Mail Call for A.A.s at Home and Abroad

NOT long ago I tried to do 12th Step work with a very sodden alcoholic. He had tried (but I don't think very hard) to work the A.A. Program. Trying not to judge him wrongly or too harshly I remembered what our A.A. Big Book says about slips and disappointments and the fact that sometimes we must be prepared to see an alcoholic disintegrate before our very eyes. An A.A. friend (who has since had a slip himself) was very pessimistic. But I still have hope for this poor fellow and here is a little lesson on faith and hope that I took to heart one Sunday in leaving church: I asked a dear little old lady friend in her seventies, how her alcoholic son was doing. He has been in and out of A.A. half a dozen times. Every time everyone feels like betting on him he takes another nosedive. I had learned from his sister what she and her mother had undergone that very week through this lad's absorption of alcohol.