Search

“Our alcoholism is a sickness we no longer fear to discuss.”

“I am grateful to AA that I have learned some humility, so when offered help, I can now say, ‘Yes, I can use your assistance.’”

“Each night I pray that when the alarm clock goes off in the morning, I'll have a spiritual awakening.”

“Often simplicity yields to complexity as the human mind grasps a great revelation, and places its own particular interpretation upon it. All too often the revelation becomes lost in the maze of human ideas, interpretations, and suggestions. Thus have great movements risen, flourished for a season, and died. But AA has steadily progressed through the labyrinth of complexity, carefully avoiding luring temptations of wealth, professionalism, and fame as a healer of one of mankind's most deadly diseases. Dr. Bob who responded to that original phone call, and heard and accepted the message from Bill, has left ringing in our ears, the vital admonition: ‘Keep it simple.’”

“Let us of AA ... resolve that we shall always be inclusive and never exclusive, offering all we have to all, save our title. May all barriers be thus leveled.”

“If we fail to ‘repair,’ we can only impair.”

“There are AA emotions and attitudes that transcend language.”

“Our sobriety should be founded on ‘unselfish selfishness’ ... It’s not sound, we have been told, to try to stay dry for the sake of a wife or a sweetheart or someone else dear to us.”

“AA recovery cannot be bought and sold, but more than once I've wished I could just send a monthly check instead of practicing those principles. Just making donations seems an easier, softer way, doesn't it?”

“The question arises of just what constitutes an amend. Many of us find that the old rationalization, ‘If I stay sober, that’s amends enough to those I have hurt,’ just doesn’t work. We have to be willing to go further.”

“Every August, one of the founding members of my group (a real character, who is jokingly said to be our spiritual leader -- or is it spherical leader?) says that in honor of the eighth month and Tradition Eight, he is offering a special discount on sponsorship for anyone who needs it.

Sometimes people take him up on the offer, but a good proportion of them cancel during the introductory trial period. Of course, this is all said in jest at our meetings, and we get a good laugh out of it.”

“Let all of us AAs, whether we be trustees, editors, secretaries, janitors, or cooks -- or just members -- ever recall the unimportance of wealth and authority as compared with the vast import of our brotherhood, love, and service.”

“In our Twelve Traditions we have set our faces against nearly every trend in the outside world.

We have denied ourselves personal government, professionalism and the right to say who our members shall be. We have abandoned do-goodism, reform and paternalism. We refuse charitable money and prefer to pay our own way. We will cooperate with practically everybody, yet we decline to marry our Society to anyone. We abstain from public controversy and will not quarrel among ourselves about those things that so rip society asunder -- religion, politics and reform. We have but one purpose: to carry the AA message to the sick alcoholic who wants it.

We take these attitudes not at all because we claim special virtue or wisdom; we do these things because hard experience has told us that we must -- if AA is to survive in the distraught world of today.

“A friend of mine told me about going to see the Statue of Liberty on a field trip with his grammar school class. He said that as they walked up the long spiral staircase, they all held hands in a line. He couldn't see the person at the beginning or the end of the line but he felt safe. He knew he was connected to the rest of his schoolmates. That's the way it is in AA. We can't see the people at either end of the line. But we know they're there -- and we know we're safe.”

“If we dwell on the past or the future, we put ourselves back into the torture chamber. We stop changing. Boredom, pain, and futility take over again. We have been ... We will be ... We no longer are. The 24-hour program disappears. Anxiety, anger, and a desire for revenge replace spiritual experience. Awareness and surrender cease. We are on a dry drunk.”