HITTING BOTTOM Why all this insistence that every A.A. must hit bottom first? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom. For practicing A.A.'s remaining eleven Steps means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who is still drinking can dream of taking. TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p, 24 Hitting bottom opened my mind and I became willing to try...
AN UNSUSPECTED INNER RESOURCE With few exceptions our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, pp. 567-68 From my first days in A.A., as I struggled for sobriety, I found hope in these words from our founders. I often pondered the phrase: "they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource." How, I asked myself,...
NO REGRETS We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 83 Once I became sober, I began to see how wasteful my life had been and I experienced overwhelming guilt and feelings of regret. The program's Fourth and Fifth Steps assisted me enormously in healing those troubling regrets. I learned that my self-centeredness and dishonesty stemmed largely from my drinking and that I drank because I was an...
IT DOESN'T HAPPEN OVERNIGHT We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 85 The most common alcoholic fantasy seems to be: "If I just don't drink, everything will be all right." Once the fog cleared for me, I saw—for the first time—the mess my life had become. I had family, work, financial and legal problems; I was hung up on old...
ACCEPTING OUR PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES Our very first problem is to accept our present circumstances as they are, ourselves as we are, and the people about us as they are. This is to adopt a realistic humility without which no genuine advance can even begin. Again and again, we shall need to return to that unflattering point of departure. This is an exercise in acceptance that we can profitably practice every day of our lives. Provided we...
