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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.
In a vague way their families and friends sense that these drinkers are
abnormal, but everybody
hopefully awaits the day when the sufferer will rouse himself from his lethargy
and assert his power of will.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Can you discard the feeling that you are dealing
only with habit, with stubbornness, or a weak
will?
7.
When a few men in this city have found themselves, and have discovered the joy of helping others to face life again, there will be no stopping until everyone in that town has had his opportunity
to recover -- if he can and will.
8.
9.
There was, they said, no such thing as the personal conquest of this
compulsion by the unaided will.
10.
11.
All of the Twelve Steps require sustained and personal exertion to conform to their principles and so, we trust,
to God's will.
12.
Even so, when making specific requests, it will be well to add to each one of them this qualification: "...if it be Thy will."
13.
All of us, without exception, pass through times when we can pray only with the greatest exertion of will.
14.
15.
16.
But the wise family will admire him for what he is trying to be, rather than for
what he is trying to get.
17.
A man may criticize or laugh at himself and it will affect others favorably, but criticism or ridicule coming from another often produces the contrary effect.
18.
It is hoped that this volume
will afford all who read it a close-up view of the principles and forces which
have made Alcoholics Anonymous what it is.
19.
But all who are in the least reasonable will agree upon one point: that there is plenty wrong with us alcoholics about which plenty will have to be done if we are to expect sobriety, progress, and any real ability to cope with life.
20.
If your husband is trying
to live on a spiritual basis, he will also be doing everything in his power to
avoid disagreement or
contention.
21.
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."
22.
23.
24.
XI. The trustees should always have the best possible committees, corporate service directors, executives,
staffs, and consultants. Composition, qualifications, induction procedures,
and rights and duties will always be matters of serious concern.
25.
Perhaps the fear will always lurk in every A.A. heart that one day our name will be exploited by somebody for
real cash.
26.
27.
... will always
remain democratic in thought and ...
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.
28.
Though self-will may slam it shut again, as it frequently does, it will always respond the moment we again pick up the key
of willingness.
29.
30.
We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only.
31.
32.
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.
33.
So how, exactly, can the willing person continue to turn his will and his life over to the Higher Power?
34.
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?
35.
36.
37.
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.
38.
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.
39.
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.
40.
41.
Step Three -- "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him."
42.
43.
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."
44.
Consequently, in Step Three we turned our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
45.
We attempt to sweep away the debris which has accumulated out of our effort to live on self-will and run the show ourselves.
46.
"Does this mean," some will anxiously ask, "that in A.A. the individual doesn't count for much? Is he to be dominated by his group and swallowed up in it?"
47.
48.
These will appear as big setbacks at the time, but will be seen later as stepping-stones to better things.
49.
We will want to be rid of some of these defects, but
in some instances this will
appear to be an impossible job from which we
recoil.
50.
51.
52.
He will appreciate knowing you are not bothering your head about him,
that you are not suspicious nor are you trying to run his life so he will be shielded from temptation to drink.
53.
If the family will appreciate that dad's current behavior is but a phase of his development,
all will be well.
54.
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.
55.
56.
57.
That will arise in the occasional situation
where to make a full revelation would seriously harm the one to whom we are making amends.
58.
Nevertheless, we find
that our thinking will, as
time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration.
59.
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?"
60.
61.
This reopening of emotional wounds, some old, some perhaps forgotten, and some still painfully festering,
will at first look like a purposeless and pointless piece of surgery.
62.
63.
64.
65.
While on the subject of confidence, can you adopt
the attitude that so far as
you are concerned this will
be a strictly personal
matter, that his alcoholic derelictions, the treatment about to be undertaken, will never be discussed without his consent?
66.
This will be a very different occasion, and in
sharp contrast with those hangover mornings when we alternated between reviling ourselves and blaming the family (and everyone else) for our troubles.
67.
If he says yes, does he really mean it, or down inside does he think he is fooling you, and
that after rest and treatment he will be able to get away with a few drinks now and then?
68.
69.
But the actual or potential alcoholic, with
hardly an exception,
will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge.
70.
The family will be affected also, pleasantly at first, as they
feel their money troubles are about to be solved, then not so pleasantly as they find themselves neglected.
71.
72.
If we are painstaking about this phase of our development,
we will be amazed before we are half way through.
73.
74.
Of course, the often disputed question of whether God can -- and will, under certain conditions -- remove defects of character will be answered with a prompt affirmative by almost any A.A. member.
75.
76.
77.
78.
You will be bound to them with
new and wonderful ties, for you will escape disaster together and you will commence shoulder to shoulder your common journey.
79.
80.
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.
81.
These family talks will be constructive if they
can be carried on without
heated argument, self-pity, self-justification or resentful criticism.
82.
But he will be curious to learn why his own convictions have not worked and why yours seem to work so well.
83.
84.
We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day "Thy
will be done."
85.
86.
87.
88.
Perhaps the fear will always lurk in every A.A. heart that one day our name will be exploited by somebody for
real cash.
89.
90.
Do we instantly confess
our irregularities to the firm, in the practical certainty that we will be fired and become unemployable?
91.
At these critical moments, if we remind ourselves that "it is better
to comfort than to be comforted, to understand
than to be understood, to love than to be loved," we will be following the intent of Step Eleven.
92.
If we are sorry for what we have done, and have the honest desire to let God take us to better things, we believe we will be forgiven and will have learned our lesson.
93.
If you take it, your past will be forgotten and the fact that you went away for treatment will not be mentioned.
94.
Some of the recommendations of A.A.'s early medical and religious friends will be found further on in this book.
95.
96.
(*) Alcoholics Anonymous will be glad to hear from you. Address P.O. Box 459, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163.
97.
98.
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.
99.
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.
100.
101.
102.
... will be
heard and personal grievances receive ...
BB
Appendix VII, Twelve Concepts (Short Form), p.574
V. Throughout our structure, a traditional "Right of Appeal" ought to prevail, so that minority opinion will be heard and personal grievances receive careful consideration.
103.
104.
105.
106.
The experiment of quitting for a period of time will be helpful, but we think we can render an even greater service to alcoholic sufferers and
perhaps to the medical fraternity.
107.
108.
If we are planning to stop
drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind, nor
any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol.
109.
110.
This is the experience which has led us to the conclusion that
our group conscience, well-advised by its elders, will be in the long run wiser than any single leader.
111.
112.
We of Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the
reader will be interested in the medical
estimate of the plan of recovery described in this
book.
113.
If there is none nearby, you
will be invited to carry on a correspondence which will
do much to insure your sobriety no matter how isolated you are.
114.
To him, this proposition will be no theory at all; it will be just about the largest fact in his life.
115.
If, however, our natural disposition is inclined
to self-righteousness
or grandiosity, our reaction will be just the opposite.
116.
These work-outs should be regarded as part of your education, for thus you will be learning to live.
117.
118.
119.
But if a willing start is made, then the great advantages of doing this
will so quickly reveal themselves that the
pain will be lessened as one obstacle after another melts away.
120.
They need to be as sure as possible that no deep-lying emotional handicap in either will be likely to rise up under later pressures to cripple them.
121.
If you both show a willingness to remedy your
own defects, there will be little need to criticize each other.
122.
123.
124.
We will be more reconciled to discussing ourselves
with another person when we
see good reasons why we should do so.
125.
You will be most successful with alcoholics if you do not exhibit any passion for crusade or reform.
126.
For them, we hope these pages
will prove so convincing that no further authentication
will be necessary.
127.
128.
When a few men in this city have found themselves, and have discovered the joy of helping others to face life again, there will be no stopping until everyone in that town has had his opportunity
to recover -- if he can and will.
129.
To him, this proposition will be no theory at all; it will be just about the largest fact in his life.
130.
The slightest disposition on your part to
guide his appointments
or his affairs so he will not
be tempted will be noticed.
131.
But even these people, if they
construct a list of still milder defects, will be obliged to admit that they prefer to hang on to some of
them.
132.
133.
Though some of his manifestations are alarming and disagreeable, we think dad will be on a firmer foundation than the
man who is placing business or professional success ahead of spiritual development.
134.
135.
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.
136.
137.
138.
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."
139.
Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.
140.
Now and then the family will be plagued by spectres from the past, for the
drinking career of almost every alcoholic has been marked by
escapades, funny, humiliating, shameful or
tragic.
141.
142.
Sometimes this was a tedious process; we hope no one else will be prejudiced for as long as
some of us were.
143.
144.
145.
146.
147.
Wherever men are gathered together in business there will be rivalries and, arising out of these, a certain amount of office politics.
148.
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.
149.
These will appear as big setbacks at the time, but will be seen later as stepping-stones to better things.
150.
He will appreciate knowing you are not bothering your head about him,
that you are not suspicious nor are you trying to run his life so he will be shielded from temptation to drink.
151.
152.
153.
We urge you to try our program, for nothing will be so helpful to your husband as the radically changed attitude toward him which God will show you how to have.
154.
155.
Once this healthy practice has become grooved, it will be so interesting and profitable that the time it
takes won't be missed.
156.
Poverty will disappear, and there will be
such abundance that everybody can have all the security and personal satisfactions he desires.
157.
158.
159.
160.
Your husband will be the first to say it was your devotion and care which brought him to the point where
he could have a spiritual experience.
161.
An honest regret for harms done, a genuine gratitude for blessings received, and a
willingness to try for better things tomorrow will be the permanent assets we shall seek.
162.
163.
So our question will be
this: How, by ignorance, compulsion, and self-will, do we misuse this gift for our own destruction?
164.
There will be those to whom we
can make only partial restitution, lest complete disclosures do
them or others more harm than good.
165.
There will be those who have drifted into indifference, those filled with self-sufficiency who have cut themselves off, those who
have become prejudiced
against religion, and those who are downright defiant because God has failed to fulfill their demands.
166.
There will be those who ought to be dealt with just as soon as we become reasonably confident that we can maintain our sobriety.
167.
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.
168.
169.
Perhaps the best way of treating you to a glimpse of your future will be to describe the growth of the fellowship among us.
170.
171.
172.
173.
174.
175.
Be certain he will be welcomed by your family, and
that he is not trying to impose upon you for money, connections, or shelter.
176.
If the family will appreciate that dad's current behavior is but a phase of his development,
all will be well.
177.
Even so, when making specific requests, it will be well to add to each one of them this qualification: "...if it be Thy will."
178.
179.
Some will be willing to term themselves "problem drinkers," but
cannot endure the suggestion that they are in fact mentally ill.
180.
181.
182.
Some of them may sink and perhaps never get up, but if our experience is a criterion, more than half of those approached will become fellows of Alcoholics Anonymous.
183.
It will become more and more evident as we go forward that it is pointless to become angry, or to get hurt by people who, like us, are suffering from
the pains of growing up.
184.
If I keep on turning my life and my will over to the care of Something or Somebody else, what will become of me?
185.
186.
187.
188.
You may be afraid your husband will lose his position; you are thinking of the disgrace
and hard times which will befall you and the children.
189.
190.
191.
192.
The first requirement is
that we be convinced that any life run
on self-will can hardly be a success.
193.
194.
195.
196.
197.
198.
Should you wish them above all
else, and be willing to make use of our experience, we are sure they
will come.
199.
200.
201.
Questions like these, more of which will come to mind easily in each individual case, will help turn
up the root causes.
202.
See to it that your relationship with Him is right, and great events will come to pass for you and countless others.
203.
These things will come to pass naturally and in good time provided, however, the alcoholic continues to demonstrate that he can be sober, considerate, and helpful, regardless of
what anyone says or does.
204.
205.
You will be bound to them with
new and wonderful ties, for you will escape disaster together and you will commence shoulder to shoulder your common journey.
206.
207.
208.
If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness
which only a spiritual experience will conquer.
209.
210.
211.
The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.
212.
213.
It may be that both will decide that the way of good sense and loving kindness is to let by-gones be by-gones.
214.
215.
216.
Poverty will disappear, and there will be
such abundance that everybody can have all the security and personal satisfactions he desires.
217.
If they sense these things,
they will not take so seriously his periods of crankiness, depression,
or apathy, which will disappear when there is tolerance, love, and spiritual understanding.
218.
Barriers which have sprung
up between you and your friends will disappear with the growth of
sympathetic understanding.
219.
Even then the best of us will discover to our dismay that there is always a
sticking point, a point at which we say, "No, I can't give this up yet."
220.
221.
222.
223.
When drinking, or getting
over a bout, an alcoholic, sometimes the
model of honesty when normal, will do incredible things.
224.
225.
During those first days of convalescence, this will
do more to insure his sobriety than anything else.
226.
If there is none nearby, you
will be invited to carry on a correspondence which will
do much to insure your sobriety no matter how isolated you are.
227.
So our question will be
this: How, by ignorance, compulsion, and self-will, do we misuse this gift for our own destruction?
228.
229.
Whether such a person can quit upon a nonspiritual basis depends upon the extent to which he has
already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not.
230.
231.
232.
You will be bound to them with
new and wonderful ties, for you will escape disaster together and you will commence shoulder to shoulder your common journey.
233.
Though old buildings will eventually be replaced by
finer ones, the new structures will take years to complete.
234.
We are delighted with this dependence; our main hope is that nothing will ever cut
off the supply of current.
235.
In this prodigy of service, he was well assisted by Sister Ignatia at St. Thomas Hospital in Akron, Ohio, one of the greatest friends our Fellowship
will ever know.
236.
Your man will fare better if placed in such physical condition that he
can think straight and no longer craves liquor.
237.
238.
239.
Some day this bunch of ex-drunks of yours will fill Madison Square Garden, and I don't see why you should starve meanwhile.
240.
We alcoholics see that we
must work together and hang together, else most of us will finally die alone.
241.
Some day we hope that every alcoholic who journeys will find a Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous at
his destination.
242.
In our personal stories
you will find a wide variation in the way each teller approaches and conceives of the Power which
is greater than himself.
243.
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.
244.
Being possessed of a spiritual experience,
the alcoholic will find he has much in common with these people, though he may differ with them
on many matters.
245.
Those having religious affiliations will find here nothing disturbing to
their beliefs or ceremonies.
246.
247.
248.
249.
250.
251.
252.
You and your husband will find that you can dispose of serious problems easier than you can the trivial ones.
253.
Our earliest printing voiced the hope "that every alcoholic who journeys will find the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous at
his destination.
254.
255.
I now conceive the psychiatrist's job to be the
task of breaking down the patient's inner resistance so that
which is inside him will flower, as under the activity of the A.A. program."
256.
Such prayers, of course, are fundamentally good acts, but often they are based upon a supposition that we know God's will for the person for whom we pray.
257.
258.
259.
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.
260.
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."
261.
"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."
262.
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."
263.
Even our severest and most
justified critics will frequently meet us more than halfway on the first trial.
264.
265.
Therefore, it seems plain that few of us can quickly or easily become ready to aim at spiritual and moral perfection; we want to settle for only as much perfection as will get us by in life, according, of course, to our various and sundry ideas of what will get us by.
266.
Therefore, it seems plain that few of us can quickly or easily become ready to aim at spiritual and moral perfection; we want to settle for only as much perfection as will get us by in life, according, of course, to our various and sundry ideas of what will get us by.
267.
268.
The second section of this
volume, though designed for A.A.'s membership, will give such inquirers an inside view of A.A. never before possible.
269.
This headquarters will
give the location of the nearest family group and will, if you wish, correspond with you
about your special problems.
270.
After satisfying yourself that your man wants to recover and that he
will go to any extreme to do so, you may suggest a definite course of action.
271.
272.
But when self-will had driven everybody away and our isolation had become complete, it caused us to play the big shot in cheap barrooms and then fare forth alone on the street to depend upon the charity of passersby.
273.
274.
275.
Perhaps this will happen in a succession of
cases, and we may be deeply
discouraged as to our ability to carry A.A.'s message.
276.
Now, this house will hardly accommodate its weekly visitors, for they number sixty or eighty as a rule.
277.
278.
When you have carefully explained to such people that he is a sick person, you will have created a new atmosphere.
279.
If we are sorry for what we have done, and have the honest desire to let God take us to better things, we believe we will be forgiven and will have learned our lesson.
280.
281.
282.
283.
Of necessity there will
have to be discussion of matters medical, psychiatric, social, and
religious.
284.
But all who are in the least reasonable will agree upon one point: that there is plenty wrong with us alcoholics about which plenty will have to be done if we are to expect sobriety, progress, and any real ability to cope with life.
285.
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.
286.
287.
288.
289.
290.
At the very beginning, the
couple ought to frankly face the fact that each will have to yield here and there if the family is
going to play an effective part in the new life.
291.
292.
293.
Perhaps your story will help him see where he has failed to practice the very precepts he knows so well.
294.
295.
Nothing will help the man who is off on a spiritual tangent so much as the wife who adopts a sane spiritual program, making a better practical use of it.
296.
Some day we hope that Alcoholics Anonymous
will help the public to a better realization of the gravity of the alcoholic problem, but we shall be of little use if our attitude is one of bitterness or hostility.
297.
Questions like these, more of which will come to mind easily in each individual case, will help turn
up the root causes.
298.
299.
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.
300.
This headquarters will
give the location of the nearest family group and will, if you wish, correspond with you
about your special problems.
301.
302.
303.
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.
304.
305.
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.
306.
307.
This statement may surprise newcomers who
have experienced nothing but constant deflation and a growing conviction that human will is of no value whatever.
308.
309.
310.
311.
312.
313.
If you propose such a procedure to him, it may be necessary to advance the cost of treatment, but we believe it should be made plain that any expense will later be deducted from his pay.
314.
If you draw this fallacious reasoning to
the attention of an alcoholic, he will laugh it off, or become irritated and refuse to talk.
315.
316.
317.
318.
319.
320.
You may be afraid your husband will lose his position; you are thinking of the disgrace
and hard times which will befall you and the children.
321.
322.
323.
Perhaps your husband will make a fair start on the new basis, but just as things are going beautifully he dismays you by coming home drunk.
324.
Neither does there appear
to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men.
325.
We realize some men are thoroughly bad-intentioned, that no amount of patience will make any difference.
326.
327.
328.
If he does not argue about religion, he will make new friends and is sure to find new avenues of usefulness and
pleasure.
329.
330.
331.
332.
Though self-will may slam it shut again, as it frequently does, it will always respond the moment we again pick up the key
of willingness.
333.
334.
335.
This requires action on
our part, which, when completed, will mean that we have admitted to
God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our defects.
336.
Suppose we tell you some of
the obstacles a family
will meet; suppose we suggest how they
may be avoided -- even converted to good use for others.
337.
338.
If at these points our emotional disturbance
happens to be great, we
will more surely keep our balance, provided we remember, and repeat to ourselves, a particular
prayer or phrase that has appealed to us in our reading or meditation.
339.
340.
341.
Father will necessarily spend much time with other alcoholics, but this
activity should be balanced.
342.
343.
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.
344.
Human beings are never quite alike, so each of us, when making an inventory, will need to determine what his individual character defects are.
345.
While on the subject of confidence, can you adopt
the attitude that so far as
you are concerned this will
be a strictly personal
matter, that his alcoholic derelictions, the treatment about to be undertaken, will never be discussed without his consent?
346.
347.
348.
Simply we tell him that we
will never get over drinking until we have done our utmost to straighten out the past.
349.
350.
Perhaps we shall be obliged in some cases still to say, "This I cannot give up yet...," but we should not say to ourselves, "This I will never give up!"
351.
352.
353.
354.
355.
356.
357.
You will no longer be self-conscious or feel that you must apologize as though your husband were a weak character.
358.
359.
360.
361.
If you take it, your past will be forgotten and the fact that you went away for treatment will not be mentioned.
362.
Unreasonable fear that
our instincts will not be
satisfied drives us to covet the possessions of others, to lust for sex and power, to become angry when our instinctive demands are
threatened, to be envious when the ambitions
of others seem to be realized while ours are not.
363.
364.
The slightest disposition on your part to
guide his appointments
or his affairs so he will not
be tempted will be noticed.
365.
If he feels free to discuss his problems with
you, if he knows you understand and will not be upset by anything he wishes to say, he will probably be off to a fast start.
366.
367.
Tradition One -- "Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon A.A. unity." Without unity, A.A. dies. Individual liberty, yet great unity. Key to paradox: each A.A.'s life depends on obedience to spiritual principles.
The group must survive or the individual
will not. Common welfare comes first. How best to live and work together as groups.
368.
Those who do not recover are
people who cannot or will not
completely give themselves to this simple
program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.
369.
But if we have prepared ourselves well in advance, such reactions will not deflect us from our steady and
even purpose.
370.
371.
It seems plain that the grace of God will not enter to expel our destructive obsessions until we are willing to try this.
372.
373.
374.
375.
He will not impose.
376.
377.
378.
379.
In all times of emotional
disturbance or indecision, we can pause, ask for quiet, and in the stillness simply say: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Thy will, not mine, be done."
380.
As the day goes on, we can pause where situations must be met and decisions made, and renew the simple request: "Thy will, not mine, be done."
381.
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.
382.
383.
384.
385.
386.
387.
If they sense these things,
they will not take so seriously his periods of crankiness, depression,
or apathy, which will disappear when there is tolerance, love, and spiritual understanding.
388.
389.
It is important that he be able to keep a confidence; that he fully understand and approve
what we are driving at; that he will not try to change our plan.
390.
391.
392.
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.
393.
394.
They have become persuaded, and rightly so,
that many problems besides alcohol will not yield to a headlong assault powered by the individual
alone.
395.
396.
It is the most natural thing
in the world, once his liquor problem is solved, to feel that he will now measure up to that cherished vision.
397.
398.
Some will object to many of the questions posed, because they think their own character defects have not
been so glaring.
399.
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.
400.
401.
If you ask him why he started on that last bender, the chances are he
will offer you any one of a hundred alibis.
402.
403.
404.
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.
405.
406.
But again we are driven on by
the inescapable conclusion which we draw from
A.A. experience, that we surely must try with a will, or else fall by the wayside.
407.
408.
If I keep on turning my life and my will over to the care of Something or Somebody else, what will become of me?
409.
410.
411.
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.
412.
He will perceive that his spiritual growth is lopsided, that for an average man like himself, a spiritual life which does not
include his family obligations may not be so perfect after all.
413.
Some of us won't believe in God, others can't, and still others who do believe that God exists have no faith whatever He will perform this miracle.
414.
415.
In this respect, we do not enter into public controversy, because we
know that our Society will perish if it does.
416.
417.
Before long, your listener may well tell a story or two about himself which will place you even more at ease.
418.
Young people may be encouraged by this man's experience to think that
they can stop, as he did, on their own will power.
419.
As we look back, we feel we had gone on drinking many years beyond the point where we could quit on our
will power.
420.
Show him, from your own experience, how the queer mental condition surrounding that first drink prevents normal functioning of the
will power.
421.
422.
423.
424.
I felt I had every right to be self-confident, that it would be only a matter of exercising my
will power and keeping on guard.
425.
426.
427.
When our friend related his
experience, the man agreed that no amount of will power he might muster could stop his drinking for long.
428.
429.
What has become of the common sense and will power that he still sometimes displays with respect to other matters?
430.
Following his physical
rehabilitation, he had a talk with me in which he frankly
stated he thought the treatment a waste of effort, unless I could assure him, which no one ever had, that in the future he would have the "will power" to resist the impulse to drink.
431.
Yet it is our great hope that all those who have as yet found no
answer may begin to find one in the pages of this book and will presently join us on the high road to a new freedom.
432.
Follow the dictates of a
Higher Power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world, no matter what your present circumstances!
433.
434.
If he feels free to discuss his problems with
you, if he knows you understand and will not be upset by anything he wishes to say, he will probably be off to a fast start.
435.
436.
437.
For them, we hope these pages
will prove so convincing that no further authentication
will be necessary.
438.
In the midst of an understanding and sympathetic family, these
vagaries of dad's spiritual infancy will quickly disappear.
439.
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.
440.
441.
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.
442.
It is not to be expected that an alcoholic employee will receive a disproportionate amount of time and attention.
443.
If you cannot find A.A. in your locality, visit our Web site: www.aa.org; or a letter addressed to Alcoholics
Anonymous, Box 459, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163, USA, will receive a prompt reply from this world center, referring you to the nearest A.A. group.
444.
Should they accept and practice spiritual principles, there is a much
better chance that the head of the family will recover.
445.
Some people are unable to stay sober at all; others will relapse periodically until they really clean house.
446.
447.
448.
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."
449.
True humility and an open mind can lead us to faith, and every A.A. meeting is an assurance
that God will restore us to sanity if we rightly relate ourselves to Him.
450.
If we keep on the way we are going there is little doubt that much good will result, but the surface of the
problem would hardly be scratched.
451.
It is to be hoped that every
A.A. who has a religious connection which emphasizes meditation
will return to the practice of that devotion
as never before.
452.
453.
454.
In a vague way their families and friends sense that these drinkers are
abnormal, but everybody
hopefully awaits the day when the sufferer will rouse himself from his lethargy
and assert his power of will.
455.
They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot,
though he usually doesn't
think so.
456.
We know these suggestions
are sometimes difficult to follow, but you
will save many a heartbreak if you can
succeed in observing
them.
457.
Show any longshoreman a Sunday supplement describing a
proposal to explore the
moon by means of a rocket and he will say, "I bet they do it -- maybe not so long either."
458.
Possibly today will see a continuation of a serious and as yet unresolved problem left over from yesterday.
459.
Your husband will see at once that he must redouble his spiritual activities if
he expects to survive.
460.
Little by little, mother and children will see they ask
too much, and father will see he gives too little.
461.
462.
463.
464.
We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part.
465.
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.
466.
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."
467.
Little by little, mother and children will see they ask
too much, and father will see he gives too little.
468.
We may often pass through Twelfth Step experiences where we
will seem to be temporarily off the beam.
469.
Our hope is that when this chip
of a book is launched on the
world tide of alcoholism, defeated drinkers will seize upon it, to follow its suggestions.
470.
471.
472.
When it will serve any good purpose, we are willing to announce our convictions
with tact and common sense.
473.
Doctors are rightly loath to tell alcoholic patients the whole story unless it will serve some good purpose.
474.
We cannot be helpful to all people, but at least God will show
us how to take a kindly and tolerant view of each and every one.
475.
476.
We urge you to try our program, for nothing will be so helpful to your husband as the radically changed attitude toward him which God will show you how to have.
477.
The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom.
478.
479.
Practical experience
shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics.
480.
But if a willing start is made, then the great advantages of doing this
will so quickly reveal themselves that the
pain will be lessened as one obstacle after another melts away.
481.
Its main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which
will solve your problem.
482.
483.
We had refused to learn the
very hard lesson that overdependence upon people is unsuccessful because all people are fallible, and even the best of them will sometimes let us down, especially when our demands for attention become unreasonable.
484.
485.
486.
When your mission is carefully explained, and
it is seen by the recipient
of your confidence how helpful he can really be, the
conversation will start easily and will soon become eager.
487.
488.
489.
490.
If we lean too heavily on people, they will sooner or later fail us, for they are human, too,
and cannot possibly meet our
incessant demands.
491.
When your mission is carefully explained, and
it is seen by the recipient
of your confidence how helpful he can really be, the
conversation will start easily and will soon become eager.
492.
493.
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.
494.
495.
496.
497.
498.
We shall be with you in the Fellowship of the Spirit,
and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the
Road of Happy Destiny.
499.
So, for one reason or another, they cover these men, hoping matters will take a turn for the better.
500.
501.
502.
503.
504.
505.
Though old buildings will eventually be replaced by
finer ones, the new structures will take years to complete.
506.
507.
Almost any experienced A.A. will tell how his affairs have taken remarkable and unexpected turns for the better as he tried to improve his conscious contact with God.
508.
They will tell how they tried to carry the load alone; how much they suffered of irritability, anxiety,
remorse, and depression; and how, unconsciously seeking
relief, they would sometimes accuse even their best friends of the very character defects they themselves were trying to
conceal.
509.
We hope the doctor will tell the patient the truth about his condition, whatever that
happens to be.
510.
If he is, and is still trying
to recover, he will tell you about it even if it means the loss of his job.
511.
512.
513.
514.
515.
He is going to be more interested in a demonstration of good
will than in our talk of spiritual discoveries.
516.
517.
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.
518.
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.
519.
520.
521.
We could wish to be moral, we
could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could
will these things with all our
might, but the needed power
wasn't there.
522.
523.
524.
525.
Each day my friend's simple talk in our kitchen multiplies itself in a widening circle of peace on earth and good will to men.
526.
Alcohol, now become the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all self-sufficiency and all
will to resist its demands.
527.
528.
529.
530.
We have begun to learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people.
531.
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.
532.
By every form of self-deception and experimentation, they will try to prove themselves exceptions to the rule, therefore nonalcoholic.
533.
534.
You are betting, of course,
that your changed attitude plus the contents of this book will turn the trick.
535.
Of course, the often disputed question of whether God can -- and will, under certain conditions -- remove defects of character will be answered with a prompt affirmative by almost any A.A. member.
536.
537.
538.
539.
540.
541.
542.
543.
If this kind of approach
does not catch your husband's interest, it may
be best to drop the subject, but after a friendly talk your husband will usually revive the topic himself.
544.
545.
We will want to be rid of some of these defects, but
in some instances this will
appear to be an impossible job from which we
recoil.
546.
547.
548.
Those of us belonging to a
religious denomination which requires confession must, and of course, will want to go
to the properly appointed authority whose duty it is to receive it.
549.
550.
551.
552.
But if no such opportunity presents itself, at some point we will want to summon all our courage, head straight for the person concerned, and lay our cards on the table.
553.
554.
At no time had we asked what God's will was for us; instead we had
been telling Him what it ought to be.
555.
556.
When her will was read, it was
discovered she had left Alcoholics Anonymous in
trust with the Alcoholic
Foundation a sum of ten thousand dollars.
557.
558.
It is A.A.'s experience that
particularly in these cases we ought to pray that God's will, whatever it is, be done for others as well as for ourselves.
559.
Like all the remaining Steps, Step Three calls for affirmative action, for it
is only by action that we can cut away the self-will which has always blocked the entry of God -- or, if you like, a Higher Power -- into our lives.
560.
561.
562.
563.
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.
564.
565.
566.
"But," he asked, "will you let me join your group? Since I am the victim of
another addiction even worse stigmatized than alcoholism, you may not want
me among you. Or will you?"
567.
568.
"But," he asked, "will you let me join your group? Since I am the victim of
another addiction even worse stigmatized than alcoholism, you may not want
me among you. Or will you?"
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