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.
But am I to be consigned to a life where I shall be stupid, boring and glum, like some righteous people I see?
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Possibly today will see a continuation of a serious and as yet unresolved problem left over from yesterday.
8.
To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends -- this is an experience you must not miss.
9.
How frequently we see a frightened human being determined to depend completely upon a stronger person for guidance and protection.
10.
When we see a man sinking into the mire that is alcoholism, we give him first aid and place what we have at his disposal.
11.
Once unlocked by willingness, the door opens almost of itself, and looking through it, we shall see a pathway beside which is an inscription.
12.
He browbeat everybody,
and everybody expected
that he'd soon get drunk -- for at the time, you
see, A.A. was on the pious side.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
To his wife, he remarked,
"Don't see anything the matter here, Ma. Ain't it grand the wind stopped blowin'?"
19.
20.
21.
22.
He may not see at once that he
has barely scratched a limitless lode which will pay dividends only if he mines it
for the rest of his life and insists on giving away the entire product.
23.
Your husband will see at once that he must redouble his spiritual activities if
he expects to survive.
24.
25.
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:
26.
Simply because it is impossible to explain what
we see, feel, direct, and use, without a reasonable assumption as a starting
point.
27.
Consequently, many groups began to hold meetings which were open to interested friends and the public, so
that the average citizen
could see for himself just what A.A. was all about.
28.
29.
We will be more reconciled to discussing ourselves
with another person when we
see good reasons why we should do so.
30.
Little by little, mother and children will see they ask too much, and father will see he gives too little.
31.
32.
33.
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.
34.
35.
For example, we may set our hearts on getting a particular person sobered up, and after doing all we can for months, we see him relapse.
36.
37.
As each member of a resentful family begins to see his shortcomings and admits
them to the others, he lays a
basis for helpful discussion.
38.
39.
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.
40.
41.
42.
43.
You need this information
to put yourself in his place, to see how you would like him to approach you if the
tables were turned.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
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.
50.
51.
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.
52.
53.
We, who are familiar with the symptoms, see large numbers of potential alcoholics among young people everywhere.
54.
They see liberty verging on license, yet they recognize at once that A.A. has an irresistible strength
of purpose and action.
55.
56.
57.
We know this because we see monotony, pain, and even calamity turned to good use by those who keep on trying to practice A.A.'s Twelve Steps.
58.
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?
59.
60.
61.
They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they
can again experience the
sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks -- drinks which they see others taking with impunity.
62.
63.
64.
Then, in this eastern city,
there are informal meetings such as we have described to you, where you may now see scores of members.
65.
66.
Finally, we begin to see that all people, including ourselves, are
to some extent emotionally ill as well as frequently wrong, and then we approach true tolerance and see what real love for our fellows actually means.
67.
We had lacked the perspective to see that character-building and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfactions
were not the purpose of living.
68.
69.
It is plain for everybody
to see that each sober A.A. member has been granted a release from this very obstinate and potentially fatal obsession.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
Had they fired me first, and
had they then taken steps to
see that I was presented
with the solution contained in this book, I
might have returned to them six months later, a well man.
76.
Alcoholics especially should be able to
see that instinct run wild in themselves is the underlying cause of their destructive drinking.
77.
We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part.
78.
79.
After we have made the list of people we have harmed, have reflected carefully upon each instance, and have tried to possess ourselves of the right attitude in which to proceed, we will see that the making of direct amends divides those we should approach into several classes.
80.
81.
82.
We had failed to see that though adult in years we were still behaving childishly, trying to turn everybody -- friends, wives, husbands, even the world itself -- into protective
parents.
83.
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?
84.
We now clearly see that we have been making unreasonable demands upon ourselves, upon others, and upon God.
85.
We see that we have no right or need to discourage A.A.'s who wish to work as individuals in these wider
fields.
86.
We alcoholics see that we
must work together and hang together, else most of us will finally die alone.
87.
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.
88.
We had to see that when we harbored grudges and planned revenge for such defeats, we were really beating ourselves with the club of anger we had intended to use on others.
89.
90.
91.
To watch the eyes of men and women open with wonder as they move from darkness into light, to see their lives quickly fill with new purpose and meaning, to see whole families reassembled, to
see the alcoholic outcast received back into his community in full citizenship, and above all to watch these people awaken to the presence of a loving God in their lives -- these things are the substance of
what we receive as we carry
A.A.'s message to the next alcoholic.
92.
The Bible, we said, was full of nonsense; we could cite it chapter and verse, and we couldn't see the Beatitudes for the 'begats.'
93.
Looking at those who were
only beginning and still
doubted themselves, the
rest of us were able to see the change setting in.
94.
95.
As our husbands began to apply spiritual principles in their lives,
we began to see the desirability of doing so
too.
96.
It marked the time when we
could commence to see the full implication of Step Seven: "Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings."
97.
98.
99.
(*) This refers to Bill's and
Dr. Bob's first visit to A.A. Number Three. See the Pioneer Section. This resulted in A.A.'s first group, at Akron, Ohio, in 1935.
100.
101.
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.
102.
If any feel that as psychiatrists directing a hospital for
alcoholics we appear somewhat sentimental, let them stand with us a while on the firing line, see the tragedies, the despairing wives, the little children; let the solving of these problems become a part of their daily work, and even of their sleeping moments, and the
most cynical will not wonder that we have accepted
and encouraged this movement.
103.
To watch the eyes of men and women open with wonder as they move from darkness into light, to see their lives quickly fill with new purpose and meaning, to see whole families reassembled, to
see the alcoholic outcast received back into his community in full citizenship, and above all to watch these people awaken to the presence of a loving God in their lives -- these things are the substance of
what we receive as we carry
A.A.'s message to the next alcoholic.
104.
105.
But for every man who drinks others are involved -- the wife who trembles in fear of the next debauch; the mother and father who see their son wasting away.
106.
107.
108.
To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends -- this is an experience you must not miss.
109.
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.
110.
Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women, desperately in need, will see these pages, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems
that they will be persuaded
to say, "Yes, I am one of them too; I must have this thing."
111.
112.
Little by little, mother and children will see they ask too much, and father will see he gives too little.
113.
We can go far beyond those things which were superficially wrong with
us, to see those flaws which were basic, flaws which sometimes were responsible for the whole
pattern of our lives.
114.
See to it that your relationship with Him is right, and great events will come to pass for you and countless others.
115.
The moment we catch even a glimpse of God's will, the moment we begin to see truth, justice, and love as the real and eternal things in life, we are no longer deeply disturbed by all the
seeming evidence to the
contrary that surrounds
us in purely human affairs.
116.
117.
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!
118.
119.
120.
121.
122.
123.
124.
Finally, we begin to see that all people, including ourselves, are
to some extent emotionally ill as well as frequently wrong, and then we approach true tolerance and see what real love for our fellows actually means.
125.
Perhaps your story will help him see where he has failed to practice the very precepts he knows so well.
126.
127.
128.
To watch the eyes of men and women open with wonder as they move from darkness into light, to see their lives quickly fill with new purpose and meaning, to see whole families reassembled, to
see the alcoholic outcast received back into his community in full citizenship, and above all to watch these people awaken to the presence of a loving God in their lives -- these things are the substance of
what we receive as we carry
A.A.'s message to the next alcoholic.
129.
130.
131.
132.
133.
Some day this bunch of ex-drunks of yours will fill Madison Square Garden, and I don't see why you should starve meanwhile.
134.
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.
135.
If he is sincerely interested and wants to
see you again, ask him to read this book in the interval.
136.
137.
138.
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.