Search

“Should our present success continue, people will commence to assert that AA is a brand new way of life, maybe a new religion, capable of saving the world. We shall be told it is our bounden duty to show modern society how it ought to live ...

“Fortunately most of us are convinced that these are perilous speculations, alluring ingredients of that new heady wine we are now being offered, each bottle marked ‘Success’!

“Of this subtle vintage may we never drink too deeply.”

“‘How will I know if I’ve really hit my bottom?’ I asked at my home group. ‘When you stop digging,’ they told me.”

“Today, as I look back over 27-plus years of sobriety, I can simply thank Him for being wherever I am going before I even get there.”

“The compulsion among most of us to survive and to grow soon becomes far stronger than the temptation to drink, or to misbehave. Literally, we must ‘do or die.’ So we make the choice to live. This, in turn, means the choice of AA principles, practices and attitudes that can salvage us from total disaster by insuring our sobriety.”

“Over the years I've gone to different types of groups to meet different needs in my life or to share experience, strength, and hope about a particular problem I was struggling with. Some days I've been part of the solution for another suffering alcoholic; other days I've been the one who was suffering.

“Thanks to our Fifth Tradition, no matter what my needs or my location I can find an AA group where I can talk about -- and listen to -- not drinking one day at a time, practicing the principles in all of my affairs, and being happily and usefully whole.”

“While wealth and authority lie at the foundation of many a noble institution, we of AA now apprehend, and thoroughly well, that these things are not for us. Have we not found that one man's meat is often another man's poison?”

“The most beautiful gifts of my life come to me in packages I do not recognize at first glance. In fact, I often don’t see them until I’ve stumbled over them. Yet I know that when I go about my business in service to AA and to others these gifts will appear, usually in the most unexpected places.”

“We are not a sociological entity, although sociologists find us fascinating. We are not a therapy group, although remarkable healing takes place among us. And we are not a religion, even though some people want to see us as such ... We are a spiritual entity.”

“I have learned in the program not to listen to the voice of my ego when it starts whispering things.”

“AA is not a separate country, cut off from the mainland of the real world; it is the schoolroom I missed somewhere along the line ... a treasure house of other people’s experience, strength and hope.”

“I can recognize that I’m caught up in my will when I desperately struggle to slam a square peg into a round hole. That’s the time for me to back off and trust that God’s will is far better than mine.”

“Each day I feel myself growing in recovery. I can honestly say I’m happier now than ever before in my adult life.”

“Through Step Five, God has removed my shame about being an alcoholic.”

“The word ‘alcoholic’ does not turn me off anymore; in fact, it is music to my ears when it applies to me.”

“I have learned to keep quiet when I disagree and to give others freedom to express opinions widely different from my own -- without giving in to the urge to enlighten them. I am grateful for all the voices of AA.”