
In the midst of such pandemonium they may have rushed out threatening to live with the
other woman forever.
209.
But the testimony of A.A.'s
who have really tried a moral inventory is that pride and fear of this sort turn out to be bogeymen, nothing else.
210.
Our admissions of personal powerlessness
finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives may be built.
211.
212.
213.
214.
215.
When, however, the perfectly logical assumption is suggested that underneath the material
world and life as we see it, there is an All Powerful, Guiding, Creative Intelligence,
right there our perverse streak comes to the surface and we laboriously set out to convince ourselves it isn't so.
216.
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.
217.
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!"
218.
219.
220.
In former days, the moment an A.A. hired out to such enterprises, he was immediately tempted to use the name Alcoholics Anonymous for
publicity or money-raising purposes.
221.
One morning he took the bull by the horns and set out to tell those he feared what his trouble had been.
222.
223.
He proved to be a devil-may-care young fellow whose parents could not make out whether he wanted to stop drinking or not.
224.
225.
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."
226.
227.
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.
228.
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