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Send us your suggestions for a theme for the 2025 International Convention celebration of AA’s 90th Anniversary in Vancouver, B.C., July 3-6, 2025.

Deadline: 10/15/21

I got sober in 1963. During the past 50-something years I’ve been in AA, I thought I had learned how to live with some peace and serenity.

I was born in 1927 in a farmhouse in central Illinois. The world was different then.

I do not want to grow old without AA. Some days, I think I don’t even want to grow old at all, regardless of AA.

In January of 2017, I walked through the doors of AA for the first time at the age of 73.

I got sober in 1968 and I haven’t had a drink since. All through my sobriety, I carried a secret.

Mark and I are the surviving sober spouses of long-term marriages of the “till death do us part” sort.

When I began my AA journey, I was 59 years old. At my first few meetings I observed that most people were my age and older, and many had at least 25 years of sobriety.

The reason I’m writing today is to offer hope to alcoholics who may be struggling with issues that I have faced and have overcome with the help of a Higher Power, AA, therapists,

Recently I was reading a story in the Steps section of Grapevine and I remembered how, in early sobriety, I learned the true meaning of the Eighth Step.

What dismays me about my early days in Alcoholics Anonymous is the extent of intellectual arrogance and grandiosity that I brought with me.

It was 5:00 p.m. on New Year’s Day of 2009. I stealthily made my way to the ship’s chapel. I was about to attend my first AA meeting, which was being held on this cruise ship.

Three years ago we had to bury my boy, and I’m still broken. At 28 years sober my disease kicked in (the rage), and I knew I had to write my story.

I was about 13 when Dad gave me a half pint of brandy. I had an old fliptop desk in my room with a little door in its center.

A couple of years ago I hit a real rough patch in my sobriety. I had moved across the country and a lot of things weren’t going my way. Work was tough.

I am a lifelong musician and I’ve had a performing and teaching career for 47 years.

I had no idea that after 36 years in AA this is where I would be—sober more than half my life and surrounded by so much love. God has graced me with more than I ever dreamed.

I was coming out of a period of half-measures in my sobriety.

It was late June and I had gotten out of treatment just 12 days earlier.

My mind was going a million miles a minute, but I was standing completely still. I tried sprinting in circles, but could not circumvent my own thoughts.

It was mid-December. I was sitting in the lounge area of the clubhouse where my home group meets, talking with an oldtimer.

As of July 7, 2021,  you’ll be able to see our Daily Quote each morning, know when our new magazine issues release, learn about new books and be inspired by both AA pioneers and today’s members.