The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

by Alcoholics Anonymous

changing myself. I had been too self-sufficient to write a moral inventory, but I discovered in pointing out to the new man his wrong attitudes and actions that I was really taking my own inventory, and that if I expected him to change I would have to work on myself too.

I have no wish to graduate.

have served on only one committee in the past nine years, for I feel that I had my chance the first few years and that newer members should fill the jobs. They are far more alert and progressive than we floundering fathers were, and the future of our fellowship is in their hands. We now live in the West and are very fortunate in our area A.A.; it is good, simple and friendly, and our one desire is to stay in A.A. and not on it. Our pet slogan is “Easy Does It.

And here’s the definition: Showing or expressing too much emotion especially in a foolish or annoying way

Sermon on the Mount.

By the time I was thirty I had found that alcohol dissolved fear.

sociologists

abnormal

Visits from friends which lasted over fifteen minutes exhausted me.

Psychiatry might have helped, but psychiatrists had not penetrated the middle west.

Fear froze me in my tracks, but the instant I turned back toward home this paralyzing fear left me.

Probably only a few readers of this story will be able, from personal experiences of their own, to understand the exhilaration and sense of accomplishment which I felt after finishing this seemingly simple assignment.

Anxiety disorders

the former, but of this, more anon.

both in the same year, leaving me, a sheltered and somewhat immature man, on my own. I moved into a “bachelor hall.” These men all drank on Saturday nights,

I had bad nervous headaches,

years. At least three of those four years must have been a living hell for my wife, because

The birth of a baby boy did nothing toward staying the downward spiral.

purposefulness about them, came

it? It was simple, they said, and went on to explain to me in their own language the program of recovery and daily living which we know today as the Twelve Steps of A.A. Dr. Bob dwelt at length on how prayer had given him release,

a drink would mean homelessness and death;

“God, for eighteen years I have been unable to handle this problem. Please let me turn it over to you.” Immediately a great feeling of peace descended upon me, intermingled with a feeling of being suffused with a quiet strength.

Nothing had changed and yet everything had changed. The scales had dropped from my eyes and I could see life in its proper perspective.

vast universe of which I was perhaps an essential,

miracle. It is, however, only the first of a series of miracles

give, I had to learn the equally important lesson of receiving graciously.

using part of the time in making many amends, which I had had no earlier opportunity of making.

I also talked A.A. to every friend who would listen, at lunch, at dinner, on street corners. A doctor tipped me off to my first prospect.

While there, two or three more “cash customers” (as Dr. Bob used to call them — probably because they had so little cash) were shipped in to us from Detroit.

Alcoholics Anonymous. I, carried away with the desire to serve A.A., gave what

lack of training.

At long last I am doing the kind of work I have always wanted to do, but never had the patience and emotional stability to train myself for. The A.A. program showed me the way to come down to earth, start from the bottom and work up.

I have faced life instead of running away from it.

Some of the things which used to stop me in my tracks from fear still make me nervous in the anticipation of their doing, but once I kick myself into doing them nervousness disappears and I enjoy

I shut my eyes

fondle such thoughts, as you might fondle a pet, because this particular pet could grow into a monster.

much eliminate grief from your life, but you also eliminate joy.

and three grandchildren. Being an alcoholic, I couldn’t dream of doing anything by halves! My wife, a sister member in A.A., had been a widow nine years and I had been single eighteen years.

I was caught in a cycle of alcohol and sedation that was proving inescapable and consciousness had become intolerable.

speakeasies

Nightclub for liquor

pseudo-sophistication.

At twenty-five I had developed an alcoholic problem.

in the hope that one of them might find some cure for my accumulating ailments, preferably something that could be removed surgically.

Just an unstable woman, undisciplined, poorly adjusted and filled...

I would hang on to sobriety for short intervals, but always there would come the tide of an overpowering necessity to drink

I could no longer gage my capacity and it might be the second or the tenth drink that would erase my consciousness.

People didn’t behave this way outside of an asylum. Heartsickness, shame, and fear, fear

bordering on panic, and no complete escape any longer except in oblivion.

Why he bothered with me as long as he did I shall never know, for he knew there was no answer for me in medicine and he, like all doctors of his day, had been taught that the alcoholic was incurable and should be ignored.

saw alcoholism as a disease and felt that the alcoholic was a victim of something over which he had no control. They had

But somehow my good doctor heard of this book and also he learned a little about the people responsible for its publication.