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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.
We stick to our own.
2.
3.
4.
Impressed by those who visited him at the hospital,
he capitulated entirely when, later, in an upper room of this house, he heard the story of some man whose experience closely tallied with his
own.
5.
6.
7.
Triumphantly we seize
upon his misbehavior as
the perfect excuse for minimizing or forgetting our own.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Much of the everyday talk we hear, and a great deal of what we read, highlights man's pride in his own achievements.
13.
14.
15.
4. With respect to its own affairs, each A.A. group should be responsible
to no other authority than its own conscience.
16.
Four -- With respect to its own affairs, each A.A. group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience.
17.
18.
Self-righteousness, the
very thing that we had contemptuously condemned in others, was our
own besetting evil.
19.
The fledgling society,
which had been nameless, now
began to be called Alcoholics Anonymous,
from the title of its own book.
20.
21.
Some will object to many of the questions posed, because they think their own character defects have not
been so glaring.
22.
His own character may still be gravely defective, but he somehow
knows that God has enabled him to make a mighty beginning, and he senses that he stands at the edge of new mysteries, joys, and experiences of which he had never even dreamed.
23.
All by himself, and in the light of his own circumstances, he needs
to develop the quality of
willingness.
24.
25.
I who had boasted my generosity that morning
was treating my own club worse than the distant alcoholics who had
forgotten to send the Foundation their dollars.
26.
27.
Our own conception,
however inadequate, was sufficient to make the approach and to effect a contact with Him.
28.
29.
With few exceptions our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with
their own conception of a
Power greater than themselves.
30.
31.
32.
33.
These are the sort of fundamental inquiries
that can disclose the source of my discomfort and
indicate whether I may be
able to alter my own conduct and so adjust myself serenely to self-discipline.
34.
35.
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.
36.
37.
4. With respect to its own affairs, each A.A. group should be responsible
to no other authority than its own conscience.
38.
Four -- With respect to its own affairs, each A.A. group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience.
39.
This meant, of course, that
we had been given the courage to declare each A.A. group an individual entity, strictly reliant on its own conscience as a guide to action.
40.
There are no dues or fees for A.A. membership; we are self-supporting through our
own contributions.
41.
42.
But he will be curious to learn why his own convictions have not worked and why yours seem to work so well.
43.
He goes on to explain that any person capable of enough willingness and honesty
to try repeatedly Step Six on all his faults -- without any reservations whatever -- has indeed come a long way spiritually, and is therefore entitled to be
called a man who is sincerely trying to grow in the image and likeness of his own Creator.
44.
And we will be comforted
and assured that our own destiny in that realm will be secure for so long as we try, however falteringly, to find and do
the will of our own Creator.
45.
Absence of coercion works because unless each A.A. follows suggested Steps to recovery, he signs his own death warrant.
46.
Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant.
47.
48.
As soon as he begins to be more objective, the newcomer can fearlessly,
rather than fearfully, look at his own defects.
49.
50.
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?"
51.
This the sponsor promptly
proves by talking freely and easily, and without exhibitionism,
about his own defects, past and present.
52.
If you both show a willingness to remedy your
own defects, there will be little need to criticize each other.
53.
One of the first members of A.A., entirely contrary to his
own desires, was obliged to conform to group opinion.
54.
55.
And we will be comforted
and assured that our own destiny in that realm will be secure for so long as we try, however falteringly, to find and do
the will of our own Creator.
56.
So our question will be
this: How, by ignorance, compulsion, and self-will, do we misuse this gift for our own destruction?
57.
The patient had made his
own diagnosis, and deciding his situation hopeless, had hidden in a deserted barn determined to die.
58.
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.
59.
60.
61.
If you have been successful in solving your own domestic problems, tell the newcomer's family how that was accomplished.
62.
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.
63.
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.
64.
65.
66.
We A.A.'s cannot pretend to offer full answers to age-old perplexities, but our
own experience does provide certain answers that work for us.
67.
Show him, from your own experience, how the queer mental condition surrounding that first drink prevents normal functioning of the
will power.
68.
69.
It may be one of our own family, but we cannot disclose anything to our wives or our parents which will hurt them and make them unhappy.
70.
Sometimes the man we are calling upon admits his own fault, so feuds of years' standing melt away in an hour.
71.
Employers learn that great corporations have set their approval upon us, and wish to discover what can be done about
alcoholism in their own firms.
72.
73.
For the time being, we who were
atheist or agnostic discovered that our own group, or A.A. as a whole, would suffice as a higher power.
74.
Dr. G. Kirby Collier, psychiatrist:
"I have felt that A.A. is a group unto themselves and their best results can be had under their
own guidance, as a result of their philosophy.
75.
76.
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.
77.
Can we have the same kind of confidence and faith in
these people who have been infected and sometimes crippled by our own illness that we have in our sponsors?
78.
Should his own image in the mirror be too awful to contemplate (and it usually is), he might first take a look at the results normal people are getting from self-sufficiency.
79.
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.
80.
Faced with this problem, if
a doctor is honest with himself, he must sometimes feel his own inadequacy.
81.
For just so long as we were convinced that we could live
exclusively by our own individual strength and
intelligence, for just
that long was a working faith in a Higher Power impossible.
82.
83.
After all his pleas for help had been rebuffed, these
words rang in his fevered mind: "They have deserted me. I have been deserted by my own kind. This is the end ... nothing is left."
84.
Each individual, in the personal stories, describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way he established his relationship with God.
85.
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?
86.
87.
For us, if we neglect those
who are still sick, there is unremitting danger to our
own lives and sanity.
88.
The notion that we would still live our own lives, God
helping a little now and then, began to evaporate.
89.
90.
91.
These were the new attitudes
that finally brought many of us an inner strength and peace that could
not be deeply shaken by the
shortcomings of others
or by any calamity not of our
own making.
92.
7. The A.A. groups themselves ought to be fully supported by the voluntary contributions of their own
members.
93.
Seven -- The A.A. groups themselves ought to be fully supported by the voluntary contributions of their own
members.
94.
There was actually a time
when the press of America thought the anonymity of A.A. was better for us than some of
our own members did.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
Yet no alcoholic, soberly analyzing his destructive behavior, whether the destruction
fell on the dining-room furniture or his own moral fiber, can claim "soundness of mind" for himself.
101.
102.
Each of us has had his own near-fatal encounter with the juggernaut of self-will, and has suffered enough under its weight to be willing to look for something better.
103.
104.
I know, in my own particular case, that nothing my company could have
done would have stopped me
for, so long as I was able to hold my position, I could not
possibly realize how serious my situation was.
105.
While we may be quite willing to reveal the very worst, we must be sure to remember that we cannot buy our
own peace of mind at the expense of others.
106.
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.
107.
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.
108.
Each individual, in the personal stories, describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way he established his relationship with God.
109.
They often jeopardize
their own positions by trying to help serious drinkers who should
have been fired long ago, or else given an opportunity to get well.
110.
111.
Instead, the Washingtonians permitted politicians
and reformers, both alcoholic and nonalcoholic, to use the society for their own purposes.
112.
If even one publicly got drunk, or was lured into using A.A.'s name for his own purposes, the damage might be
irreparable.
113.
The second difficulty is
this: what comes to us alone
may be garbled by our own rationalization and wishful thinking.
114.
Drinking occasionally, and understanding your own reactions, it is possible
for you to become quite sure of many things which, so far as the alcoholic is concerned,
are not always so.
115.
116.
It is important for him to realize that your attempt to
pass this on to him plays a vital part in your own recovery.
117.
118.
You should be described to him as one of a fellowship who, as part of their own recovery, try to help others and who will be glad to talk to him if he cares to see you.
119.
Finally, he saw that I wasn't
attempting to change his
religious views, that I wanted him to find the grace in his own religion that would aid his recovery.
120.
121.
122.
And then he discovers that by the divine paradox of this kind of giving he has found his own reward, whether his brother has yet received anything or not.
123.
124.
125.
He is not likely to get far in any direction if he fails to show unselfishness and love under his own roof.
126.
How then shall we help our readers determine, to their
own satisfaction, whether they are one of us?
127.
128.
129.
130.
131.
132.
133.
134.
Others fell apart because of sheer self-righteousness while trying to enforce upon the rest of mankind some millennium of
their own specification.
135.
136.
I insisted that few drunks could ever get well on their own steam, but that in our groups we could do together
what we could not do separately.
137.
138.
139.
Because of the employee's
special ability, or of his
own strong personal attachment to
him, the employer has sometimes kept such a man at work long beyond a reasonable period.
140.
If you have developed a high confidence in him, and
his temperament and problems are close to your
own, then such a choice will be good.
141.
In our own times, we have seen millions die in political and economic wars often spurred by religious and racial difference.
142.
143.
Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way.
144.
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.
145.
146.
Our demand for emotional
security, for our own way, had constantly thrown us into unworkable
relations with other people.
147.
148.
149.
Many a distracted wife has visited this house to find loving and understanding
companionship among women who knew her problem, to hear from the lips of their husbands what had
happened to them, to be advised how her own wayward mate might be hospitalized and approached when next he stumbled.
150.
151.
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?
152.
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.
153.
With the best of intentions, he tends to force his own will into all sorts of situations and problems
with the comfortable assurance that he is acting
under God's specific direction.
154.
Young people may be encouraged by this man's experience to think that
they can stop, as he did, on their own will power.
155.
When we habitually try to
manipulate others to our
own willful desires, they revolt, and resist us heavily.
156.
The real tests of the situation are your own willingness to confide
and your full confidence
in the one with whom you share
your first accurate self-survey.
157.
158.
He may have forgotten the possibility that his own wishful thinking and the human tendency to rationalize have distorted his so-called guidance.
159.
We are greatly indebted
to the doctor in attendance there, for he, although it might prejudice his own work, has told us of his belief in ours.
160.
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