Freedom From Fear

ALCOHOLICS are dominated by fear. Our civilization, education and materialistic thinking tends, increasingly, to produce fear-ridden individuals. We constantly seek to remove the cause of our fears rather than conquer them. Many fears are normal and can be faced and understood. . .even used for growth. People without resources of spiritual power, with excess intellectual skepticism, with no strong religious conviction or firm philosophy of life, seem to distrust life itself. These people are powerless over their fears. The alcoholic who boasts of no fear of "God, man nor the devil" is, usually, afraid of man, the devil and God. His way of removing, temporarily, the cause of his fears, is to drown them in "hootch." Poor man! He is so full of fears, most of the time he doesn't know who or what it is he is afraid of, or why. His favorite fear seems to be of running out of his particular brand of alcoholic poison; and so, has to face his fear even of himself. Some have been known to hesitate to come to AA for fear of upsetting their alcoholism; without which, to them, life would be simply impossible. Pitiful, eh?