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If you are as seriously alcoholic as we were, we believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution. We were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid, we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could; and the other, to accept spiritual help. This we did because we honestly wanted to, and were willing to make the effort.
vital spiritual experiences.
Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and
a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.
while his religious convictions were very good, in his case they did not spell the necessary vital spiritual experience.
No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows.
The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.
The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.
All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals–usually brief–were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.
We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones. Neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men.
By every form of self-deception and experimentation, they will try to prove themselves exceptions to the rule, therefore nonalcoholic.
We do not like to pronounce any individual as alcoholic, but you can quickly diagnose yourself.
we believe that early in our drinking careers most of us could have stopped drinking. But the difficulty is that few alcoholics have enough desire to stop while there is yet time.
“Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.” Commencing to drink after a period of sobriety, we are in a short time as bad as ever. If we are planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol.
inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink.
However intelligent we may have been in other respects, where alcohol has been involved, we have been strangely insane. It’s strong language–but isn’t it true?
the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly any exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge.
Not only had I been off guard, I had made no fight whatever against the first drink. This time I had not thought of the consequences at all.
I would have to throw several lifelong conceptions out of the window.
Though not a religious person, I have profound respect for the spiritual approach in such cases as yours. For most cases, there is virtually no other solution.”
The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power.
We were bothered with the thought that faith and dependence upon a Power beyond ourselves was somewhat weak, even cowardly. We looked upon this world of warring individuals, warring theological systems, and inexplicable calamity,
with deep skepticism. We looked askance at many individuals who claimed to be godly. How could a Supreme Being have anything to do with it all? And who could comprehend a Supreme Being anyhow? Yet, in other moments, we found ourselves thinking, when enchanted by a starlit night, “Who, then, made all this?” There was a feeling of awe and wonder, but it was fleeting and soon lost.
We needed to ask ourselves but one short question. “Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself?” As soon as a man can say that he does believe, or is willing to believe, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built.
Everybody nowadays, believes in scores of assumptions for which there is good evidence, but no perfect visual proof. And does not science demonstrate that visual proof is the weakest proof? It is being constantly revealed, as mankind studies the material world, that outward appearances are not inward reality at all.
When, however, the perfectly logical assumption is suggested that underneath the material world and life as we see it, there is an All Powerful, Guiding, Creative Intelligence, right there our perverse streak comes to the surface and we laboriously set out to convince ourselves it isn’t so. We read wordy books and indulge in windy arguments, thinking we believe this universe needs no God to explain it. Were our contentions true, it would follow that life originated out of nothing, means nothing, and proceeds nowhere. Instead of regarding ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of God’s
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People of faith have a logical idea of what life is all about. Actually, we used to have no reasonable conception whatever. We used to amuse ourselves by cynically dissecting spiritual beliefs and practices when we might have observed that many spiritually-minded persons of all races, colors, and creeds were demonstrating a degree of stability, happiness and usefulness which we should have sought ourselves. Instead, we looked at the human defects of these people, and sometimes used their shortcomings as a basis of wholesale condemnation. We talked of intolerance, while we were intolerant
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Students of ancient history tell us that the intellect of men in those days was equal to the best of today. Yet in ancient times material progress was painfully slow. The spirit of modern scientific inquiry, research and invention was almost unknown. In the realm of the material, men’s minds were fettered by superstition, tradition, and all sort of fixed ideas. Some of the contemporaries of Columbus thought a round earth preposterous. Others came near putting Galileo to death for his astronomical heresies. We asked ourselves this: Are not some of us just as biased and unreasonable about the
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Logic is great stuff. We like it. We still like it. It is not by chance we were given the power to reason, to examine the evidence of our sense, and to draw conclusions. That is one of man’s magnificent attributes. We agnostically inclined would not feel satisfied with a proposal which does not lend itself to reasonable approach and interpretation. Hence we are at pains to tell why we think our present faith is reasonable, why we think it more sane and logical to believe than not to believe, why we say our former thinking was soft and mushy when we threw up our hands in doubt and said, “We
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Without knowing it, had we not been brought to where we stood by a certain kind of faith? For did we not believe in our own reasoning? Did we not have confidence in our ability to think? What was that but a sort of faith? Yes, we had been faithful, abjectly faithful to the God of Reason. So, in one way or another, we discovered that faith had been involved all the time!
We found, too, that we had been worshippers. What a state of mental goose-flesh that used to bring on! Had we not variously worshipped people, sentiment, things, money, and ourselves? And then, with a better motive, had we not worshipfully beheld the sunset, the sea, or a flower? Who of us had not loved something or somebody? How much did these feelings, these loves, these worships, have to do with pure reason? Little or nothing, we saw at last.
Imagine life without faith! Were nothing left but pure reason, it wouldn’t be life.
we saw that reason isn’t everything. Neither is reason, as most of us use it, entirely dependable, thought it emanate from our best minds.
Actually we were fooling ourselves, for deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there. For faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives, are facts as old as man himself. We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our make-up, just as much as the feeling we have for a friend.
“If there is a God, He certainly hasn’t done anything for me!”
“Who are you to say there is no God?”
Save for a few brief moments of temptation the thought of drink has never returned; and at such times a great revulsion has risen up in him.
Those who do not recover are
usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.
At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not.
Remember that we deal with alcohol–cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us.
Half measures availed us nothing.
admitted we were powerless over alcohol–that
believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God
moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Continued to take personal inventory
