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AS BILL SEES IT |
Personality Change |
"It has often been said of A.A. that we are interested only on |
alcoholism. That is not true. We have to get over drinking in |
order to stay alive. But anyone who knows the alcoholic |
personality by firsthand contact knows that no true alky ever |
stops drinking permanently without undergoing a profound |
personality change." |
We thought "conditions" drove us to drink, and when we |
tried to correct these conditions and found that we couldn't |
do so to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of |
hand and we became alcoholics. It never ocurred to us that |
we needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever |
they were. |
In God's Hands |
When we look back, we realize that the things which came to |
us when we put ourselves in God's hands were better than |
anything we could have planned. |
My depression deepened unbearable, and finally it seemed to |
me as though I were at the very bottom of the pit. For the |
moment, the last vestige of my proud obstinacy was |
crushed. All at once I found myself crying out, "If there is a |
God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything, |
anything!" |
Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. It seemed to |
me, in the mind's eye, that I was on a mountain and that a |
wind not of air but of spirit was blowing. And then it burst |
upon me that I was a free man. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I |
lay on the bed, but now for a time I was in another world,a |
new world of consciouness. All about me and through me |
there was a wonderful feeling of Presence, and I thought to |
myself, "So this is the God of the preachers!" |
Pain and Progress |
"Years ago I used to commiserate with all people who |
suffered. Now I commiserate only with those who suffer in |
ignorance, who do not understand the purpose and ultimate |
utility of pain." |
Someone once remarked that pain is the touchstone of |
spiritual progress. How heartily we A.A.'s can agree with him, |
for we know that the pains of alcoholism had to come before |
sobriety, and emotional turmoil before serenity. |
"Believe more deeply. Hold your face up to the Light, even |
though for the moment you do not see." |
Can We Choose? |
We must never be blinded by the futile philosophy that we |
are just the hapless victims of our inheritance, of our life |
experience, and of our surroundings -- that these are the sole |
forces that make our decisions for us. This is not the road to |
freedom. We have to believe that we can really choose. |
"As active alcoholics, we lost our ability to choose |
whetherwe would drink. We were the victims of a compulsion |
which seemed to decree that we must go on with our own |
destruction. |
"Yet we finally did make choices that brought about |
recovery. We came to believe that alone we were powerless |
over alcohol. This was surely a choice, and a most difficult |
one. We came to believe that a Higher Power could restore |
us to sanity when we became willing to practice A.A.'s |
Twelve Steps. |
"In short, we chose to `become willing', and no better choice |
did we ever make." |
Maintenance and Growth |
It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads |
only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that |
we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have |
been worth while. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the |
maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this |
business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is |
fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off |
from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns |
and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die. |
If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and |
the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious |
luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are |
poison. |
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 66 |
All or Nothing? |
Acceptance and faith are capable of producing 100 per cent |
sobriety. In fact, they usually do; and they must, else we |
could have no life at all. But the moment we carry these |
attitudesinto our emotional problems, we find that only |
relative results are possible. Nobody can, for example, |
become completely free from fear, anger, and pride. |
Hence, in this life we shall attain nothing like perfect humility |
and love. So we shall have to settle, respecting most of our |
problems, for a very gradual progress, punctuated |
sometimes by heavy setbacks. Our oldtime attitude of "all or |
nothing" will have to be abandoned. |
The Realm of the Spirit |
In ancient times material progress was painfully slow. The |
spirit of modern scientific inquiry, research and invention |
was almost unknown. |
In the realm of the material, men's minds were fettered by |
superstition, tradition, and all sorts of fixed ideas. Some of |
the contemporaries of Columbus thought a round earth |
preposterous. Others came near putting Galileo to death for |
his astronomical heresies. |
Are not some of us just as biased and unreasonable about |
the realm of the spirit as were the ancients about the realm of |
the material? |
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