A recovery thought
archie
We have an “I” disease that has a “we” solution.
We have a responsibility to share the message.
UNMANAGEABILITY IN SOBRIETY
Look in the second paragraph on p. 52 for symptoms of the spiritual malady or as this paragraph describes them as bedevilments, which means to be confused. That’s what we alcoholics suffered from all our lives-–a “confused and baffled spirit”. Turn these statements into questions that we can answer for ourselves. These questions can be answered in the past tense (i.e., when we were drinking) or in the present tense (i.e., now, not drinking, suffering from an unmanageable spirit because of untreated alcoholism.
When I was drinking I was having trouble with personal relationships.
When I was drinking I couldn’t control my emotional nature.
When I was drinking I was prey to misery and depression.
When I was drinking I couldn’t make a living.
When I was drinking I had a feeling of uselessness.
When I was drinking I was full of fear.
When I was drinking I was unhappy.
When I was drinking I couldn’t seem to be of real help to other people.
When I was drinking I was having trouble with personal relationships.
When I was drinking I couldn’t control my emotional nature.
When I was drinking I was prey to misery and depression.
When I was drinking I couldn’t make a living.
When I was drinking I had a feeling of uselessness.
When I was drinking I was full of fear.
When I was drinking I was unhappy.
When I was drinking I couldn’t seem to be of real help to other people.
or
I’m not drinking but I can’t control my emotional nature.
I’m not drinking but I am prey to misery and depression.
I’m not drinking but I can’t make a living.
I’m not drinking but I have a feeling of uselessness.
I’m not drinking but I am full of fear.
I’m not drinking but I am unhappy.
I’m not drinking but I can’t seem to be of real help to other people.
Source unknown
An employee after coming to work for the past month or so always had the smell of booze on his breath and couldn’t walk straight and slurred his words. The boss finally had enough of this conduct and called the drinker into his office and told if he could not tell him a damn good reason why he was 1/2 drunk before noon, he would be fired. The fellow tried to stand up straight and said, “Here are some pretty solid reasons why alcohol should be served at work. It’s an incentive to show up. It leads to more honest communications. It reduces complaints about low pay. Employees tell management what they think, not what management wants to hear. It encourages car pooling. Increase job satisfaction because if you have a bad job, you don’t care. It eliminates vacations because people would rather come to work. It makes fellow employees look better. It makes the cafeteria food taste better. Bosses are more likely to hand out raises when they are wasted. Salary negotiations are a lot more profitable. Employees work later since there’s no longer a need to relax at the bar. It makes everyone more open with their ideas. Eliminates the need for employees to get drunk on their lunch break. Increases the chance of seeing another employee naked. Employees no longer need coffee to sober up. Sitting bare ass on the copy machine will no longer be seen as gross. Not having to worry about your wife being mad when you come home wasted, it’s your job! Any sick days taken would be completely genuine. You can take longer and more frequent bathroom breaks.”
Always Say A Prayer
archie
We don’t change everything about us, just our attitudes.
We don’t change the message, the message changes us.
THE ARCH WHICH WE WALK THROUGH TO FREEDOM
If we are going to build an arch to walk through to the broad highway to freedom it must be built on a firm foundation.
But before we lay the foundation, where do we build our arch?
But be sure you are on solid spiritual ground before you start and that your motive in going is thoroughly good.
page 101, paragraph 4, line 8
What are we going to build with?
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.
page 25, paragraph 1, line 7
The portion of a structure upon which all else even the foundation. rests is the footing.
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.
page 63, paragraph 1, line 3
Let’s now look at the foundation itself.
Upon a foundation of complete willingness I might build what I saw in my friend.
page 12, paragraph 4, line 4
Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery.
page 97, paragraph 1, line 2
...let him go as far as he likes in helping other alcoholics.
During those first days of convalescence, this will do more to insure his sobriety than anything else. Though some of his manifestations are alarming and disagreeable, we think dad will be on a firmer foundation than the man who is placing business or professional success ahead of spiritual development.
page 129, paragraph 3, line 4
Twelve--Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
page 562, paragraph 12
We have all heard of a cornerstone. To a mason, it is the first stone laid. It is also a stone forming a part of a corner or angle, specifically one laid at the formal inauguration of the erection of a building, usually inscribed with the date or other matters and often hollowed out to receive documents, records or other relics. In a more general sense, a cornerstone is something of fundamental importance; a trait or fact upon which others rest as if forming a superstructure. In the latter sense it is akin to a keystone.
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 is on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built.
page 47, paragraph 2, line 2
For the first time, he lived in conscious companionship with his Creator.
Thus was our friend’s cornerstone fixed in place.
page 56, paragraph 4, line 8
Let us take a look at a keystone. It is the stone in the center at the top. Both sides of the arch rest upon it. Without the keystone, the whole structure would collapse. Because our arch is spiritual, rather than material, the keystone symbolizes something other than stone.
...we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director. He is the Principal; we are His agents. He is the Father, and we are His children. Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch...
page 62, paragraph 3, line 2
And what binds the stones together?
The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us.
page 17, paragraph 2, line 13
Entry into the arch, however, is barred to those without the key.
We turned back to the list, for it held the key to the future.
page 66, paragraph 6
Cling to the thought that, in God’s hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have--the key to life and happiness for others.
page 124, paragraph 2, line 9
Now let’s review our construction.
Is our work solid so far? Are the stones properly in place? Have we skimped on the cement put into the foundation? Have we tried to make mortar without sand? Have we skimped on the cement put into the foundation? Have we tried to make mortar without sand?
page 75, paragraph 3, line 9
Source unknown
An alcoholic goes into the confessional box after years of being away from church. There’s a fully equipped bar with Irish stout on tap. On the other wall is a dazzling array of the finest cigars and chocolates. Then the priest comes in. Father, forgive me, for it’s been a very long time since I’ve been to confession, but I must first admit that the confessional box is much more inviting than it used to be. The priest replies; Get out. You’re on my side.
archie
We have a threefold disease: physical, emotional, and spiritual, thus our recovery must be on these 3 levels.
We have a we Program, not a me and my Program.
WE CAN NEVER USE ALCOHOL SAFELY
THESE ALLERGIC TYPES CAN NEVER SAFELY USE ALCOHOL IN ANY FORM AT ALL BIG BOOK PAGE XXVIII, PARAGRAPH 1, LINE 5
I have had a cold since Monday which has left me with a tickly dry cough. The cough medicine I purchased on Monday had ran out, so I went to my local shop to get some more (it was a different shop to the one I’d been to before), they didn’t have the one I’d had before, so I bought one that was suitable for children.
I had taken throughout the course of the evening half the bottle, thankfully it was a small bottle (one hundred ml), but on trying to get some sleep I noticed that not only was I restless, but that my hands were a little shaky. I was beginning to rattle!
I came back downstairs and checked the bottle; it contains propylene glycol, an alcohol variant. I have goggled this and found that it is used in ‘reduced alcohol content’ mouthwashes; ‘low alcohol’ beers, and antifreeze among other things.
To say I am concerned is putting mildly; I have put the matter firmly in the hands of God. And I have the words of Doctor Silkworth ringing in my ears, "These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all".
So to all of you with the holidays coming up, I beg you to be careful of what food and beverages you partake. To some of us this is a deadly serious matter.
God bless, David Jones
An extremely inebriated gentleman staggers through the front door of a bar and orders a drink. The barman refuses him and asks him to leave, which he does, only to come hurtling back a few minutes later through the side door. Again, the proprietor tells him, "Sorry, but you’re too drunk to serve, sir, you’ll have to leave.” This time he comes stumbling through the back door only to meet the same results, whereupon he wails, "Maaaaaan! How many bars in this town do you work at?"
archie
We have both participants and observers in our Fellowship, wonder which has quality sobriety?
We have no knowledge of how or when the urge to drink will come, we know it will however and we shouldn’t wait until it is upon us; we should prepare ourselves with faith and prayer now for our hour of need.
USING THE TRADITIONS FOR GROUP PROBLEMS
Alcoholics Anonymous is made of many cultures, and without the Traditions, communities would have many different A.A. groups. Members report that they work better when they use all the Traditions. Each Tradition has a spiritual principle. It is helpful to have regular Traditions meetings; they are helpful to newcomers. The Traditions create unity, group consciousness, and a singleness of purpose by acknowledging the still-suffering alcoholic. The Traditions are available because of our mistakes and we use our experiences to build knowledge of the Traditions. The Traditions were used as a pre-Conference theme. It was suggested that groups use the Tradition Checklist to examine how each group applies the Traditions. The Traditions are important for the survival of the group.
Specifically, Tradition One has helped with disruptive members. Tradition Two and the group conscience are used to maintain group harmony. Group conscience solves problems at all levels and is a part of acceptance. The long form of Tradition Three explains who attends closed meetings and should be remembered in our groups. When group problems arise we ask what is my responsibility and we deflate our ego. Tradition Five and singleness of purpose is the heartbeat of A.A. Tradition Seven reminds us that we are self-supporting and need contributions to help other groups, the district, the area, and G.S.O. Tradition Seven helped one member get a job when they got sober. It also helps groups to be accountable. Tradition Nine explains that committees are responsible to those they serve. Tradition Ten helps the group by having no opinion on outside issues. Tradition Twelve helps groups to keep personality out of principles; anonymity is the spiritual foundation of our groups.
Area problems: There is a responsibility to demonstrate active respect for the Traditions, while experiencing opinions on matters in another group, district or area. Tradition Three helps in an Area to be tolerant of those with problems other than alcohol. Tradition Twelve helped a member when a trusted servant would not follow area procedures and was vocal about it. In Canada, area meetings are now more accepted in English, French and native population languages, in assemblies and round-ups.
Source unknown
An alcoholic who was lying in a gutter, nearly passed out. Finally, he opened his eyes and saw another inebriate, on rubbery legs, clinging to a nearby lamppost. "If I ever get that bad," he told himself, "I’ll quit.”
archie
We have not seen the best day of our sobriety yet.
We have one ultimate authority in A.A. and it is not one of us, thank God.
WE DON’T HAVE TO DIE THAT WAY ANYMORE
Do you remember when?
We died of pneumonia in furnished rooms where they found us three days later when somebody complained about the smell.
We died against bridge abutments and nobody knew if it was suicide and we probably didn’t know either except in the sense that it was always suicide.
We died in hospitals, our stomachs huge, our livers distended and there was nothing they could do.
We died in cells, never knowing whether we were guilty or not.
We went to priests and ministers, they gave us pledges, they told us to pray, and they told us to go and sin no more, but go.
We tried and we died.
We died of overdoses, we died in bed.
We died in straitjackets, in the DT’s seeing God knows what, creeping skittering slithering shuffling things.
And you know what the worst thing was? The worst thing was that nobody ever believed how hard we tried.
We went to doctors and they gave us stuff to take that would make us sick when we drank, on a principle so crazy that it just might work, I guess, or maybe they just shook their heads and sent us to places like Dropkick Murphy’s.
And when we got out we were hooked on the drugs they gave us, or maybe we lied to the doctors and they told us not to drink so much, just drink like me. And we tried, and we died.
We drowned in our own vomit or choked on it, our broken jaws wired shut.
We died playing Russian roulette and people thought we’d lost, but we knew better.
We died under the hoofs of horses, under the wheels of vehicles, under the knives and boot heels of our brother drunks.
We died in shame.
And you know, what was even worse was that we couldn’t believe it ourselves, that we had tried. We figured we just thought we tried, and we died believing that we hadn’t tried, believing that we didn’t know what it meant to try.
When we were desperate enough or hopeful or deluded or embattled enough to go for help, we went to people with letters after their names and prayed that they might have read the right books that had the right words in them, never suspecting the terrifying truth, that the right words, as simple as they were, had not been written yet.
We died falling off girders on high buildings, because of course ironworkers drink, of course they do.
We died with a shotgun in our mouth, or jumping off a bridge, and everybody knew it was suicide.
We died under the Southeast Expressway, with our hands tied behind us and a bullet in the back of our head, because this time the people that we disappointed was the wrong people.
We died in convulsions, or of insult to the brain.
We died incontinent, and in disgrace, abandoned. If we were women, we died degraded, because women have so much more to live up to.
We tried and we died and nobody cried. And the very worst thing was that for every one of us that died, there were another one hundred of us, or another one thousand who wished that we could die, who went to sleep praying we would not have to wake up because what we were enduring was intolerable, and we knew in our hearts it wasn’t ever gonna change.
One day in 1934 in a hospital room in New York City, one of us had what the books call a transforming spiritual experience, and he said to himself "I’ve got it," (No you haven’t, you’ve only got part of it) "and I have to share it." (Now you’ve almost got it!) and he kept trying to give it away, but we couldn’t hear it.
We tried and we died. We died of one last cigarette, the comfort of its glowing in the dark. We passed out and the bed caught fire. They said we suffocated before our body burned, they said we never felt a thing. That was the best way, maybe, that we died, except sometimes we took our family with us.
And the man in New York was so sure he had it, he tried to love us into sobriety, but that didn’t work either. Love confuses drunks and he tried and we still died.
One after another we got his hopes up and we broke his heart, because that’s what we do.
And the worst thing was that every time we thought we knew what the worst thing was, something happened that was worse.
Until a day came in a hotel lobby and it wasn’t in Rome, or Jerusalem, or Mecca or even Dublin, or South Boston, it was in Akron, Ohio, of all places.
A day came when the man said, "I have to find a drunk because I need him more than he needs me." (Yes, now you’ve got it!).
And the transmission line, after all those years, was open. The transmission line was open. And now we don’t go to priests, and we don’t go to doctors and people with letters after their names.
We come to people who have been there, done that. We come to each other.
We come to try and we don’t have to die because the right words have been written in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Source unknown
Alcoholics have 3 kinds of memory loss: short-term, long-term and convenient.
archie
We have only today, we can’t live in yesterday, nor can we worry about tomorrow; God has given this day as a gift to us, what we do with it is our gift to Him.
We have people in A.A. who are alive but dead, they do nothing but come to meetings.
UNTREATED ALCOHOLISM
We don't have to drink to die, we buried him yesterday. The County Coroner had published the required notices for next of kin and nobody had claimed the body. It was just myself and his sponsor, no preacher even, the county doesn't pay for those.
Not much of send-off , and not the one David had asked for. A cheap coffin, a backhoe dug a hole, and that was it--another old A.A. gone.
He had been sober over twenty years and in A.A. over thirty, a stern and rigid man who tried to soften his edges and never could.
He was a loner, a fringe-er, an isolated man at the edge of life's good things. He hung in there and in the end hung himself. I don't know why; I can't know.
I know there had been a diagnosis of senile dementia, and I know that the doctor had added cancer to the list.
But, I've seen A.A.s deal with such things before. I don't know why David decided he couldn't.
It isn't the first time I've been through this in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've known several over the years who just up and walked out life's door one day. Sober, but not happy. Sober, but not at peace. Sober, but they died of alcoholism.
Our disease doesn't need us to drink in order to kill us. I wish more folks knew that, and appreciated it.
Alcoholism is the only disease that is entirely capable of fighting back, of taking care of itself, and of emerging in new places and new forms when it isn't properly treated. That's because of the spiritual malady.
Most people think that has something to do with prayer or with God. It doesn't. It has to do with 'our spirit', that force which animates, motivates and propels us.
As an alcoholic, my spirit is ill. It is flawed. My character, or basic nature, doesn't work right. At its root, it is a fundamental and unresolvable insecurity, a hole that can't ever be filled.
It is an instinct run rampant, a desperate need for acceptance and love that cannot be met. It hurts. It fills one with fear. The selfishness and self-centeredness of the alcoholic lies here, we are totally preoccupied with what is going on with ourselves on the inside.
The slings and arrows of experience warped by this need drive us to the fringe, and the voices of the committee in our head keep us there.
We are obsessed with ourselves, and from this condition of mind, the insanity of feelings gone haywire, we become self-mediators eventually.
We discover alcohol or something else, and the stuff quiets the voices, provides the relief we've never been able to find in any other way. It isn't any wonder we drink, or drug, the way we do.
And some of us don't develop an addiction, in attempting to meet these crying demands of our spirit become ill, we develop other malformations of behavior, and suffer in a one hundred different ways.
God broke David's obsession to drink. But, I don't think David ever truly understood his disease. I say that because I watched him struggle with those old unresolved issues of his heart for years.
His rigidity, coldness, aloofness, isolation and difficulty with other people were a reflection of the pain in his heart of the disease of alcoholism gone deep inside, and still active.
Alcoholism didn't need David to drink in order to continue trying to kill him, and in the end, it succeeded.
In the end, instead of self abandoned, David abandoned hope and discovered a bitter end.
Our recovery from alcoholism through the Steps must be a threefold process. It is not one dimensional. When we say, in A.A., that we have a triangle; recovery, unity, service, we mean it.
In working the Steps, I clear a pathway for two purposes, first, to come into a group of human people and away from the fringe of society where I have spent most of my emotional life.
Secondly, to discover 'belonging' through service to the people within that group. It is only this entire, three fold process that heals. It is especially true for those of us who suffer from the spiritual malady to a great degree.
Perhaps the Twelfth Step says it best: "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps (recovery), we tried to carry this message to other alcoholics (service) and practice these principles in all our affairs (unity).
You see, I cannot hold back. I must not continue to suffer that shyness, aloneness, that overwhelming sense of self in my affairs. I must get involved in a group of people to practice these principles in all my affairs.
Only the total approach is healing. Anything less is little more than driving my disease deep and if I do that, it will continue to eat away, trying to destroy me.
It destroyed David. This is a memorial to an old A.A. who gave his best shot, and I think David ended up on the plus side. It wasn't his fault; he seemed to have been born that way.
There were a lot of old ideas about self that David could never muster the willingness to let go of. He is at rest now.
But it says somewhere that "no matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others."
David cannot speak to his experience any longer; I am speaking in his memory. And I think that if David could talk to us today, he'd say "Understand your disease thoroughly, and work the complete Program of Recovery!"
God Bless.
Author unknown
An armored money truck got caught in a funeral procession and had to travel along with it for several blocks. A well-oiled pedestrian observed it with amazement. "Waddaya know!" he exclaimed. "You can take it with you."
archie
We have to be spiritually prepared daily for whatever comes our way.
We have to face our deficiencies before we can put them behind us.
SPONSORSHIP
WE HAVE BEEN THERE
A businessman went by. The drunk called out for help. The businessman threw him some money and told him, "Get yourself a ladder." But the drunk could not find a ladder in this hole he was in.
A doctor walked by. The drunk said, "Help, I can’t get out." The doctor gave him drugs and said, "Take this, it will relieve the pain," The drunk said thanks, but when the pills ran out, he was still in the hole.
A renowned psychiatrist rode by and heard the drunk’s cries for help. He stooped and said, "How did you get there? Were you born there? Were you put there by your parents? Tell me about yourself; it will alleviate your sense of loneliness." So the drunk talked with him for an hour, then the psychiatrist had to leave, but he said he’d be back next week. The drunk thanked him, but he was still in his hole.
A priest came by. The drunk called for help. The priest gave him a Bible and said I’ll say a prayer for you. He got down on his knees and prayed for the drunk, then left. The drunk was very grateful, he read the Bible, but he was still stuck in that hole.
A recovering alcoholic happened to be passing by. The drunk cried out, "Hey, help me, I’m stuck in this hole." Right away, the recovering alcoholic jumped in the hole with him. The drunk said, "What are you doing? Now we’re both stuck here." But the recovering alcoholic said, "It’s okay, I’ve been here before, I know how to get out."
Source unknown
An extremely modest man was in the hospital for a series of tests, the last of which had left his bodily systems extremely upset. Upon making several false alarm trips to the bathroom, he figured that the latest episode was just that, so he stayed put. Suddenly, however, he filled his bed with diarrhea and was embarrassed beyond his ability to remain rational. In a complete loss of composure, he jumped out of bed, gathered up the bed sheets, and threw them out the hospital window. A drunk was walking by the hospital when the sheets landed on him. The drunk started yelling, stumbling, and swinging his arms violently, in an attempt to free himself of the sheets. He ended up with the soiled sheets in a tangled pile at his feet. As the drunk stood there, staring down at the sheets, a hospital security guard who had witnessed the entire incident, walked up to him and asked, "What the heck is going on?" The drunk, still staring down at the sheets, replied, "I think I just beat the crap out of a ghost."
archie
We have to give it (sobriety) away to keep it.
We have to let go of the past and forget the future, as long as we hold on to the past with one hand and grab at the future with the other hand, we have nothing to hold on to today with.
THAT AIN’T IN THE BIG BOOK
We hear a lot of stuff said in meetings that can’t be reconciled with the Program as described in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. What follows are some of the things we often hear, along with what the Big Book, our basic text has to say on the subject.
REMEMBER YOUR LAST DRUNK
"We are unable, at times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink."
page 24, paragraph 1, line 4
I CHOOSE NOT TO DRINK TODAY
"The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink."
page 24
PLAY THE TAPE ALL THE WAY THROUGH
"The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into the mind to deter us. If these thoughts do occur, they are hazy and readily supplanted with the old threadbare idea that this time we shall handle ourselves like other people. There is a complete failure of the kind of defense that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove."
page 24, paragraph 2
THING THROUGH THE DRINK
"Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power."
page 43, paragraph 3
I WILL ALWAYS BE RECOVERING, NEVER RECOVERED
The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism"
"Alcoholics Anonymous, Title Page
"Doubtless you are curious to discover how and why, in face of expert opinion to the contrary, we have recovered from a hopeless condition of mind and body. Foreword to the first edition: "We, of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body."
page 20, paragraph 1, line 2
“We, of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.”
Foreword to the first edition, “Further on, clear-cut directions are given showing how we recovered."
page 29
"We have recovered, and have been given the power to help others."
"And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone--even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality--safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us"
page 84, paragraph 3
I DON’T HAVE AN ALCOHOL PROBLEM, I HAVE A LIVING PROBLEM
"In our belief, any picture of the alcoholic which leaves out this physical factor is incomplete."
page XXVI, paragraph 2, line 12, page 17, paragraph 2, line 10
DON’T DRINK AND GO TO MEETINGS
"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 shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us. But that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined."
page 17, paragraph 2, line 10
"Whether such a person can quit upon a non-spiritual basis depends upon the extent to which he has already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not."
page 34, paragraph 2, line 3
"Many of us felt we had plenty of character. There was a tremendous urge to cease forever. Yet we found it impossible. This is the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it-this utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish."
page 34, paragraph 2, line 7
THIS IS A SELFISH PROGRAM
“For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead."
page 14, paragraph 6, line 6:"
"Our very lives, as ex-problem drinkers depend upon our constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs."
page 19, paragraph 4, line 10
"Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles."
page 62
"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!
page 62, paragraph 2
"Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery. A kindly act once in a while isn’t enough. You have to act the Good Samaritan every day, if need be. It may mean the loss of many nights’ sleep, great interference with your pleasures, interruptions to your business. It may mean sharing your money and your home, counseling frantic wives and relatives, innumerable trips to police courts, sanitariums, hospitals, jails and asylums. Your telephone may jangle at any time of the day or night."
page 97, paragraph 1, line 2
MEETING MAKERS MAKE IT
"Here are the Steps we took, which are suggested as a Program of Recovery"
page 59, paragraph 2
I’M POWERLESS OVER PEOPLE, PLACES AND THINGS
"The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the 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."
page 82, paragraph 3
"You can help when no one else can. You can secure their confidence when others fail."
page 89, paragraph 1, line 5
"Years of living with an alcoholic is almost sure to make any wife or child neurotic."
page 122, paragraph 3, line 3
"We have recovered, and have been given the power to help others."
You’re in the right place."
page 132, paragraph 2, line 5
"Then we have a certain type of hard drinker. He may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally. It may cause him to die a few years before his time. If a sufficiently strong reason--ill health, falling in love, change of environment, or the warning of a doctor--becomes operative, this man can also stop or moderate, although he may find it difficult and troublesome and may even need medical attention."
Alcoholics only drink on days beginning with "T"-Tuesdays, Thursdays, Today, Tomorrow.
archie
We have to tell people where we really are to make it possible for them to help us.
We help each other more by example than by instruction.
WHAT TO SAY AT A MEETING
His dignified manner belied the struggle and inner turmoil the newcomer said he was feeling. "If only I could say something meaningful or profound. Then I’d feel like I was getting somewhere in this Program."
I had to smile, as did many of the not-so-newcomers. His words were practically an echo of my own when I was new in sobriety.
Why, I thought, can’t I impress them with words of wisdom and intelligence? Why is it that when it’s my turn to speak I sound just about as articulate as a canary? Yes, folks, with less than a year’s sobriety I wanted to be notable and quotable. How’s that for humility?
And yet maybe that aspiration wasn’t as bad as all that. What I really wanted was to fit in, to be a part of these people who had achieved that elusive state known as sobriety.
What I would like to stress is how many ways all of us "say" something profound--every time we show up at a meeting, reach out for help, chair a meeting, or clean the coffeepot. In these actions we are reaffirming for that twenty four hours that we have chosen sobriety. Because I was dying when I came into this program it’s hard for me to think of this as anything but profound.
And yet, I’ll have to confess that on occasion I still wish for that precious gem to roll off my tongue and impress others. But if I allow my mind to go on a treasure hunt during a meeting, chances are it will return with fool’s gold. And I may have missed someone else’s gem.
At one time I even found myself thinking, "Well, if I can’t say something profound I’ll say something hilariously funny." Now the good times and the laughter are important to me but I must never forget how deadly this disease is.
There will always be those who are quotable without realizing it or even trying. For someone who loves words, like myself, it’s a little frustrating to lack that ability. And yet I feel I’m pretty good with the written word as are a multitude of others. Our talents may differ; it’s how we use them that is important.
So the next time I hear someone wishing they could say something profound, I will gently remind them that their presence at the meeting is the most profound statement they could make.
AAGrapevine, August 1990
An alcoholic went out for a pack of cigarettes 1 night. 2 days later, he woke up in a strange room. He peered out the window, discovered it was morning, threw himself into his clothes, dashed out to the nearest phone, and called his wife. When she answered, he fairly screamed, "Don’t pay the ransom, dear! I’ve escaped!"