Search

“In the meetings I attend, newcomers sometimes ask me how I’ve been able to stay sober so long. My answer is always the same: every morning, the first thing I do is say three magic words -- God, help me.”

“I use notes to remind me to seek my Higher Power ... On my desk, in front of my computer is the note: ‘Good morning, this is God, I will be handling all your worries and concerns for today. I will not need your help!’”

“Consider the problem of the fast-growing overseas centers just now emerging from their pioneering time -- how they have slowly gained the confidence of medicine, religion, and the press; how they have finally grown into unity through an ever better application of our Twelve Traditions; how they have tried to make good their desperate lack of language translations; and how they have well begun to cross all barriers of race, creed, or social condition.”

“The welcome I received in AA was real. Neither my youth, my race, my newness, nor my foreignness concerned them. All they appeared to see was that I finally admitted my powerlessness over alcohol. That was enough for them.”

“The Italians have a neat way of telling someone ‘I love you.’ Their expression is ‘Ti voglio bene’ -- ‘I wish you well.’ It just seems to put things on a tangible level ... Quite often my prayer is nothing more than this little Italian phrase, ‘Ti voglio bene.’"

“I expect to be ‘on tap’ but never again ‘on top,’ this being precisely the stance that AA hopes all its old-timers will take.”

“I was told by a sober member of AA that if I wanted to stay sober I would need to do three things: get a sobriety date and don’t change it, get a sponsor, and get a home group.”

“Today, I don’t have the home, the husband, the three cars in the garage. I have one old clunker that takes me to meetings. I am not financially well off, but I have a peace of mind I never dreamed possible. My needs are always met -- and even some of my wishes. I am truly happy for the first time in my life. Thank you AA.”

“We found that all progress, material or spiritual, consisted of finding out what our responsibilities actually were and then proceeding to do something about them ... We found that we didn’t always have to be driven by our own discomforts as, more willingly, we picked up the burdens of living and growing ... We discovered that full acceptance and action upon any clear-cut responsibility almost invariably made for true happiness and peace of mind.”

“If I want to be of some use to someone (my family, my employer, my community) then I can be a leader by becoming a servant. This is one of those crazy paradoxes we find all over the AA program: being a servant to be a leader.”

“I have come to believe that my drinking insanity is only one form of the craziness to which we AAs are prone. I call it Insanity A. Insanity B is finding out what works for you -- and then not doing it.”

“Some days are harder than others, but I have been told a person is not measured by what she has achieved but by what she has overcome.”

“Because of this program I am starting to love myself again. I still get urges to ‘drink and drug’ but I don’t let them run my life. I value good friends today. I value my serenity, and I value life today.”

“My heart sings with each new day.”

“Each AA has been an individual who, because of his alcoholism, could seldom govern himself. Nor could any other human being govern the alcoholic’s obsession to drink, his drive to have things his own way ... Yet we alcoholics can be led, we can be inspired.”