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.
2.
3.
He had been thinking it over.
4.
When we have finally admitted without reservation that we are powerless over alcohol, we are apt to breathe a great sigh of relief, saying, "Well, thank God that's over!
5.
6.
"I was bowled over.
7.
(*) Written in 1939. In 2016, there are over 117,748 groups. There is A.A. activity in approximately 180 countries, with an estimated membership of
over two million.
8.
By March 1976, when this edition went to the printer, the total worldwide membership of
Alcoholics Anonymous
was conservatively estimated at more than 1,000,000, with almost 28,000 groups meeting in over 90 countries.
9.
When drinking, or getting
over a bout, an alcoholic, sometimes the
model of honesty when normal, will do incredible things.
10.
11.
Most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James calls the "educational variety" because they develop slowly over a period of time.
12.
Outsiders are sometimes shocked when we
burst into merriment over a seemingly tragic experience out of the past.
13.
For most alcoholics who are drinking, or who are just getting over a spree, a certain amount of physical treatment is desirable,
even imperative.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
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.
21.
We saw that we were powerless over alcohol, but we also perceived that faith of some
kind, if only in A.A. itself, is possible to anyone.
22.
Only Step One, where we made the 100 percent admission we were
powerless over alcohol, can be practiced
with absolute perfection.
23.
Every newcomer in Alcoholics Anonymous is
told, and soon realizes for himself, that
his humble admission of
powerlessness over alcohol is his first step toward liberation from its paralyzing grip.
24.
25.
26.
27.
When we have finally admitted without reservation that we are powerless over alcohol, we are apt to breathe a great sigh of relief, saying, "Well, thank God that's over!
28.
29.
We know there are difficult
wives and families, but the
man who is getting over alcoholism must remember he did much to make them so.
30.
They are authorized by the groups to handle our over-all public relations and they guarantee the integrity
of our principal newspaper, the A.A. Grapevine.
31.
A corporation director who had just voted a company expenditure of a hundred
thousand dollars would appear at an A.A. business meeting and blow his top over an outlay of twenty-five dollars' worth of needed postage stamps.
32.
This is repeated over and
over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.
33.
34.
Just saying it over and over will often enable us to clear a channel choked up with anger, fear, frustration, or misunderstanding, and permit us to return to the surest help of all -- our search for God's will, not our own, in the moment of stress.
35.
36.
This is repeated over and
over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.
37.
Why is it, they ask, that in A.A. no member
can be set in personal authority over another, that nothing like a central government can anywhere
be seen?
38.
39.
40.
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.
41.
The house was taken over by the mortgage holder, my mother-in-law died, my wife and father-in-law became ill.
42.
43.
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.
44.
45.
Simply we tell him that we will never get over drinking until we have done our utmost to straighten out the past.
46.
47.
48.
Six of the stories in Part II have been carried over, eleven new ones have been added, and eleven taken out.
49.
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.
50.
Wishing to be polite, though I felt very badly, I said, "Let's make the call," and extracted from my wife a promise that we would not stay
over fifteen minutes.
51.
Nine of the stories in Part II ("They Stopped in Time") were carried over from the second edition; eight new stories were added.
52.
Possibly today will see a continuation of a serious and as yet unresolved problem left over from yesterday.
53.
54.
If he can afford it, he may have liquor concealed all over his house to be certain no one gets his entire supply away from him to throw down the wastepipe.
55.
Looking back over his life, he can readily get under way by consideration of questions such as these:
56.
The elder statesman is the
one who sees the wisdom of the group's decision, who holds no resentment over his reduced status, whose judgment, fortified by considerable experience, is sound, and
who is willing to sit quietly on the sidelines patiently awaiting developments.
57.
Husbands and wives have sometimes been obliged to
separate for a time until new perspective, new victory over hurt pride could be rewon.
58.
Or we may be tipped over in
the other direction when,
in rare cases, we get a cool and skeptical reception.
59.
60.
61.
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.
62.
Step One showed us an amazing paradox: We found that we were
totally unable to be rid of the alcohol obsession until we first admitted that we were powerless over it.
63.
64.
If you are an alcoholic who wants to get over it, you may already be asking -- "What do I have to do?"
65.
66.
67.
68.
Unlike most of our crowd, I
did not get over my craving for liquor much during the first two and one-half years of abstinence.
69.
70.
But that was over now.
71.
72.
... over others;
that it reach all important ...
BB
Appendix VII, Twelve Concepts (Short Form), p.575
XII. The Conference shall observe the spirit of A.A. tradition, taking care that it never becomes the seat of perilous wealth or power; that sufficient operating funds and reserve be its prudent financial principle; that it place none of its members in a position of unqualified authority
over others; that it reach all important decisions by discussion,
vote, and, whenever possible, by substantial
unanimity; that its actions never be personally punitive nor an incitement to public controversy; that
it never perform acts of government, and that,
like the Society it serves, it will always remain democratic in thought and
action.
73.
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.
74.
When temporary good fortune came our way, we indulged ourselves in fantasies of
still greater victories over people and circumstances.
75.
Experience has often warned us that nothing can so
surely destroy our spiritual heritage as futile disputes over property, money, and authority.
76.
Experience has often warned us that nothing can so
surely destroy our spiritual heritage as futile disputes over property, money, and authority.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
About this time a lady called up my wife one Saturday afternoon saying she wanted me to come over that evening to meet a friend of hers who might help me.
82.
If, when you honestly want
to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
We gloated over the hypocrisy, bigotry, and crushing self-righteousness that clung
to so many 'believers' even in their Sunday best.
89.
We began to get over the idea that the Higher Power was a sort of bush-league pinch hitter, to be called upon only in an emergency.
90.
91.
As we look over the list of business acquaintances and friends we have hurt, we may feel diffident about going to some of them on a spiritual basis.
92.
To avoid falling into confusion over the names these defects should be
called, let's take a universally recognized list of major human failings -- the Seven Deadly Sins of pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth.
93.
Dr. W. W. Bauer, broadcasting under the auspices of The American Medical Association in 1946, over the NBC network, said, in part: "Alcoholics Anonymous are
no crusaders; not a temperance society.
94.
He is like the retired business man who lolls in the Florida sunshine in the winter complaining of the sad state of the nation; the minister who sighs over the sins of the twentieth century; politicians and reformers who are sure all
would be Utopia if the rest of
the world would only behave;
the outlaw safe cracker who thinks society has wronged him; and
the alcoholic who has lost
all and is locked up.
95.
Enthusiastic over the spectacular recovery of
a brother alcoholic,
we'd sometimes discuss
those intimate and harrowing aspects of his case meant for his sponsor's ear alone.
96.
But when he gets over the spree, he begins to think once more how he can drink moderately next time.
97.
We try not to indulge in cynicism over the state of the nations, nor do we carry the world's troubles on our shoulders.
98.
Many a man, yet dazed from his hospital experience, has
stepped over the threshold of that home into freedom.
99.
100.
Eight tons of books and literature per month do not package and channel themselves all over the world.
101.
102.
103.
All changes made over the years in the Big Book (A.A.
members' fond nickname for this volume)
have had the same purpose: to
represent the current membership of Alcoholics Anonymous more accurately, and thereby to reach more alcoholics.
104.
105.
106.
107.
Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life.
108.
When, with God's help, we calmly accepted our lot, then we found we could live at peace with ourselves and show others who still suffered the same fears that they could get over them, too.
109.
110.
I could almost hear the sound of the preacher's voice as I sat, on still Sundays, way over there on the hillside; there was that proffered temperance pledge I never signed; my grandfather's
good natured contempt of some church folk and their doings; his insistence that the spheres really had their music; but his denial of the preacher's right to tell him how he must listen; his fearlessness
as he spoke of these things
just before he died; these recollections
welled up from the past.
111.
112.
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.
113.
114.
115.
Being convinced, we were
at Step Three, which is that we
decided to turn our will and our life over to God as we understood Him.
116.
117.
118.
Step Three -- "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him."
119.
120.
In fact, the effectiveness of the whole A.A. program will rest upon how well and earnestly we have tried to come to "a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him."
121.
Consequently, in Step Three we turned our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
122.
If I keep on turning my life and my will over to the care of Something or Somebody else, what will become of me?
123.
No matter how much one wishes to try, exactly how can he turn his own will and his own life over
to the care of whatever God he thinks there is?
124.
Isn't it true that in all matters touching upon alcohol, each of them has decided to turn his or her life over to the care, protection, and guidance
of Alcoholics Anonymous?
125.
So how, exactly, can the willing person continue to turn his will and his life over to the Higher Power?
126.
127.
128.
(*) Written in 1939. In 2016, there are over 117,748 groups. There is A.A. activity in approximately 180 countries, with an estimated membership of
over two million.
129.
130.
131.
132.
This to the end that our great
blessings may never spoil us; that we shall forever live in thankful contemplation
of Him who presides over us
all.
133.
For it is only by accepting and solving our problems that we
can begin to get right with ourselves and with
the world about us, and with Him who presides over us all.
134.
This to the end that our great
blessings may never spoil us; that we shall forever live in thankful contemplation
of Him who presides over us
all.
135.
The tyrant alcohol wielded a double-edged sword over us: first we were smitten by an insane urge that condemned us to go on drinking, and then by an allergy of the body that insured we would ultimately destroy ourselves in the process.
136.
If your husband is a drinker, you probably worry over what other people are thinking and you hate to meet your friends.
137.
His financial insecurity worries him sick, and panic takes over when he thinks of all the bridges to
safety that alcohol burned behind him.
138.
At such moments we forget that alcoholism is
an illness over which we
could not possibly have had any power.
139.
Just saying it over and over will often enable us to clear a channel choked up with anger, fear, frustration, or misunderstanding, and permit us to return to the surest help of all -- our search for God's will, not our own, in the moment of stress.
140.
From a trembling, despairing, nervous wreck, had emerged a man brimming over with self-reliance and contentment.
141.
142.
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.