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“This issue of the Grapevine marks the anniversary of its founding exactly fifteen [now seventy] years ago.

The memory of some of those first editorial meetings will linger with me always. Seated around a table in a tiny cheerless room some place downtown, the founders pored over their freshly written copy for the first issues. In those days the enthusiastic founders did everything. Not only did they do the art work, write the bulk of the stories, they kept the books, they paid the printing bill, they typed the address on each copy and finally licked all the stamps. So went the happy monthly paroxysm of creating what was to become the principal monthly journal of our whole society.

Today 35,000 readers [now over 100,000 across multiple media platforms] see mirrored in each issue of the AA Grapevine a monthly vision of the worldwide thought, feeling and activity of our whole fellowship. It is our great means of inter-communication; a magic carpet on which each of you can ride to the more distant reaches and watch new brothers and sisters emerge from darkness into light.

On this happy occasion I send my warmest affection to Grapevine readers and staff alike. May God prosper the Grapevine always.”

“Groups change, just like people do, and we AAs fight change. Although we can never go back to the way it once was, we will survive -- yea, even thrive -- as long as we remember Tradition Five, ‘Each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose -- that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.’”

“There will always be people in the Fellowship with whom I don’t see eye-to-eye, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work together. The Fellowship wouldn’t be what it is today if we always saw eye-to-eye on everything.”

“I opened up the imaginary closet in my mind where I kept all the well-nurtured hurts and tossed them into my past, where they belonged. Into this newly cleaned-out space, I started storing my goals and the hopes and dreams of what I wanted to achieve in life.”

“Asking for help is not just a path to humility; it is a path to connection with my fellows and with God.”

“If there are challenges to be met today, I remember other days when what seemed impossible was made possible.”

“Trial and error produces group experience, and out of corrected experience comes custom. When a customary way of doing things is definitely proved to be best, then that custom forms into AA Tradition.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Great love is the sunlight of AA's tree of life.”

“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.”

“I still don’t have answers for all the eternal questions, like why bad things happen to good people, or why babies die. But I have found that life works better when I focus more on how I am contributing to God’s world than musing about what he is or is not doing in mine.”

“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 started to understand that while I didn’t believe in churches, I had to see that something or someone was working in my life that hadn’t been there before.”

“Ever deepening humility, accompanied by an ever greater willingness to accept and to act upon clear obligations -- these are truly our touchstones for all growth in the life of the spirit.”