Digital Archive
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| 1. | Keeping It Simple (by C. R.) Maryland -- BEFORE I came to AA, I centered my life around intellectual accomplishments and analytic thinking. You name it--I analyzed it! My favorite topics included: (1) me, myself, and I: (2) me and my relationships with other people; and (3) me vs. society and its injustices. You can see the common theme: me. I spent my days in morbid self-preoccupation, until the negative thinking and self-centered fear became so unbearable that I drank myself into alcoholic oblivion. | March 1979 | |
| 2. | New Life in Lurigancho (by C. R.) Bring only your passport and 15,000 soles," my friend had told me. "Nothing else. Don't wear a belt. The guards at the prison won't let you wear it in and then you'll never see it again." | July 1986 | |
| 3. | Many Paths to the Mountaintop (by Peter F.) California -- Every month or so, it seems, the Grapevine prints at least one article by an old-(or not so old) timer on the topic of "things aren't the way they were when I got sober." Sometimes, the tone is, ". . .and I may drink if it doesn't change--then you'll be sorry!" Well, okay, guys, you're right. Things have changed. AA has changed, the world has changed, and I have changed. And I don't like change. | May 1992 | |
| 4. | Eye of the Hurricane (by Jim N.) Massachusetts -- It is often said in AA that fear is the absence of faith. But my own experience has taught me that fear can be a stage of faith. | May 1996 | |
| 5. | Savoring Sobriety (by Anonymous) N. Y. -- During my drinking days, my life was in freefall. I didn't think before I acted, didn't accept responsibility, didn't show up, didn't behave morally or decently. To rationalize this behavior, I presented myself to myself and others as a free spirit and a hedonist. I really thought I was a pleasure-seeker when in fact I was merely seeking gratification for my addiction to alcohol. I didn't see that my "free-spirited" behaviors--my selfishness, the carelessness of my love life, my lack of commitment, the wild unmanageability of my life--weren't choices, but came directly out of my alcoholism and my desire to evade reality. I had to see myself as a hedonist because I couldn't claim more solid accomplishments; there was ... | August 1997 | |
| 6. | PO Box 1980 (by Bob B.) Massachusetts -- Bill F.'s article in the September Grapevine is an excellent discourse on the essentially disproven "hidden cause" theory of alcoholism contained in the Big Book and the "Twelve and Twelve." I've written my own Fourth Step and listened to others share their Fifth Step with me. I now know that I initially made these Steps more difficult than they had to be because I got hung up looking for some "hidden cause" of my alcoholism that turned out to have no consequence in my recovery. I really didn't have to identify anything hidden in my personality to recognize "self-centered fear" and other human shortcomings, but like Bill F., I realize that I must deal with them to protect my sobriety. | February 1998 | |
| 7. | Restoration (by R. S.) Ohio -- It was one of those times when all I could do is look heavenward and say, "Okay, what is it I'm supposed to learn this time?" Being willing for the first time in my life to take an honest look at myself and to work toward a spiritual awakening, I find that there is something in every experience which can teach me. There are lessons in even the most mundane details. | May 1999 | |
| 8. | Your Move (by James G.) Rhode Island -- Readers tell us about their favorite passages in AA literature. The second-to-last paragraph of Step Seven in the "Twelve and Twelve" was the wake-up call I needed as I reluctantly began my first journey through the Steps. Finally I had found, in one sentence, the sum total of my active alcoholic life: "The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear--primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded." | July 2000 | |
| 9. | Carry the Message? Me? (by Andy B.) New Hampshire -- I still was shaking from having spoken at the meeting so I was sure I misunderstood the phone call I received when I got home. It sounded as though the caller wanted me to write down some of the things I had shared. She felt they were good examples of what Twelfth Step work was all about. | March 2001 | |
| 10. | Ham on Wry (by Jim O.) New York -- RECIPE FOR MAKING A MOUNTAIN out of a molehill: Start with a generous portion of negative thinking. | December 2001 | |
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