A True Miracle
(Continued) If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will...
Category: AA Literature Quotes
The Spiritual Life
Sometimes we hear an alcoholic say that the only thing he needs to do is to keep sober. Certainly he must keep sober, for there will be no home if he doesn’t. But he...
Coming Clean
The chances are that we have domestic troubles. Perhaps we are mixed up with women in a fashion we wouldn’t care to have advertised. We doubt if, in this respect, alcoholics are fundamentally much...
Drastic Steps
A man we know had remarried. Because of resentment and drinking, he had not paid alimony to his first wife. She was furious. She went to court and got an order for his arrest....
No Exceptions
Most alcoholics owe money. We do not dodge our creditors. Telling them what we are trying to do, we make no bones about our drinking; they usually know it anyway, whether we think so...
Making Amends
Let’s look at Steps Eight and Nine. We have a list of people we have harmed and to whom we are willing to make amends. We made it when we took inventory. Now we...
Are We Ready?
When we decide who is to hear our story, we waste no time. We have a written inventory and we are prepared for a long talk. We explain to our partner what we are...
Tell Your Story
More than most people, the alcoholic leads a double life. He is very much the actor. To the outer world he presents his stage character. This is the one he likes his fellows to...
Into Action
Having made our personal inventory, what shall we do about it? We have been trying to get a new attitude, a new relationship with our Creator, and to discover the obstacles in our path....
The Sex Question
Now about sex. Many of us needed an overhauling there. Here we find human opinions running to extremes. One set of voices cry that sex is a lust of our lower nature, a base...
Outgrow Fear
Fear — this short word somehow touches about every aspect of our lives. It was an evil and corroding thread; the fabric of our existence was shot through with it. It set in motion...
Resentment Leads to Spiritual Disease
Resentment destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease. For, we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. While dealing with resentments,...
A Personal Inventory
We were now at Step Three. Many of us said to our Maker, as we understood Him: “God I offer myself to Thee — to build me and to do with me as Thou...
Quit Playing God
Most people try to live by self-propulsion. Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest...
The Twelve Steps
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men...
Question of Faith
When we saw others (in the fellowship) solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the Spirit of the Universe, we had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work....
A Greater Power
Lack of power was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously. But where and how were we...
Overcome Denial
Our behavior is as absurd and incomprehensible with respect to the first drink as that of an individual with a passion, say, for jay-walking. He gets a thrill out of skipping in front of...
Spiritual Solution
How often have some of us begun to drink in this nonchalant way, and after the third or fourth, pounded on the bar and said to ourselves, “For God’s sake, how did I ever...
Loss of Control
If you ask him (an alcoholic) why he lost control, the chances are he will offer you any one of a hundred alibis. Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them...
