The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous (Including Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

by Alcoholics Anonymous World Service Inc.

They believe in themselves, and still more in the Power which pulls chronic alcoholics back from the gates of death. Of course an alcoholic

ought to be freed

from his physical craving for liquor, and this often requires a definite hospital procedure, before psychological me...

These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve.

This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.

have had many men who had, for example, worked a period of months on some problem or business deal which was to be settled on a certain date, favorably to them. They took a drink a day or so prior to the date, and then the phenomenon of craving at once became paramount to all other interests so that the important appointment was not met. These men were not drinking to escape; they were drinking to overcome a craving beyond their mental control.

Selfishness–self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes

of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have

made decisions based on self which later placed us in a p...

“God, I offer myself to Thee–to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life.

May I do Thy will always!”