Growth

Several months ago, my husband and I enrolled in a beginners' art course. We didn't become great painters, but both of us now see things, such as leaves and blades of grass and shadings of color, that we weren't aware of before. One day, the instructor showed us a Picasso drawing of the artist's daughter. It pictured her in profile, and it consisted of only three lines. What was left out dramatized what was there. We learned also that in shading a tree, what is left out is as important as the pencil lines, for the blanks create sunlight on the leaves.

Bonus stories from some of the first AA women

There's No Double Standard in Alcoholism or AA

I sat jittering in Bill's office. My psychiatrist had sent me to see Bill. I had said to her: "Good. I'd like to meet him. Wouldn't it be fun to get him to take a drink?" She laughed a nice easy laugh. She said, "You couldn't get him to take a drink." I heard that. It stayed with me. You couldn't get him to take a drink. So I, the girl who was going to get Bill to take a drink, now sat here, talking to Bill.

Women Pioneers

When I attended my first AA meeting on April 11, 1939, I was the only woman alcoholic there. And I might not have been there had there not been one before me whose story I had read in the manuscript of a book called Alcoholics Anonymous. Some weeks before, my psychiatrist had handed me a red cardboard-covered document, saying flatly that he had about given up hope of being able to help me after nearly a year of intensive treatment in the sanitarium he headed. But, he added, he had just read something that might help, and he wanted me to read it. He said little more, except to remark that this group of men (the emphasis is mine) seemed to have discovered a way out of the same trouble I had--drinking.

Hands-Off Policy

"If there's anything worse than a drunk, it's a woman drunk!" That was a bartender talking, several years ago. He meant me, and thousands of my sisters-under-a-skinful. I blushed, and teetered quietly to the next bar.

Story of the Day: Calls for Restatement of AA Purposes

AA helps the individual alcoholic create within himself a spiritual and physiological change. AA is not trying to start a mass movement for the betterment of the whole human race. Read more >

Step Eleven:

WHEN I WAS SMALL, my parents sent me to several different Sunday schools, but I don't think they ever went to church themselves. My aunts and uncles were members of different sects, and when they came to visit, they took me with them to their churches. My parents made no objection, and, in fact, I believe they thought it would be good for me. As it turned out, it wasn't. Read more >

Tradition Eleven:

I HAVEN'T MADE a good old-fashioned sweeping statement in a long time. I would like to make one now and say that nothing on earth could ever have promoted me out of drunkenness into sobriety. Not family, friends, or lovers. Not a jail, a mental institution, or a psychoanalyst. Not threats of violence, actual fistfights, or suicide attempts. There just never was enough reason or incentive in the sober life to win me over. Never, that is, until I came to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, in the summer of 1960. Read more >