November 1 – PM          Page 25, There Is A Solution, Chapter 2

There is a solution. Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation. But we saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it. When, therefore, we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.

November 1 – AM          Page 66-67, How It Works, Chapter 5

This was our course:  We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick.  Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too.  We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend.  When a person offended we said to ourselves, “This is a sick man.  How can I be helpful to him?  God save me from being angry.  Thy will be done.”
We avoid retaliation or argument.  We wouldn’t treat sick people that way.  If we do, we destroy our chance of being helpful.  We cannot be helpful to all people, but at least God will show us how to take a kindly and tolerant view of each and every one.

November 2 – PM          Page 133, The Family Afterward, Chapter 9

But this does not mean that we disregard human health measures.  God has abundantly supplied this world with fine doctors, psychologists, and practitioners of various kinds.  Do not hesitate to take your health problems to such persons.  Most of them give freely of themselves, that their fellows may enjoy sound minds and bodies.  Try to remember that though God has wrought miracles among us, we should never belittle a good doctor or psychiatrist.  Their services are often indispensable in treating a newcomer and in following his case afterward.

November 2 – AM          Page 37-38, More About Alcoholism, Chapter 3

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 fast-moving vehicles.  He enjoys himself for a few years in spite of friendly warnings. Up to this point you would label him as a foolish chap having queer ideas of fun.  Luck then deserts him and he is slightly injured several times in succession.  You would expect him, if he were normal, to cut it out.  Presently he is hit again and this time has a fractured skull. Within a week after leaving the hospital a fast-moving trolley car breaks his arm.  He tells you he has decided to stop jay-walking for good, but in a few weeks he breaks both legs.
On through the years this conduct continues, accompanied by his continual promises to be careful or to keep off the streets altogether.  Finally, he can no longer work, his wife gets a divorce and he is held up to ridicule.  He tries every known means to get the jay-walking idea out of his head.  He shuts himself up in the asylum, hoping to mend his ways. But the day he comes out he races in front of a fire engine, which breaks his back.  Such a man would be crazy, wouldn’t he?
You may think our illustration is too ridiculous.  But is it?  We, who have been through the wringer, have to admit if we substituted alcoholism for jay-walking, the illustration would fit us exactly.  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?

November 3 – PM           Page 83-84, Into Action, Chapter 6

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.  We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.  We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.  We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.  No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.  That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.  We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.  Self-seeking will slip away.  Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.  Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.  We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.  We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises?  We think not.  They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.  They will always materialize if we work for them.

November 3 – AM          Page 116-117, To Wives, Chapter 8

We have elsewhere remarked how much better life is when lived on a spiritual plane.  If God can solve the age-old riddle of alcoholism, He can solve your problems too.  We wives found that, like everybody else, we were afflicted with pride, self-pity, vanity and all the things which go to make up the self-centered person; and we were not above selfishness or dishonesty.  As our husbands began to apply spiritual principles in their lives, we began to see the desirability of doing so too.
At first, some of us did not believe we needed this help.  We thought, on the whole, we were pretty good women, capable of being nicer if our husbands stopped drinking.  But it was a silly idea that we were too good to need God.  Now we try to put spiritual principles to work in every department of our lives.  When we do that, we find it solves our problems too; the ensuing lack of fear, worry and hurt feelings is a wonderful thing.  We urge you to try our program, for nothing will be so helpful to your husband as the radically changed attitude toward him which God will show you how to have.  Go along with your husband if you possibly can.

November 4 – PM          Page xxix, The Doctor’s Opinion

Men have cried out to me in sincere and despairing appeal:  “Doctor, I cannot go on like this!  I have everything to live for!  I must stop, but I cannot!  You must help me!”
Faced with this problem, if a doctor is honest with himself, he must sometimes feel his own inadequacy.  Although he gives all that is in him, it often is not enough.  One feels that something more than human power is needed to produce the essential psychic change. Though the aggregate of recoveries resulting from psychiatric effort is considerable, we physicians must admit we have made little impression upon the problem as a whole.  Many types do not respond to the ordinary psychological approach.

November 4 – AM          Page 53, We Agnostics, Chapter 4

When we became alcoholics, crushed by self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing.  God either is, or He isn’t.  What was our choice to be?

November 5 – PM          Page 11-12, Bill’s Story, Chapter 1

That floored me.  It began to look as though religious people were right after all.  Here was something at work in a human heart which had done the impossible.  My ideas about miracles were drastically revised right then.  Never mind the musty past; here sat a miracle directly across the kitchen table.  He shouted great tidings.
I saw that my friend was much more than inwardly reorganized.  He was on a different footing.  His roots grasped a new soil.

November 5 – AM          Page 27, There Is A Solution, Chapter 2

Some of our alcoholic readers may think they can do without spiritual help.  Let us tell you the rest of the conversation our friend had with his doctor.
The doctor said:  “You have the mind of a chronic alcoholic.  I have never seen one single case recover, where that state of mind existed to the extent that it does in you.”  Our friend felt as though the gates of hell had closed on him with a clang.
He said to the doctor, “Is there no exception?”
“Yes,” replied the doctor, “there is.  Exceptions to cases such as yours have been occurring since early times.  Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences.  To me these occurrences are phenomena.  They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements.  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. In fact, I have been trying to produce some such emotional rearrangement within you.  With many individuals the methods which I employed are successful, but I have never been successful with an alcoholic of your description.”*

*For amplification—see Appendix II.

November 6 – PM          Page 99, Working With Others, Chapter 7

After they have seen tangible results, the family will perhaps want to go along.  These things will come to pass naturally and in good time provided, however, the alcoholic continues to demonstrate that he can be sober, considerate, and helpful, regardless of what anyone says or does.  Of course, we all fall much below this standard many times.  But we must try to repair the damage immediately lest we pay the penalty by a spree.

November 6 – AM          Page 67, How It Works, Chapter 5

Referring to our list again.  Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes.  Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened?  Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely.  Where were we to blame?  The inventory was ours, not the other man’s.  When we saw our faults we listed them.  We placed them before us in black and white.  We admitted our wrongs honestly and were willing to set these matters straight.

November 7 – PM          Page 132, The Family Afterward, Chapter 9

So we think cheerfulness and laughter make for usefulness.  Outsiders are sometimes shocked when we burst into merriment over a seemingly tragic experience out of the past.  But why shouldn’t we laugh?  We have recovered, and have been given the power to help others.

November 7 – AM          Page 38-39, More About Alcoholism, Chapter 7

Some of you are thinking:  “Yes, what you tell us is true, but it doesn’t fully apply.  We admit we have some of these symptoms, but we have not gone to the extremes you fellows did, nor are we likely to, for we understand ourselves so well after what you have told us that such things cannot happen again.  We have not lost everything in life through drinking and we certainly do not intend to.  Thanks for the information.”
That may be true of certain nonalcoholic people who, though drinking foolishly and heavily at the present time, are able to stop or moderate, because their brains and bodies have not been damaged as ours were.  But the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge.  This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience.

November 8 – PM          Page 567-568, Spiritual Experience, Appendix II

In the first few chapters a number of sudden revolutionary changes are described.  Though it was not our intention to create such an impression, many alcoholics have nevertheless concluded that in order to recover they must acquire an immediate and overwhelming “God-consciousness” followed at once by a vast change in feeling and outlook.
Among our rapidly growing membership of thousands of alcoholics such transformations, though frequent, are by no means the rule.  Most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James calls the “educational variety” because they develop slowly over a period of time.  Quite often friends of the newcomer are aware of the difference long before he is himself.  He finally realizes that he has undergone a profound alteration in his reaction to life; that such a change could hardly have been brought about by himself alone.  What often takes place in a few months could seldom have been accomplished by years of self discipline.  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.

November 8 – AM          Page xix-xx, Foreword To Second Edition (1955)

While the internal difficulties of our adolescent period were being ironed out, public acceptance of A.A. grew by leaps and bounds.  For this there were two principal reasons; the large numbers of recoveries, and reunited homes.  These made their impressions everywhere.  Of alcoholics who came to A.A. and really tried, 50% got sober at once and remained that way; 25% sobered after some relapses, and among the remainder, those who stayed on with A.A. showed improvement.  Other thousands came to a few A.A. meetings and at first decided they didn’t want the program.  But great numbers of these—about two out of three—began to return as time passed.

November 9 – PM          Page 53-54, We Agnostics, Chapter 4

Arrived at this point, we were squarely confronted with the question of faith.  We couldn’t duck the issue.  Some of us had already walked far over the Bridge of Reason toward the desired shore of faith.  The outlines and the promise of the New Land had brought lustre to tired eyes and fresh courage to flagging spirits.  Friendly hands had stretched out in welcome.  We were grateful that Reason had brought us so far.  But somehow, we couldn’t quite step ashore.  Perhaps we had been leaning too heavily on Reason that last mile and we did not like to lose our support.
That was natural, but let us think a little more closely.  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!

November 9 – AM          Page 12, Bill’s Story, Chapter 1

Despite the living example of my friend there remained in me the vestiges of my old prejudice.  The word God still aroused a certain antipathy.  When the thought was expressed that there might be a God personal to me this feeling was intensified.  I didn’t like the idea.  I could go for such conceptions as Creative Intelligence, Universal Mind or Spirit of Nature but I resisted the thought of a Czar of the Heavens, however loving His sway might be.  I have since talked with scores of men who felt the same way.

November 10 – PM          Page 117, To Wives, Chapter 8

If you and your husband find a solution for the pressing problem of drink you are, of course, going to be very happy.  But all problems will not be solved at once.  Seed has started to sprout in a new soil, but growth has only begun.  In spite of your new-found happiness, there will be ups and downs.  Many of the old problems will still be with you.  This is as it should be.
The faith and sincerity of both you and your husband will be put to the test.  These work-outs should be regarded as part of your education, for thus you will be learning to live.  You will make mistakes, but if you are in earnest they will not drag you down.  Instead, you will capitalize them.  A better way of life will emerge when they are overcome.

November 10 – AM          Page 160-161, A Vision For You, Chapter 11

Many a man, yet dazed from his hospital experience, has stepped over the threshold of that home into freedom.  Many an alcoholic who entered there came away with an answer.  He succumbed to that gay crowd inside, who laughed at their own misfortunes and understood his.  Impressed by those who visited him at the hospital, he capitulated entirely when, later, in an upper room of this house, he heard the story of some man whose experience closely tallied with his own.  The expression on the faces of the women, that indefinable something in the eyes of the men, the stimulating and electric atmosphere of the place, conspired to let him know that here was haven at last.
The very practical approach to his problems, the absence of intolerance of any kind, the informality, the genuine democracy, the uncanny understanding which these people had were irresistible.  He and his wife would leave elated by the thought of what they could now do for some stricken acquaintance and his family.  They knew they had a host of new friends; it seemed they had known these strangers always.  They had seen miracles, and one was to come to them.  They had visioned the Great Reality—their loving and All Powerful Creator.

November 11 – PM          Page 99, Working With Others, Chapter 7

If there be divorce or separation, there should be no undue haste for the couple to get together.  The man should be sure of his recovery.  The wife should fully understand his new way of life.  If their old relationship is to be resumed it must be on a better basis, since the former did not work.  This means a new attitude and spirit all around.  Sometimes it is to the best interests of all concerned that a couple remain apart.  Obviously, no rule can be laid down.  Let the alcoholic continue his program day by day.  When the time for living together has come, it will be apparent to both parties.

November 11 – AM          Page xxix-xxx, The Doctor’s Opinion

I do not hold with those who believe that alcoholism is entirely a problem of mental control.  I 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.
There are many situations which arise out of the phenomenon of craving which cause men to make the supreme sacrifice rather than continue to fight.
The classification of alcoholics seems most difficult, and in much detail is outside the scope of this book.  There are, of course, the psychopaths who are emotionally unstable.  We are all familiar with this type.  They are always “going on the wagon for keeps.”  They are over-remorseful and make many resolutions, but never a decision.

November 12 – PM          Page 88, Into Action, Chapter 6

It works—it really does.
We alcoholics are undisciplined.  So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined.
But this is not all.  There is action and more action.  “Faith without works is dead.”  The next chapter is entirely devoted to Step Twelve.

November 12 – AM          Page 132-133, The Family Afterward, Chapter 9

Everybody knows that those in bad health, and those who seldom play, do not laugh much.  So let each family play together or separately, as much as their circumstances warrant.  We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free.  We cannot subscribe to the belief that this life is a vale of tears, though it once was just that for many of us.  But it is clear that we made our own misery.  God didn’t do it.  Avoid then, the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate His omnipotence.

November 13 – PM          Page 25-26, There Is A Solution, Chapter 2

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.

November 13 – AM          Page 161, A Vision For You, Chapter 11

Now, this house will hardly accommodate its weekly visitors, for they number sixty or eighty as a rule.  Alcoholics are being attracted from far and near.  From surrounding towns, families drive long distances to be present.  A community thirty miles away has fifteen fellows of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Being a large place, we think that some day its Fellowship will number many hundreds.*

*Written in 1939.

November 14 – PM          Page xii, Preface

All changes made over the years in the Big Book (A.A. members’ fond nickname for this volume) have had the same purpose:  to represent the current membership of Alcoholics Anonymous more accurately, and thereby to reach more alcoholics.  If you have a drinking problem, we hope that you may pause in reading one of the forty-four personal stories and think:  “Yes, that happened to me”; or, more important, “Yes, I’ve felt like that”; or, most important, “Yes, I believe this program can work for me, too.”

November 14 – AM          Page 67-68, How It Works, Chapter 5

Notice that the word “fear” is bracketed alongside the difficulties with Mr. Brown, Mrs. Jones, the employer, and the wife.  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 trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn’t deserve.  But did not we, ourselves, set the ball rolling?  Sometimes we think fear ought to be classed with stealing.  It seems to cause more trouble.

November 15 – PM          Page 147-148, To Employers, Chapter 10

After reading this book, a junior executive can go to such a man and say approximately this, “Look here, Ed.  Do you want to stop drinking or not?  You put me on the spot every time you get drunk.  It isn’t fair to me or the firm.  I have been learning something about alcoholism.  If you are an alcoholic, you are a mighty sick man.  You act like one.  The firm wants to help you get over it, and if you are interested, there is a way out.  If you take it, your past will be forgotten and the fact that you went for treatment will not be mentioned.  But if you cannot or will not stop drinking, I think you ought to resign.”
Your junior executive may not agree with the contents of our book.  He need not, and often should not show it to his alcoholic prospect.  But at least he will understand the problem and will no longer be misled by ordinary promises.  He will be able to take a position with such a man which is eminently fair and square.  He will have no further reason for covering up an alcoholic employee.
It boils right down to this:  No man should be fired just because he is alcoholic.  If he wants to stop, he should be afforded a real chance.  If he cannot or does not want to stop, he should be discharged.  The exceptions are few.

November 15 – AM          Page 12, Bill’s Story, Chapter 1

My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea.  He said, “Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?”
That statement hit me hard.  It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years.  I stood in the sunlight at last.
It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself.  Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning.  I saw that growth could start from that point.  Upon a foundation of complete willingness I might build what I saw in my friend.  Would I have it?  Of course I would!
Thus was I convinced that God is concerned with us humans when we want Him enough.  At long last I saw, I felt, I believed.  Scales of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes.  A new world came into view.

November 16 – PM          Page 118, To Wives, Chapter 8

You and your husband will find that you can dispose of serious problems easier than you can the trivial ones.  Next time you and he have a heated discussion, no matter what the subject, it should be the privilege of either to smile and say, “This is getting serious.  I’m sorry I got disturbed.  Let’s talk about it later.”  If your husband is trying to live on a spiritual basis, he will also be doing everything in his power to avoid disagreement or contention.
Your husband knows he owes you more than sobriety.  He wants to make good.  Yet you must not expect too much.  His ways of thinking and doing are the habits of years. Patience, tolerance, understanding and love are the watchwords.  Show him these things in yourself and they will be reflected back to you from him.  Live and let live is the rule.  If you both show a willingness to remedy your own defects, there will be little need to criticize each other.

November 16 – AM           Page 54, We Agnostics, Chapter 4

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.  Were not these things the tissue out of which our lives were constructed? Did not these feelings, after all, determine the course of our existence?  It was impossible to say we had no capacity for faith, or love, or worship.  In one form or another we had been living by faith and little else.


November 17 – PM          Page 103, Working With Others, Chapter 7

We are careful never to show intolerance or hatred of drinking as an institution.  Experience shows that such an attitude is not helpful to anyone.  Every new alcoholic looks for this spirit among us and is immensely relieved when he finds we are not witch burners.  A spirit of intolerance might repel alcoholics whose lives could have been saved, had it not been for such stupidity.  We would not even do the cause of temperate drinking any good, for not one drinker in a thousand likes to be told anything about alcohol by one who hates it.
Some day we hope that Alcoholics Anonymous will help the public to a better realization of the gravity of the alcoholic problem, but we shall be of little use if our attitude is one of bitterness or hostility.  Drinkers will not stand for it.
After all, our problems were of our own making.  Bottles were only a symbol.  Besides, we have stopped fighting anybody or anything.  We have to!

November 17 – AM          Page 84-85, Into Action, Chapter 6

And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone—even alcohol.  For by this time sanity will have returned.  We will seldom be interested in liquor.  If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame.  We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically.  We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part.  It just comes!  That is the miracle of it.  We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation.  We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality—safe and protected.  We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed.  It does not exist for us.  We are neither cocky nor are we afraid.  That is our experience.  That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.

November 18 – PM          Page 26, There Is A Solution, Chapter 2

A certain American business man had ability, good sense, and high character.  For years he had floundered from one sanitarium to another.  He had consulted the best known American psychiatrists.  Then he had gone to Europe, placing himself in the care of celebrated physician (the psychiatrist, Dr. Jung) who prescribed for him.  Though experience had made him skeptical, he finished his treatment with unusual confidence.  His physical and mental condition were unusually good.  Above all, he believed he had acquired such a profound knowledge of the inner workings of his mind and its hidden springs that relapse was unthinkable.  Nevertheless, he was drunk in a short time.  More baffling still, he could give himself no satisfactory explanation for his fall.

November 18 – AM          Page 133, The Family Afterward, Chapter 9

Now about health:  A body badly burned by alcohol does not often recover overnight nor do twisted thinking and depression vanish in a twinkling.  We are convinced that a spiritual mode of living is a most powerful health restorative.  We, who have recovered from serious drinking, are miracles of mental health.  But we have seen remarkable transformations in our bodies.  Hardly one of our crowd now shows any mark of dissipation.

November 19 – PM          Page 161, A Vision For You, Chapter 11

But life among Alcoholics Anonymous is more than attending gatherings and visiting hospitals.  Cleaning up old scrapes, helping to settle family differences, explaining the disinherited son to his irate parents, lending money and securing jobs for each other, when justified—these are everyday occurrences.  No one is too discredited or has sunk too low to be welcomed cordially—if he means business.  Social distinctions, petty rivalries and jealousies—these are laughed out of countenance.  Being wrecked in the same vessel, being restored and united under one God, with hearts and minds attuned to the welfare of others, the things which matter so much to some people no longer signify much to them.  How could they?

November 19 – AM          Page 114-115, To Wives, Chapter 8

If your husband is a drinker, you probably worry over what other people are thinking and you hate to meet your friends.  You draw more and more into yourself and you think everyone is talking about conditions at your home.  You avoid the subject of drinking, even with your own parents.  You do not know what to tell the children.  When your husband is bad, you become a trembling recluse, wishing the telephone had never been invented.
We find that most of this embarrassment is unnecessary.  While you need not discuss your husband at length, you can quietly let your friends know the nature of his illness.  But you must be on guard no to embarrass or harm your husband.
When you have carefully explained to such people that he is a sick person, you will have created a new atmosphere.  Barriers which have sprung up between you and your friends will disappear with the growth of sympathetic understanding.  You will no longer be self-conscious or feel that you must apologize as though your husband were a weak character.  He may be anything but that.  Your new courage, good nature and lack of self-consciousness will do wonders for you socially.

November 20 – PM          Page 180, Doctor Bob’s Nightmare, Part I

The question which might naturally come into your mind would be:  “What did the man do or say that was different from what others had done or said?”  It must be remembered that I had read a great deal and talked to everyone who knew, or thought they knew anything about the subject of alcoholism.  But this was a man who had experienced many years of frightful drinking, who had had most all the drunkard’s experiences known to man, but who had been cured by the very means I had been trying to employ, that is to say the spiritual approach.  He gave me information about the subject of alcoholism which was undoubtedly helpful.  Of far more importance was the fact that he was the first living human with whom I had ever talked, who knew what he was talking about in regard to alcoholism from actual experience.  In other words, he talked my language.  He knew all the answers, and certainly not because he had picked them up in his reading.

November 20 – AM          Page 12-13, Bill’s Story, Chapter 1

The real significance of my experience in the Cathedral burst upon me.  For a brief moment, I had needed and wanted God.  There had been a humble willingness to have Him with me—and He came.  But soon the sense of His presence had been blotted out by worldly clamors, mostly those within myself.  And so it had been ever since.  How blind I had been.
At the hospital I was separated from alcohol for the last time.  Treatment seemed wise, for I showed signs of delirium tremens.
There I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would.  I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction.  I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing; that without Him I was lost.  I ruthlessly faced my sins and became willing to have my new-found Friend take them away, root and branch.  I have not had a drink since.

November 21 – PM          Page 99-100, Working With Others, Chapter 7

Let no alcoholic say he cannot recover unless he has his family back.  This just isn’t so.  In some cases the wife will never come back for one reason or another.  Remind the prospect that his recovery is not dependent upon people.  It is dependent upon his relationship with God.  We have seen men get well whose families have not returned at all.  We have seen others slip when the family came back too soon.

November 21 – AM          Page 68, How It Works, Chapter 5

We reviewed our fears thoroughly.  We put them on paper, even though we had no resentment in connection with them.  We asked ourselves why we had them.  Wasn’t it because self-reliance failed us?  Self-reliance was good as far as it went, but it didn’t go far enough.  Some of us once had great self-confidence, but it didn’t fully solve the fear problem, or any other.  When it made us cocky, it was worse.
Perhaps there is a better way—we think so.  For we are now on a different basis; the basis of trusting and relying upon God.  We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves.  We are in the world to play the role He assigns.  Just to the extent that we do as we think He would have us, and humbly rely on Him, does He enable us to match calamity with serenity.

November 22 – PM          Page xx, Foreword to Second Edition (1955)

Another reason for the wide acceptance of A.A. was the ministration of friends—friends in medicine, religion, and the press, together with innumerable others who became our able and persistent advocates.  Without such support, A.A. could have made only the slowest progress.  Some of the recommendations of A.A.’s early medical and religious friends will be found further on in this book.
Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religious organization.  Neither does A.A. take any particular medical point of view, though we cooperate widely with the men of medicine as well as with the men of religion.
Alcohol being no respecter of persons, we are an accurate cross section of America, and in distant lands, the same democratic evening-up process is now going on.  By personal religious affiliation, we include Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Hindus, and a sprinkling of Moslems and Buddhists.  More than 15% of us are women.

November 22 – AM          Page 161-162, A Vision For You, Chapter 11

Under only slightly different conditions, the same thing is taking place in many eastern cities.  In one of these there is a well-known hospital for the treatment of alcoholic and drug addiction.  Six years ago one of our number was a patient there.  Many of us have felt for the first time, the Presence and Power of God within its walls.  We are greatly indebted to the doctor in attendance there, for he, although it might prejudice his own work, has told us of his belief in ours.
Every few days this doctor suggests our approach to one of his patients.  Understanding our work, he can do this with an eye to selecting those who are willing and able to recover on a spiritual basis.  Many of us, former patients, go there to help.  Then, in this eastern city, there are informal meetings such as we have described to you, where you may now see scores of members.  There are the same fast friendships, there is the same helpfulness to one another as you find among our western friends.  There is  a good bit of travel between East and West and we foresee a great increase in the helpful interchange.

November 23 – PM          Page 118-119, To Wives, Chapter 8

We women carry with us a picture of the ideal man, the sort of chap we would like our husbands to be.  It is the most natural thing in the world, once his liquor problem is solved, to feel that he will now measure up to that cherished vision.  The chances are he will not for, like yourself, he is just beginning his development.  Be patient.
Another feeling we are very likely to entertain is one of resentment that love and loyalty could not cure our husbands of alcoholism.  We do not like the thought that the contents of a book or the work of another alcoholic has accomplished in a few weeks that for which we struggled for years.  At such moments we forget that alcoholism is an illness over which we could not possibly have had any power.  Your husband will be the first to say it was your devotion and care which brought him to the point where he could have a spiritual experience.  Without you he would have gone to  pieces long ago.  When resentful thoughts come, try to pause and count your blessings.  After all, your family is reunited, alcohol is no longer a problem and you and your husband are working together toward an undreamed-of future.

November 23 – AM          Page 85, Into Action, Chapter 6

It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels.  We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe.  We are not cured of alcoholism.  What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.  Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will into all of our activities.  “How can I best serve Thee—Thy will (not mine) be done.”  These are thoughts which must go with us constantly.  We can exercise our will power along this line all we wish.  It is the proper use of the will.

November 24  – PM          Page 54-55, We Agnostics, Chapter 4

Imagine life without faith!  Were nothing left but pure reason, it wouldn’t be life.  But we believed in life—of course we did.  We could not prove life in the sense that you can prove a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, yet, there it was.  Could we still say the whole thing was nothing but a mass of electrons, created out of nothing, meaning nothing, whirling on to a destiny of nothingness?  Of course we couldn’t.  The electrons themselves seemed more intelligent than that.  At least, so the chemist said.
Hence, we saw that reason isn’t everything.  Neither is reason, as most of us use it, entirely dependable, though it emanate from our best minds.  What about people who proved that man could never fly?
Yet we had been seeing another kind of flight, a spiritual liberation from this world, people who rose above their problems.  They said God made these things possible, and we only smiled.  We had seen spiritual release, but liked to tell ourselves it wasn’t true.

November 24 – AM          Page 100, Working With Others, Chapter 7

Both you and the new man must walk day by day in the path of spiritual progress.  If you persist, remarkable things will happen.  When we look back, we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God’s hands were better than anything we could have planned.  Follow the dictates of a Higher Power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world, no matter what your present circumstances!

November 25 – PM          Page 132, The Family Afterward, Chapter 9

We have been speaking to you of serious, sometimes tragic things.  We have been dealing with alcohol in its worst aspect.  But we aren’t a glum lot.  If newcomers could see no joy or fun in our existence, they wouldn’t want it.  We absolutely insist on enjoying life.  We try not to indulge in cynicism over the state of the nations, nor do we carry the world’s troubles on our shoulders.  When we see a man sinking into the mire that is alcoholism, we give him first aid and place what we have at his disposal.  For his sake, we do recount and almost relive the horrors of our past.  But those of us who have tried to shoulder the entire burden and trouble of others find we are soon overcome by them.

November 25 – AM          Page 26-27, There Is A Solution ,Chapter 2

So he returned to this doctor, whom he admired, and asked him point-blank why he could not recover.  He wished above all things to regain self-control.  He seemed quite rational and well-balanced with respect to other problems.  Yet he had no control whatever over alcohol.  Why was this?
He begged the doctor to tell him the whole truth, and he got it.  In the doctor’s judgment he was utterly hopeless; he could never regain his position in society and he would have to place himself under lock and key or hire a bodyguard if he expected to live long. That was a great physician’s opinion.
But this man still lives, and is a free man.  He does not need a bodyguard nor is he confined.  He can go anywhere on this earth where other free men may go without disaster, provided he remains willing to maintain a certain simple attitude.

November 26 – PM          Page 40-41, More About Alcoholism, Chapter 3

Let him tell you about it:  “I was much impressed with what you fellows said about alcoholism, and I frankly did not believe it would be possible for me to drink again.  I rather appreciated your ideas about the subtle insanity which precedes the first drink, but I was confident it could not happen to me after what I had learned.  I reasoned I was not so far advanced as most of you fellows, that I had been usually successful in licking my other personal problems, and that I would therefore be successful where you men failed.  I felt I had every right to be self-confident, that it would be only a matter of exercising my will power and keeping on guard.
“In this frame of mind, I went about my business and for a time all was well.  I had no trouble refusing drinks, and began to wonder if I had not been making too hard work of a simple matter.  One day I went to Washington to present some accounting evidence to a government bureau.  I had been out of town before during this particular dry spell, so there was nothing new about that.  Physically, I felt fine.  Neither did I have any pressing problems or worries.  My business came off well, I was pleased and knew my partners would be too.  It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon.
“I went to my hotel and leisurely dressed for dinner.  As I crossed the threshold of the dining room, the thought came to mind that it would be nice to have a couple of cocktails with dinner.  That was all.  Nothing more.  I ordered a cocktail and my meal.  Then I ordered another cocktail.  After dinner I decided to take a walk.  When I returned to the hotel it struck me a highball would be fine before going to bed, so I stepped into the bar and had one.  I remember having several more that night and plenty next morning.  I have a shadowy recollection of being in an airplane bound for New York, and of finding a friendly taxicab driver at the landing field instead of my wife.  The driver escorted me about for several days.  I know little of where I went or what I said and did.  Then came the hospital with unbearable mental and physical suffering.

November 26 – AM          Page xxvi-xxvii, The Doctor’s Opinion

Though we work out our solution on the spiritual as well as an altruistic plane, we favor hospitalization for the alcoholic who is very jittery or befogged.  More often than not, it is imperative that a man’s brain be cleared before he is approached, as he has then a better chance of understanding and accepting what we have to offer.

November 27 – PM          Page 85-86, Into Action, Chapter 6

Much has already been said about receiving strength, inspiration, and direction from Him who has all knowledge and power.  If we have carefully followed directions, we have begun to sense the flow of His Spirit into us.  To some extent we have become God-conscious.  We have begun to develop this vital sixth sense.  But we must go further and that means more action.
Step Eleven suggests prayer and meditation.  We shouldn’t be shy on this matter of prayer.  Better men than we are using it constantly.  It works, if we have the proper attitude and work at it.  It would be easy to be vague about this matter.  Yet, we believe we can make some definite and valuable suggestions.

November 27 – AM          Page 162-163, A Vision For You, Chapter 11

Thus we grow.  And so can you, though you be but one man with this book in your hand.  We believe and hope it contains all you will need to begin.
We know what you are thinking.  You are saying to yourself:  “I’m jittery and alone.  I couldn’t do that.”  But you can.  You forget that you have just now tapped a source of power much greater than yourself.  To duplicate, with such backing, what we have accomplished is only a matter of willingness, patience and labor.

November 28 – PM          Page 180-181, Doctor Bob’s Nightmare, Part I

It is a most wonderful blessing to be relieved of the terrible curse with which I was afflicted.  My health is good and I have regained my self-respect and the respect of my colleagues.  My home life is ideal and my business is as good as can be expected in these uncertain times.
I spend a great deal of time passing on what I learned to others who want and need it badly.  I do it for four reasons:

1.          Sense of duty.
2.          It is a pleasure.
3.          Because in so doing I am paying my debt to the man who took time to pass it on to me.
4.          Because every time I do it I take a little more insurance for myself against a possible slip.

November 28 – AM          Page 13, Bill’s Story, Chapter 1

My schoolmate visited me, and I fully acquainted him with my problems and deficiencies.  We made a list of people I had hurt or toward whom I felt resentment.  I expressed my entire willingness to approach these individuals, admitting my wrong.  Never was I to be critical of them.  I was to right all such matters to the utmost of my ability.

November 29 – PM          Page 41-42, More About Alcoholism, Chapter 3

“As soon as I regained my ability to think, I went carefully over that evening in Washington.  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 had commenced to drink as carelessly as though the cocktails were ginger ale.  I now remembered what my alcoholic friends had told me, how they prophesied that if I had an alcoholic mind, the time and place would come—I would drink again.  They had said that though I did raise a defense, it would one day give way before some trivial reason for having a drink.  Well, just that did happen and more, for what I had learned of alcoholism did not occur to me at all.  I knew from that moment that I had an alcoholic mind.  I saw that will power and self-knowledge would not help in those strange mental blank spots.  I had never been able to understand people who said that a problem had them hopelessly defeated.  I knew then.  It was a crushing blow.

November 29 – AM          Page 55, We Agnostics, Chapter 4

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.

November 30 – PM          Page 13-14, Bill’s Story, Chapter 1

I was to test my thinking by the new God-consciousness within.  Common sense would thus become uncommon sense.  I was to sit quietly when in doubt, asking only for direction and strength to meet my problems as He would have me.  Never was I to pray for myself,  except as my requests bore on my usefulness to others.  Then only might I expect to receive.  But that would be in great measure.
My friend promised when these things were done I would enter upon a new relationship with my Creator; that I would have the elements of a way of living which answered all my problems.  Belief in the power of God, plus enough willingness, honesty and humility to establish and maintain the new order of things, were the essential requirements.

November 30 – AM          Page 86, Into Action, Chapter 6

When we retire at night, we constructively review our day.  Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid?  Do we owe an apology?  Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once?  Were we kind and loving toward all?  What could we have done better?  Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time?  Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life?  But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others.  After making our review we ask God’s forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken.

Reprinted from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous with permission of A.A. World Services, Inc.