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? 
We have found that God does not make too hard terms with 
those who seek Him. To us, the Realm of Spirit is broad, 
roomy, all inclusive, never exclusive or forbidding to those 
who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men. 
A New Life 
Is sobriety all that we are to expect of a spiritual awakening? 
No, sobriety is only a bare beginning; it is only the first gift of 
the first awakening. If more gifts are to be received, our 
awakening has to go on. As it does go on, we find that bit by 
bit we can discard the old life -- the one that did not work -- 
for a new life that can and does work under any conditions 
whatever. 
Regardless of worldly success or failure, regardless of pain 
or joy, regardless of sickness or health or even of death 
itself, a new life of endless possibilities can be lived if we are 
willing to continue our awakening, through the practice of 
A.A.'s Twelve Steps. 
GRAPEVINE, DECEMBER 1957 
Group and World-Wide Community 
The moment Twelfth Step work forms a group, a discovery is 
made -- that most individuals cannot recover unless there is 
a group. Realization dawns on each member that he is but a 
small part of a great whole; that no personal sacrifice is too 
great for preservation of the Fellowship. He learns that the 
clamor of desires and ambitions within him must be silenced 
whenever these could damage the group. 
It becomes plain that the group must survive or the
individual will not. 
"The Lone member at sea, the A.A. at war in a far land -- all 
these members know that they belong to A.A.'s world-wide 
community, that theirs is only a physical separation, that 
their fellows may be as near as the next port of call. Ever so 
importantly, they are certain that God's grace is just as much 
with them on the high seas or the lonely outpost as it is with 
them at home." 
Out of the Dark 
Self-searching is the means by which we bring new vision, 
action, and grace to bear upon the dark and negative side of 
our natures. With it comes the development of that kind of 
humility that makes it possible for us to receive God's help. 
Yet it is only a step. We will want to go further. 
We will want the good that is in us all, even in the worst of 
us, to flower and to grow. But first of all we shall want 
sunlight; nothing much can grow in the dark. Meditation is 
our step out into the sun. 
"A clear light seems to fall upon us all -- when we open our 
eyes. Since our blindness is caused by our own defects, we 
must first deeply realize what they are. Constructive 
meditation is the first requirement for each new step in our 
spiritual growth." 
Quantity or Quality 
"About this slip business -- I would not be too discouraged. I 
think you are suffering a great deal from a needless guilt. For 
some reason or other, the Lord has laid out tougher paths for 
some of us, and I guess you are treading one of them. God is 
not asking us to be successful. He is only asking us to tgy to 
be. That, you surely are doing, and have been doing. So I 
would not stay away from A.A. through any feeling of 
discouragement or shame. It's just the place you should be. 
Why don't you try just as a member? You don't have to cargy 
the whole A.A. on your back, you know! 
"It is not always the quantity of good things that you do, it is 
also the quality that counts. 
"Above all, take it one day at a time." 
Seeking Fool's Gold 
Pride is the basic breeder of most human difficulties, the 
chief block to true progress. Pride lures us into making 
demands upon ourselves or upon others which cannot be 
met without perverting or misusing our God-given instincts. 
When the satisfaction ofour instincts for sex, security, and a 
place in society becomes the primary object of our lives, the 
pride steps in to justify our excesses. 
I may attain "humility for today" only to the extent that I am 
able to avoid the bog of guilt and rebellion on one hand and, 
on the other hand, that fair but deceiving land which is 
strewn with the fool's-gold coins of pride. This is how I can 
find and stay on the highroad of humility, which lies between 
these extremes. Therefore, a constant inventory which can 
reveal when I am off the road is always in order. 
The Shared Gift 
A.A. is more than a set of principles; it is a society of 
alcoholics in action. We must carry the message, else we 
ourselves can wither and those who haven't been given the 
truth may die. 
Faith is more than our greatest gift; its sharing with others is 
our greatest responsibility. May we of A.A. continually seek 
the wisdom and the willingness by which we may well fulfill 
that immense trust which the Giver of all perfect gifts has 
placed in our hands. 
Newcomer Problems 
The temptation is to become rather possessive of 
newcomers. Perhaps we try to give them advice about their 
affairs which we aren't really competent to give or ought not 
give at all. Then we are hurt and confused when the advice is 
rejected, or when it is accepted and brings still greater 
confusion. 
"You can't make a horse drink water if he still prefers beer or 
is to crazy to know what he does want. Set a pail of water 
beside him, tell him how good it is and why, and leave him 
alone. 
"If people really want to get drunk, there is, so far as I know, 
no way of stopping this -- so leave them alone and let them 
get drunk. But don't exclude them from the water pail, 
either." 
Eternal Values 
Many people will have no truck at all with absolute spiritual 
values. Perfectionists, they say, are either full of conceit 
because they fancy they have reached some impossible goal, 
or else they are swamped in self-condemnation because they 
have not doneso. 
Yet I think that we should not hold this view. It is not the fault 
of great ideals that they are sometimes misused and so 
become shallow excuses for guilt, rebellion, and pride. On 
the contrary, we cannot grow very much unless we 
constantly try to envision that the eternal spiritual values are. 
"Day by day, we try to move a little toward God's perfection. 
So we need not be consumed by maudlin guilt for failure to 
achieve His likeness and image by Thursday next. Progress 
is our aim, and His perfection is the beacon, light-years 
away, that draws us on." 
Never Again! 
"Most people feel more secure on the twenty-four-hour basis 
than they do in the resolution that they will never drink again. 
Most of them have broken too many resolutions. It's really a 
matter of personal choice; every A.A. has the privilege of 
interpreting the program as he likes. 
"Personally, I take the atitude that I intend never to drink 
again. This is somewhat different from saying, `I will never 
drink again.' The latter attitude sometimes gets people in 
trouble because it is undertaking on a personal basis to do 
what we alcoholics never could do. It is too much an act of 
will and leaves us too little room for the idea that God will 
release us fromthe drink obsession provided we follow the 
A.A. program." 
Toward Honesty 
The perverse wish to hide a bad motive underneath a good 
one permeates human affairs from top to bottom. Tis subtle 
and elusive kind of self-righteousness can underlie the 
smallest act or thought. Learning daily to spot, admit, and 
correct these flaws is the essence of character-building and 
good living. 
The deception of others is nearly always rooted in the 
deception of ourselves. 
Somehow, being alone with God doesn't seem as 
embarrassing as facing up to another person. Until we 
actually sit down and talk aloud about what we have so long 
hidden, our willingness to clean house is still largely 
theoretical. When we are honest with another person, it 
confirms that we have been honest with ourselves and with 
God. 
Companion and Partner 
"Dr. Bob was my constant companion and partner in the 
great A.A. adventure. As the physician and great human 
being that he was, he chose work with others as his prime 
A.A, vocation and achieved a record which, in quantity and in 
quality, none will ever surpass. Assisted by the incomparable 
Sister Ignatia at St. Thomas Hospital in Akron, he -- without 
charge -- medically treated and spiritually infused five 
thousand sufferers. 
"In all the stress and strain of A.A.'s pioneering time, no hard 
word ever passed between us. For this, I can thankfully say 
that the credit was all his." 
I took my leave of Dr. Bob, knowing that he was to undergo a 
serious operation. The old, broad smile was on his face as he 
said almost jokingly, "Remember, Bill, let's not louse this 
thing up. Let's keep it simple!" I turned away, unable to say a 
word. That was the last time I ever saw him. 
The Wine of Success 
Disagreeable or unexpected problems are not the only ones 
that call for self-control. We must be quite as careful when 
we begin to achieve some measure of importance and 
material success. For no people have ever loved personal 
triumphs more than we have loved them; we drank of 
success as of a wine which could never fail to make us feel 
elated. Blinded by prideful self-confidence, we were apt to 
play the big shot. 
Now that we're in A.A. and sober, winning back the esteem of 
our friends and business associates, we find that we still 
need to exercise special vigilance. As an insurance against 
the dangers of big-shot-ism, we can often check ourselves 
by remembering that we are today sober only by the grace of 
God and that any success we may be having is far more His 
success than ours. 
Light from a Prayer 
"God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot 
change, the courage to change the things we can, and the 
wisdom to know the difference." 
We treasure our "Serenity Prayer" because it brings a new 
light to us that can dissipate our oldtime and nearly fatal 
habit of fooling ourselves. 
In the radiance of this prayer we see that defeat, rightly 
accepted, need be no disaster. We now know that we do not 
have to run away, nor ought we again try to overcome 
adversity by still another bulldozing power drive that can 
only push up obstacles before us faster than they can be 
taken down. 
Citizens Again 
"Each of us in turn -- that is, the member who gets the most 
out of the program -- spends a very large amount of time on 
Twelfth Step work in the early years. That was my case, and 
perhaps I should not have stayed sober with less work. 
"However, sooner or later most of us are presented with 
other obligations -- to family, friends, and country. As you 
will remember, the Twelfth Step also refers to `practicing 
these principles in all our affairs.' Therefore, I think your 
choice of whether to take a particular Twelfth Step job is to 
be found in your own conscience. No one else can tell you 
for certain what you ought to do at a particular time. 
"I just know that you are expected, at some point, to do more 
than carry the message of A.A. to other alcoholics. In A.A. we 
aim not only for sobriety -- we try again to become citizens of 
the world that we rejected, and of the world that once 
rejected us. This is the ultimate demonstration toward which 
Twelfth Step work is the first but not the final step." 
Fear as a Steppingstone 
The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear 
-- primar fear that we would lose something we already 
possessed or would fail to get something we demanded. 
Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a 
state of continual disturbance and frustration. Therefore, no 
peace was to be had unless we could find a means of
reducing these demands. 
For all its usual destructiveness, we have found that fear can 
be the starting point for better things. Fear can be a 
steppingstone to prudence and to a decent respect for 
others. It can point the path to justice, as well as to hate. And 
the more we haveof respect and justice, the more we shall 
begin to find love which can suffer much, and yet be freely 
given. So fear need not always be destructive, because the 
lessons of its consequences can lead us to positive values. 
Worshipers All 
We found that we had been indeed worshippers. What a state 
of mental goose flesh that used to bring on! Had we not 
variously worshipped people, sentiment, things, money, and 
ourselves? 
And then, with a better motive, had we not worshipfully 
beheld the sunset, the sea, or a flower? Who of us had not 
loved omething or somebody? Were not these things the 
tissue out of which our lives were constructed? Did not these 
feelings, after all, determine the course of our existence? 
It was impossible to say we had no capacity for faith, or love, 
or worship. In one form or another we had been living by 
faith and little else. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 54 
Alike When the Chips Are Down 
In the beginning, it was four whole years before A.A. brought 
permanent sobriety to even one alcoholic woman. Like the 
"high bottoms," the women said they were different; A.A. 
couldn't be for them. But as the communication was 
perfectedmostly by the women themselves, the picture 
changed. 
This process of identification and transmission has gone on 
and on. The Skid-Rower said he was different. Even more 
loudly, the socialite (or Park Avenue stumblebum) said the 
same -- so did the artist and the professional people, the rich, 
the poor, the religious, the agnostic, the Indians and the 
Eskimos, the veterans, and the prisoners. 
But nowadays all of these, and legions more, soberly talk 
about how very much alike all of us alcoholics are when we 
admit that the chips are finally down. 
GRAPEVINE, OCTOBER 1959 
We Cannot Stand Still 
In the first days of A.A., I wasn't much bothered about the 
areas of life in which I was standing still. There was always 
the alibi: "After all," I said to myself, "I'm far too busy with 
much more important matters." That was my near perfect 
prescriptionfor comfort and complacency. 
How many of us would presume to declare, "Well, I'm sober 
and I'm happy. What more can I want, or do? I'm fine the way 
I am." We know that the price of such self-satisfaction is an 
inevitable backslide, punctuated at some point by a very rude 
awakening. We have to grow or else deteriorate. For us, the 
status quo can only be for today, never for tomorrow. 
Changewe must; we cannot stand still. 
True Independence of the Spirit 
The more we become willing to depend upon a Higher Power, 
the more independent we actually are. Therefore, 
dependence as A.A. practices it is really a means of gaining 
true independence of the spirit. 
At the level of everyday living, it is startling to discover how 
dependent we really are, and how unconscious of that 
dependence. Every modern house has electric wiring 
carrying power and light to its interior. By accepting with 
delight our dependence upon this marvel of science, we find 
ourselves personally more independent, more comfortable 
and secure. Power flows just where it is needed. Silently and 
surely, electricity, that strange energy so few people 
understand, meets our somplest daily needs. 
Though we readily accept this principle of healthy 
dependence in many of our temporal affairs, we often fiercely 
resist the identical principle when asked to apply it as means 
of growth in the life of the spirit. Clearly, we shall never know 
freedom under God until we try to seek His will for us. The 
choice is ours. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 36 
Daily Reprieve 
We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a 
daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual 
condition. 
We of A.A. obey spiritual principles, at first because we must, 
then because we ought to, and ultimately because we love 
the kind of life such obedience brings. Great suffering and 
great love are A.A.'s disciplinarians; we need no others. 
Troublemakers Can Be Teachers 
Few of us are any longer afraid of what any newcomer can do 
to our A.A. reputation or effectiveness. Those who slip, those 
with mental twists, those who rebel at the program, those 
who trade on the A.A. reputation -- all such persons seldom 
harm an A.A. group for long. 
Some of these have become our most respected and best 
loved. Some have remained to try our patience, sober 
nevertheless. Others have drifted away. We have begun to 
regard the troublesome ones not as menaces, but rather as 
our teachers. They oblige us to cultivate patience, tolerance, 
and humility. We finally see that they are only people sicker 
than the rest of us, that we who condemn them are the 
Pharisees whose false rightousness does our group the 
deeper spiritual damage. 
GRAPEVINE, AUGUST 1946 
Gratitude Should Go Forward 
"Gratitude should go forward, rather than backward.
"In other words, if you carry the message to still others, you 
will be making the best possible repayment for the help given 
to you." 
No satisfaction has been deeper and no joy greater than in a 
Twelfth Step job well done. 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, and above all to watch them 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. 
Getting off a "Dry Bender" 
"Sometimes, we become depressed. I ought to know; I have 
been a champion dry-bender case myself. While the surface 
causes were a part of the picture -- trigger-events that 
precipitated depression -- the underlying causes, I am 
satisfied, ran much deeper. 
"Intellectually, I could accept my situation. Emotionally, I 
could not. 
"To these problems, there are certainly no pat answers. But 
part of the answer surely lies in the constant effort to 
practice all of A.A.'s Twelve Steps." 
In God's Economy 
"In God's economy, nothing is wasted. Through failure, we 
learn a lesson in humility which is probably needed, painful 
though it is." 
We did not always come closer to wisdom by reason of our 
virtues; our better understanding is often rooted in the pains 
of our former follies. Because this has been the essence of 
our individual experience, it is also the essence of our 
experience as a fellowship. 
Moral Responsibility 
"Some strongly object to the A.A. position that alcoholism is 
an illness. This concept, they feel, removes moral 
responsibility from alcoholics. As any A.A. knows, this is far 
from true. We do not use the concept of sickness to absolve 
our members from responsibility. On the contrary, we use 
the fact of fatal illness to clamp the heaviest kind of moral 
obligation onto the sufferer, the obligation to use A.A.'s 
Twelve Steps to get well. 
"In the early days of his drinking, the alcoholic is often guilty 
of irresponsibility. But once the time of compulsive drinking 
has arrived, he can't very well be held fully accountable for 
his conduct. He then has an obsession that condemns him to 
drink, and a bodily sensitivity to alcohol that guarantees his 
final madness and death. 
"But when he is made aware of this condition, he is under 
pressure to accept A.A.'s program of moral regeneration." 
TALK, 1960 
Foundation for Life 
We discover that we receive guidance for our lives to just 
about the extent that we stop making demands upon God to 
give it to us on order and on our terms. 
In praying, we ask simply that throughout the day God place 
in us the best understanding of His will that we can have for 
the day, and that we be given the grace by which we may 
carry it out. 
There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, 
and prayer. Taken separately, these practices can bring 
much relief and benefit. But when they are logically related 
and interwoven, the result is an unshakable foundation for 
life. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE 
"Not Allied with Any Sect..." 
"While A.A. has restored thousands of poor Christians to 
their churches, and has made believers out of atheists and 
agnostics, it has also made good A.A.'s out of those 
belonging to the Buddhist, Islamic, and Jewish faiths. For 
example, we question very much whether our Buddhist
members in Japan would ever have joined this Society had 
A.A. officially stamped itself a strictly Christian movement. 
"You can easily convince yourself of this by imagining that 
A.A. started among the Buddhists and that they then told you 
you couldn't join them unless you become a Buddhist, too. If 
you were a Christian alcoholic under these circumstances, 
you might well turn your face to the wall and die."
Suffering Transmuted 
"A.A. is no success story in the ordinary sense of the word. It 
is a story of suffering transmuted, under grace, into spiritual 
progress." 
For Dr. Bob, the insatiable craving for alcohol was evidently 
a physical phenomenon which bedeviled several of his first 
years in A.A.,a time when only days and nights of carrying 
the message to other alcoholics could cause him to forget 
about drinking. Although his craving was hard to withstand, 
it doubtless did account for some part of the intense 
incentive that went into forming Akron's Group Number One. 
Bob's spiritual release did not come easily; it was to be 
painfully slow. It always entailed the hardest kind of work 
and the sharpest vigilance. 
Humility First 
We found many in A.A.who once thought, as we did, that 
humility was another name for weakness. They helped us to 
get down to our right size. By their example they showed us 
that humility and intellect could be compatible, provided we 
placed humility first. When we began to do that, we received 
the gift of faith, a faith which works. This faith is for you, too. 
Where humility formerly stood for a forced feeding on 
humble pie, it now begins to mean the nourishing ingredient 
that can give us serenity. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE 
A Full and Thankful Heart 
One exercise that I practice is to try for a full inventory of my 
blessings and then for a right acceptance of the many gifts 
that are mine -- both temporal and spiritual. Here I try to 
achieve a state of joyful gratitude. When such a brand of 
gratitude is repeatedly affirmed and pondered, it can finally 
displace the natural tendency to congratulate myself on 
whatever progress I may have been enabled to make in some 
areas of living. 
I try to hold fast to the truth that a full and thankful heart 
cannot entertain great conceits. When brimming with
gratitude, one's heartbeat must surely result in outgoing 
love, the finest emotion that we can ever know. 
GRAPEVINE, MARCH 1962 
Pipeline to God 
"I am a firm believer in both guidance and prayer. But I am 
fully aware, and humble enough, I hope, to see there may be 
nothing infallible about my guidance. 
"The minute I figure I have got a perfectly clear pipeline to 
God, I have become egotistical enough to get into real 
trouble. Nobody can cause more needless grief than a 
power-driver who thinks he has got it straight from God." 
Dealing with Resentments 
Resentment is the Number One offender. It destroys more 
alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of 
spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and 
physically ill, we have also been spiritually ill. When the 
spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and 
physically. 
In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. We listed 
people, institutions, or principles with whom we were angry. 
We asked ourselves why we were angry. In most cases it was 
found that our self-esteem, our pocketbooks, our ambitions, 
our personal relationships (includingsex) were hurt or 
threatened. 
safety valve -- providing the wastebasket is somewhere 
nearby." 
Material Achievement 
No member of A.A. wants to deprecate material achievment. 
Nor do we enter into debate with the many who cling to the 
belief that no satisfy our basic natural desires is the main 
object of life. But we are sure that no class of people in the 
world ever made a worse mess of trying to live by this 
formula than alcoholics. 
We demanded more than our share of security, prestige, and 
romance. When we seemed to be succeeding, we drank to 
dream still greater dreams. When we were frustrated, even in 
part, we drank for oblivion. 
In all these strivings, so many of them well-intentioned, our 
crippling handicap was our lack of humility. We lacked the 
perspective to see that character-building and spiritual 
values had to come first, and that material satisfaction were 
simply by-products and not the chief aims of life. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 71 
Membership Rules? 
Around 1943 or 1944, the Central Office asked the groups to 
list their membership rules and send them in. After they 
arrived we set them all down. A littlereflection upon these 
many rules brought us to an astonishing conclusion.
If all of these edicts had been in force everywhere at once it 
would have been practically impossible for any alcoholic to 
have ever joined A.A. About nine-tenth of our oldest and best 
members could never have got by! 
At last experience taught us that to make away any 
alcoholic's full chance for sobriety in A.A. was sometimes to 
pronounce his death sentence, and often to condemn him to 
endless misery. Who dared to be judge, jury, and executioner 
of his own sick brother? 
Self-Confidence and Will Power 
When we first challenged to admit defeat, most of us 
revolted. We had approached A.A. expecting to be taught 
self-confidence. Then we had been told so far as alcohol was 
concerned, self-confidence was no good whatever; in fact, it 
was a total liability. There was no such thing as personal 
conquest of the alcoholic compulsion by the unaided will. 
It is when we try to make our will conform with God's that we 
begin to use it rightly. To all of us, this was a m
As a rule, the average newcomer wanted his family to know 
immediately what he was trying to do. He also wanted to tell 
others who had tried to help him -- his doctor, his minister, 
and close friends. As he gained confidence, he felt it right to 
explain his new way of life to his employer and business 
associates. When opportunities to be helpful came along, he 
found he could talk easily about A.A. to almost anyone. 
These quiet disclosures helped him to lose his fear of the 
alcoholic stigma, and spread the news of A.A.'s existence in 
his community. Many a new man and woman came to A.A. 
because of such conversation. Since it is only at the top 
public level that anonymity is expected, such 
communications were well within its spirit. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 185-186 
Daily Acceptance 
"Too much of my life has been spent in dwelling upon the 
faults of others. This is a most subtle and perverse form of 
self-satisfaction, which permits us to remain comfortably 
unaware of our own defects. Too often we are heard to say, 
`If it weren't for him (or her), how happy I'd be!'" 
Our very first problem is to accept our present 
circumstances as they are, ourselves as we are, and the 
people abour us as they are. This is to adopt a realistic 
humility without which no genuine advance can even begin. 
Again and again, we shall need to return to that unflattering 
point of departure. This is an exercise in acceptance that we 
can profitably practice every day of our lives. 
Provided we strenuously avoid turning these realistic 
surveys of the factsof life into unrealistic alibis for apathy of 
defeatism, they can be sure foundation upon which 
increased emotional health and therefore spiritual progress 
can be built. 
Our Companions 
Today, the vast majority of us welcome any new light that 
can be thrown on the alcoholic's mysterious and baffling 
malady. We welcome new and valuable knowledge whether it 
issues from a test tube, from a psychiatrist's couch, or from 
revealing social studies. We are glad of any kind of education 
that accurately informs the public and changes its age-old 
attitude toward the drunk. 
More and more we regard all who labor in the total field of 
alcoholism as our companions on a march from darkness 
into light. We see that we can accomplish together what we 
could never accomplish in separation and in rivalry. 
GRAPEVINE, MARCH 1958 
True Ambition -- and False 
We have had a much keener look at ourselves and those 
about us. We have seen that we were prodded by 
unreasonable fears oranxieties into making a life business of 
winning fame, money, and what we thought was leadership. 
So false pride became the reverse side of that ruinous coin 
marked "Fear." We simply had to be Number One people to 
cover up our deep-lying inferiorities. 
True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is 
the profound desire to live usefully and walk humbly under 
the grace of God. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE 
Seeing is Believing 
admission and correction of errors -- now. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 88-89 
Out of Defeat...Strenght 
If we are planning to stop drinking, there must be no 
reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that some day 
we will be immune to alcohol. 
Such is the paradox of A.A. regeneration: strength arising 
out of complete defeat and weakness, the loss of one's old 
life as a condition for finding a new one. 
A.A.: Benign Anarchy and Democracy 
When we come into A.A. we find a greater personal freedom 
than any other society knows. We cannot be compelled to do 
anything. In that sense our Society is a benign anarchy. The 
word "anarchy" has a bad meaning to most of us. But I think 
that the idealist who first advocated the concept felt that if 
only men were granted absolute liberty, and were compelled 
to obey no one, they would then voluntarily associate 
themselves in the common interest. A.A. is an association of 
the benign sort he envisioned. 
But when we had to go into action -- to function as groups -- 
we discovered that we also had to become a democracy. As 
our oldtimers retired, we therefore began to elect our trusted 
servants by majority vote. Each group in this sense became 
a town meeting. All plans for group action had to be 
approved by the majority. This meant that no single
individual could appoint himself to act for his group or for 
A.A. as a whole. Neither dictatorship nor paternalism was for 
us. 
A.A. COMES OF AGE, PP. 224-225 
The Coming of Faith 
In my own case, the foundation stone of freedom from fear is 
that of faith: a faith that, despite all worldly appearances to 
the contrary, causes me to believe that I live in a universe 
that makes sense. 
To me, this means a belief in a Creator who is all power, 
justice, and love; a God who intends for me a purpose, a 
meaning, and a destiny to grow, however little and haltingly, 
toward His own likeness and image. Before the coming of 
faith I had lived as an alien in a cosmos that too often 
seemed both hostile and cruel. In it there could be no inner 
security for me. 
"When I was driven to my knees by alcohol, I was made 
ready to ask for the gift of faith. And all was changed. Never 
again, my pains and problems notwithstanding, would I 
experience my former desolation. I saw the universe to be 
lighted by God's love; I was alone no more." 
To Guard Against a Slip 
Suppose we fall short of the chosen ideal and stumble? Does 
this mean we are going to get drunk? Some people tell us so. 
But this is only a half-truth. 
It depends on us and on our motives. 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. If we are not sorry, and our conduct 
continues toharm others, we are quite sure to drink. These 
are facts out of our experience. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 70 
"Loners" -- but Not Alone 
What can be said of many A.A. members who, for a variety of 
reasons, cannot have a family life? At first many of these feel 
lonely, hurt, and left out as they witness so much domestic 
happiness about them. If they cannot have this kind of 
happiness, can A.A. offer them satisfactions of similar worth 
and durability? 
Yes -- whenever they try hard to seek out these satisfactions. 
Surrounded by so many A.A. friends, the co-called loners tell 
us they no longer feel alone. In partnership with others -- 
women and men -- they can devote themselves to any 
number of ideas, people, and constructive projects. They can 
participate in enterprises which would be denied to family 
men and women. We daily see such members render 
prodigies of service, and receive great joys in return. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 120 
To Deepen Our Insight 
It is necessary that we extricate from an examination of our 
personal relations every bit of information about ourselves 
and our fundamental difficulties that we can. Since defective 
relations with other human beings have nearly always been 
the immediate cause of our woes, including our alcoholism, 
no field of investigation could yield more satisfying and 
valuable rewardsthan this one. 
Calm, thoughtful reflection upon personal relations can 
deepen our insight. 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. Thoroughness, we have found, 
will pay -- and pay handsomely. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 80 
Seeking Guidance 
"Man is supposed to think, and act. He wasn't made in God's 
image to be an automaton. 
"My own formula along this lines runs as follows: First, think 
through every situation pro and con, praying meanwhile that 
I be not inluened by ego considerations. Afirm t hat I would 
like to do God's will. 
"Then, having turned the problem over in this fashion and 
gettin no conclusive orcompelling answer, I wait f or further 
guidane, which may come into mind directly or thro ugh 
other people or through circumstances. 
"If I feel I cant wait, and still get no definite indication, 
Irepeat the first measure several times, try to pick out the 
best course, and then proceed to act. I know if I am wrong, 
the heavens wont fall. Alesson will be learned, i n any case." 
LETTR, 1950 
Facing Criticism 
Sometimes, we register surprise, shock, and anger when 
people find fault with A.A. We are apt to be disturbed to such 
an extent that we cannot benefit by constructive criticism. 
This sort of resentment makes no friends and achieves no 
constructive purpose. Certainly, this is an area in which we 
can improve. 
It is evident that the harmony, security, and future 
effectiveness of A.A. will depend largely upon our 
maintenance of a thoroughly nonaggressive and pacific 
attitude in all our public relations. This is an exacting 
assignment, because in our drinking days we were prone to 
anger, hostility, rebellion, and aggression. And, even though 
we are now sober, the old patterns of behaviour are to a 
degree still with us, always threatening to explode on any 
good excuse. 
But we now know this, and therefore I feel confident that in 
the conduct of our public affairs we shall always find the 
grace to exert restraint. 
Better than Gold 
As newcomers, many of us have indulged in spiritual
intoxication. Like a gaunt prospector, belt drawn in over the 
last ounce of food, we saw our pick strike gold. Joy at our 
release from a lifetime of frustration knew no bounds. 
The newcomer feels he has struck something better than 
gold. 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.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, PP. 128-129 
Righteous Indignation 
"The positive value of righteous indignation is theoretical -- 
especially for alcoholics. It leaves every one of us open to 
the rationalization that we may be as angry as we like 
provided we can claim to be righteous about it." 
When we harbored grudges and planned revenge for defeats, 
we were really beating ourselves with the club of anger we 
had intended to use on others. We learned that if we were 
seriously disturbed, our very first need was to quiet that 
disturbance, regardless of who or what we thought caused it. 
Conviction and Compromise 
One qualification for a useful life is give-and-take, the ability 
to compromise cheerfully. Compromise comes hard to us 
"all or nothing" drunks. Nevertheless, we must never lose 
sight of the fact that progress is nearly always characterized 
by a series of improving compromises. 
Of course, we cannot always compromise. There are 
circumstances in which it is necessary to stick flat-footed to 
one's convictions until the issue is resolved. Deciding when 
to compromise and when not to compromise always calls for 
the most careful discrimination. 
TWELVE CONCEPTS, PP. 42-43 
Brain Power Alone? 
To the intellectually self-sufficient man or woman, many 
A.A.'s can say, "Yes, we were like you -- far too smart for our 
own good. We loved to have people call us precocious. We 
used our education to blow ourselves up into prideful 
balloons, though we were careful to hide this from others. 
Secretly, we felt we could float above the rest of folks on our 
brain power alone. 
"Scientific progress told us there was nothing man couldn't 
do. Knowledge was all powerful. Intellect could conquer 
nature. Since we were brighter than most folks (so we 
thought), the spoils of victory would be ours for the thinking. 
The god of intellect displaced the God of our fathers. 
grace to deal constructively with whatever fears remain. 
A Different Swinging Door 
When a drunk shows up among us and says that he doesn't 
like the A.A. principles, people, or service management, 
when he declares that he can do better elsewhere -- we are 
not worried. We simply say, "Maybe your case really is 
different. Why don't you try something else?" 
If an A.A. member says he doesn't like his own group, we are 
not disturbed. We simply say, "Why don't you try another 
one? Or start one of your own." 
To those who wish to secede from A.A. altogether, we extent 
a cheerful invitation to do just that. If they can do better by 
other means, we are glad. If after a trial they cannot do better, 
we know they face a choice: They can go mad or die or they 
return to A.A. The decision is wholly theirs. (As a matter of 
fact, most of them do come back.) 
TWELVE CONCEPTS, PP. 74-75 
Free of Dependence 
I asked myself, "Why can't the Twelve Steps work to release 
me from this unbearable depression?" By the hour, I stared 
at the St. Francis Prayer: "It is better to comfort than to be 
comforted." 
Suddenly I realized what the answer might be. My basic flaw 
had always been dependence on people or circumstances to 
supply me with prestige, security, and confidence. Failing to 
get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and 
specifications, Ifought for them. And when defeat came, so 
did my depression. 
Reinforced by what grace I could find in prayer, I had to exert 
every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty 
emotional dependencies upon people and upon 
circumstances. Then only could I be free to love as Francis 
had loved. 
GRAPEVINE, JANUARY 1958 
Search for Motives 
Some of us clung to the claim that when drinking we never 
hurt anybody but ourselves. Our families didn't suffer, 
because we always paid the bills and seldom drank at home. 
Our business associates didn't suffer, because we were 
usually on the job. Our reputations didn't suffer, because we 
were certain fewknew of our drinking. Those who did would 
sometimes assure us that, after all, a lively bender was only a 
good man's fault. What real harm, therefore, had we done? 
No more, surely, than we could easily mend with a few casual 
apologies. 
This attitude, of course, is the end result of purposeful 
forgetting. It is an attitude which can be changed only by 
deep and honest search of our motives and actions. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 79 
Growth by the Tenth Step 
In the years ahead A.A. will, of course, make mistakes. 
Experience has taught us that we need have no fear of doing 
this, providing that we always remain willing to admit our 
faults and to correct them promptly. Our growth as 
individuals has depended upon this healthy process of trial 
and error. So will our growth as a fellowship. 
Let us always remember that any society of men and women 
that cannot freely correct its own faults must surely fall into 
decay if not into collapse. Such is the universal penalty for 
the failure to go on growing. Just as each A.A. must continue 
to take his moral inventory and act upon it, so must our 
whole Society if we are to survive and if we are to serve 
usefully and well. 
A.A. COMES OF AGE, P. 231 
For Emergencies Only? 
Whether we had been believers or unbelievers, we began to 
get over the idea that the Higher Power was a sort of bushleague pinch hitter, to be called upon only in an emergency. 
The notion that we would still live our own lives, God helping 
a little now and then, began to evaporate. Many of us who 
hadthought ourselves religious awoke to the limitations of 
this attitude. Refusing to place God first, we had deprived 
ourselves of His help. 
But now the words "Of myself I am nothing, the Father doeth 
the works" began to carry bright promise and meaning. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 75 
Thousands of "Founders" 
"While I thank God that I was privileged to be an early 
member of A.A., I honestly wish that the word `founder' could 
be eliminated from the A.A. vocabulary. 
"When you get right down to it, everyone who has done any 
amount of successful Twelfth Step work is bound to be the 
founder of a new life for other alcoholics." 
"A.A. was not invented! Its basics were brought to us 
through the experience and wisdom of many great friends. 
We simply borrowed and adapted their ideas." 
"Thankfully, we have accepted the devoted services of many 
nonalcoholics. We owe our very lives to the men and women 
of medicine and religion. And, speaking for Dr. Bob and 
myself, I gratefully declare that had it not been for our wives, 
Anne and Lois, neither of us could have lived to see A.A.'s 
beginning." 
Renew Your Effort 
"Though I know how hurt and sorry you must be after this 
slip, please do not worry about a temporary loss of your 
inner peace. As calmly as you can, just renew your effort on 
the A.A. program, especially those parts of it which have to 
do with meditationand self-analysis. 
"Could I also suggest that you look at excessive guilt for 
what it is? Nothing but a sort of reverse pride. A decent 
regret for what has happened is fine. But guilt -- no. 
"Indeed, the slip could well have been brought about by 
unreasonable feelings of guilt because of other moral 
failures, so called. Surely, you ought to look into this 
possibility. Even here you should not blame yourself for 
failure; you can be penalized only for refusing to try for 
better things." 
Giving Without Demand 
Watch any A.A. of six months workingwith a Twelfth Step 
prospect. If the newcomer says, "To the devil with you," the 
twelfth-stepper only smiles and finds another alcoholic to 
help. He doesn't feel frustrated or rejected. If this next drunk 
responds, and in turn starts to give love and attention to 
other sufferers, yet gives none back to him, the sponsor is 
happy about it anyway. He still doesn't feel rejected; instead 
he rejoices that his former prospect is sober and happy. 
And he well knows that his own life has been made richer, as 
an extra dividend of giving to another without any demand 
for a return. 
GRAPEVINE, JANUARY 1958 
Truth, the Liberator 
How truth makes us free is something that we A.A.'s can well 
understand. It cut the shackles that once bound us to 
alcohol. It continues to release us from conflicts and 
miseries beyond reckoning; it banishes fear and isolation. 
The unity of our Fellowship, the love we cherish for each 
other, the esteem in which the world holds us -- all of these 
are products of the truth which, under God, we have been 
privileged to perceive. 
Just how and when we tell the truth -- or keep silent -- can 
often reveal the difference between genuine integrity and 
none at all. 
Step Nine emphatically cautions us against misusing the 
truth when it states: "We made direct amends to such people 
wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them 
or others." Because it points up the fact that the truth can be 
used to injure as well as to heal, this valuable principle 
certainly has a wide-ranging application to the problem of the 
developing integrity. 
GRAPEVINE, AUGUST 1961 
"How Can You Roll with a Punch?" 
On the day that the calamity of Pearl Harbor fell upon our 
country, a great friend of A.A. was walking alone a St. Louis 
street. Father Edward Dowling was not an alcoholic, but he 
had been one of the founders of the struggling A.A. group in 
his city. Because many of his usually sober friends had 
already taken to their bottles that they might blot out the 
implications of the Pearl Harbor disaster, Father Ed was 
anguished by the thought that his cherished A.A. group 
would probably do the same. 
Then a member, sober less than a year, stepped alongside 
and engaged Father Ed in a spirited conversation -- mostly 
about A.A. Father Ed saw, with relief, that his companion was 
perfectly sober. 
"How is it that you have nothing to say about Pearl Harbor? 
How can you roll with a punch like that?" 
"Well," replied the yearling, "each of us in A.A. has already 
had his own private Pearl Harbor. So why should we drunks 
crack up over this one?" 
GRAPEVINE, JANUARY 1962 
Dependence -- Unhealthy or Healthy 
"Nothing can be more demoralizing than a clinging and 
abject dependence upon another human being. This often 
amounts to the demand for a degree of protection and love 
that no one could possibly satisfy. So our hoped-for 
protectors finally flee, and once more we are left alone -- 
either to grow up or to disintegrate." 
We discovered the best source of emotional stability to be 
God Himself. We found that dependence upon His perfect 
justice, forgiveness, and love was healthy, and that it would 
work where nothing else would. 
If we really depended upon God, we couldn't very well play 
God to our fellows, nor would we feel the urge to rely wholly 
on human protection and care. 
Two-Way Tolerance 
"Your point of view was once mine. Fortunately, A.A. is 
constructed so that we need not debate the existence of 
God; but for best results, most of us must depend upon a 
Higher Power. You say the group is your Higher Power, and 
no rightminded A.A. would challenge your privilege to 
believe precisely that way. We should all be glad that good 
recoveries can be made even on this limited basis. 
"But turnabout is fair play. If you would expect tolerance for 
your point of view, I am sure you would be willing to 
reciprocate. I try to remember that, down through the 
centuries, lots of brighter people than I have been found on 
both sides of this debate about belief. For myself, of late 
years, I am finding it much easier to believe that God made 
man, than that man made God." 
Breach the Walls of Ego 
People who are driven by pride of self unconsciously blind 
themselves to their liabilities. Newcomers of this sort 
scarcely need comforting. The problem is to help them 
discover a chink in the walls their ego has built, through 
which the light of reason can shine. 
The attainment of greater humility is the foundation principle 
of each of A.A.'s Twelve Steps. For without some degree of 
humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all. 
Nearly all A.A.'s have found, too, that unless they develop 
much more of this precious quality than may be required just 
for sobriety, they still haven't much chance of becoming truly 
happy. Without it, they cannot live to much useful purpose, 
or, in adversity, be able to summon the faith that can meet 
any emergency. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE 
Losing Financial Fears 
When ajob still looked like a mere means of getting money 
rather than an opportunity for service, when the acquisition 
of money for financial independence looked more important 
than a right dependence upon God, we were the victims of 
unreasonable fears. And these were fears which would make 
a serene and useful existence, at any financial level, quite 
impossible. 
But as time passed we found that with the help of A.A.'s 
Twelve Steps we could lose those fears, no matter what our 
material prospects were. We could cheerfully perform 
humble labor without worrying about tomorrow. If our 
circumstances happened to be good, we no longer dreaded a 
change for the worse, for we had learned that these troubles 
could be turned into great values, for ourselves and for 
others. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 121-122 
Only God Is Unchanging 
"Change is the characteristic of all growth. From drinking to 
sobriety, from dishonesty to honesty, from conflict to 
serenity, from hate to love, from childish dependence to 
adult responsibility -- all this and infinitely more represent 
change for the better. 
"Such changes are accomplished by a belief in and a
prectice of sound principles in favor of good ones that work. 
Even good principles can sometimes be displaced by the 
discovery of still better ones. 
"Only God is unchanging; only He has all the truth there is." 
R.S.V.P. -- Yes or No? 
Usually, we do not avoid a place where there is drinking -- if 
we have a legitimate reason for being there. That includes 
bars, night clubs, dances, receptions, weddings, even plain 
ordinary parties. 
You will note that we made an important qualification. 
Therefore, ask yourself, "Have I any good social, business, 
or personal reason for going to this place? Or am I expecting 
to steal a little vicarious pleasure from the atmosphere?" 
Then go or stay away, whichever seems better. But be sure 
you are on solid spiritual ground before you start and that 
your motive in going is thoroughly good. Do not think of 
what you will get out of the occasion. Think of what you can 
bring to it. 
If you are shaky, you had better work with another alcoholic 
instead! 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, PP. 101-102 
Clearing a Channel 
During the day, we can pause where situations must be met 
and decisions made, and renew the simple request "Thy will, 
not mine, be done." 
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. 
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, inthe moment 
of stress. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 102-103 
Whose Responsibility? 
"An A.A. group, as such, cannot take on all the personal 
problems of its members, let alone those of nonalcoholics, in 
the world around us. The A.A. group is not, for example, a 
mediator of domestic relations, nor does it furnish personal 
financial aid to anyone. 
"Though a member may sometimes be helped in such 
matters by his friends in A.A., the primary responsibility for 
the solutions of all his problems of living and growing rests 
squarely upon the individual himself. Should an A.A. group 
attempt this sort of help, its effectiveness and energies 
would be hopelessly dissipated. 
"This is why sobriety -- freedom from alcohol -- through the 
teaching and practice of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, is the sole 
purpose of the group. If we don't stick to this cardinal 
principle, we shall almost certainly collapse. And if we 
collapse we cannot help anyone." 
Debits and Credits 
Following a gossip binge, we can well ask ourselves these 
questions: "Why did we say what we did? Were we only 
trying to be helpful and informative? Or were we not trying to 
feel superior by confessing the other fellow's sins? Or, 
because of fear and dislike, were we not really aiming to 
damage him?" 
This would be an honest attempt to examine ourselves, 
rather than the other fellow. 
Inventory-taking is not always done in red ink. It's a poor day 
indeed when we haven't done something right. As a matter of 
fact, the eaking hours are usually well filled with things that 
are constructive. Good intentions, good thoughts, and good 
acts are there for us to see. 
Even when we have tried hard and failed, we may chalk that 
up as one of the greatest credits of all. 
"Selfish?" 
"I can see why you are disturbed to hear some A.A. speakers 
say, `A.A. is a selfish program.' The word `selfish' ordinarily 
implies that one is acquisitive, demanding, and thoughtless 
of the welfare of others. Of course, the A.A. way of life does 
not at all imply such undesirable traits. 
"What do these speakers mean? Well, any theologian will tell 
you that the salvation of his own soul is the highest vocation 
that a man can have. Without salvation -- however we may 
define this -- he will have little or nothing. For us if A.A., there 
is even more urgency. 
"If we cannot or will not achieve sobriety, then we become 
truly lost, right in the here and now. We are of no value to 
anyone, including ourselves, until we find salvation from 
alcohol. Therefore, our own recovery and spiritual growth 
have to come first-- a right and necessary kind of selfconcern." 
Trouble Becomes an Asset 
"I think that this particular General Service Conference 
holdspromise and has been filled with progress -- because it 
has had trouble. And it has converted that trouble into an 
asset, into some growth, and into a great promise. 
"A.A. was born out of trouble, one of the most serious kinds 
of trouble that can befall an individual, the trouble attendant 
upon this dark and fatal malady of alcoholism. Every single 
one of us approached A.A. in trouble, in impossible trouble, 
in hopeless trouble. And that is why we came. 
"If this Conference was ruffled, if individuals were deeply 
disturbed -- I say, `This is fine.' What parliament, what 
republic, what democracy has not been disturbed? Friction 
of opposing viewpoints is the very modus operandi on which 
they proceed. Then what should we be afraid of?" 
TALK, P. 1958 
We Cannot Live Alone 
All of A.A.'s Twelve Steps ask us to go contrary to our 
natural desires; they all deflate our egos. When it comes to 
ego deflation, few Steps are harder to take than the Fifth. 
Scarcely any Step is more necessary to long time sobriety 
and peace of mind. 
A.A. experience has taught us we cannot live alone with our 
pressing problems and the character defects which cause or 
aggrevate them. If Step Four has revealed in stark relief 
those experiences we'd rather not remember, then the need 
to quit living by ourselves with those tormenting ghosts of 
yesterday gets more urgent than ever. We have to talk to 
somebody about them. 
We cannot wholly rely on friends to solve all our difficulties. 
A good adviser will never do all our thinking for us. He 
knows that each final choice must be ours. He will therefore 
help to eliminate fear, expediency, and self-deception, so 
enabling us to make choices which are loving, wise, and 
honest. 
Benefits of Responsibilty 
"Happily, A.A.'s per capita expenses are very low. For us to 
fail to meet them would be to evade a responsibility 
beneficial for us. 
"Most alcoholics have said they had no troubles that money 
would not cure. We are a group that, when drinking, always 
held out a hand for funds. So when we commence to pay our 
own service bills, this is a healthy change." 
"Because of drinking, my friend Henry had lost a highsalaried job. There remained a fine house -- with abudget 
three times his reduced earnings. 
"He could have rented the house for enough to carry it. But 
no! Henry said he knew that God wanted him to live there, 
and He would see that the costs were paid. So Henry went on 
running up bills andglowing with faith. Not surprisingly, his 
creditors finally took over the place. 
Henry can laugh about it now, having learned that God more 
often helps those who are willing to help themselves." 
Life Is Not a Dead End 
When a man or a woman has a spiritual awakening, the most 
important meaning of it is that he has now become able to 
do, feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his 
unaided strength and resources alone. He has been granted 
a gift which amounts to a new state of consciousness and 
being. 
He has been set on a path which tells him he is really going 
somewhere, that life is not a dead end, not something to be 
endured or mastered. In a very real sense he has been 
transformed, because he has laid hold of a source of 
strength which he had hitherto denied himself. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 106-107 
Room for Improvement 
We have come to believe that A.A.'s recovery Steps and 
Traditions represent the approximate truths which we need 
for our particular purpose. The more we practice them, the 
more we like them. So there is little doubt that A.A. principles 
will continue to be advocated in the form they stand now. 
If our basis are so firmly fixed as all this, then what is there 
left to change or to improve? 
The answer will immediately occur to us. While we need not 
alter our truths, we can surely improve their application to 
ourselves, to A.A. as a whole, and to our relation with the 
world around us. We can constantly step up the practice of 
"these principles in all our affairs." 
GRAPEVINE, FEBRUARY 1961 
Keystone of the Arch 
Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as openminded on spiritual matters. In this respect alcohol was a 
great persuader. It finally beat us into a state of
reasonableness. 
We had to quit playing God. It didn't work. We decided that 
hereafter, in this drama of life, God was going to be our 
Director. He would be the Principal; we, His agents. 
Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the 
keystone of the new and triumphal arch through which we 
passed to freedom. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS 
Will Power and Choice 
"We A.A.'s know the futility of trying to break the drinking 
obsession by will power alone. However, we do know that it 
takes great willingness to adopt A.A.'s Twelve Steps as a way 
of life that can restore us to sanity. 
"No matter how grievious the alcohol obsession, we happily 
find that other vital choices still be made. For example, we 
can choose to admitthat we are personally powerless over 
alcohol; that dependence upon a `Higher Power' is a
necessity, even if this be simply dependence upon an A.A. 
group. Then we can choose to try for a life of honesty and 
humility, of selfless service to our fellows and to `God as we 
understand Him.' 
"As we continue to make these choices and so move toward 
these high aspirations, our sanity returns and the 
compulsion to drink vanishes." 
Review the Day 
When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. 
Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe 
an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which 
should be discussed with another person at once? Were we 
kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better? 
Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we 
thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could 
pack into the stream of life? 
We must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid 
reflections, for that would diminish our usefulness to 
ourselves and to others. After making our review we ask 
God's forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures 
should be taken. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 86 
To Watch Loneliness Vanish 
Almost without exception, alcoholics are tortured by 
loneliness. Even before our drinking got bad and people 
began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered the feeling that 
we didn't quite belong. Either we were shy, and dared not 
draw near others, or wewere noisy good fellows constantly 
craving attention and companionship, but rarely getting it. 
There was always that mysterious barrier we could neither 
surmount nor understand. 
That's one reason we loved alcohol too well. But even 
Bacchus betrayed us; we were finally struck down and left in 
terrified isolation. 
Life takes on new meaning in A.A. 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 not to be missed. 
Courage and Prudence 
When fear persisted, we knew it for what it was, and we 
became able to handle it. We began to see each adversity as 
a God-given opportunity to develop the kind of courage 
which is born of humility, rather than of bravado. 
Prudence is a workable middle ground, a channel of clear 
sailing between the obstacles of fear on the one side and of 
recklessness on the other. Prudence in practice creates a 
definite climate, the only climate in which harmony, 
effectiveness, and consistent spiritual progress can be 
achieved. 
"Prudence is rational concern without worry." 
Walking Toward Serenity 
"When I was tired and couldn't concentrate, I used to fall 
back on an affirmation toward life that took the form of 
simple walking and deep breathing. I sometimes told myself 
that I couldn't do even this -- that I was to weak. But I learned 
that this was the point at which I could not give in without 
becoming still more depressed. 
"So I would set myself a small stint. I would determine to 
walk a quarter of a mile. And I would concentrate by counting 
my breathing -- say, six steps to each slow inhalation and 
four to each exhalation. Having done the quarter-mile, I found 
that I could go on, maybe a half-mile more. Then another 
half-mile, and maybe another. 
"This was encouraging. The false sense of physical 
weakness would leave me (this feeling being so 
characteristic of depressions). The walking and especially 
the breathing were powerful affirmations toward life and 
living and away from failure and death. The counting 
represented a minimum discipline in concentration, to get 
some rest from the wear and tear of fear and guilt." 
Atmosphere of Grace 
Those of us who have come to make regular use of prayer 
would no more do without it than we would refuse air, food, 
or sunshine. And for the same reason. When we refuse air, 
light, or food, the body suffers. And when we turn away from 
meditation and prayer, we likewise deprive our minds, our 
emotions, and our intuitions of vitally needed support. 
As the body can fail its purpose for lack of nourishment, so 
can the soul. We all need the light of God's reality, the 
nourishment of His strenth, and the atmosphere of His grace. 
To an amazing extent the facts of A.A. life confirm this 
ageless truth. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 97-98 
". . . In All Our Affairs 
"The chief purpose of A.A. is sobriety. We all realize that 
without sobriety we have nothing. 
"However, it is possible to expand this simple aim into a 
great deal of nonsense, so far as the individual member is 
concerned. Sometimes we hear him say, in effect, `Sobriety 
is my sole responsibility. After all, I'm a pretty fine chap, 
expect for my drinking. Give me sobriety, and I've got it 
made!' 
"As long as our friend clings to this comfortable alibi, he will 
make so little progress with his real life problems and 
responsibilities that he stands in a fair way to get drunk 
again. This is why A.A.'s Twelfth Step urges that we `practice 
these principles in all our affairs.' We are not living just to be 
sober; we are living to learn, to serve, and to love." 
Spiritual Kindetgarten 
"We are only operating a spiritual kindergarten in which 
people are enabled to get over drinking and find the grace to 
go on living to a better effect. Each man's theology has to be 
his own quest, his own affair." 
When the Big Book was planned, some members thought
that it ought to be Christian in doctrinal sense. Others had no 
objection to the use of the word "God", but wanted to avoid 
doctrinal issues. Spirituality, yes. Religion, no. Still others 
wanted a psychological book, to lure the alcoholic in. Once 
in, he could take God or leave Him alone as he wished. 
To the rest of us this was shocking, but happily we listened. 
Our group conscience was at work to construct the most 
acceptable and effective book possible. 
Every voice was playing its appointed part. Our atheists and 
agnostics widened our gateway so that all who suffer might 
pass through, regardless of their belief or lack of belief. 
When Defects Are Less than Deadly 
Practically everybody wishes to be rid of his most glaring 
and destructive handicaps. No one wants to be so proud that 
he is scorned as a braggart, nor so greedy that he is labeled 
a thief. No one wants to be angry enough to murder, lustful 
enough to rape, gluttonous enough to ruin his health. No one 
wants to be agonized by chronic envy or paralyzed by sloth. 
Of course, most human beings don't suffer these defects at 
these rock-bottom levels, and we who have escaped such 
extremes are apt to congratulate ourselves. Yet can we? 
After all, hasn't it been self-interest that has enabled most of 
us to escape? Not much spiritual effort is involved in 
avoiding excesses which will bring us punishment anyway. 
But when we face up to the less violent aspects of these very 
same defects, where do we stand then? 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 66 
Self-Respect Through Sacrifice 
At the beginning we sacrificed alcohol. We had to, or it would 
have killed us. But we couldn't get rid of alcohol unless we 
made other sacrifices. We had to toss self-justification, selfpity, and anger right out the window. We had to quit the crazy 
contest for personal prestige and big bank balances. We had 
to take personal responsibility for our sorry slate and quit 
blaming others for it. 
Were these sacrifices? Yes, they were. To gain enough 
humility and self-respect to stay alive at all, we had to give 
up what had really been our dearest possesions -- our 
ambition and our illegitimate pride. 
A.A. COMES OF AGE, P. 287 
Anger -- Personal and Group Enemy 
"As the book `Alcoholics Anonymous' puts it, `Resentment is 
the Number One offender'. It is a primary cause of relapses 
into drinking. How well we of A.A. know that for us `to drink 
is eventually to go mad or die'. 
"Much the same penalty overhangs every A.A. group. Given 
enough anger, both unity and purpose are lost. Given still 
more `righteous' indignation, the group can disintegrate; it 
can actually die. This is why we avoid controversy. This is 
why we prescribe no punishments for any misbehavior, no 
matter how grievous. Indeed, no alcoholic can be deprived of 
his membership for any reason whatever. 
"Punishment never heals. Only love can heal." 
The "Slipper" Needs Understanding 
"Slips can often be charged to rebellion; some of us are 
more rebellious than others. Slips may be due to the illusion 
that one can be `cured' of alcoholism. Slips can also be 
charged to carelessness and complacency. Many of us fail to 
ride out these periods sober. Things go fine for two or three 
years -- then the member is seen no more. Some of us suffer 
extreme guilt because of vices or practices that we can't or 
won't let go of. Too little self-forgiveness and too little prayer 
-- well, this combination adds up to slips. 
"Then some of us are far more alcohol-damaged than others. 
Still others encounter a series of calamities and cannot seem 
to find the spiritual resources to meet them. There are those 
of us who are physically ill. Others are subject to more or 
less continuous exhaustion,anxiety, and depression. These 
conditions often play a part in slips -- sometimes they are 
utterly controlling." 
TALK, 1960 
The Forgotten Mountain 
When I was a child, I acquired some of the traits that had a 
lot to do with my insatiable craving for alcohol. I was brought 
up in a little town in Vermont, under the shadow of Mount 
Aeolus. An early recollection is that of looking up at this vast 
and mysterious mountain, wondering what it meant and 
whether I could ever climb that high. But I was presently 
distraced by my aunt who, as a fourth-birthday present, 
made me a plate of fudge. For the next thirty-five years I 
pursued the fudge of life and quite forgot about the 
mountain. 
When self-indulgence is less than ruinous, we have a milder 
word for it. We call it "taking our comfort." 
"The Spiritual Angle" 
How often do we sit in A.A. meetings and hear the speaker 
declare, "But I haven't yet got the spiritual angle." Prior to 
this statement, he has described a miracle of transformation 
which has occurred in him -- not only his release from 
alcohol, but a complete change in his whole attitude toward 
life and the living of it. 
It is apparent to everyone else present that he has received a 
great gift, and that this gift is all out of proportion to anything 
that may be expected from simple A.A. participation. So we 
in the audience smile and say to ourselves, "Well, that guy is 
just reeking with the spiritual angle -- except that he doesn't 
seem to know it yet!" 
GRAPEVINE, JULY 1962 
Healing Talk 
When we consult an A.A. friend, we should not be reluctant 
to remind him of our need for full privacy. Intimate 
communication is normally so free and easy among us that 
an A.A. adviser may sometimes forget when we expect him 
to remain silent. The protective sanctity of this most healing 
of human relations ought never be violated. 
Such privileged communications have priceless advantages. 
We find in them the perfect opportunity to be as honest as 
we know how to be. We do not have to think of the possibility 
of damage to other people, nor need we fear ridicule or 
condemnation. Here,too, we have the best possible chance 
of spotting self-deception. 
GRAPEVINE, AUGUST 1961 
Principles Before Expediency 
Most of us thought good character was desirable. Obviously, 
good character was something one needed to get on with the 
business of being self-satisfied. With a proper display of 
honesty and morality, we'd stand a better chance of getting 
what we really wanted. But whenever we had to choose 
between character and comfort, character-building was lost 
in the dust of our chase after what we thought was 
happiness. 
Seldom did we look at character-building as something 
desirable initself. We never thought of making honesty, 
tolerance, and true love of man and God the daily basis of 
living. 
How to translate a right mental conviction into a right 
emotional result, and so into easy, happy, and good living, is 
the problem of life itself. 
Our New Employer 
We had a new Employer. Being all powerful, He provided 
what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His 
work well. 
Established on such a footing we became less and less 
interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs. More 
and more we became interested in seeing what we could 
contribute to life. 
As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, 
as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we 
became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our 
fear of today, tomorrow or the hereafter. We were reborn. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 63 
Move Ahead 
To spend too much time on any one alcoholic is to deny 
some otheran opportunity to live and be happy. One of our 
Fellowship failed entirely with his first half-dozen prospects. 
He often says that if he had continued to work on them, he 
might have deprived many others, who have since recovered, 
of their chance. 
"Our chief responsibility to the newcomer is an adequate 
presentation of the program. If he does nothing or argues, we 
do nothing but maintain our own sobriety. If he starts to 
move ahead, even a little, with an open mind, we then break 
our necks to help in every way we can." 
"Perfect" Humility 
For myself, I try to seek out the truest definition of humility 
that I can. This will not be the perfect definition, because I 
shall always be imperfect. 
At this writing, I would choose one like this: "Absolute 
humility would consist of a state of complete freedom from 
myself, freedom from all the claims that my defects of 
character now lay so heavily upon me. Perfect humility would 
be a full willingness, in all times and places, to find and to do 
the will of God." 
When I mediate upon such vision, I need not be dismayed 
because I shall never attain it, nor need I swell with 
presumption that one of these days its virtues shall be mine. 
I only need to dwell on the vision itself, letting it grow and 
ever more fill my heart. This done, I can compare it with my 
last-taken personal inventory. Then I get a sane and healthy 
idea of where I stand on the highway to humility. I see that 
my journey toward God has scarce begun. 
As I thus get down to my right size and stature, my selfconcern and importance become amusing. 
GRAPEVINE, JUNE 1961 
Two Kinds of Pride 
The prideful righteousness of "good people" may often be 
just as destructive as to dglaring sins of those who are 
supposedly not so good. 
We loved to shout to ddamaging fact toat millions of the 
"good men of religion" wer dstillkilling one anoth er off in the 
name of God. This all meant, of course, that we had
substituted negative for positive thinking. 
After we came to A.A., we had to recognize that this trait had 
been an ego-feeding proposition. In belaboring the sins of 
some religious people, we could feel superior to all of them. 
Moreover, we could avoid looking at some of our own
shortcomings. 
Self-righteousness, the very thing that we had 
contemptuously condemned in others, was our own 
besetting evil. This phony form of respectability was our 
undoing, so far as faith was concerned. But finally, driven to 
A.A., we learned better. 
Learn in Quiet 
In 1941, a news clipping was called to our attention by a New 
York member. In an obituary notice from a local paper, there 
appeared these words: "God grant us the serenity to accept 
the things we cannot change, the courage to change the 
things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference." 
Never had we seen so much A.A. in so few words. With 
amazing speed the Serenity Prayer came into general use. 
In meditation, debate has no place. We rest quietly with the 
thoughts or prayers of spiritually centered people who 
understand, so that we may experience and learn. This is the 
state of being that so often discovers and deepens a 
conscious contact with God. 
Freedom Through Acceptance 
We admitted we couldn't lick alcohol with our own remaining 
resources, and so we accepted the further fact that
dependence upon a Higher Power (if only our A.A. group) 
could do this hitherto impossible job. The moment we were 
able to accept these facts fully, our release from the alcohol 
compulsion had begun. 
For most of us, this pair of acceptances had required a lot of 
exertion to achieve. Our whole treasured philosophy of selfsufficiency had to be cast aside. This had not been done with 
sheer will power; it came instead as the result of developing 
the willingness to accept these new facts of living. 
We neither ran nor fought. But accept we did. And then we 
began to be free. 
GRAPEVINE, MARCH 1962 
Trouble: Constructive or Destructive? 
"There was a time when we ignored trouble, hoping it would 
go away. Or, in fear and in depression, we ran from it, but 
found it was still with us. Often, full of unreason, bitterness, 
and blame, we fought back. These mistaken attitudes, 
powered by alcohol, guaranteed our destruction, unless they 
were altered. 
"Then came A.A. Here we learned that trouble was really a 
fact of life for everybody -- a fact that had to be understood 
and dealt with. Surprisingly, we found that our troubles 
could, under God's grace, be converted into unimagined 
blessings. 
"Indeed, that was the essence of A.A. itself: trouble 
accepted, trouble squarely faced with calm courage, trouble 
lessened and often transcended. This was the A.A. story, and 
we became a part of it. Such demonstration became our 
stock in trade for the next sufferer." 
Surveying the Past 
We should make an accurate and really exhaustive surveyof 
our past life as it has affected other people. In many 
instances we shall find that, though the harm done to others 
has not been great, we have nevertheless done ourselves 
considerable injury. 
Then, too, damaging emotional conflicts persist below the 
level of consciouness, very deep, sometimes quite forgotten. 
Therefore, we should try hard to recall and review those past 
events which originally induced these conflicts and which 
continue to give our emotions violent twists, thus discoloring 
our personalities and altering our lives for the worse. 
"We reacted more strongly to frustration than normal people. 
By reliving these episodes and discussing them in strict 
confidence with somebody else, we can reduce their size and 
therfore their potency in the unconscious." 
Complete Security? 
Upon entering A.A., the spectacle of years of waste threw us 
into panic. Financial importance was no longer our principal 
aim; we now clamored for material secutity. 
Even when we re-established in our business, terrible fears 
often continued to haunt us. This made us misers and pennypinchers all over again. Complete financial security we must 
have -- or else. 
We forgot that most alcoholics in A.A. have an earning power 
considerably above average; we forgot the immense good 
will of our brother A.A.'s who were only too eager to help us 
to better jobs when we deserved them; we forgot the actual 
or potential financial insecurity of every human being in the 
world. And, worst of all, we forgot God. In money matters we 
had faith only in ourselves, and not too much of that. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 120-121 
To Be Fair-Minded 
Too often, I think, we have deprecated and even derided 
projects of our friends in the field of alcoholism just because 
we do not always see eye to eye with them. 
We should very seriously ask ourselves how many 
alcoholics have gone on drinking simply because we have 
failed to cooperate in good spirit with these many agencies -- 
whether they be good, bad, or indifferent. No alcoholic 
should go mad or die merely because he did not come
straight to A.A. at the beginning. 
Our first objective will be the development of self-restraint. 
This carries a top-priority rating. When we speak or act 
hastily or rashly, the ability to be fair-minded and tolerant 
evaporates on the spot. 
No Personal Power 
"At first, the remedy for my personal difficulties seemed so 
obvious that I could not imagine any alcoholic turning the 
proposition down were it properly presented to him.
Believing so firmly that Christ can do anything, I had the 
unconscious conceit to suppose that He would do everything 
through me -- right thenand in the manner I chose. After six 
long months, I had to admit that not a soul had surely laid 
hold of the Master -- not excepting myself. 
"This brought me to the good healthy realization that there 
were plenty of situations left in the world over whichI had no 
personal power -- that if I was so ready to admit that to be the 
case with alcohol, so I must make the same admission with 
respect to much else. I would have to be still and know that 
He, not I, was God." 
Essence of Growth 
Let us never fear needed change. Certainly we have to 
discriminate between changes for worse and changes for 
better. But once a need becomes clearly apparent in an 
individual, in a group, or in A.A. as a whole, it has long since 
been found out that we cannot stand still and look the other 
way. 
The essence of all growth is a willingness to change for the 
better and then an unremitting willingness to shoulder 
whatever responsibilty this entails. 
GRAPEVINE, JULY 1965 
Each Man's Vision 
"Beyond a Higher Power, as each of us may vision Him, A.A. 
must never, as a society, enter the field of dogma or 
theology. We can never become a religion in that sense, lest 
we kill our usefulness by getting bogged down in theological 
contention." 
"The really amazing fact about A.A. is that all religions see in 
our program a resemblance to themselves. For example, 
Catholic theologians declare our Twelth Step to be in exact 
accord with their Ignatian Exercises for Retreat, and, though 
our book reeks of sin, sickness, and death, the Christian 
Science Monitor has often praised it editorially. 
"Now, looking through Quaker eyes, you, too, see us
favorably. What happy circumstances, these!" 
The Sense of Belonging 
Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of meditation and prayer 
is the sense of belonging that comes to us. We no longer live 
in a completely hostile world. We are no longer lost and 
frightened and purposeless. 
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. We know that God lovingly 
watches over us. We know that when we turn to Him, all will 
be well with us, here and hereafter. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 105 
Prelude to the Program 
Few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program 
unless they have "hit bottom", for practicing A.A.'s Steps 
means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no 
alcoholic who is still drinking can dream of taking. The 
average alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn't care 
for this prospect -- unless he has to do these things in order 
to stay alive himself. 
We know that the newcomer has to "hit bottom"; otherwise, 
not much can happen. Because we are drunks who 
understand him, we can use at depth the nutcracker of theobsession-plus-the-allergy as a tool of such power that it can 
shatter his ego. Only thus can he be convinced that on his 
own unaided resources he has little or no chance. 
On The Broad Highway 
"I now realize that my former prejudice against clergymen 
was blind and wrong. They have kept alive through the 
centuries a faith which might have been extinguished 
entirely. They pointed out the road to me, but I did not even 
look up, I was so full of prejudice and self-concern. 
"When I did open my eyes, it was because I had to. And the 
man who showed me the truth was a fellow sufferer and a 
layman. Through him, I saw at last, and I stepped from the 
abyss to solid ground, knowing at once that my feet were on 
the broad highway ifI chose to walk." 
Word of Mouth 
"In my view, there isn't the slightest objection to groups who 
wish to remain strictly anonymous, or to people who think 
they would not like their membership in A.A. known at all. 
That is their business, and this is a very natural reaction. 
"However, most people find that anonymity to this degree is 
not necessary, or even desirable. Once one is fairly sober, 
and sure of this, there seems no reason for failing to talk 
about A.A. membership in the right places. This has a 
tendency to bring inother people. Word of mouth is one of 
our most important communications. 
"So we should criticize neither the people who wish to 
remain silent, nor even the people who wish to talk too much 
about belonging to A.A., provided they do not so at the 
public level and thus compromise our whole Society." 
We are Not Fighting 
We have ceased fighting anything or anyone -- even alcohol. 
For by this time sanity has returned. We can now react 
sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened 
automatically. We see that this new attitude toward liquor is 
really a gift of God. 
That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we 
avoiding temptation. We have not even sworn off. Instead, 
the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We 
are neither cocky nor are we afraid. 
That how we react -- so long as we keep in fit spiritual 
condition. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, PP. 84-85 
Defects and Repairs 
No matter how much one wishes to try, exactly how can he 
turn his will and his own life over to the care of whatever God 
he thinks there is? 
A beginning, even the smallest, is all that is needed. Once we 
have placed the key of willingness in the lock and have 
placed the key of willingness in the lock and have the door 
ever so slightly open, we find we can always open it some 
more. 
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. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 35 
The New A.A. and His Family 
When alcoholism strikes, very unnatural situations may 
develop which work against marriage partnership and
compatible union. If the man is affected, the wife must 
become the head of the house, often the breadwinner. As 
matters get worse, the husband becomes a sick and 
irresponsible child who needs to be looked after and 
extricated from endless scrapes and impasses. Very 
gradually, usually without any realization of the fact, the wife 
is forced to become the mother of an erring boy, and the 
alcoholic alternately loves and hates her maternal care. 
Under the influence of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, these situations 
are often set right. 
Whether the family goes on a spiritual basis or not, the 
alcoholic member has to if he would recover. The others 
must be convinced of his new status beyond the shadow of a 
doubt. Seeing is believing to most families who have lived 
with a drinker. 
Freedom to Choose 
Looking back, we see that our freedom to choose badly was 
not, after all, a very real freedom. 
When we chose because we "must", this was not a free 
choice, either. But it got us started in the right direction. 
When we chose because we "ought to", we were really doing 
better. This time we were earning some freedom, making 
ourselves ready for more. 
But when, now and then, we could gladly make right choices 
without rebellion, hold-out, or conflict, then we had our first 
view of what perfect freedom under God's will could be like. 
GRAPEVINE, MAY 1960 
Look Beyond the Horizon 
My workshop stands on a hill back of our home. Looking 
over the valley, I see the village community house where our 
local group meets. Beyond the circle of my horizon lies the 
whole world of A.A. 
The unity of A.A. is the most cherished quality our Society 
has. Our lives, the lives of all to come, depend squarely upon 
it. Without unity, the heart of A.A. would cease to beat; our 
world arteries would no longer carry the life-giving grace of 
God. 
"Admitted to God . . ." 
Provided you hold back nothing in taking the Fifth Step, your 
sense of relief will mount from minute to minute. The 
dammed-up emotions of years break out of their 
confinement, and miraculously vanish as soon as they are 
exposed. As the pain sunsides, a healing tranquillity takes its 
place. And when humility and serenity are so combined, 
something else of great moment is apt to occur. 
Many an A.A., once agnostic or atheist, tells us that it was 
during this stage of Step Five that he first actually felt the 
presence of God. And even those who already had faith often 
become conscious of God as they never were before. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 62 
Persistence in Prayer 
We often tend to slight serious meditation and prayer as 
something not really necessary. To be sure, we feel it is 
something that might help us to meet an occasional 
emergency, but at first many of us are apt to regard it as a 
somewhat mysteriousskill of clergymen, from which we may 
hope to get a secondhand benefit. 
In A.A. we have found that the actual good results of prayer 
are beyond question. They are matters of knowledge and 
experience. All those who have persisted have found
strength not ordinarily their own. They have found wisdom 
beyond their usual capability. And they have increasingly 
found a peace of mind which can stand firm in the face of 
difficult circumstances. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE 
Back to Work 
It is possible for us to use the alleged dishonesty of other 
people as a plausible excuse for not meeting our own 
obligations. 
Once, some prejudiced friends exhorted me never to go back 
to Wall Street. They were sure that the rampant materialism 
and double-dealing down there would stunt my spiritual 
growth. Because this sounded so high-minded, I continued 
to stay away from the only business that I knew. 
When, finally, my household went broke, I realized I hadn't 
been able to face the prospect of going back to work. So I 
returned to Wall Street, and I have ever since been glad that I 
did. I needed to rediscover that there are many fine people in 
New York's financial district. Then, too, I needed the 
experience of staying sober in the very surroundings where 
alcohol had cut me down. 
A Wall Street business trip to Akron, Ohio, first brought me 
face to face with Dr. Bob. So the birth of A.A. hinged on my 
effort to meet my bread-and-butter responsibilities. 
GRAPEVINE, AUGUST 1961 
The Way of Strength 
We need not apologize to anyone for depending upon the 
Creator. We have good reason to disbelieve those who think 
spirituality is the way of weakness. For us, it is the way of 
strength. 
The verdict of the ages is that men of faith seldom lack 
courage. They trust their God. So we never apologize for our 
belief in Him. Instead, we try to let Him demonstrate, through 
us, what He can do. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 68 
Our Problem Centers in the Mind 
We know that while the alcoholic keeps away from drink, he 
usually reacts much like other men. We are equally positive 
that once he takes any alcohol whatever into his system, 
something happens, in both the bodily and mental sense, 
which makes it virtually impossible for him to stop. The 
experience of any alcoholic will abundantly confirm this. 
These observations would be academic and pointless if our 
friend never took the first drink, thereby setting the terrible 
cycle in motion. Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic 
centers in his mind, rather than in his body. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, PP. 22-23 
Obstacles in Our Path 
We live in a world riddled with envy. To a greater or lesser 
degree, everybody is infected with it. From this defect we 
must surely get a warped yet definite satisfaction. Else why 
would we consume so much time wishing for what we have 
not, rather than working for it, or angrily looking for 
attributes we shall never have, instead of adjusting to the 
fact, and accepting it? 
Each of us would like to live at peace with himself and with 
his fellows. We would like to be assured that the grace of 
God can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. 
We have seen that character defects based upon 
shortsighted or unworthy desires are the obstacles that 
block our path toward these objectives. We now clearly see 
that we have been making unreasonable demands upon 
ourselves, upon others, and upon God. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE 
Spot-Checking 
A spot-check inventory taken in the midst of 
disturbancescan be of very great help in quieting stormy 
emotions. Today's spot check finds its chief application to 
situations which arise in each day's march. The 
consideration of long-standing difficulties had better be 
postponed, when possible, to times deliberately set aside for 
that purpose. 
The quick inventory is aimed at our daily ups and downs, 
especially those where people or new events throw us off 
balance and tempt us to make mistakes. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE PP. 90-91 
"Privileged People" 
I saw that I had been living too much alone, too much aloof 
from my fellows, and too deaf to that voice within. Instead of 
seeing myself as a simple agent bearing the message of 
experience, I had thought of myself as a founder of A.A. 
How much better it would have been had I felt gratitude 
rather than self-satisfaction -- gratitude that I had once 
suffered the pains of alcoholism, gratitude that a miracle of 
recovery had been worked upon me from above, gratitude for 
the privilege of serving my fellow alcoholics, and gratitude 
for those fraternal ties which bound me ever closer to them 
in a comradeship such as few societies of men have ever 
known. 
Truly did a clergyman say to me, "Your misfortune has 
become your good fortune. You A.A.'s are a privileged 
people." 
GRAPEVINE, JULY 1946 
The Individual's Rights 
We believe there isn't a fellowship on earth which devotes 
more care to its individual members; surely there is none 
which more jealously guards the individual's right to think, 
talk, and act as he wishes. No A.A. can compel another to do 
anything; nobody can be punished or expelled. 
Our Twelve Steps to recovery are suggestions; the Twelve 
Traditions which guarantee A.A.'s unity contain not a single 
"Don't." They repeatedly say, "We ought..." but never "You 
must!" 
"Though it is traditional that our Fellowship may not coerce 
anyone, let us not suppose even for an instant that we are 
not under constraint. Indeed, we are under enormous
coercion -- the kind that comes in bottles. Our formertyrant, 
King Alcohol, always stands ready again to clutch us to him. 
"Therefore, freedom from alcohol is the great `must' that has 
to be achieved, else we go mad or die." 
Victory in Defeat 
Convinced I never could belong, and vowing I'd never settle 
for any second-rate status, I felt I simply had to dominate in 
everything I chose to do: work or play. As this attractive 
formula for the good life began to succeed, according to my 
then specifications of success, I became deliriously happy. 
But when an undertaking occasionally did fail, I was filled 
with resentment and depression that could be cured only by 
the next triumph. Very early, therfore, I came to value 
everything in terms of victory or defeat -- "all or nothing." 
The only satisfaction I knew was to win. 
Only through utter defeat are we able to take our first steps 
toward liberation and strength. Our admissions of personal 
powerlessness finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon which 
happy and purposeful lives may be built. 
Giving Up Defects 
Looking at those defects we are unwilling to give up, we 
ought to erase the hard and fast lines that we have drawn. 
Perhaps in some cases we shall say, "This I cannot give up 
yet...." But we should not say to ourselves, "This O will never 
give up!" 
The moment we say, "No, never!" our minds close against 
the grace of God. Such rebellion my be fatal. Instead, we 
should abandon limited objectives and begin to move
towards God's will for us. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 68-69 
Beyond Agnosticism 
We of agnostic temperament found that as soon as we were 
able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to 
believe in a Power greater than ourselves, we commenced to 
get results, even though it was impossible for any of us to 
fully define or comprehend that Power, which is God. 
"Many people soberly assure me that man has no better 
place in the universe than that of another competing 
organism, fighting its way through life only to perish the end. 
Hearing this, I feel that I still prefer to cling to the so-called 
illusion of religion, which in my own experience has 
meaningfully told me something very different." 
Two Roads for the Oldtimer 
The founders of many groups ultimately divide into two 
classes known in A.A. slang as "elder statesmen" and 
"bleeding deacons." 
The elder statesmen sees the wisdom of the group's decision 
to run itself and holds no resentment over his reduced 
status. His judgment, fortified by considerable experience, is 
sound; he is willing to sit quietly on the side lines patiently 
awaiting developments. 
The bleeding deacon is just as surely convinced that the 
group cannot get along without him. He constantly connives 
for re-election to office and continues to be consumed with 
self-pity. Nearly every oldtimer in our Society has gone 
through this process in some degree. Happily, most of them 
survive and live to become elder statesmen. They become 
the real and permanent leadership of A.A. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 135 
Basis of All Humility 
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. 
This was true even when we believed that God existed. We 
could actually have earnest religious beliefs which remained 
barren because we were still trying to play God ourselves. As 
long as we placed self-reliance first, a genuine reliance upon 
a Higher Power was out of the question. 
That basic ingredient of all humility, a desire to seek and do 
God's will, was missing. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 72 
Defects and Repairs 
More than most people, the alcoholic leads a double life. He 
is very much the actor. To the outer world he presents his 
stage character. This is the one he likes his fellows to see. 
He wants to enjoy a certain reputation, but knows in his heart 
he doesn't deserve it. 
Guilt is really the reserve side of the coin of pride. Guilt aims 
at self-destruction, and pride aims at the destruction of 
others. 
"The moral inventory is a cool examination of the damages 
that occurred to us during life and a sincere effort to look at 
them in a true perspective. This has the effect of taking the 
ground glass out of us, the emotional substance that still 
cuts and inhibits." 
"Restore Us to Sanity" 
Few indeed are the practicing alcoholics who have any idea 
how irrational they are, or, seeing their irrationality, can bear 
to face it. For example, some will be willing to term 
themselves "problem drinkers," but cannot endure the 
suggestion that they are in fact mentally ill. 
They are abettet in this blindness by a world which does not 
understand the difference between sane drinking and
alcoholism. "Sanity" is defined as "soundness of mind". 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. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 32-33 
God-Given Instincts 
Creation gave us instincts for a purpose. Without them we 
wouldn't be complete human beings. If men and women
didn't exert themselves to be secure in their persons, made 
no effort to harvest food or construct shelter, there would be 
no survival. If they didn't reproduce, the earth wouldn't be 
populated. If there were no social instinct, there would be no 
society. 
Yet these instincts, so necessary for our existence, often far 
exceed their proper functions. Powerfully, blindly, many 
times subtly, they drive us, dominate us, and insist upon 
ruling our lives. 
We tried to shape a sane ideal for our future sex life. We 
subjected each relation to this test: Was it selfish or not? We 
asked God to mold our ideals and help us to live up to them. 
We remembered always that our sex powers were God-given 
and therefore good, neither to be used lightly or selfishly nor 
to be despised and loathed. 
A.A.'s School of Life 
Within A.A., I suppose, we shall always quarrel a good bit. 
Mostly, I think, about how to do the greatest good for the 
greatest number of drunks. We shall have our childish spats 
and snits over small questions of money management and 
who is going to run our groups for the next six months. Any 
bunch of growing children (and that is what we are) would 
hardly be in character if they did less. 
These are the growing pains of infancy, and we actually 
thrive on them. Surmounting such problems, in A.A.'s rather 
rugged school of life, is a healthy exercise. 
A.A. COMES OF AGE, P. 233 
Blind Trust? 
"Most surely, there can be no trust where there is no love, 
nor can be real love where distrust holds malign sway. 
"But does trust require that we be blind to other people's 
motives or, indeed, to our own? Not at all; this would be folly. 
Most certainly, we should assess the capacity for harm as 
well as the capability for good in every person that we would 
trust. Such a private inventory can reveal the degree of 
confidence we should extend in any given situation.
"However, this inventory needs to be taken in a spirit of 
understanding and love. Nothing can so much bias our 
judgment as the negative emotions of suspicion, jealousy, or 
anger. 
"Having vested our confidence in another person, we ought 
to let him know of our full support. Because of this, more 
often than not he will respond magnificently, and far beyond 
our first expectations." 
To Take Responsibility 
Learning how to live in the greatest peace, partnership, and 
brotherhood with all men and women, of whatever 
description, is a moving and fascinating adventure.
But every A.A. has found that he can make little headway in 
this new adventure of living until he first backtracks and 
really makes an accurate and unsparingsurvey of the human 
wreckage he has left in his wake. 
The readiness to take the full consequences of our past acts, 
and to take responsibility for the well-being of others at the 
same time, is the very spirit of Step Nine. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE 
"Do as I Do . . ." 
Perhaps more often than we think, we make no contact at 
depth with alcoholics who are suffering the dilemma of no 
faith. 
Certainly none are more sensitive to spiritual cocksureness, 
pride, and aggression than they are. I'm sure this is 
something we too often forget. 
In A.A.'s first years, I all but ruined the whole undertaking 
with this sort of unconscious arrogance. God as I 
understood Him had to be for everybody. Sometimes my 
aggression was subtle and sometimes it was crude. But 
either way it was damaging -- perhaps fatally so -- to 
numbers of nonbelievers. 
Of course this sort of thing isn't confined to Twelfth Step 
work. It is very apt to leak out into our relations with 
everybody. Even now, I catch myself chanting that same old 
barrier-building refrain: "Do as I do, believe as I do -- or 
else!" 
GRAPEVINE, APRIL 1961 
A.A. -- the Lodestar 
We can be grateful for every agency or method that tries to 
solve the problem of alcoholism -- whether of medicine, 
religion, education, or research. We can be open-minded 
toward all such efforts and we can be sympathetic when the 
ill-advised ones fail. We can remember that A.A. itself ran for 
years on "trial and error." 
As individuals, we can and should work with those that 
promise success -- even a little success. 
Every one of the pioneers in the total field of alcoholism will 
generously say that had it not been for the living proof of 
recovery in A.A., they could not have gone on. A.A. was the 
lodestar of hope and help that kept them at it. 
GRAPEVINE, MARCH 1958 
More than Comfort 
When I am feeling depressed, I repeat to myself statements 
such as these: "Pain is the touchstone of progress." . . . 
"Fear no evil." . . . "This, too, will pass." . . . "This experience 
can be turned to benefit." 
These fragments of prayer bring far more than mere comfort. 
They keep me on the track of right acceptance; they break up 
my compulsive themes of guilt, depression, rebellion, and 
pride; and sometimes they endow me with the courage to 
change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the
difference. 
GRAPEVINE, MARCH 1962 
Guide to a Better Way 
Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of 
our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the Steps 
require. But we saw that the program really worked in others, 
and we had come to believe in the hopelessness of life as we 
had been living it. 
When, therefore, we were approached by those in whom the 
problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us but to 
pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. 
Implicit throughout A.A.'s Traditions is the confession that 
our Fellowship has its sins. We admit that we have character 
defects as a society and that these defects threaten us 
continually. Our Traditions are a guide to better ways of 
working and living, and they are to group survival and 
harmony what A.A.'s Twelve Steps are to each member's 
sobriety and peace of mind. 
No Boundaries 
Meditation is something which can always be further
developed. It has no boundaries, of width or height or depth. 
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. But its object is always 
the same: to improve our conscious contact with God, with 
His grace, wisdom, and love. 
And let's always remember that meditation is in reality 
intensly practical. One of its first fruits is emotional balance. 
With it we can broaden and deepen the channel between 
ourselves and God as we understand Him. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 101-102 
Start by Forgiving 
The moment we ponder a twisted or broken relationship with 
another person, our emotions go on the defensive. To 
escape looking at the wrongs we have done another, we 
resentfully focus on the wrong he has done us. Triumphantly 
we seize upon his slightest misbehavior as the perfect 
excusefor minimizing or forgetting our own. 
Right here we need to fetch ourselves up sharply. Let's 
remember that alcoholics are not only ones bedeviled by sick 
emotions. In many instances we are really dealing with fellow 
sufferers, people whose woes we have increased. 
If we are about to ask forgiveness for ourselves, why 
shouldn't we start out by forgiving them, one and all? 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 78 
Miraculous Power 
Deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the 
fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by 
pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other 
it is there. For faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and 
miraculous demonstrations of that Power in human lives, are 
facts as old as man himself. 
"Faith may often be given through inspired teaching or a 
convincing personal example of its fruits. It may sometimes 
be had through reason. For instance, many clergymen
believe that St. Thomas Auinas actually proved God's 
existence by sheer logic. But what can one do when all these 
channels fail? This was my own grievous dilemma. 
"It was only when I came fully to believe I was powerless 
over alcohol, only when I appealed to a God who just might 
exist, that I experienced a spiritual awakening. This freedomgiving experience came first, and then faith followed 
afterward -- a gift indeed!" 
Without Anger 
Suppose A.A. falls under sharp public attack or heavy 
ridicule, having little or no justification in fact. Our best 
defense in these situations would be no defense whatever -- 
namely, complete silence at the public level. If in good humor 
we let unreasonable critics alone, they are apt to subside the 
more quickly. If their attacks persist and it is plain that they 
are misinformed, it may be wise to communicate with them 
privately in a temperate and informative way. 
If, however, a given criticism of A.A. is partly or wholly 
justified, it may be well to acknowledge this privately to the 
critics, together with our thanks. 
But under no conditions should we exhibit anger or any 
punitive intent. 
What we must recognize is that we exult in some of our 
defects. Self-righteous anger can be very enjoyable. In a 
perverse way we can actuallytake satisfaction from the fact 
that many people annoy us; it brings a comfortable feeling of 
superiority. 
Relapses -- and the Group 
An early fear was that of slips or relapses. At first nearly 
every alcoholic we approached began to slip, if indeed he 
sobered up at all. Others would stay dry six months or 
maybe a year and then take a skid. This was always a 
genuine catastrophe. We would all look at each other and 
say, "Who next?" 
Today, though slips are a very serious difficulty, as a group 
we take them in stride. Fear has evaporated. Alcohol always 
threatens the individual, but we know that it cannot destroy 
the common welfare. 
"It does not seem to pay to argue with `slippers' about the 
proper method of getting dry. After all, why should people 
who are drinking tell people who are dry how it should be 
done? 
"Just kid the boys along -- ask them if they are having fun. If 
they are too noisy or troublesome, amiably keep out of their 
way." 
Built by the One and the Many 
We give thanks to our Heavenly Father, who, through so 
many friends and through so many means and channels, has 
allowed us to construct this wonderful edifice of the spirit in 
which we are now dwelling -- this cathedral whose 
foundations already rest upon the corners of the earth. 
On its great floor we have inscribed our Twelve Steps of 
recovery. On the side walls, the buttresses of the A.A. 
Traditions have been set in place to contain us in unity for as 
long as God may will it so. Eager hearts and hands have 
lifted the spire of our cathedral into its place. That spire 
bears the name of Service. May it ever point straight upward 
toward God. 
"It's not only to the few that we owe the remarkable 
developments in our unity and in our ability to carry A.A.'s 
message everywhere. It is to the many; indeed, it is to the 
labors of all of us that we owe these prime blessings." 
Perception of Humility 
An improved perception of humility starts a revolutionary 
change in our outlook. Our eyes begin to open to the 
immense values which have come straight out of painful egopuncturing. Until now, our lives have been largely devoted to 
running from pain and problems. Escape via the bottle was 
always our solution. 
Then, in A.A., we looked and listened. Everywhere we saw 
failure and misery transformed by humility into priceless 
assets. 
To those who have made progress in A.A., humility amounts 
to a clear recognition of what and who we really are, followed 
by a sincere attempt to become what we could be. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE 
Imagination Can Be Constructive 
We recall, a little ruefully, how much store we used to set by 
imagination as it tried to create reality out of bottles. Yes, we 
reveled in that sort of thinking, didn't we? And, though sober 
nowadays, don't we often try to do much the same thing? 
Perhaps our trouble was not that we used our imagination. 
Perhaps the real trouble was our almost total inability to 
point imagination toward the right objectives. There's 
nothing the matter with truly constructive imagination; all 
sound achievements rests upon it. After all, no man can build 
a house until he first visions a plan for it. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 100 
Tolerance in Practice 
"We found that the principles of tolerance and love had to be 
emphasized in actual practice. We can never say (or
insinuate) to anyone that he must agree to our formula or be 
excommunicated. The atheist may stand up in an A.A.
meeting still denying the Deity, yet reporting how vastely he 
has been changed in attitude and outlook. Much experience 
tells us he will presently change his mind about God, but 
nobody tells him he must do so. 
"In order to carry the principle of inclusiveness and tolerance 
still further, we make no religious requirement of anyone. All 
people having an alcoholic problem who wish to get rid of it 
and so make a happy adjustment with the circumstances of 
their lives, become A.A. members by simply associating with 
us. Nothing but sincerity is needed. But we do not demand 
even this. 
"In such an atmosphere the orthodox, the unorthodox, and 
the unbeliever mix happily and usefully together. An 
opportunity for spiritual growth is open to all." 
Between the Extremes 
"The real question is whether we can learn anything from our 
experiences upon which we may grow and help others to 
grow in the likeness and image of God. 
"We know that if we rebel against doing that which is 
reasonably possible for us, then we will be penalized. And we 
will be equally penalized if we presume in ourselves a 
perfection that simply is not there. 
"Apparently, the course of relative humility and progress will 
have to lie somewhere between these extremes. In our slow 
progress away from rebellion, true perfection is doubtless 
several millennia away." 
The Rationalizers and the Self-Effacing 
We alcoholics are the biggest rationalizers in the world. 
Fortified with the excuse that we are doing great things for 
A.A., we can, through broken anonymity, resume our old and 
disastrous pursuit of personal power and prestige, public 
honors, and money -- the same implacable urges that, when 
frustrated, once caused us to drink. 
Dr. Bob was essentially a far more humble person than I, and 
anonymity came rather easily to him. When it was sure that 
he was mortally afflicted, some of his friends suggested that 
there should be a monument erected in honor of him and his 
wife, Anne -- befitting a founder and his lady. Telling me 
about this, Dr. Bob grinned broadly and said, "God bless 'em. 
They mean well. But let's you and me get buried just 
likeother folks." 
In the Akron cementery where Dr. Bob and Anne lie, the 
simple stone says not a word about A.A. This final example 
of self-effacement is of more permanent worth to A.A. than 
any amount of public attention or any great monument. 
A.A. COMES OF AGE 
Whose Inventory? 
We do not relate intimate experiences of another member 
unless we are sure he would approve. We find it better, when 
possible, to stick to our own stories. A man may criticize or 
laugh at himself and it will affect others favorably, but 
criticism or ridicule aimed at someone else often produces 
the contrary effect. 
A continous look at our assets and liabilities, and a real 
desire to learn and grow by this means are necessities for 
us. We alcoholics have learned this the hard way. More 
experienced people, of course, in all times and places have 
practiced unsparing self-survey and criticism. 
"Lets Keep It Simple" 
"We need to distinguish sharply between spiritual simplicity 
and functional simplicity. 
"When we say that A.A. advocates no theological propositon 
except God as we understand Him, we geatly simplify A.A. 
life by avoiding conflict and exclusiveness. 
"But when we get into questions of action by groups, by 
areas, and by A.A. as a whole, we find that we must to some 
extent organize to carry the message -- or else face chaos. 
And chaos is not simplicity." 
I learned that the temporary or seeming good can often be 
the deadly enemy of the permanent best. When it comes to 
survival for A.A., nothing short of our best will be good 
enough. 
Release and Joy 
Who can render an account of all the miseries that once were 
ours, and who can estimate the release and joy that the later 
years have brought to us? Who can possibly tell the vast 
consequences of what God's work through A.A. has already 
set in motion? 
And who can penetrate the deeper mystery of our wholesale 
deliverance from slavery, a bondage to a most hopeless and 
fatal obsession which for centuries possesed the minds and 
bodies od men and women like ourselves? 
We think cheerfulness and laughter make for usefulness. 
Outsiders are sometimes shocked when we burst into 
merriment over a seemingly tragic experience out of the past. 
But why shouldn't we laugh? We have recovered, and have 
helped others to recover. What greater cause could there be 
for rejoycing thanthis? 
A Saving Principle 
The practice of admitting one's defects to another person is, 
of course, very ancient. It has been validated in every 
century, and it characterizes the lives of all spiritually 
centered and truly religious people. 
But today religion is by no means the sole advocate of this 
saving principle. 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 withan understanding and trustworthy 
person. 
So far as alcoholics are concerned, A.A. would go even 
further. Most of us would declare that without a fearless 
admission of our defects to another human being, we could 
not stay sober. It seems plain that the grace of God will not 
enter to expel our destructive obsessions until we are willing 
to try this. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 56-57 
"Success" in Twelfth-Stepping 
"We now see that in twelth-stepping the immediate results 
are not so important. Some people start out working with 
others and have immediate success. They are likely to get 
crocky. Those of us who are not so successful at first get 
depressed. 
"As a matter of fact, the successful worker differs from the 
unsuccessful only in being lucky about his prospects. He 
simply hits newcomers who are ready and able to stop at 
once. Given the same prospects, the seemingly unsuccessful 
person would have produced almost the same results. You 
have to work ona lot of newcomers before the law of
averages commences to assert itself." 
All true communication must be founded on mutual need. We 
saw that each sponsor would have to admit humbly his own 
needs as clearly as those of his prospect. 
Fear No Evil 
Though we of A.A. find ourselves living in a world 
characterized by destructive fears as never before in history, 
we see great areas of faith, and tremendous aspirations 
toward justice and brotherhood. Yet no prophet can presume 
to say whether the world outcome will be blazing destruction 
or the beginning, under God's intention, of the brightest era 
yet known to mankind. 
I am sure we A.A.'s will comprehend this scene. In 
microcosm, we have experienced this identical state of 
terrifying uncertainty, each in his own life. In no sense 
pridefully, we can say that we do not fear the world outcome, 
whichever course it may take. This is because we have been 
enabled to deeply feel and say, "We shall fearno evil -- Thy 
will, not ours, be done." 
Progress Rather than Perfection 
On studying the Twelve Steps, many of us exclaimed, "What 
an order! I can't go through with it." Do not be discouraged. 
No one among us has been able to maintain anything like 
perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. 
The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. 
The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We 
claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. 
"We recovered alcoholics are not so much brothers in virtue 
as we are brothers in our defects, and in our common 
strivings to overcome them." 
Accepting God's Gifts 
"Though many theologians hold the sudden spiritual 
experiences amount to a special distinction, if not a divine 
appointment of some sort, I question this view. Every human 
being, no matter what his attributes for good or evil, is a part 
of the divine spiritual economy. Therefore, each of us has his 
place, and I cannot see that God intends to exalt one over 
another. 
"So it is necessary for all of us to accept whatever positive 
gifts we receive with a deep humility, always bearing in mind 
that our negative attitudes were first necessary as a means 
of reducing us to such a state that we would be ready for a 
gift of the positive ones via the conversion experience. Your 
own alcoholism and the immense deflation that finally 
resulted are indeed the foundationupon which your spiritual 
experiences rests." 
Learning Never Ends 
"My experience as an oldtimer has to some degree paralleled 
your own and that of many others. We all find that the time 
comes when we are not allowed to manage and conduct the 
functional affairs of groups, areas, or, in my case, A.A. as a 
whole. In the end we can only be worth as much as our 
spiritual example has justified. To that extent, we become 
useful symbols -- and that's just about it." 
"I have become a pupil of the A.A. movement rather than the 
teacher I once thought I was." 
Whose Will? 
We have seen A.A.'s ask with much earnestness and faith for 
God's explicit guidance on matters ranging all the wayfrom a 
shattering domestic or financial crisis to a minor personal 
fault, like tardiness. A man who tries to run his life rigidly by 
this kind of prayer, by this self-serving demand of God for 
replies, is a particularly disconcerting individual. To any 
questioning or criticism of his actions, he instantly proffers 
his reliance upon prayer for guidance in all matters great or 
small. 
He may have forgotten the possibility that his own wishful 
thinking and the human tendency to rationalize have
distorted his so-called guidance. With the best of intentions, 
he tends to force his will into all sorts of situations and 
problems with the comfortable assurance that he is acting 
under God's specific direction. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 103-104 
Dividends and Mysteries 
"The A.A. preoccupation with sobriety is sometimes 
misunderstood. To some, this single virtue appears to be the 
sole dividend of our Fellowship. We are thought to be driedup drunks who otherwise have changed little, or not at all, for 
the better. Such a surmise widely misses the truth. We know 
that permanent sobriety can be attained only by a most 
revolutionary change in the life and outlook of the individual 
-- by a spiritual awakening that can banish the desire to 
drink." 
"You are asking yourself, as all of us must: `Who am I?' ... 
`Where am I?' ... `Whence do I go?' The process of 
enlightenment is usually slow. But, in the end, our seeking 
always brings a finding. These great mysteries are, after all, 
enshrined in complete simplicity. The willingness to grow is 
the essence of all spiritual development." 
This Matter of Honesty 
"Only God can fully know what absolute honesty is. 
Therefore, each of us has to conceive what this great ideal 
may be -- to the best of our ability. 
"Fallible as we all are, and will be in this life, it would be 
presumption to suppose that we could ever really achieve 
absolute honesty. The best way we can do is to strive for a 
better quality of honesty. 
"Sometimes we need to place love ahead of indiscriminate 
`factual honesty'. We cannot, under the guise of `perfect 
honesty', cruelly and unnecessarily hurt others. Always one 
must ask, `What is the best and most loving thing I can do?'" 
Roots of Reality 
We started upon a personal inventory, Step Four. A business 
which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. Taking 
a commercial inventory is a fact-finding and a fact-facing 
process. It is an effort to discover the truth about the stock in 
trade. One object is to disclose damaged or unsalable goods, 
to get rid of them promptly and without regret. If the owner of 
the business is to be successful, he cannot fool himself 
about values. 
We did exactly the same thing with our lives. We had to take 
stock honestly. 
"Moments of perception can build into a lifetime of spiritual 
serenity, as I have excellent reason to know. Roots of reality, 
supplanting the neurotic underbrush, will hold fast despite 
the high winds of the forces which would destroy us, or 
which we would use to destroy ourselevs. 
Constructive Forces 
Mine was exactly the kind of deep-seated block we so often 
see today in new people who say they are atheistic or 
agnostic. Their will to disbelieve is so powerful tha 
apparently they prefer a date with the undertaker to an openminded and experimental quest for God. 
Happily for me, and for most of my kind who have since 
come along in A.A., the constructive forces brought to bear 
in our Fellowship have nearly always overcome this colossal 
obstinacy. Beaten into complete defeat by alcohol, 
confronted by the living proof of release, and surrounded by 
those who can speak to us from the heart, we have finally 
surrendered. 
And then, paradoxically, we have found ourselves in a new 
dimension, the real world of spirit and faith. Enough 
willingness, enough open-mindedness -- and there it is! 
A.A. TODAY, P. 9 
Aspects of Tolerance 
All kinds of people have found their way into A.A. Not too 
long ago, I sat talking in my office with a member who bears 
the title Countess. That same night, I went to an A.A. 
meeting. It was winter, and there was a mild-looking little 
gent taking the coats. I said, "Who's that?" 
And somebody answered, "Oh, he's been around for a long 
time. Everybody likes him. He used to be one of Al Capone's 
mob." That's how universal A.A. is today. 
We have no desire to convince anyone that there is only one 
way by which faith canbe acquired. All of us, whatever our 
race, creed, or color are the children of a living Creator, with 
whom we may form a relationship upon simple and 
understandable terms as soon as we are willing and honest 
enough to try. 
Domination and Demand 
The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability 
to form a true partnership with another human being. Our 
egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls. Either we insist upon 
dominating the people we know, or we depend upon them far 
too much. 
If we lean too heavily on people, they will sooner or later fail 
us, for they are human, too, and cannot possibly meet our 
insecurity grows and festers. 
When we habitually try to manipulate others to our own 
willful desires, they revolt, and resist us heavily. Then we 
develop hurt feelings, a sense of persecution, and a desire to 
retaliate. 
My dependency meant demand -- a demand for the 
possession and control of the people and the conditions 
surrounding me. 
Money -- Before and After 
In our drinking time, we acted as if the money supply were 
inexhaustible, though between binges we'd sometimes go to 
the other extreme and become miserly. Without realizing it, 
we were just accumulating funds for the next spree. Money 
was the symbol of pleasure and self-importance. As our 
drinking became worse, money was only an urgent 
requirement which could supply us with the next drink and 
the temporary comfort of oblivion it brought. 
Although financial recovery is on the way for many of us, we 
found we could not place money first. For us, material wellbeing always follows spiritual progress; it never precedes. 
Down to Earth 
Those of us who have spent much time in the world of 
spiritual make-believe have eventually seen the childishness 
of it. This dream world has been replaced by a great sense of 
purpose, accompanied by a growing consciousness of the 
power of God in our lives. 
We have come to believe He would like us to keep our heads 
in the clouds with Him, but that our feet ought to be firmly 
planted on earth. That is where our fellow travelers are, and 
that is where our work must be done. These are the realities 
for us. We have found nothing incompatible between a 
powerful spiritual experience and a life of sane and happy 
usefulness. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 130 
Coping with Anger 
Few people have been more victimized by resentment than 
have we alcoholics. A burst of temper could spoil a day, and 
a well-nursed grudge could make us miserably ineffective. 
Nor were we ever skillful in separating justified from 
unjustified anger. As we saw it, our wrath was always 
justified. Anger, that occasional luxury of more balanced 
people, could keep us on an emotional jag indefinitely. These 
"dry benders" often led straight to the bottle. 
Nothing pays off like restraint of tongue and pen. We must 
avoid quick-tempered criticism, furious power-driven 
argument, sulking, and silent scorn. These are emotional 
booby traps baited with pride and vengefulness. When we 
are tempted by the bait, we should train ourselves to step 
back and think. We can neither think nor act to good purpose 
until the habit of self-restraint has become automatic. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE 
Community Problem 
The answer to the problem of alcoholism seems to be in 
education -- education in schoolrooms, in medical colleges, 
among clergymen and employers, in families, and in the 
public at large. From cradle to grave, the drunk and the 
potential alcoholic will have to be completely surrounded by 
a true and deep understanding and by a continuous barrage 
of information. 
This means factual education, properly presented. 
Heretofore, much of this education has attacked the
immorality of drinking rather than the illness of alcoholism. 
Now who is going to do all this education? Obviously, it is 
both a community job and a job for specialists. Individually, 
we A.A.'s can help, but A.A. as such cannot, and should not, 
get directly into this field. Therefore, we must rely on other 
agencies, on outside friends and their willingness to supply 
great amounts of money and effort. 
GRAPEVINE, MARCH 1958 
Imaginary Perfection 
When we early A.A.'s got our first glimmer of how spiritually 
prideful we could be, we coined this expression: "Don't try to 
be a saint by Thursday!" 
That oldtime admonition may look like another of those 
handy alibis that can excuse us from trying for our best. Yet 
a closer view reveals just the contrary. This is our A.A. way 
of warning against pride-blindness, and the imaginary 
perfections that we do not possess. 
Only Step One, where we made the 100 per cent admission 
that we were powerless over alcohol, can be practiced with 
absolute perfection. The remaining eleven Steps state perfect 
ideals. They are goals toward which we look, and the 
measuring sticks by which we estimate our progress.
The Reality of Spiritual Experiences 
"Perhaps you raise the question of hallucination versus the 
divine imagery of a genuine spiritual experience. I doubt if 
anyone has authoritatively defined what an hallucination 
really is. However, it is certain that all recipients of spiritual 
experiences declare for their reality. The best evidence of 
that reality is in the subsequent fruits. Those who receive 
these gifts of grace are very much changed people, almost 
invariably for the better. This can scarcely be said of those 
who hallucinate. 
"Some might think me presumptuous when I say that my 
own experience is real. Nevertheless, I can surely report that 
in my own life and in the lives of countless others, the fruits 
of that experience have been real, and the benefactions 
beyond reckoning." 
TALK 1960 
A Viewer-with-Alarm 
"I went through several fruitless years in a state called 
`viewing with alarm for the good of the movement'. I thought 
it was up to me to be always `correcting conditions'. Seldom 
had anybody been able to tell me what I ought to do, and 
nobody had ever succeeded in effectively telling me what I 
must do. I had to learn the hard way out of my own 
experience. 
"When setting out to `check' others, I found myself often 
motivated by fear of what they were doing, selfrighteousness, and even downright intolerance. 
Consequently, I seldom succeeded in correcting anything. I 
just raised barriers of resentment thatcut off any suggestion, 
example, understanding, or love." 
"A.A.'s often say, `Our leaders do not drive by mandate; they 
lead by example.' If we would favorable affect others, we 
ourselves need to practice what we preach -- and forget the 
`preaching,' too. The quiet good example speaks for itself." 
Meeting Adversity 
"Our spiritual and emotional growth in A.A. does not depend 
so deeply upon success as it does upon our failures and 
setbacks. Ifyou will bear this in mind, I think that your slip 
will have the effect of kicking you upstairs, instead of down. 
"We A.A.'s have had no better teacher than Old Man 
Adversity, except in those cases where we refuse to let him 
teach us." 
"Now and then all of us fall under heavy criticism. When we 
are angered and hurt, it's difficult not to retaliate in kind. Yet 
we can restrain ourselves and then probe ourselves, asking 
whether our critics were really right. If so, we can admit our 
defects to them. This usually clears the air for mutual 
understanding. 
"Suppose our critics are being unfair. Then we can try to 
calm persuasion. If they continue to rant, it is still possible 
for us -- in our hearts -- to forgive them. Maybe a sense of 
humour can be our saving grace -- thus we can both forgive 
and forget." 
Boomerang 
When I was ten, I was tall and gawky, and smaller kids could 
push me around in quarrels. I remember being very 
depressed for a year ormore, and then I began to develop a 
fierce resolve to win. 
One day, my grandfather came along with a book about 
Australia and told me, "This book says that nobody but an 
Australian bushman knows how to make and throw the 
boomerang." 
"Here's my chance," I thought. "I will be the first man in 
America to make and throw a boomerang." Well, any kid 
could have had a notion like that. It might have lasted two 
days or two weeks. But mine was a power drive that kept on 
for six months, till Imade a boomerang that swung around 
the church yard in front of the house and almost hit my 
grandfather in the head when it came back. 
Emotionally, I had begun the fashioning of another sort of 
boomerang, one that almost killed me later on. 
A.A. COMES OF AGE, P. 53 
"The Only Requirement . . ." 
In Tradition Three, A.A. is really saying to every serious 
drinker, "You are an A.A. member if you say so. You can 
declare yourself in; nobody can keep you out. No matter how 
grave your emotional complications -- even your crimes-- we 
don't want to keep you out. We just want to be sure that you 
get the same chance for sobriety that we've had." 
We do not wish to deny anyone his chance to recover from 
alcoholism. We wish to be just as inclusive as we can, never 
exclusive. 
Talk or Action? 
In making amends, it is seldom wise to approach an 
individual, who still smarts from our injustice to him, and 
announce that we have gone religious. This might be called 
leading with the chin. Why lay ourselves open to being 
branded fanatics or religious bores? If we do this, we may kill 
a future opportunity to carry a beneficial message.
But the man who hears our amends is sure to be impressed 
with a sincere desire to set right a wrong. He is going to be 
more interested in a demonstration of good will than in our 
talk of spiritual discoveries. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 77 
To Survive Trials 
In our belief, any scheme of combating alcoholism which 
proposes wholly to shield the sick man from temptation is 
doomed to failure. If the alcoholic tries to shield himself he 
may succeed for a time, but he usually winds up with a 
bigger explosion than ever. We have tried these methods. 
These attempts to do the impossible have always failed. 
Release from alcohol, and not flight from it, is our answer. 
"Faith without works is dead." And how appallingly true for 
the alcoholic! For if an alcoholic fails to perfect and enlarge 
his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he 
cannot survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If he 
does not work, he will surely drink again, and if he drinks, he 
will surely die. Then faith will be dead indeed. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS 
Experimenters 
We agnostics liked A.A. all right, and were quick to say that it 
had done miracles. But we recoiled from meditation and 
prayer as obstinately as the scientist who refused to perform 
a certain experiment lest it prove his pet theory wrong. 
When we finally did experiment, and unexpected results 
followed, we felt different; in fact, we knew different; and so 
we were sold on meditation and prayer. And that, we have 
found, can happen to anybody who tries. It has been well 
said that "Almost theonly scoffers at prayer are those who 
never tried it enough." 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 97 
The A.A. Way in the Home* 
Though an alcoholic does not respond, there is no reason 
why you should neglect his family. You should continue to 
be friendly to them, explaining A.A.'s concept of alcoholism 
and its treatment. If they accept this and also apply our 
principles to their problems, there is a much better chance 
that the head of the family will recover. And even though he 
continues to drink, the family will find life more bearable. 
Unless a new member's family readily expresses a desire to 
live upon spiritual principles, we think he ought not to urge 
them. They will change in time. His better behavior will 
usually convince them far more than his words. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS 
* Today, the initiation of the A.A. way of life in the home is 
the central purpose of the Al-Anon Family Groups, of which 
there are (as of 1978) about 15,300 throughout the world. 
These are composed of wives, husbands, and relatives of 
alcoholics. In restoring families to the good life, Al-Anon's 
success has been enormous. 
The Beginning of Humility 
"There are few absolute inherent in the Twelve Steps. Most 
Steps are open to interpretation, based on the experience 
and outlook of the individual. 
"Consequently, the individual is free to start the Steps at 
whatever point he can, or will. God, as we understand Him, 
may be defined as a `Power greater...' or the Higher Power. 
For thousands of members, the A.A. group itself has been a 
`Higher Power' in the beginning. This acknowledgment is 
easy to make if a newcomer knows that most of the members 
are sober and he isn't. 
"His admission is the beginning of humility -- at least the 
newcomer is willing to disclaim that he himself is God. That's 
all the start he needs. If, following this achievement, he will 
relax and practice as many of the Steps as he can, he is sure 
to grow spiritually." 
Carrying the Message 
The wonderful energy the Twelfth Step releases, by which it 
carries our message to the next suffering alcoholic and 
finally translates the Twelve Steps into action upon all our 
affairs, is the payoff, the magnificent reality of A.A. 
Never talk down to an alcoholic from any moral or spiritual 
hilltop; simply lay out the kit of spiritual tools for his 
inspection. Show him how they worked with you. Offer him 
friendship and fellowship. 
The Spiritual Alibi 
Our first attempts at inventories are apt to prove very 
unrealistic. I used to be a champ at unrealistic self-appraisal. 
On certain occasions, I wanted to look only at the part of my 
life which seemed good. Then I would greatly exaggerate 
whatever virtues I supposed I had attained. Next I would 
congratulate myself on the grand job I was doing in A.A. 
Naturally this generated a terrible hankering for still more 
"accomplishments," and still more approval. I was falling 
straight back into the pattern of my drinking days. Here were 
the same old goals -- power, fame, and applause. Besides, I 
had the best alibi known -- the spiritual alibi. The fact that I 
really did have a spiritual objective made this utter nonsense 
seem perfectly right. 
GRAPEVINE, JUNE 1961 
The Obsession and the Answer 
The idea is somehow, some day, he will control and enjoy his 
drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. 
The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue 
it into the gates of insanity or death. 
Alcoholism, not cancer, was my illness, but what was the 
difference? Was not alcoholism also a consumer of body and 
mind? Alcoholism took longer to do its killing, but the result 
was the same. So, I decided, if there was a great Physician 
who could cure the alcoholic sickness, I had better seek Him 
at once. 
The Language of the Heart 
Why, at this particular point in history, has God chosen to 
communicate His healing grace to so many of us? Every 
aspect of this global unfoldment can be related to a single 
crucial word. The word is "communication". There has been 
a lifesaving communication among ourselves, with the world 
around us, and with God. 
>From the beginning, communication in A.A. has been no 
ordinary transmission of helpful ideas and attitudes. 
Because our common means of deliverance are effective for 
ourselves only when constantly carried to others, our 
channels of contact have always charged with the language 
of the heart. 
A.A. COMES OF AGE, PP. 7-8 
Antidote for Fear 
When our failings generate fear, we then have soul-sickness. 
This sickness, in turn, generates still more character defects. 
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. We eat, drink, and 
grab for more of everything than we need, fearing we shall 
never have enough. And, with genuine alarm at the prospect 
at work, we stay lazy. We loaf and procrastinate, or at best 
work grudgingly and under half steam. 
These fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the 
foundations of whatever sort of life we try to build. 
As faith grows, so does inner security. The vast underlying 
fear of nothingness commences to subside. We of A.A. find 
that our basic antidote for fear is a spiritual awakening. 
Where Rationalizing Leads 
"You know what our genius for rationalization is. If, to 
ourselves, we fully justify one slip, then our rationalizing 
propensities are almost sure to justify another one, perhaps 
with a different set of excuses. But one justification leads to 
another and presently we are back on the bottle full-time." 
Experience shows, all too often, that even the "controlled" 
pill-taker may get out of control. The same crazy 
rationalizations that once characterized his drinking begin to 
blight his existence. He thinks that if pills can cure insomnia 
so may they cure his worry. 
Our friends the doctors are seldom directly to blame for the 
dire results we so often experience. It is much too easy for 
alcoholics to buy these dangerous drugs, and once 
possessed of them the drinker is often likely to use them 
without any judgement whatever. 
Tell the Public? 
"A.A.'s of worldly prominence sometimes say, `If I tell the 
public that I am in Alcoholics Anonymous, then that will 
bring in many others.' Thus they express the belief that our 
anonymity Tradition is wrong -- at least for them. 
"They forget that, during their drinking days, prestige and the 
achievement of worldly ambition were their principal aims. 
They do not realize that, by breaking anonymity, they are 
unconsciously pursuing those old and perilous illusions 
once more. They forget that the keeping of one's anonymity 
often means a sacrifice of one's desire for power, prestige, 
and money. They do not see that if these strivings became 
general in A.A., the course of our whole history would be 
changed; that we would be sowing the seeds of our own 
destruction as a society. 
"Yet I can happily report that while many of us are tempted -- 
and I have been one -- few of us in America actually break 
our anonymity at the public-media level." 
Arrogance and Its Opposite 
A very tough-minded prospect was taken to his first A.A. 
meeting, where two speakers (or maybe lecturers) themed 
their talks on "God as I understand Him." Their attitude 
oozed arrogance. In fact, the final speaker got far overboard 
on his personal theological convictions. 
Both were repeating my performance of years before. Implicit 
in everything they said was the same idea: "Folks, listen to 
us. We have the only true brand of A.A. -- and you'd better 
get it!" 
The new prospect said he'd had it -- and he had. His sponsor 
protested that this wasn't real A.A. But it was to late; nobody 
could touch him after that. 
I see "humility for today" as a safe and secure stance 
midway between violent emotional extremes. It is a quiet 
place where I can keep enough perspective and enough 
balance to take my next small step up the clearly marked 
road that points toward eternal values. 
GRAPEVINE 
Source of Strength 
When World War II broke out, our A.A. dependence on a 
Higher Power had its first major test. A.A.'s entered the 
services and were scattered all over the world. 
Would they be able to take discipline, stand up under fire, 
and endure the monotony and misery of war? Would the kind 
of dependence they had learned in A.A. carry them through? 
Well, it did. They had even fewer alcoholic lapses or 
emotional binges than A.A.'s safe at home did. They were 
just as capable of endurance and valor as any other soldiers. 
Whether in Alaska or on the Salerno beachhead, their 
dependence upon a Higher Power worked. 
Far from being a weakness, this dependence was their chief 
source of strength. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 38-39 
Unlimited Choice 
Any number of alcoholics are bedeviled by the dire 
conviction that if ever they go nearA.A. they will be 
pressured to conform to some particular brand of faith or 
theology. 
They just don't realize that faith is never an imperative for 
A.A. memberships; that sobriety can be achieved with an 
easily acceptable minimum of it, and that our concepts of a 
Higher Power and God -- as we understand Him -- afford 
everyone a nearly unlimited choice of spiritual belief and 
action. 
In talking to a prospect, stress the spiritual feature freely. If 
the man be agnostic or atheist, make it emphatic that he 
does not have to agree with your conception of God. He can 
choose any conception he likes, provided it makes sense to 
him. 
The main thing is that he be willing to believe in a Power 
greater than himself and that he live by spiritual principles. 
The Hour of Decision 
"Not all large decisions can be well made by simply listing 
the pros and cons of a given situation, helpful and necessary 
as this process is. We cannot always depend on what seems 
to us to be logical. When there is doubt about our logic, we 
wait upon God and listen for the voice of intuition. If, in 
meditation, that voice is persistent enough, we may well gain 
sufficient confidence to act upon that, rather than upon logic. 
"If after an exercise of these two disciplines, we are still 
uncertain, then we should ask for further guidance and, when 
possible, defer important decisions for a time. By then, with 
more knowledge of our situation, logic and intuition maywell 
agree upon a right course. 
"But if the decision must be now, let us not evade it through 
fear. Right or wrong, we can always profit from the
experience." 
True Tolerance 
Gradually we began to be able to accept the other fellow's 
sins as well as his virtues. We coined the potent and 
meaningful expression "Let us always love the best in others 
-- and never fear their worst." 
Finally, we begin to see that all people, including ourselves, 
are to some extent emotionally ill as well as frequently 
wrong. When this happens, we approach true tolerance and 
we see what real love for our fellows actually means. 
The Building of Character 
Since most of us are born with an abundance of natural 
desires, it isn't strange that we often let these far exceed 
their intended purpose. When they drive us blindly, or we 
willfully demand that they supply us with more satisfactions 
or pleasures than are possible or due to us, that is the point 
at which we depart from the degree of perfection that God 
wishes for us here on earth. That is the measure of our 
character defects, or, if you wish, of our sins. 
If we ask, God will certainly forgive our derelictions. But in 
no case does He render us white as snow and keep us that 
way without our cooperation. That is something we are 
supposed to be willing to work toward ourselves. He asks 
only that we try as best we know how to make progress in 
the building of character. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 65 
Virtue and Self-Deception 
I used to take comfort from an exaggerated belief in my own 
honesty. My New England kinfolk had taught me the sanctity 
of all business commitments and contracts, saying, "A man's 
word is his bond." After this rigorous conditioning, business 
honesty always came easy; I never flim-flammed anyone. 
However, this small fragment of readily won virtue did 
produce some interesting liabilities. I never failed to whip up 
a fine contempt for those of my fellow Wall Streeters who 
were prone to shortchange their customers. This was
arrogant enough, but the ensuing self-deception proved even 
worse. 
My prized business honesty was presently converted into a 
comfortable cloak under which I could hide the many serious 
flaws that beset other departments of my life. Being certain 
of this one virtue, it was easy to conclude that I had them all. 
For years on end, this prevented me from taking a good look 
at myself. 
GRAPEVINE, AUGUST 1961 
Praying for Others 
While prayingsincerely, we still may fall into temptation. We 
form ideas as to what we think God's will is for other people. 
We say to ourselves, "This one ought to be cured of his fatal 
malady" or "That one ought to be relieved of his emotional 
pain," and we pray for these specific things. 
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. This means that side 
by side with an earnest prayer there can be a certain amount 
of presumption and conceit in us. 
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. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 104 
The Fellowship's Future 
"It seems proved that A.A. can stand on its own feet 
anywhere and under any conditions. It has outgrown any 
dependence it might once have had upon the personalities or 
efforts of a few of the older members like me. New, able, and 
vigorous people keep coming to the surface, turning up 
where they are needed. Besides, A.A. has reached enough 
spiritual maturity to know that its final dependence is upon 
God." 
Clearly, our first duty to A.A.'s future is to maintain in full 
strength what we now have. Only the most vigilant 
caretaking can assure this. Never should we be lulled into 
complacent self-satisfaction by the wide acclaim and 
success that are everywhere ours. This is the subtle 
temptation which could render us stagnant today, perchance 
disintegrate us tomorrow. We have always rallied to meet 
and transcend failure and crisis. Problems have been our 
stimulants. How well, though, shall we be able to meet the 
problems of success? 
Reason -- a Bridge to Faith 
We were squarely confronted with the question of faith. We 
couldn't duck the issue. Some of us had already walked 
along the bridge of reason toward the desired shore of faith, 
where friendly hands had stretched out in welcome. We were 
grateful that reason had brought us so far. But, somehow, we 
couldn't quite step ashore. Perhaps we had been relying too 
heavily on Reason that last mile, and we did not like to lose 
our support. 
Yet without knowing it, had we not been brought to where we 
stood by a certain kind of faith? For did we not believe in our 
own reasoning? Did we not have confidence in our ability to 
think? What was that but a sort of faith? Yes, we had been 
faithful, abjectly faithful to the god of reason. So, in one way 
or another, we discovered that faith had been involved all the 
time! 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, PP. 53-54 
Never the Same Again 
It was discovered that when one alcoholic had planted in the 
mind of another the true nature of his malady, that person 
could never be the same again. Following every spree, he 
would say to himself, "Maybe those A.A.'s were right." After a 
few such experiences, often before the onset of extreme 
difficulties, he would return to us convinced. 
In the first years, those of us who sobered up in A.A. had 
been grim and utterly hopeless cases. But then we began to 
have success with milder alcoholics and even some potential 
alcoholics. Younger folks appeared. Lots of people turned up 
who still had jobs, homes, health, and even good social 
standing. 
Of course, it was necessary for these newcomers to hit 
bottom emotionally. But they did not have to hit every 
possible bottom in order to admit that they were licked. 
Out of Bondage 
At Step Three, many of us said to our Maker, as we 
understood Him: "God, I offer myself to Thee -- to build with 
me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the 
bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my 
difficulties, that transcendence over them may bear witness 
to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way 
of life. May I do Thy will always!" 
We thought well before taking this Step, making sure we 
were ready. Then we could commence to abandon ourselves 
utterly to Him. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 63 
Reaching for Humility 
We saw we needn't always be bludgeoned and beaten into 
humility. It could come quite as much from our voluntary 
reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering. 
"We first reach for a little humility, knowing that we shall 
perish of alcoholism if we do not. After a time, though we 
may still rebel somewhat, we commence to practice humility 
because this is the right thing to do. Then comes the day 
when, finally freed in large degree from rebellion, we practice 
humility because we deeply want it as a way of life." 
Faith and Action 
Your prospect's religious education and training may be far 
superior to yours. In that case, he is going to wonder how 
you can add anything to what he already knows. 
But he will be curious to learn why his own convictions have 
not worked and why yours seem to work so well. He may be 
an example of the truth that faith alone is insufficient. To be 
vital, faith must be accompanied by self sacrifice and 
unselfish, constructive action. 
Admit that he probably knows more about religion than you 
do, but remind him that, however deep his faith and
knowledge, these qualities could not have served him well, 
or he would not be asking your help. 
Dr. Bob did not need me for his spiritual instruction. He had 
already had more of that than I. What he did need, when we 
first met, was the deflation at depth and the understanding 
that only one drunk can give to another. What I needed was 
the humility of self-forgetfulness and the kinship with 
another human being of my own kind. 
Complete the Housecleaning 
Time after time, newcomers have tried to keep to themselves 
shoddy facts about their lives. Trying to avoid the humbling 
experience of the Fifth Step, they have turned to easier 
methods. Almost invariably they got drunk. Having 
persevered with the rest of the program, they wondered why 
they fell. 
We think the reason is that they never completed their 
housecleaning. They took inventory all right, but hung on to 
some of the worst items in stock. They only thought they had 
lost their egoism and fear; they only thought they had 
humbled themselves. But they had not learned enough of 
humility, fearlessness and honesty, in the sense we find it 
necessary, until they told someone else all their life story. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, PP. 72-73 
Only Try 
In my teens, I had to be an athlete because I was not an 
athlete. I had to be a musician because I could not carry a 
tune. I had to be the president of my class in boarding 
school. I had to be first in everything because in my perverse 
heart I felt myself the least of God's creatures. I could not 
accept my deep sense of inferiority, and so I strove to 
become captain of the baseball team, and I did learn to play 
the fiddle. Lead I must -- or else. This was the "all or nothing" 
kind of demand that later did me in. 
"I'm glad you are going to try that new job. But make sure 
that you are only going to `try'. If you approach the project in 
the attitude that `I must succeed, I must not fail, I cannot fail,' 
then you guarantee a drinking relapse. But if you look at the 
venture as a constructive experiment only, then all should go 
well." 
Constructive Workouts 
There are those in A.A. whom we call "destructive" critics. 
They power-drive, they are "politickers," theymake 
accusation to gain their ends -- all for the good of A.A., of 
course! But we have learned that these folks need not be 
really destructive. 
We ought to listen carefully to what they say. Sometimes 
they are telling the whole truth; at other times, a little truth. If 
we are within their range, the whole truth, the half truth, or no 
truth at all can prove equally unpleasant to us. If they have 
got the whole truth, or even little truth, then we had better 
thank them and get on withour respective inventories, 
admitting we were wrong. If they are talking nonsense, we 
can ignoreit, or else try to persuade them. Failing this, we 
can be sorry they are too sick to listen, and we can try to 
forget the whole business. 
There are few better means of self-survey and of developing 
patience than the workouts these usually well-meaning but 
erratic members so often afford us. 
TWELVE CONCEPTS, P. 43 
After the "Honeymoon" 
"For most of us, the first years of A.A. are something like a 
honeymoon. There is a new and potent reason to stay alive, 
joyful activity aplenty. For a time, we are diverted from the 
main life problems. That is all to the good. 
"But when the honeymoon has worn off, we are obliged to 
take our lumps, like other people. This is where the testing 
starts. Maybe the group has pushed us onto the side lines. 
Maybe difficulties have intensified at home, or in the world 
outside. Then theold behavior patterns reappear. How well 
we recognize and deal with them reveals the extent of our 
progress." 
The wise have always known that no one can make much of 
his life until self-searching becomes a regular habit, until he 
is able to admit and accept what he finds, and until he 
patiently and persistently tries to correct what is wrong. 
Hope Born from Hopelessness 
"Most conversion experiences, whatever their variety, do 
have a common denominator of ego collapse at depth. The 
individual faces an impossible dilemma. 
"In my case the dilemma had been created by my compulsive 
drinking, and the deep feeling of hopelessness had been 
vastly deepened by my doctor. It was deepened still more by 
my alcoholic friend when he acquainted me with your verdict 
of hopelessness respecting Rowland H. 
<note: the following is "The Message" !!!> 
"In the wake of my spiritual experience there came a vision 
of a society of alcoholics. If each sufferer were to carry the 
news of the scientifc hopelessness of alcoholism to each 
new prospect, he might be able to lay every newcomer wide 
open to a transforming spiritual experience. This concept 
proved to be the foundation of such success as A.A. has 
since achieved." 
GRAPEVINE, JANUARY 1963 
Happy -- When We're Free 
For most normal folks, drinking means release from care, 
boredom and worry. It means joyous intimacy with friends 
and a feeling that life is good. 
But not so with us in those last days of heavy drinking. The 
old pleasures were gone. There was an insistent yearning to 
enjoy life as we once did and a heartbreaking delusion that 
some new miracle of control would enable us to do it. There 
was always one more attempt -- and one more failure. 
We are sure God would like us to be happy, joyous, and free. 
Hence, we cannot subscribe to the belief that this life 
necessarily has to be a vale of tears, though it once was just 
that for many of us. But it became clear that most of the time 
we had madeour own misery. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS 
Willing to Believe 
Do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms 
deter you from honestly asking yourself what they might 
mean to you. At the start, this was all we needed to 
commence spiritual growth, to effect our first conscious 
relation with God as we understood Him. Afterward, we 
found ourselves accepting many things which had seemed 
entirely out of reach. That was growth. But if we wished to 
grow we had to begin somewhere. So we used our own 
conceptions of God, however limited they were. 
Weneeded to ask ourselves but one short question: "Do I 
now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a 
Power greater than myself?" As soon as a man can say that 
he does believe, or is willing to believe, we emphatically 
assure him that he ison his way. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 47 
In Partnership 
As we made spiritual progress, it became clear that, if we 
ever were to feel emotionally secure, we would have to put 
our lives on a give-and-take basis; we would have to develop 
the sense of being in partnership or brotherhood with all 
those around us. We saw that we would need to give 
constantly of ourselves without demand for repayment. 
When we persistently did this, we gradually found that 
people were attracted to us as never before. And even if they 
failed us, we could be understanding and not too seriously 
affected. 
The unity, the effectiveness, and even the survival of A.A. will 
always depend upon our continued willingness to give up 
some of our personal ambitionsand desires for the common 
safety and welfare. Just as sacrifice means survival for the 
individual alcoholic, so does sacrifice mean unity and 
survival for the group and for A.A.'s entire Fellowship. 
God Will Not Desert Us 
"Word comes to me that you are making a magnificent stand 
in adversity -- this adversity being the state of your health. It 
gives me a chance to express my gratitude for your recovery 
in A.A. and especially for the demonstration of its principles 
you are now so inspringly giving to us all. 
"You will be glad to know that A.A.'s have an almost unfailing 
record in this respect. This, I think, is because we are so 
aware that God will not desert us when the chips are down; 
indeed, He did not when we were drinking. And so it should 
be with the remainder of life. 
"Certainly, He does not plan to save us from all troubles and 
adversity. Nor, in the end, does He save us from so-called 
death -- since this is but an openingof a door into a new life, 
where we shall dwell among His many mansions. Touching 
these things I know you have a most confident faith." 
Who Is to Blame? 
At Step Four we resolutely looked for our own mistakes. 
Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and 
frightened? Though a given situation had not been entirely 
our fault, we often tried to cast the whole blame on the other 
person involved. 
We finally saw that the inventory should be ours, not the 
other man's. So we admitted our wrongs honestly and
became willing to set these matters straight. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 67 
One Fellowship -- Many Faiths 
As a society we must never become so vain as to suppose 
that we are authors and inventors of a new religion. We will 
humbly reflect that every one of A.A.'s principles has been 
borrowed from ancient sources. 
A minister in Thailand wrote, "We took A.A.'s Twelve Steps to 
the largest Buddhist monastry in this province, and the head 
priest said, `Why,these Steps are fine! For us Buddhists, it 
might be slightly more acceptable if you had inserted the 
word `good' in your Steps instead of `God'. Nevertehless, 
you say that it is God as you understand Him, and that must 
certainly include the good. Yes, A.A.'s Twelve Steps will 
surely be accepted by Buddhists around here.'" 
St. Louis oldtimers recall how Father Edward Dowling helped 
start their group; it turned out to be largely Protestant, but 
this fazed him not a bit. 
A.A. COMES OF AGE 
Leadership in A.A. 
No society can function well without able leadership at all its 
levels, and A.A. can be no exception. But we A.A.'s
sometimes cherish the thought that we can do without much 
personal leadership at all. We are apt to warp the traditional 
idea of "principles before personalities" around to such a 
point that there would be no "personality" in leadership 
whatever. This would imply rather faceless robots trying to 
please everybody. 
A leader in A.A. service is a man (or woman) who can 
personally put principles, plans, and policies into such 
dedicated and effective action that the rest of us naturally 
want to back him up and help him with his job. When a leader 
powerdrives us badly, we rebel; but when he too meekly 
becomes an order-taker and he exercises no judgement of 
his own -- well, he really isn't a leader at all. 
TWELVE CONCEPTS, PP. 41, 42 
The Answer in the Mirror 
While drinking, we were certain that our intelligence, backed 
by will power,could rightly control our inner lives and 
guarantee us success in the world around us. This brave 
philosophy, wherein each man played God, sounded good in 
the speaking, but it still had to meet the acid test: How well 
did it actually work? One good look in the mirror was answer 
enough. 
My spiritual awakening was electrically sudden and 
absolutely convincing. At once, I became a part -- if only a 
tiny part -- of a cosmos that was ruled by justice and love in 
the person of God. No matter what had been the 
consequences of my own willfulness and ignorance, or those 
of my fellow travelers on earth, this was still the truth. Such 
was the new and positive assurance, and this has never left 
me. 
Humility for the Fellowship, Too 
We of A.A. sometimes brag of the virtues of our Fellowship. 
Let us remember that few of these are actually earned 
virtues. We were forced into them, to begin with, by the cruel 
lash of alcoholism. We finally adopted them, not because we 
wished to, but because we had to. 
Then, as time confirmed the seeming rightness of our basic 
principles, we began to conform because it was right to do 
so. Some of us, notably myself, conformed even then with 
reluctance. 
But at last we came to a point where we stood willing to 
conform gladly to the principles which experience, under the 
grace of God, had taught us. 
A.A. COMES OF AGE, P. 224 
Is Sobriety Enough? 
The alcoholic is like a tornado rearing his way throughthe 
lives of others. Hearts are broken. Sweet relationships are 
dead. Affections have been uprooted. Selfish and 
inconsiderate habits have kept the home in turmoil.
We feel a man is unthinking when he says that sobriety is 
enough. He is like the farmer who came up out of his cyclone 
cellar to find his home ruined. To his wife, he remarked, 
"Don't see anything the matter here, Ma. Ain't it grand the 
wind stopped blowin'?" 
We ask ourselves what we mean when we say that we have 
"harmed" other people. What kinds of "harm" do people to 
one another, anyway? To define the word "harm" in a
practical way, we might call it the result of instincts in 
collision, which cause physical, mental, emotional, or 
spiritual damage to those about us. 
The Beginning of True Kinship 
When we reached A.A., and for the first time in our lives 
stood among people who seemed to understand, the sense 
of belonging was tremendously exciting. We thought the 
isolation problem had been solved. 
But we soon discovered that, while we weren't alone any 
more in a social sense, we still suffered many of the old 
pangs of anxious apartness. Until we had talked with 
complete candor of our conflicts, and had listened to 
someone else do the same thing, we still didn't belong. 
Step Five was the answer. It was the beginning of true 
kinship with man and God. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 57 
Day of Homecoming 
"As sobriety means long life and happiness for the 
individual, so does unity mean exactly the same thing to our 
Society as a whole. Unified we live; disunited we shall 
perish." 
"We must think deeply of all those sick ones still to come to 
A.A. As they try to make their return to faith and to life, we 
want them to find everything in A.A. that we have found, and 
yet more, if that be possible. No care, no vigilance, no effort 
to preserve A.A.'s constant effectiveness and spiritual 
strength will ever be too great to hold us in full readiness for 
the day of their homecoming." 
Love Everybody? 
Not many people can truthfully assert that they love 
everybody. Most of us must admit that we have loved but a 
few; that we have been quite indifferent to the many. As for 
the remainder -- well, we have really disliked or hated them. 
We A.A.'s find we need something much better than this in 
order to keep our balance. The idea that we can be 
possessively loving of a few, can ignore the many, and can 
continue to fear or hate anybody at all, has to be abandoned, 
if only a little at a time. 
We can try to stop making unreasonable demands upon
those we love. We can show kindness where we had formerly 
shown none. With those we dislike we can at least begin to 
practice justice and courtesy, perhaps going out of our way 
at times to understand and help them. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 92-93 
Privileged to Communicate 
Everyone must agree that we A.A.'s are unbelievably
fortunate people; fortunate that we have suffered so 
much;fortunate that we can know, understand, and love each 
other so supremely well. 
These attributes and virtues are scarcely of the earned 
variety. Indeed, most of us are well aware that these are rare 
gifts which have their true origin in our kinship born of a 
common suffering and a common deliverance by the grace of 
God. 
Thereby we are privileged to communicate with each other to 
a degree and in a manner not very often surpassed among 
our nonalcoholic friends in the world around us. 
"I used to be ashamed of my condition and so didn't talk 
about it. But nowadays I freely confess I am a depressive, 
and this has attracted other depressives to me. Working with 
them has helped a great deal."° 
° Bill would like to say that he has had no depression since 
The Value of Human Will 
Many newcomers, having experienced little but constant 
deflation, feel a growing conviction that human will is of no 
value whatever. They have become persuaded, sometimes 
rightly so, that many problems besides alcohol will not yield 
to a headlong assault powered only by the individual's will. 
However, there are certain things which the individual alone 
can do. All by himself, and in the light of his own
circumstances, he needs to develop the quality of 
willingness. When he acqires willingness, he is the only one 
who can then make the decisionto exert himself along 
spiritual lines. Trying to do this is actually an act of his own 
will. It is a right use of this faculty. 
Indeed, all of A.A.'s Twelve Steps require our sustained and 
personal exertion to conform to their principles and so, we 
trust, to God's will. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 40 
Everyday Living 
The A.A. emphasis on personal inventory is heavy because a 
great many of us have never really acquired the habit of 
accurate self-appraisal. 
Once this healthy practice has become a habit, it will prove 
so interesting and profitable that the time it takes won't be 
missed. For these minutes and often hours spent in selfexamination are bound to make all the other hours of our day 
better and happier. At length, our inventories become a 
necessity of everyday living, rather than something unusual 
or set apart. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 89-90 
Freed Prisoners 
"Every A.A. has been, in a sense, a prisoner. Each of us has 
walled himself out of society; each has known social stigma. 
The lot of you folks has been even more difficult: In your 
case, society has also built a wall around you.But there isn't 
any really essential difference, a fact that practically all A.A.'s 
now know. 
"Therefore, when you members come into the world of A.A. 
on the outside, you can be sure that no one will care a fig 
that you have done time. What you are trying to be -- not 
what you were -- is all that counts with us." 
"Mental and emotional difficulties are sometimes very hard 
to take while we are trying to maintain sobriety. Yet we do 
see, in the long run, that transcendence over such problems 
is the real test of the A.A. way of living. Adversity gives us 
more opportunity to grow than does comfort or success." 
Looking for Lost Faith 
Any number of A.A.'s can say, "We were diverted from our 
childhood faith. As material success began to come, we felt 
we were winning at the game of life. This was exhilarating, 
and it made us happy. 
"Why should we be bothered with theological abstractions 
and religious duties, or with the state of our souls, here or 
hereafter? The will to win should carry us through.
"But then alcohol began have its way with us. Finally, when 
all our score cards read `zero,' and we saw that one more 
strike would put us out of the game forever, we had to look 
for our lost faith. It was in A.A. that we rediscovered it." 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 28-29 
Perfection -- Only the Objective 
There can be no absolute humility for us humans. At best, we 
can merely glimpse the meaning and splendor of such a 
perfect ideal. Only God himself canmanifest in the absolute; 
we human beings must needs live and grow in the domain of 
the relative. 
So we seek progress in humility for today. 
Few of us can quickly or easily become ready even to look at 
spiritual and moral perfection; we want to settle for only as 
much development as may get us by in life, according, of 
course, to our various and sundry ideas of what will get us 
by. Mistakenly, we strive for a self-determined objective, 
rather than for the perfect objective which is of God. 
No Orders Issued 
Neither the A.A. General Service Conference, its Board of 
Trustees, nor the humblest group committee can issue a 
single directive to an A.A. member and make it stick, let 
alone mete out any punishment. We've tried this lots of 
times, but utter failure isalways the result. 
Groups have sometimes tried to expel members, but the 
banished have come back to sit in the meeting place, saying, 
"This is life for us; you can't keep us out." Committees have 
instructed many an A.A. to stop working a chronic 
backslider, only to be told: "How I do my Twelfth Step work 
is my business. Who are you to judge?" 
This doesn't mean that an A.A. won't take good advice or 
suggestions from more experienced members. He simply 
objects to taking orders. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 173 
Maudlin Martyrdom 
"Self-pity is one of the most unhappy and consuming defects 
that we know. It is a bar to all spiritual progress and can cut 
off all effective communication with our fellows because of 
its inordinate demands for attention and sympathy. It is a 
maudlin form of martyrdom, which we can ill afford.
"The remedy? Well, let's have a hard look at ourselves, and a 
still harder one at A.A.'s Twelve Steps to recovery. When we 
see how many of our fellow A.A.'s have used the Steps to 
transcend great pain and adversity, we shall be inspired to 
try these life-giving principles for ourselves." 
When and How to Give 
Men who cry for money and shelter as a condition of their 
sobriety, are on the wrong track. Yet we sometimes do 
provide a new prospect with these very things -- when it 
becomes clear that he is willing to place his recovery first. 
It is not whether we shall give that is the question, but when 
and how we give. Whenever we put our work on a material 
plane, the alcoholic commences to rely upon alms rather 
than upon a Higher Power and the A.A. group. He continues 
to insist that he cannot master alcohol until his material 
needs are cared for. 
Nonsense. Some of us have taken very hard knocks to learn 
this truth: that, job or no job, wife or no wife, we simply do 
not stop drinking so long as we place dependence upon 
other people ahead of dependence on God. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 98 
Hard on Ourselves, Considerate of Others 
We cannot disclose anything to our wives or our parents 
which will hurt them and make them unhappy. We have no 
right to save our own skin at their expense. 
Such damaging parts of our story we tell to someone
elsewho will understand, yet be unaffected. The rule is we 
must be hard on ourselves, but always considerate of others. 
Good judgment will suggest that we ought to take our time in 
making amends to our families. It may be unwise at first to 
rehash certain harrowing episodes. While we may be quite 
willing to reveal the very worst, we must be sure to 
remember that we cannotbuy our own peace of mind at the 
expense of others. 
Middle of the Road 
"In some sections of A.A., anonymity is carried to the point 
of real absurdity. Members are on such a poor basis of 
communication that they don't even know each other's last 
names or where each lives. It's like the cell of an
underground. 
"In other sections, we see exactly the revers. It is difficult to 
restrain A.A.'s from shouting too much before the whole 
public, by going on spectacular `lecture tours' to play the big 
shot. 
"However, I know that from these extremes we slowly pull 
ourselves onto a middle ground. Most lecture-giving
members do not last too long, and the superanonymous 
people are apt to come out of hiding respecting their A.A. 
friends, business associates, and the like. I think the longtime trend is toward the middle of the road -- which is 
probably where we should be." 
Let Go Absolutely 
After failure on my part to dry up any drunks, Dr. Silkworth 
reminded me of Professor William James's observation that 
truly transforming spiritual experiencesare nearly always 
founded on calamity and collapse. "Stop preaching at them," 
Dr. Silkworth said, "and give them the hard medical facts 
first. This may soften them up at depth so that they will be 
willing to do anything to get well. Then they may accept 
those spiritual ideas of yours, and even a Higher Power." 
We beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very 
start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and 
the result was nil -- until we let go absolutely. 
Morning Thoughts 
On awakening, let us think about the twenty-four hours 
ahead. We ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking 
that it be divorced from self-pity and from dishonest or selfseeking motives. Free from these, we can employ our mental 
faculties with assurance, for God gave us brains to use. Our 
thought-life will be on a higher plane when our thinking 
begins to be cleared of wrong motives. 
If we determine which of two courses to take, we ask God for 
inspiration, an intuitive thought, or a decision. Then we relax 
and take it easy, and we are often surprised how the right 
answers come after we have tried this for a while. 
We usually conclude our meditation with a prayer that we be 
shown all through the day what our next step is to be, asking 
especially for freedom from damaging self-will. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, PP. 86, 87 
Toward Maturity 
Many oldsters who have put our A.A. "booze cure" to severe 
but successful tests still find they often lack emotional 
sobriety. To attain this, we must develop real maturity and 
balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with 
ourselves, with our fellows, and with God. 
Let A.A. never be a closed corporation; let us never deny our 
experience, for whatever it may be worth, to the world around 
us. Let our individual members heed the call to every field of 
human endeavor. Let them carry the experience and spirit of 
A.A. into all these affairs, for whatever good they may 
accomplish. For not only has God saved us from alcoholism; 
the world has received us back into its citizenship. 
Singlehanded Combat 
Few indeed are those who, assailed by the tyrant alcohol, 
have ever won through in singlehanded combat. It is a 
statistical fact that alcoholics almost never recover on their 
personal resources alone. 
'Way up toward Point Barrow in Alaska, a couple of 
prospectors got themselves a cabin and a case of Scotch. 
The weather turned bitter, fifty below, and they got so drunk 
they let the fire go out. Barely escaping death by freezing, 
one of them woke up in time to rekindle the fire. He was 
prowling around outside for fuel, and he looked into an 
empty oil drum filled with frozen water. Down in the ice cake 
he saw a reddish-yellow object. When thawed out, it was 
seen to be an A.A. book. One of the pair read the book and 
sobered up. Legend has it that he became the founder of one 
of our farthest north groups. 
Instinct to Live 
When men and women pour so much alcohol into 
themselves that they destroy their lives, they commit a most 
unnatural act. Defying their instinctive desire for selfpreservation, they seem bent upon self-destruction. They 
work against their own deepest instinct. 
As they are progressively humbled by the terrific beating 
administered by alcohol, the grace of God can enter them 
and expel their obsession. Here their powerful instinct to live 
can cooperate fully with their Creator's desire to give them 
new life. 
"The central characteristic of the spiritual experience is that 
it gives the recipient a new and better motivation out of all 
proportion to any process of discipline, belief, or faith. 
"These experiences cannot make us whole at once; they are 
a rebirth to a fresh and certain opportunity." 
Have You Experimented? 
"Since open-mindedness and experimentation are supposed 
to be the indispensable attributes of our `scientific' 
civilisation, it seems strange that so many scientist are 
reluctant to try out personally the hypothesis that God came 
first and man afterward. They prefer to believe that man is 
the chance product of evolution; that God, the Creator, does 
not exist. 
"I can only report that I have experimented with both 
concepts and that, in my case, the God concept has proved 
to be a better basis for living than the man-centered one. 
"Nevertheless, I would be the first to defend your right to 
think as you will. I simply ask this question: `In your own life, 
have you ever really tried to think and act as though there 
might be a God? Have you experimented?'" 
We Need Outside Help 
It was evident that a solitary self-appraisal, and the 
admission of our defects based upon that alone, wouldn't be 
nearly enough. We'd have to have outside help if we were 
surely to know and admit the truth about ourselves -- the 
help of God and of another human being. 
Only by discussing ourselves, holding back nothing, only by 
being willing to take advice and accept direction could we set 
foot on the road to straight thinking, solid honesty, and 
genuine humility. 
If we are fooling ourselves, a competent adviser can see this 
quickly. And, as he skillfully guides us away from our 
fantasies, we are surprised to find that we have few of the 
usual urges to defend ourselves against unpleasant truths. In 
no other way can fear, pride, and ignorance be so readily 
melted. After a time, we realize that we are standing firm on a 
brand-new foundation for integrity, and we gratefully credit 
our sponsors, whose advice pointed the way. 
God's Gifts 
We see that the sun never sets upon A.A.'s Fellowship; that 
more than three hundred and fifty thousand of us have now 
recovered from our malady; that we have everywhere begun 
to transcend the formidable barriers of race,creed, and 
nationality. This assurance that so many of us have been 
able to meet our responsibilities for sobriety and for growth 
and effectiveness in the troubled world where we live, will 
surely fill us with the deepest joy and satisfaction. 
But, as a people who have nearly always learned the hard 
way, we shall certainly not congratulate ourselves. We shall 
perceive these assets to be God's gifts, which have been in 
part matched by an increasing willingness on our part to find 
and do His will for us. 
GRAPEVINE, JULY 1965 
Prayer Under Pressure 
Whenever I find myself under acute tensions, I lengthen my 
daily walks and slowly repeat our Serenity Prayer in rhythm 
to my steps and breathing. 
If I feel that my pain has in part been occasioned by others, I 
try to repeat, "God grant me the serenity to love their best, 
and never fear their worst." This benign healing process of 
repitition, sometimes necessary to persist with for days, has 
seldomfailed to restore me to at least a workable emotional 
balance and perspective. 
GRAPEVINE, MARCH 1962 
Face the Music 
"Don't be too discouraged about that slip. Practically always, 
we drunks learn the hard way. 
"Your idea of moving on to somewhere else may be good, or 
it may not. Perhaps you have got into an emotional or 
economic jam that can't be well handled where you are. But 
maybe you are doing just what all of us have done, at one 
time or another: Maybe you are running away. Why don't you 
try to think that through again carefully? 
"Are you really placing recovery first, or are you making it 
contingent upon other people, places, or circumstances? 
You may find it ever so much better to face the music right 
where you are now, and, with the help of the A.A. program, 
win through. Before you make a decision,weigh it in these 
terms." 
Alone No More 
Alcoholism was a lonely business, even though we were 
surrounded by people who loved us. But when our self-will 
had driven everybody away and our isolation became 
complete, we commenced to play the big shot in cheap 
barrooms. Failing even this, we had to fare forth alone on the 
street to depend upon the charity of passers-by. 
We were trying to find emotional security either by
dominating or by being dependent upon others. Even when 
our fortunes had not totally ebbed, we nevertheless found 
ourselves alone in the world. We still vainly tried to be secure 
by some unhealthy sort of domination or dependence.
For those of us who were like that, A.A. has a very special 
meaning. In this Fellowship we begin to learn right relations 
with people who understand us; we don't have to be alone 
any more. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 116-117 
"Look Before You Leap"? 
"Wise men and women rightly give a top rating to the virtue 
of prudence. They know that without this all important 
attribute little wisdom is to be had. 
"Mere `looking before we leap' is not enough. If our looking 
is charged with fear, suspicion, or anger, we had better not 
have looked or acted at all." 
"We lose the fear of making decisions, great and small, as we 
realize that should our choice prove wrong we can, if we will, 
learn from the experience. Should our decision be the right 
one, we can thank God for giving us the courage and the 
grace that caused us so to act." 
Satisfactions of Right Living 
How wonderful is the feeling that we do not have to be 
specially distinguished among our fellows in order to be 
useful and profoundly happy. Not many of us can be leaders 
of prominence, nor do we wish to be. 
Service gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles 
well accepted or solved with God's help, the knowledge that 
at home or in the world outside we are partners in a common 
effort, the fact that in God's sight all human beings are 
important, the proof that love freely given brings a full return, 
the certainly that we are no longer isolated and alone in selfconstructed prisons, the surety that we can fit and belong in 
God's scheme of things -- these are the satisfactions of right 
living for which no pomp and circumstance, no heap of 
material possession, could possibly be substitutes.
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 124 
Wider Understanding 
To reach more alcoholics, understanding of A.A. and public 
good will towards A.A. must go on growing everywhere. We 
need to be on still better terms with medicine, religion, 
employers, governments, courts, prisons, mental hospitals, 
and all enterprsises in the alcoholism field. We need the 
increasing good will of editors, writers, television and radio 
channels. These publicity outlets need to be opened ever 
wider. 
Nothing matters more to A.A.'s future welfare than the 
manner in which we use the colossus of modern 
communication. Used unselfishly and well, it can produce 
results surpassing our present imagination. 
Should we handle this great instrument badly, we shall be 
shattered by the ego manifestations of our own people. 
Against this peril, A.A. members' anonymity before the 
general public is our shield and our buckler. 
A "Special" Experience? 
I was the recipient of a tremendous mystic experience or 
"illumination", and at first it was very natural for me to feel 
that this experience staked me out as somebody very
special. 
But as I now look back upon this tremendous event, I can 
only feel very grateful. It now seems clear that the only 
special features of my experience were its suddenness and 
the overwhelming and immediate conviction that it carried. 
In all other respects, however, I am sure that my own 
experience was essentially like that received by any A.A. 
member who has strenuously practiced our recovery 
program. Surely, the grace he receives is also of God; the 
only difference is that he becomes aware of his gift more 
gradually. 
GRAPEVINE, JULY 1962 
Key to Sobriety 
The unique ability of each A.A. to identify himself with, and 
bring recovery to, the newcomer in no way depends upon his 
learning, his eloquence, or any special individual skills. The 
only thing that matters is that he is an alcoholic who has 
found a key to sobriety. 
In my first conversation with Dr. Bob, I bore down heavily on 
the medical hopelessness of his case, freely using Dr. 
Silkworth's words describing the alcoholic's dilemma, the 
"obsession plus allergy" theme. Though Bob was a doctor, 
this was news to him, bad news. And the fact that I was an 
alcoholic and knew what I was talking about from personal 
experience made the blow a shattering one. 
You see, our talk was a completely mutual thing. I had quit 
preaching. I knew that I needed this alcoholic as much as he 
needed me. 
Beneath the Surface 
Some will object to many of the questions that should be 
answered in a moral inventory, because they think their own 
character defects have not been so glaring. To these, it can 
be suggested that a conscientious examination is likely to 
reveal the very defects the objectionable questions are 
concerned with. 
Because our surface record hasn't looked too bad, we have 
frequently been abashed to find that this is so simply 
because we have buried these selfsame defects deep down 
in us under thick layers of self-justification. Those were the 
defects that finally ambushedus into alcoholism and misery. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 53-54 
Servant, Not Master 
In A.A., we found that it did not matter too much what our 
material condition was, but it mattered greatly what our 
spiritual condition was. As we improved our spiritual 
outlook, money gradually became our servant and not our 
master. It became a means of exchanging love and service 
with those about us. 
One of A.A.'s Loners is an Australian sheepman who lives 
two thousand miles from the nearest town, where yearly he 
sells his wool. In order to be paid best prices he has to get to 
town during a certain month. But when he heard that a big 
regional A.A. meeting was to be held at a later date when 
wool prices would have fallen, he gladly took a heavy 
financial loss in order to make his journey then. That's how 
much an A.A. meeting means to him. 
Inward Reality 
It is being constantly revealed, as mankind studies the 
material world, that its outward appearances are not inward 
reality at all. The prosaic steel girder is a mass of electrons 
whirling around each other at incredible speed, and these 
tiny bodies are governed by precise laws. Science tells us 
so. We have no reason to doubt it. 
When, however, the perfectly logical assumption is 
suggested 
that, infinitely beyond the material world as we see it, there is 
an all powerful, guiding, creative Intelligence, our perverse 
streak comes to the surface and we set out to convince 
ourselves that it isn't so. Were our contention true, it would 
follow that life originated out of nothing, means nothing, and 
proceeds nowhere. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, PP. 48-49 
"Fearless and Searching" 
My self-analysis has frequently been faulty . 
Sometimes I'vefailed to share my defects with the right 
people; at other times, I've confessed their defects, rather 
than my own; and still other times, my confession of defects 
has been more in the nature of loud complaints about my 
circumstances and my problems. 
When A.A. suggests a fearless moral inventory, it must seem 
to every newcomer that more is being asked of him than he 
he can do. Every time he tries to look within himself, Pride 
says, "You need not pass this way," and Fear says, "You 
dare not look!" 
But pride and fear of this sort turn out to be bogymen, 
nothing else. Once we have a complete willingness to take 
inventory, and exert ourselves to do the job thoroughly, a 
wonderful light falls upon this foggy sceneene. As we 
persist, a brandnew kind ofcinfidence is born, and the sense 
of relief at finally facing ourselves is indescribable. 
Individual Responsibilities 
Let us emphasize that our reluctance to fight one another, or 
anybody else, is not counted as some special virtue which 
entitles us A.A.'s to feel superior to other people. Nor does 
this reluctance mean that the members of A.A. are going to 
back away from their individual responsibilities as citizens. 
Here theyshould feel free to act as they see the right upon 
the public issues of our times. 
But when it comes to A.A. as a whole, that's quite a different 
matter. As a group we do not enter into public controversy, 
because we are sure that our Society will perish if we do. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 177 
Fear and Faith 
The achievement of freedom from fear is a lifetime 
undertaking, one that can never be wholly completed. 
When under heavy attack, acute illness, or in other
conditions of serious insecurity, we shall all react to this 
emotion -- well or badly, as the case may be. Only the selfdeceived will claim perfect freedom from fear. 
We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of 
our make-up. Sometimes we had to search persistently, but 
He was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found 
the Great Reality deep down within us. 
The Step That Keeps Us Growing 
Sometimes, when friends tell us how well we are doing, we 
know better inside. We know we aren't doing well enough. 
We still can't handle life, as life is. There must be a serious 
flaw somewhere in our spiritual practice and development. 
What, then, is it? 
The chances are better than even that we shall locate our 
trouble in our misunderstanding or neglect of A.A.'s Step 
Eleven -- prayer, meditation, and the guidance of God. 
The other Steps can keep most of us sober and somehow 
functioning. But Step Eleven can keep us growing, if we try 
hard and work at it continually. 
GRAPEVINE, JUNE 1958 
Neither Dependence nor Self-Sufficiency 
When we insisted, like infants, that people protect and take 
care of us or that the world owed us a living, then the result 
was unfortunate. The people we most loved often pushed us 
aside or perhaps deserted us entirely. Our disillusionment 
was hard to bear. 
We 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. We refused to learn 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.
We are now on a different basis: the basis of trusting and 
relying upon God. We trust infinite God rather than our finite 
selves. Just to the extent that we do as we think He would 
have us do, and humbly rely on Him, does He enable us to 
match calamity with serenity. 
Give Thanks 
Though I still find it difficult to accept today's pain and 
anxiety with any great degree of serenity -- as those more 
advanced in the spiritual life seemable to do -- I can give 
thanks for present pain nevertheless. 
I find the willingness to do this by contemplating the lessons 
learned from past suffering -- lessons which have led to the 
blessings I now enjoy. I can remember how the agonies of 
alcoholism, the pain of rebellion and thwarted pride, have 
often led me to God's grace, and so to a new freedom. 
GRAPEVINE, MARCH 1962 
Behind Our Excuses 
As excuse-makers and rationalizers, we drunks are 
champions. It is the business of the psychiatrist to find the 
deeper causes for our conduct. Though uninstructed in 
psychiatry, we can, after a little time in A.A., see that our 
motives have not been what we thought they were, and that 
we have been motivated by forces previously unknown to us. 
Therefore we ought to look, with the deepest respect, 
interest, and profit, upon the example set us by psychiatry. 
"Spiritual growth through the practice of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, 
plus the aid of a good sponsor, can usually reveal most of 
the deeper reasons for our character defects, at least to a 
degree that meets our practical needs. Nevertheless, we 
should be grateful that our friends in psychiatry have so 
strongly emphasized the necessity to search for false and 
often unconscious motivations." 
Those Other People 
"Just like you, I have often thought myself the victim of what 
other people say and do. Yet every time I confessed the sins 
of such people, especially those whose sins did not
correspond exactly with my own, I found that I only
increased the total damage. My own resentment, my self-pity 
would often render me well-nigh useless to anybody.
"So, nowadays, if anyone talks to me so as to hurt, I first ask 
myself if there is any truth at all in what they say. If there is 
none, I try to remember that I too have had my periods of 
speaking bitterly to others; that hurtful gossip is but a 
symptom of our remaining emotional illness; and 
consequently that I must never be angry at the 
unreasonableness of sick people. 
"Under very trying conditions I have had, again and again, to 
forgive others -- also myself. Have you recently tried this?" 
When Infancy Is Over 
"You must remember that every A.A. group starts, as it 
should, through the efforts of a single man and his friends -- 
a founder and his hierarchy. There is no other way.
"But when infancy is over, the original leaders always have 
to make way for that democracy which springs up through 
the grass roots and will eventuallysweep aside the selfchosen leadership of the past." 
"Everywhere the A.A. groups have taken their service affairs 
into their own hands. Local founders and their friends are 
now on the side lines. Why so many people forget that, when 
thinking of the future of our world services, I shall never 
understand. 
"The groups will eventually take over, and maybe they will 
squander their inheritance when they get it. It is probable, 
however, that they won't. Anyhow, they really have grown up; 
A.A. is theirs; let's give it to them." 
Honesty and Recovery 
In taking an inventory, a member might consider questions 
such as: 
How did my selfish pursuit of the sex relation damage other 
people and me? What people were hurt, and how badly? Just 
how did I react at the time? Did I burn with guilt? Or did I 
insist that I was the pursued and not the pursuer, and thus 
absolve myself? 
How have I reacted to frustration in sexual matters? When 
denied, did I become vengeful or depressed? Did I take it out 
on other people? If there was rejection or coldness at home, 
did I use this as a reason for promiscuity? 
Let no alcoholic say he cannot recover unless he has his 
family back. This just isn't so. His recovery is not dependent 
upon people. It is dependent upon his relationship with God, 
however he may define Him. 
A.A. in Two Words 
TALK, 1965 (PRINTED IN GRAPEVINE, JANUARY 1966) 
Troubles of Our Own Making 
Selfishness -- self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of 
our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, selfdelusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of 
our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, 
seemingly withoutprovocation, but we invariably find that at 
some time in the past we have made decisions based on self 
which later placed us in a position to be hurt. 
So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. 
They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme 
example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn't think 
so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this 
selfishness. We must, or it kills us! 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 62 
Compelling Love 
The life of each A.A. and of each group is built around our 
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. We know that the 
penalty for extensive disobedience to these principles is 
death for the individual and dissolution for the group. But an 
even greater force for A.A.'s unity is our compelling love for 
our fellow members and for our principles. 
You might think the people at A.A.'s headquarters in New 
York would surely have to have some personal authority. 
But, long ago, trustees and secretaries alike found they 
could do no more than make very mild suggestions to the 
A.A. groups. 
They even had to coin a couple of sentences which still go 
liberty to handle this matter any way you please. But the 
majority experience in A.A. does seem to suggest..." 
A.A. world headquarters is not a giver of orders. It is, instead, 
our largest transmitter of the lessons of experience. 
Going It Alone 
Going it alone in spiritual matters is dangerous. How many 
times have we heard well-intentioned people claim the 
guidance of God when it was plain that they were mistaken? 
Lacking bothpractice and humility, they had deluded
themselvelvelves and so were able to justify the most arrant 
nonsense on the ground that this was what God had told 
them. 
People of of very high spiritual development almost always 
insist on checking with friends or spiritual advisers the 
guidance they have received from God. Surely, then, a novice 
ought not lay himself open to the chance of making foolish, 
perhaps tragic, blunders. While the comment or advice of 
others may not be infallible, it is likely to be far more specific 
than any direct guidance we may receive while we wre still 
inexperienced in establishing contact with a Power greater 
than ourselves. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 60 
Recovery Through Giving 
For a new prospect, outline the program of action, explaining 
how you made a self-appraisal, how you straightened out 
your past, and why you are now endeavoring to be helpful to 
him. It is important for him to realize that your attempt to 
pass this on tohim plays a vital part in your own recovery. 
Actualually, he may be helping you more than you are 
helping him. Make it plain that he is under no obligation to 
you. 
In the first six months of my own sobriety, I worked hard with 
many alcoholics. Not a one responded. Yet this work kept me 
sober. It wasn't a question of those alcoholics giving me 
anything. My stability came out of trying to give, not out of 
demanding that I receive. 
A Higher Power for Atheists 
"I have had many experiences with atheists, mostly good. 
Everybody in A.A. has the right to his own opinion. It is much 
better to maintain an open and tolerant society than it is to 
suppress any small disturbances their opinions might 
occasion. Actually, I don't know anybody who went off and 
died of alcoholism because some atheist's opinions on the 
cosmos. 
"But I do always entreat these folks to look to a `Higher 
Power' -- namely, their own group. When they come in, most 
of their A.A. group is sober, and they are drunk. Therefore, 
the group is a`Higher Power'. That's a good enough start, 
and most of them do progress from there. I know how they 
feel, because I was once that way myself." 
To Lighten Our Burden 
Only one consideration should qualify our desire for a 
complete disclosure of the damage we have done. That will 
arise where a full revelation would seriously harm the one to 
whom we are making amends. Or -- quite as important -- 
other people. We cannot,for example, unload a detailed 
account of extramarital adventuring upon the shoulders of 
our unsuspecting wife or husband. 
It does not lighten our burden when we recklessly make the 
crosses of others heavier. 
In making amends, we should be sensible, tactful, 
considerate and humble without being servile or scraping. 
As God's people we stand on our feet; we don't crawl before 
anyone. 
Speak Up Without Fear 
Few of us are anonymous so far as our daily contacts go. We 
have dropped anonymity at this level because we think our 
friends and associates ought to know about A.A. and what it 
has done dor us. We also wish to lose the fear of admitting 
that we are alcoholics. Though we earnestly request
reporters not to disclose our identities, wefrequently speak 
before semipublic gatherings. We wish to convince 
audiences that our alcoholism is a sickness we no longer 
fear to discuss before anyone. 
If, however, we venture beyond this limit, we shall surely lose 
the principle of anonymity forever. If every A.A. felt free to 
publish his own name, picture, and story, we would soon be 
launched upon a vast orgy of personal publicity. 
"While the so-called public meeting is questioned by many 
A.A. members, I favour it myself providing only that 
anonymity is respected in press reports and that we ask 
nothing for ourselves except understanding." 
The Fine Art of Alibis 
The majority of A.A. members have suffered severely from 
self-justification during their drinking days. For most of us, 
self-justification was the maker of excuses for drinking and 
for all kinds of crazy and damaging conduct. We had made 
the invention of alibis a fine art. 
We had to drink because times were hard or times were 
good. We had to drink because at home we were smothered 
with love or got none at all. We had to drink because at work 
we were great successes or dismal failures. We had to drink 
because our nation hadwon a war or lost a peace. And so it 
went, ad infinitum. 
To see how our own erratic emotions victimized us often 
took a long time. Where other people were concerned, we 
had to drop the word "blame" from our speech and thought. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE 
Spiritually Fit 
Assuming we are spiritually fit, we can do all sorts of things 
alcoholics are not supposed to do. People have said we must 
not go where liquor is served; we must not have it in our 
homes; we must shun friends who drink; we must avoid 
moving pictures which show drinking scenes; we must not 
go into bars; our friends must hide their bottles if we go to 
their houses; we mustn't think or be reminded about alcohol 
at all. Our experience shows that this is not necessarily so. 
We meet these conditions every day. An alcoholic who 
cannot meet them still has an alcoholic mind; there is 
something the matter with his spiritual status. His only 
chance for sobriety would be some place like the Greenland 
Ice Cap, and even there an Eskimo might turn up with a 
bottle of scotch and ruin everything! 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, PP. 100-101 
Ourselves as Individuals 
There is only one sure test of all spiritual experiences: "By 
their fruits, ye shall know them." 
This is why I think we should question no one's 
transformation -- whether it be sudden or gradual. Nor 
should we demand anyone's special type for ourselves, 
because experience suggests that we are apt to receive 
whatever may be the most useful for our own needs. 
Human beings are never quite alike, so each of us, when 
making an inventory, will need to determine what his 
individual character defects are. Having found the shoes that 
fit, he ought to step into them and walk with new confidence 
that he is at last on the right track. 
Instincts Run Wild 
Every time a person imposes his instincts unreasonable 
upon others, unhappiness follows. If the pursuit of wealth 
tramples upon people who happen to be in the way, then 
anger, jealousy, and revenge are likely to be aroused. If sex 
runs riot, there is a similar uproar. 
Demands made upon other people for too much attention, 
protection, and love can invite only domination or revulsion 
in the protectors themselves -- two emotions quite as 
unhealthy as the demands which evoke them. When an 
individual's desire for prestige becomes uncontrollable, 
whether in the sewing circle or at the international 
conference table, other people suffer and often revolt. This 
collision of instincts can produce anything from a cold snub 
to a blazing revolution. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 44 
"Powerless over Alcohol" 
I had gone steadily downhill, and on that day in 1934 I lay 
upstairs in the hospital, knowing for the first time that I was 
utterly hopeless. 
Lois was downstairs, and Dr. Silkworth was trying in his 
gentle way to tell her what was wrong with me and that I was 
hopeless. "But Bill has a tremendous amount of will power," 
she said. "He has tried desperately to get well. We have tried 
everything. Doctor, why can't he stop?" 
He explained that my drinking, once a habit, had become an 
obsession, a true insanity that condemned me to drink 
against my will. 
"In the late stages of our drinking, the will to resist has fled. 
Yet when we admit complete defeat and when we become 
entirely ready to try A.A. principles, our obsession leaves us 
and we enter a new dimension -- freedom under God as we 
understand Him." 
Faith -- a Blueprint -- and Work 
"The idea of `twenty-four-hour living' applies primarily to the 
emotional life of the individual. Emotionally speaking, we 
must not live in yesterday, nor in tomorrow. 
"But I have never been able to see that this means the 
individual, the group, or A.A. as a whole should give no 
thought whatever to how to function tomorrow or even in the 
more distant future. Faith alone never constructed the house 
you live in. There had to be a blueprint and a lot of work to 
bring it into reality. 
"Nothing is truer for us of A.A. than the Biblical saying `Faith 
without works is dead.' A.A.'s services, all designed to make 
more and better Twelfth Step work possible, are the `works' 
that insure our life and growth by preventing anarchy or 
stagnation." 
False Pride 
The alarming thing about pride-blindness is the ease with 
which it is justified. But we need not look far to see that selfjustification is a universal destroyer of harmony and of love. 
It sets man against man, nation against nation.By it, every 
form of folly and violence can be made to look right, and 
even respectable. 
It would be a product of false pride to claim that A.A. is a 
cure-all, even for alcoholism. 
Mastering Resentments 
We began to see that the world and its people had really 
dominated us. Under that unhappy condition, the 
wrongdoing of others, fancied or real, had the power to 
actually kill us, because we could be driven back to drink 
through resentment. We saw that these resentments must be 
mastered, but how? We could not wish them away. 
This was our course: We realized that the people who 
wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. So we asked God 
to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience 
that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. 
Today, we avoid retaliation or argument. We cannot treat sick 
people that way. If we do, we destroy our chance of being 
helpful. 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. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, PP. 66-67 
Aspects of Spirituality 
"Among A.A.'s there is still a vast amount of mix-up 
respecting what is material and what is spiritual. I prefer to 
believe that it is all a matter of motive. If we use our worldly 
possessions too selfishly, then we are materialists. But if we 
share these possessions in helpfulness to others, then the 
material aids the spiritual." 
"The idea keeps persisting that the instincts are primarily 
bad and are the roadblocks before which all spirituality 
falters. I believe that the difference between good and evil is 
not the difference between spiritual and instinctual man; it is 
the difference between properand improper use of the 
instinctual. Recognition and right channeling of the 
instinctual are the essence of achieving wholeness." 
Emotional Sobriety 
If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we 
will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependency and its 
consequent unhealthy demand. Let us, with God's help, 
continually surrender these hobbling liabilities. 
Then we can be set free to live and love; we may then be able 
to twelth-step ourselves, as well as others, into emotional 
sobriety. 
GRAPEVINE, JANUARY 1958 
When Conflicts Mount 
Sometimes I would be forced to look at situations where I 
was doing badly. Right away, the search for excuses would 
become frantic. 
"These," I would exclaim, "are really a good man's faults." 
When that pet gadget broke apart, I would think, "Well, if 
those people would only treat me right, I wouldn't have to 
behave the way I do." Next was this: "God well knows that I 
do have awful compulsions. I just can't get over this one. So 
He will have to release me." At last came the time when I 
would shout, "This, I positively will not do! I won't even try." 
Of course, my conflicts went right on mounting, because I 
was simply loaded with excuses, refusals, and outright 
rebellion. 
In self-appraisal, what comes to us alone may be garbled by 
our own rationalization and wishful thinking. The benefit of 
talking to another person is that we can get his direct 
comment and counsel on our situation. 
Time Versus Money 
Our attitude toward the giving of time when compared with 
our attitude toward giving money presents an interesting 
contrast. We give a lot of our time to A.A. activities for our 
own protection and growth, but also for the sake of our 
groups, our areas, A.A. as a whole, and, above all, the 
newcomer. Translated into terms of money, these collective 
sacrifices would add up to a huge sum. 
But when it comes to the actual spending of cash, 
particularly for A.A. service overhead, many of us are apt to 
turn a bit reluctant. We think of the loss of all that earning 
power in our drinking years, of those sums we might have 
laid by for emergencies or for education of the kids. 
In recent years, this attitude is everywhere on the decline; it 
quickly disappears when the real need for a given A.A. 
service becomes clear. Donors can seldom see what the 
exact result has been. They well know, however, that 
countless thousands of other alcoholics and their families 
are being helped. 
TWELVE CONCEPTS, PP. 66-67 
Pain-Killer -- or Pain-Healer 
"I believe that when we were active alcoholics we drank 
mostly to kill pain of one kind or another -- physical or 
emotional or psychic. Of course, everybody has a cracking 
point, and I suppose you reached yours -- hence, the resort 
once more to the bottle. 
"If I were you, I wouldn't heap devastating blame on myself 
for this; on the other hand, the experience should redouble 
your conviction that alcohol has no permanent value as a 
pain-killer." 
In every A.A. story, pain has been the price of admission into 
a new life. But this admission price purchased more than we 
expected. It let us to a measure of humility, which we soon 
discovered to be a healer of pain. We began to fear pain less, 
and desire humility more than ever. 
Toward Partnership 
When the distortion of family life through alcohol has been 
great, a long period of patient striving may be necessary. 
After the husband joins A.A., the wife may become 
discontented, even highly resentful that A.A. has done the 
very thing that all her years of devotion had failed to do. Her 
husband may become so wrapped up in A.A. and his new 
friends that he is inconsiderately away from home more than 
when he drank. Each then blames the other. 
But eventually the alcoholic, now fully understanding how 
much he did to hurt his wife and children, nearly always 
takes up his marriage responsibilities with a willingness to 
repair what he can and accept what he can't. He persistently 
tries all of A.A.'s Twelve Steps in his home, often with fine 
results. He firmly but lovingly commences to behave like a 
patner instead of like a bad boy. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 118-119 
Rebellion or Acceptance 
All of us pass through times when we can pray only with the 
greatest exertion. Occasionally we go even further than this. 
We are seized with a rebellion so sickening that we simply 
won't pray. When these things happen, we should not think 
too ill of ourselves. We should simply resume prayer as soon 
as we can, doing what we know to be good for us. 
A man who persists in prayer finds himself in possession of 
great gifts. When he has to deal with hard circumstances, he 
finds he can face them. He can accept himself and the world 
around him. 
He can do this because he now accepts a God who is All -- 
and who loves all. When he says, "Our Father who art in 
heaven, hallowed be Thy name," he deeply and humbly
means it. When in good meditation and thus freed from 
clamors of the world, he knows that he is in God's hands, 
that his own ultimate destiny is really secure, here and 
hereafter, come what may. 
Love + Rationality = Growth 
"It seems to me that the primary object of any human being 
is to grow, as God intended, that being the nature of all 
growing things. 
"Our search must be for what reality we can find, which 
includes the best definition and feeling of love that we can 
acquire. If the capability of loving is in the human being, then 
it must surely be in his Creator. 
"Theology helps me in that many of its concepts cause me to 
believe that I live in a rational universe under a loving God, 
and that my own irrationality can be chipped away, little by 
little. This is, I suppose, the process of growth for which we 
are intended." 
Praying Rightly 
We thought we had been deeply serious about religious 
practices. However, upon honest praisal we found that we 
had been most superficial. Or sometimes, going to extremes, 
we had wallowed in emotionalism and had also mistaken this 
for true religious feeling. In both cases, we had been asking 
something for nothing. 
We had not prayed rightly. We hadalways said, "Grant me my 
wishes," instead of "Thy will be done." The love of God and 
man we understood not at all. Therefore we remained selfdeceived, and so incapable of receiving enough grace to 
restore us to sanity. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 32 
Daily Inventory 
Often, as we review each day, only the closest scrutinity will 
reveal what our true motives were. There are cases where 
our ancient enemy rationalization has stepped in and has 
justified conduct which was really wrong. The temptation 
here is to imagine that we had good motives and reasons 
when we really hadn't. 
We "condstructively criticized" someone who needed it, 
when our real motive was to win a useless argument. Or, the 
person concerned not being present, we thought we were 
helping others to understand him, when in actuality our true 
motive was to feel superior by pulling him down. 
We hurt those we loved because they needed to be "taught a 
lesson", but we really wanted to punish. We were depressed 
and complained we felt bad, when in fact we were mainly 
asking for sympathy and attention. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 94 
A Vision of the Whole 
"Though many of us have had to struggle for sobriety, never 
yet has this Fellowship had to struggle for lost unity. 
Consequently, we sometimes take this one great gift for 
granted. We forget that, should we lose our unity, the 
millions of alcoholics who still `do not know' might never get 
a chance." 
"We used to be skeptical about large A.A. gatherings like 
conventions, thinking they might prove too exhibitionistic. 
But, on balance, their benefit is huge. While each A.A.'s 
interest should center principally in those about him and 
upon his own group, it is both necessary and desrirable that 
we all get a larger vision of the whole. 
"The General Service Conference in New York also produces 
this effect upon those who attend. It is a vision-stretching 
process." 
A Mighty Beginning 
Even the newest of newcomers finds undreamed rewards as 
he triesto help his brother alcoholic, the one who is even 
blinder than he. This is indeed the kind of giving that actually 
demands nothing. He does not expect his brother sufferer to 
pay him, or even to love him. 
And then he discovers that through the divine paradox of 
this kind of giving he has found his own reward, whether or 
not his brother has yet received anything. 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 before dreamed. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 109-110 
Anonymity and Sobriety 
As the A.A. groups multiplied, so did anonymity problems. 
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. The aggrieved victim would then rightly declare that 
his trust had been broken. 
When stories get into circulation outside of A.A., the loss of 
confidence in our anonymity promise was severe. It 
frequently turned people from us. Clearly, every A.A. 
member's name -- and story, too -- had to be confidential, if 
he wished. 
We now fully realize that 100 per cent personal anonymity 
before the public is just as vital to the life of A.A. as 100 per 
cent sobriety is to the life of each and every member. This is 
not the counsel of fear; it is the prudent voice of long 
experience. 
People of Faith 
We who have traveled a path through agnosticism or atheism 
beg you to lay aside prejudice, even against organized 
religion. We have learned that whatever the human frailties of 
various faiths may be, those faiths have given purpose and 
direction to millions. People of faith have a rational idea of 
what life is all about. 
Actually, we used to have no reasonable conception 
whatever. We used to amuse ourselves by cynically 
dissecting spiritual beliefs and practices, when we might 
have seen that many spiritually-minded persons of all races, 
colors, and creeds were demonstrating a degree of stability, 
happiness and usefulness that we should have sought
ourselves. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 49 
To Rebuild Security 
In our behavior respecting financial and emotional security, 
fear, greed, possessiveness, and pride have too often done 
their worst. Surveying his business or employment record, 
almost any alcoholic can ask questions like these: In 
addition tomy drinking problem, what character defects 
contributed to my financial instability? Did fear and 
inferiority about my fitness for my job destroy my confidence 
and fill me with conflict? Or did I overvalue myself and play 
the big shot? 
Businesswomen in A.A. will find that these questions often 
apply to them, too, and the alcoholic housewife can also 
make the family financially insecure. Indeed, all alcoholics 
need to crossexamine themselves ruthlessly to determine 
how their own personality defects have demolished their 
security. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 51-52 
Comradeship in Peril 
We A.A.'s are like the passengers of a great liner the moment 
after rescue from shipwreck when camaraderie, joyousness 
and democracy pervade the vessel from steerage to captain's 
table. 
Unlike the feelings of the ship's passengers, however, our 
joy in escape from disaster does not subside as we go our 
individual ways. The feeling of having sharing in a common 
peril -- relapse into alcoholism -- continues to be an 
important element in the powerful cement which binds us of 
A.A. together. 
Our first woman alcoholic had been a patient of Dr. Harry 
Tiebout's, and he had handed her a prepublication 
manuscript copy of the Big Book. The first reading made her 
rebellious, but the second convinced. Presently she came to 
a meeting held in our living room, and from there she 
returned to the sanitarium carrying this classic message to a 
fellow patient: "We aren't alone any more." 
Loving Advisers 
Had I not been blessed with wise and loving advisers, I might 
have cracked up long ago. A doctor once saved me from 
death by alcoholism because he obliged me to face up to the 
deadlines of that malady. Another doctor, a psychiatrist, later 
on helped me save my sanity because he led me to ferret out 
some of my deep-lying defects. From a clergyman I acquired 
the truthful principles by which we A.A.'s now try to live. 
But these precious friends did far more thansupply me with 
their professional skills. I learned that I could go to them with 
any problem whatever. Their wisdom and their integrity were 
mine for the asking. 
Many of my dearest A.A. friends have stood with me in 
exactly this same relation. Oftentimes they could help where 
others could not, simply because they were A.A.'s. 
GRAPEVINE, AUGUST 1961 
Single Purpose 
There are those who predict that A.A. may well become a 
new spearhead for a spiritual awakening throughout the 
world. When our friends say these things, they are both 
generous and sincere. But we of A.A. must reflect that such a 
tribute and such a prophecy could well prove to be a heady 
drink for most of us -- that is, if we really came to believe this 
to be the real purpose of A.A., andif we commenced to 
behave accordingly. 
Our Society, therefore, will prudently cleave to its single 
purpose: the carrying of the message to the alcoholic who 
still suffers. Let us resist the proud assumption that since 
God has enabled us to do well in one area we are destined to 
be a channel of saving grace for everybody. 
A.A. COMES OF AGE, P. 232 
From the Taproot 
The principle that we shall find no enduring strength until we 
first admit complete defeat is the main taproot from which 
our whole Society has sprung and flowered. 
Every newcomer 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. 
So it is that we first see humility as a necessity. But this is 
the barest beginning. To get completely away from our 
aversion to the idea of being humble, to gain a vision of 
humility as the avenue to true freedom of the human spirit, to 
be willing to work for humility as somethingto be desired for 
itself, takes most of us a long, long time. A whole lifetime 
geared to self-centeredness cannot be set in reverse all at 
once. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE 
Is Happiness the Goal? 
"I don't think happiness or unhappiness is the point. How do 
we meet the problems we face? How do we best learn from 
them and transmit what we have learned to others, if they 
would receive the knowledge? 
"In my view, we of this world are pupils in a great school of 
life. It is intended that we try to grow, and that we try to help 
our fellow travelers to grow in the kind of love that makes no 
demands. In short, we try to move toward the image and 
likenessof God as we understand Him. 
"When pain comes, we are expected to learn from it willingly, 
and help others to learn. When happiness comes, we accept 
it as a gift, and thank God for it." 
Circle and Triangle 
Above us, at the International Convention at St. Louis in 
symbol for A.A., a circle enclosing a triangle. The circle 
stands for the whole world of A.A., and the triangle stands 
for A.A.'s Three Legacies: Recovery, Unity, and Service. 
It is perhaps no accident that priests and seers of antiquity 
regarded this symbol as a means of warding off spirits of 
evil. 
When, in 1955, we oldtimers turned over our Three Legacies 
to the whole movement, nostalgia for the old days blended 
with gratitude for the great day in which I was now living. No 
more would it be necessary for me to act for, decide for, or 
protect A.A. 
For a moment, I dreaded the coming change. But this mood 
quickly passed. The conscience of A.A. as moved by the 
guidance of God could be depended upon to insure A.A.'s 
future. Clearly my job henceforth was to let go and let God. 
A.A. COMES OF AGE 
A Way Out of Depression 
"During acute depression, avoid trying to set your whole life 
in order all at once. If you take on assignments so heavy that 
you are sure to fail in them at the moment, then you are 
allowing yourself to be tricked by your unconscious. Thus 
you will continue to make sure of your failure, and when it 
comes you will have another alibi for still more retreat into 
depression. 
"In short, the `all or nothing' attitude is a most destructive 
one. It is best to begin with whatever the irreducible 
minimums of activity are. Then work for an enlargement of 
these -- day by day. Don't be disconcerted by setbacks -- just 
start over." 
Spiritual Axiom 
It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no 
matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. If 
somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong. 
But are there no exceptions to this rule? What about 
"justifiable" anger? If somebody cheats us, aren't we entitled 
to be mad? And shouldn't we be properly angry with selfrighteous folks? 
For us of A.A. these adventures in anger are sometimes very 
dangerous. We have found that even justified anger ought to 
be left to those better qualified to handle it. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 90 
Learning Trust 
Our entire A.A. program rests upon the principle of mutual 
trust. We trust God, we trust A.A., and we trust each other. 
Therefore, we trust our leaders in world service. The "Right 
of Decision" that we offer them is not only the practical 
means by which they may act and lead effectively, but it is 
also the symbol of our implicit confidence. 
If you arrive at A.A. with no religious convictions, you can, if 
you wish, make A.A. itself or even your A.A. group your 
"Higher Power". Here's a large group of people who have 
solved their alcohol problem. In this respect they are 
certainly a power greater than you. Even this minimum of 
faith will be enough. 
Many members who have crossed the treshold just this way 
will tell you that, once across, their faith broadened and 
deepened. Relieved of the alcohol obsession, their lives 
unaccountably transformed, they came to believe in a Higher 
Power, and most of them began to talk of God. 
Telling the Worst 
Though the variations were many, my main theme was 
always "How godawful I am!" Just as I often exaggerated my 
modest attainments by pride, soI exaggerated my defects 
through guilt. I would race about, confessing all (and a great 
deal more) to whoever would listen. Believe it or not, I took 
this widespread exposure of my sins to be great humility on 
my part, and considered it a great spiritualasset and 
consolation! 
But later on I realized at depth that the great harms I had 
done others were not truly regretted. These episodes were 
merely the basis for storytelling and exhibitionism. With this 
realization came the beginning of a certain amount of 
humility. 
GRAPEVINE, JUNE 1961 
Tolerance Keeps Us Sober 
"Honesty with ourselves and others gets us sober, but it is 
tolerance that keeps us that way. 
"Experience shows that few alcoholics will long stay away 
from a group because they don't like the way it is run. Most 
return and adjust themselves to whatever conditions they 
must. Some go to a different group, or form a new one. 
"In other words, once an alcoholic fully realizes that he 
cannot get well alone, he will soemhow find a way to get well 
and stay well in the company of others. It has been that way 
from the beginning of A.A. and probably always will be so." 
In the Sunlight at Last 
When the thought was expressed that there might be a God 
personal to me, I didn't like the idea. So my friend Ebby made 
what then seemed a novel suggestion. He said, "Why don't 
you choose your own conception of God?" 
That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual 
mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many 
years. I stood in the sunlight at last. 
It may be possible to find explanations of spiritual 
experiences such as ours, but I have often tried to explain 
my own and have succeeded only in giving the story of it. I 
know the feeling it gave me and the results it has brought, 
but I realize I may never fully understand its deeper why and 
how. 
High and Low 
When our membership was small, we dealt with "low-bottom 
cases" only. Many less desperate alcoholics tried A.A., but 
did not succeed because they could not make the admission 
of their hopelessness. 
In the following years, this changed. Alcoholics who still had 
their health, their families, their jobs, and even two cars in 
the garage, began to recognize their alcoholism. As this 
trend grew, they were joined by young people who were 
scarcely more than potential alcoholics. How could people 
such as these take the First Step? 
By going back in our own drinking histories, we showed 
them 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. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 23 
Greater than Ourselves 
If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were 
sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have 
recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and 
philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried. 
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 power needed for change wasn't 
there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were 
not sufficient; they failed utterly. 
Lack of power: That was our dilemma. We had to find a 
power by which we could live -- and it had to be a Power 
greater than ourselves. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, PP.44-45 
Our Protective Mantle 
Almost every newspaper reporter who covers A.A. 
complains, at first, of the difficulty of writing his story 
without names. But he quickly forgets this difficulty when he 
realizes that here is a group of people who care nothing for 
acclaim. 
Probably this is the first time in his life he has ever reported 
on an organization that wants no personalized publicity. 
Cynic though he may be, this obvious sincerity quickly 
transforms him into a friend of A.A. 
Moved by the spirit of anonymity, we try to give up our 
natural desires for personal distinction as A.A. members, 
both among fellow alcoholics and before the general public. 
As we lay aside these very human aspirations, we believe 
that each of us takes part in the weaving of a protective 
mantle which covers our whole Society and under which we 
may grow and work in unity. 
Vision Beyond Today 
Vision is, I think, the ability to make good estimates, both for 
the immediate and for the more distant future. Some might 
feel this sort of striving to be heresy against "One day at a 
time." But that valuable principle really refers to our mental 
and emotional lives and means chiefly that we are not 
foolishly to repine over the past nor wishfully to daydream 
about the future. 
As individuals and as a fellowship, we shall surely suffer if 
we cast the whole job of planning for tomorrow onto a 
fatuous idea of providence. God's real providence has 
endowed us human beings with a considerable capability for 
foresight, and He evidently expects us to use it. Of course, 
we shall often miscalculate the future in whole or in part, but 
that is better than to refuse to think at all. 
TWELVE CONCEPTS, P. 43 
Forgiveness 
Through the vital Fifth Step, we began to get the feeling that 
we could be forgiven, no matter what we had thought or 
done. 
Often it was while working on this Step with our sponsors or 
spiritual advisers that we first felt truly able to forgive others, 
no matter how deeply we felt they had wronged us. 
Our moral inventory had persuaded us that allround 
forgiveness was desirable, but it was only when we 
resolutely tackled Step Five that we inwardly knew we'd be 
able to receive forgiveness and give it, too. 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 57-58 
Two Authorities 
Many people wonder how A.A. can function under a seeming 
anarchy. Other societies have to have law and force and 
sanction and punishment, administered by authorized
people. Happily for us, we found that we need no human 
authorities which are far more effective. One is benign, the 
other malign. 
There is God, our Father, who very simply says, "I am waiting 
for you to do my will." The other authority is named John 
Barlicorn, and he says, "You had better do God's will or I will 
kill you." 
The A.A. Traditions are neither rules, regulations, nor laws. 
We obey them willingly because we want to. Perhaps the 
secret of their power lies in the fact that these life-giving 
communications spring out of living experience and are 
rooted in love. 
Running the Whole Show 
Most people try to live by self-propulsion. Each person is like 
an actor who wants to run the whole show and is forever 
trying to arrange the lights, the scenery and the rest of the 
players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay 
put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be 
great. 
What usually happens? The show doesn't come off very well. 
Admitting he may be somewhat at fault, he is sure that other 
people are more to blame. He becomes angry, indignant, selfpitying. 
Is he not really a self-seeker even when trying to be useful? 
Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest 
satisfaction and happiness out of this world if only he 
manages well? 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, PP. 60-61 
Results of Prayer 
As the doubter tries the process of prayer, he should begin 
to add up the results. If he persists, he will almost surely find 
more serenity, more tolerance, less fear, and less anger. He 
will acquire a quiet courage, the kind that isn't tensionridden. He can look at "failure" and "success" for what these 
really are. Problems and calamity will begin to mean his 
instruction, instead of his destruction. He will feel freer and 
saner. 
The idea that he may have been hypnotizing himself by 
autosuggestion will become laughable. His sense of purpose 
and of direction will increase. His anxieties will commence to 
fade. His physical health will be likely to improve. Wonderful 
and unaccountable things will start to happen. Twisted 
relations in his family and on the outside will improve 
surprisingly. 
GRAPEVINE, JUNE 1958 
Easy Does It -- but Do It 
Procrastination is really sloth in five syllables. 
"My observation is that some people can get by with a 
certain amount of postponement, but few can live with 
outright rebellion." 
"We have succeeded in confronting many a problem drinker 
with that awful alternative, `This we A.A.'s do, or we die.' 
Once this much is firmly in his mind, more drinking only 
turns the coil tighter. 
"As many an alcoholic has said, `I came to the place where it 
was either into A.A. or out the window. So here I am!'" 
Groping Toward God 
"More than most people, I think, alcoholics want to know 
who they are, what this life is about, whether they have a 
divine origin and an appointed destiny, and whether there is 
a system of cosmic justice and love. 
"It is the experience of many of us in the early stages of 
drinking to feel that we have had glimpses of the Absolute 
and a heightened feeling of identification with the cosmos. 
While these glimpses and feelings doubtless have a validity, 
they are deformed and finally swept away in the chemical, 
spiritual, and emotional damage wrought by the alcohol 
itself. 
"In A.A., and in many religious approaches, alcoholics find a 
great deal more of what they merely glimpsed and felt while 
trying to grope their way toward God in alcohol." 
Spirituality and Money 
Some of us still ask, "Just what is this Third Legacy 
business anyhow? And just how much territory does 
`service' take in?" 
Let's begin with my own sponsor, Ebby. When Ebby heard 
how serious my drinking was, he resolved to visit me. He 
was in New York; I was in Brooklyn. His resolve was not 
enough; he had to take action and he had to spend money. 
He called me on the phone and then got into the subway; 
total cost, ten cents. At the level of the telephone booth and 
subway turnstile, spirituality and money began to mix. One 
without the other would have amounted to nothing at all. 
Right then and there, Ebby established the principle that A.A. 
in action calls for the sacrifice of much time and a little 
money. 
A.A. COMES OF AGE, P. 140-141 
Humility Brings Hope 
Now that we no longer patronize bars and bordellos, now 
that we bring home the pay checks, now that we are so very 
active in A.A., and now that people congratulate us on these 
signs of progress -- well, we naturally proceed to 
congratulate ourselves. Of course, we are not yet within 
hailing distance of humility. 
We 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. 
If humility could enable us to find the grace by which the 
deadly alcohol obsession could be banished, then there 
must be hope of the same result respecting any other 
problem we can possibly have. 
Welcome Criticism 
it not been for its strong critics, A.A. would have made 
slower progress. 
"For myself, I have come to set a high value on the people 
who have criticized me, whether they have seemed 
reasonable critics or unreasonable ones. Both have often 
restrained me from doing much worse than I actually have 
done. The unreasonable ones havetaught me, I hope, a little 
patience. But the reasonable ones have always done a great 
job for all of A.A. -- and have taught me many a valuable 
lesson." 
Three Choices 
The immediate object of our quest is sobriety -- freedom from 
alcohol and from all its baleful consequences. Without this 
freedom, we have nothing at all. 
Paradoxically, though, we can achieve no liberation from the 
alcohol obsession until we become willing to deal with those 
character defects which have landed us in that helpless 
condition. In this freedom quest, we are always given three 
choices. 
A rebellious refusal to work upon our glaring defects can be 
an almost certain ticket to destruction. Or, perhaps for a 
time, we can stay sober with a minimum of self-improvement 
and settle ourselves into a comfortable but often dangerous 
mediocrity. Or,finally, we can continuously try hard for those 
sterling qualities that can add up to fineness of spirit and 
action -- true and lasting freedom under God. 
GRAPEVINE, NOVEMBER 1960 
A New-Found Providence 
When dealing with a prospect of agnostic or atheistic bent, 
you had better use everyday language to describe spiritual 
principles. There is no use arousing any prejudice he may 
have against certain theological terms and conceptions, 
about which he may already be confused. Don't raise such 
issues, no matter what your own convictions are. 
Every man and woman who has joined A.A. and intends to 
stick has, without realizing it, made a beginning on Step 
Three. 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 A.A.? 
Already a willingness has been achieved to cast out one's 
own ideas about hte alcohol problem in favor of those 
suggested by A.A. Now if this is not turning one's will and life 
over to a new-found "Providence," then what is it? 
Do It Our Way? 
In praying, 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. In that case, we are asking God to do it our way. 
Therefore, we ought to consider each request carefully to see 
what its real merit is. 
Even so, when making specific requests, it will be well to add 
to each one of them this qualification: "... if it be Thy will." 
TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 102 
To Grow Up 
Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for 
complete approval, utter security, and perfect romance -- 
urgesquite appropriate to age seventeen -- prove to be an 
impossible way of life at forty-seven or fifty-seven. 
Since A.A. began, I've taken huge wallops in all these areas 
because of my failure to grow up, emotionally and spiritually. 
As we grow spiritually, we find that our old attitudes toward 
our instinctual drives need to undergo drastic revisions. Our 
demands for emotional security and wealth, for personal 
prestige and power all have to be tempered and redirected. 
We learn that the full satisfaction of these demands cannot 
be the sole end and aim of our lives. We cannot place the 
cart before the horse, or we shall be pulled backward into 
disillusionment. But when we are willing to place spiritual 
growth first -- then and only then do we have a real chance to 
grow in healthy awareness and mature love. 
The Great Fact 
We realize we know only a little. God will constantly disclose 
more to you and to us. Ask Him in your morning meditation 
what you can do each day for the man who is still sick. The 
answers will come, if your own house is in order. 
But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven't 
got. See to it that your relationship with Him is right, and 
great events will come to pass for you and countless others. 
This is the great fact for us. 
To the Newcomer: 
Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit 
your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the 
wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join 
us. 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. 
May God bless you and keep you -- until then. 
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 164 
I Am Responsible . . . 
When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the 
hand of A.A. always to be there. 
And for that: I am responsible. 
-- DECLARATION OF 30TH ANNIVERSARY 
INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION, 1965 
DEAR FRIENDS: 
Since 1938, the greatest part of my A.A. life has been spent in 
helping to create, design, manage, and insure the solvency 
and effectiveness of A.A.'s world services -- the office of 
which has enabled our Fellowship to function all over the 
globe, and as a unified whole. 
It is no exaggeration to say that, under their trustees, these 
all important services have accounted for much of our 
present size and over-all effectiveness. 
The A.A. General Service Office is by far the largest single 
carrier of the A.A. message. It has well related A.A. to the 
troubled world in which we live. It has fostered the spread of 
our Fellowship everywhere. A.A. World Services, Inc., stands 
ready to serve the special needs of any group orisolated 
individual, no matter the distance or language. Its many 
years of accumulated experience are available to us all. 
The members of our trusteeship -- the General Service Board 
of A.A. -- will, in the future, be our primary leaders in all of 
our world affairs. This high responsibility has long since 
been delegated to them; they are the successors in world 
service to Dr. Bob and to me, and they are directly
accountable to A.A. as a whole. 
This is the legacy of world-service responsibility that we 
vanishing oldtimers are leaving to you, the A.A.'s of today 
and tomorrow. We know that you will guard, support, and 
cherish this world legacy as the greatest collective 
responsibility that A.A.has or ever can have. 
Yours in trust, and in affection, 
Bill 
Bill W. died on January 24, 1971. 
THE TWELVE STEPS 
lives had become unmanageable. 
could restore us to sanity. 
care of God as we understood Him. 
ourselves. 
being the exact nature of our wrongs. 
of character. 
willing to make amends to them all. 
except when to do so would injure them or others. 
wrong promptly admitted it. 
conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying 
only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry 
that out. 
steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to 
practice these principles in all our affairs. 
THE TWELVE TRADITIONS 
recovery depends upon A.A. unity. 
-- a loving God as He may express Himself in our group 
conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not 
govern. 
stop drinking. 
affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole. 
message to the alcoholic who still suffers. 
A.A. nameto any related facility or outside enterprise, lest 
problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our 
primary purpose. 
declining outside contributions. 
nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special 
workers. 
create service boards or committees directly responsible to 
those they serve. 
issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into 
public controversy. 
than promotion; we need always maintain personal 
anonymity at the level of press, radio and films. 
Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before 
personalities.