Search

“If in order to get into AA we had had to meet any standards more rigid than the one given in the Third Tradition, who of us would be alive? Think of all the wonderful people, including the nonconformists, eccentrics, and kooks who make such valuable additions to our number, who would have been kept out of AA if we had any requirement for membership other than a desire to get well.”

“If the Fourth Step is the exploration of an abandoned house, I have come to think of the Fifth Step as raising the blinds and throwing open the windows. The house has air and sunlight now, and it's no longer haunted. When people come to the door, I can welcome them without shame, and I can even invite them in. Some rooms are private of course, but none are secret, and I live in all of them.”

“On a daily basis I choose not to drink – or to fear, hate, be angry, or indulge in any other defect that’s raising its ugly head. They’re all there waiting, and when given a chance they charge into the center of my life and try to take over. But when I work Step Seven I find that my life is filled with good, and people actually like to be around me – something they never did in my drinking days.”