27 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. 1. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 85 2. TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 174 28 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 29 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. 1. LETTER, 1959 2. TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 110 30 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." LETTER, 1954 31 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. 1. LETTER, 1942 2. GRAPEVINE, NOVEMBER 1961 32 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 33 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 1. P. 104 2. P. 102 3. P. 98 34 "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." LETTER, 1954 35 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. 1. LETTER, 1959 2. A.A. COMES OF AGE, P. 69 36 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 1. P. 30 2. P. 74 37 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 38 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." 2. LETTER, 1950 39 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. << << << >> >> >> "The most heated bit of letter-writing can be a wonderful safety valve -- providing the wastebasket is somewhere nearby." 1. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, PP. 64-65 2. LETTER, 1949 40 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 41 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? 1. GRAPEVINE, AUGUST 1946 2. TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 141 42 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 most wonderful revelation. Our whole trouble had been the misuse of will power. We had tried to bombard our problems with it instead of attempting to bring it into agreement with God's intention for us. To make this increasingly possible is the purpose of A.A.'s Twelve Steps. TWELVE AND TWELVE 1. P. 22 2. P. 40 43 How Much Anonymity? 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 44 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. 1. LETTER, 1966 2. GRAPEVINE, MARCH 1962 45 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 46 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 1. P. 123 2. PP. 124-125 47 Seeing is Believing The Wright brothers' almost childish faith that they could build a machine which would fly was the mainspring of their accomplishment. Without that, nothing could have happened. We agnostics and atheists were sticking to the idea that self-sufficiency would solve our problems. When others showed us that God-sufficiency worked with them, we began to feel like those who had insisted the Wrights would never fly. We were seeing another kind of flight, a spiritual liberation from this world, people who rose above their problems. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, PP. 52-53, 55 48 Live Serenely When a drunk has a terrific hangover because he drank heavily yesterday, he cannot live well today. But there is another kind of hangover which we all experience whether we are drinking or not. That is the emotional hangover, the direct result of yesterday's and sometimes today's excesses of negative emotions -- anger, fear, jealousy, and the like. If we would live serenely today and tomorrow, we certainly need to eliminate these hangovers. This doesn'tmean we need to wander morbidly around in the past. It requires an admission and correction of errors -- now. TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 88-89 49 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. 1. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 33 2. A.A. COMES OF AGE, P. 46 50 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 51 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." 1. GRAPEVINE, JANUARY 1962 2. LETTER, 1966 52 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 53 "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 54 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