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From the books ... Alcoholics Anonymous (Big Book) and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (12 & 12)
Click the page number or the book cover icon
to view that page in the literature.1.
2.
3.
So Step Six -- "Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character" -- is
A.A.'s way of stating the best possible attitude one can take in order to make a beginning on this lifetime
job.
4.
If we would gain any real advantage in the use of this Step on problems other than alcohol, we shall need to make a brand new venture into open-mindedness.
5.
She sees she was wrong to make a burning issue out of such a matter when his more serious ailments were being rapidly cured.
6.
Then there are those occasions when alone, or in
the company of our sponsor
or spiritual adviser, we
make a careful review of our progress since
the last time.
7.
Let him know you are available if he wishes to
make a decision and tell his story, but do not insist upon it if he prefers to consult someone else.
8.
So it is by circumstance rather than by any virtue that we have been driven
to A.A., have admitted defeat, have acquired the rudiments of faith, and now want to make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to a Higher Power.
9.
We got a pretty severe shock when we realized that we were preparing to make a face-to-face admission of our wretched
conduct to those we had hurt.
10.
Perhaps your husband will make a fair start on the new basis, but just as things are going beautifully he dismays you by coming home drunk.
11.
That will arise in the occasional situation
where to make a full revelation would seriously harm the one to whom we are making amends.
12.
13.
14.
We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn't control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we
couldn't make a living, we had
a feeling of uselessness, we were full of
fear, we were unhappy, we
couldn't seem to be of real help to other people -- was not a basic solution of these bedevilments more important than whether we
should see newsreels of lunar flight?
15.
His own character may still be gravely defective, but he somehow
knows that God has enabled him to make a mighty beginning, and he senses that he stands at the edge of new mysteries, joys, and experiences of which he had never even dreamed.
16.
17.
Using his best judgment of what has been right and what has been wrong, he
might make a rough survey of his conduct with respect to his primary instincts for sex, security, and society.
18.
And these were fears which would make a serene and useful existence, at any financial level, quite impossible.
19.
20.
21.
22.
First, we take a look backward and try to discover where we have
been at fault; next we make a vigorous attempt to repair the damage we have done; and third, having thus cleaned away the debris of the past, we consider how, with our newfound knowledge of ourselves, we may develop
the best possible relations with every human being we know.
23.
24.
Let it be noted, too, that they
were almost always concerned with ways to make A.A. more effective, how to do the most good for the most alcoholics.
25.
Neither does there appear
to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men.
26.
For these minutes and sometimes hours spent in self-examination are bound to
make all the other hours of our day better and happier.
27.
28.
29.
30.
But all of them do require a complete willingness to
make amends as fast and as far as may be possible in a given set of conditions.
31.
32.
33.
Step Eight -- "Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all."
34.
35.
We must be willing to make amends where we have done harm, provided that we do not bring
about still more harm in so doing.
36.
Though in some cases we
cannot make restitution
at all, and in some cases action ought to be deferred, we should nevertheless make an accurate and really exhaustive survey of our past life as it has affected other people.
37.
We realize some men are thoroughly bad-intentioned, that no amount of patience will make any
difference.
38.
A doctor said to us, "Years of living with an alcoholic is almost sure to make any wife or child neurotic.
39.
How could we know that thousands of these sometimes frightening
people were to make astonishing recoveries
and become our greatest workers and intimate friends?
40.
Handing it to me, he continued, 'This shows the kind of money the hospital used to make back in the 1920's.
41.
Those of us who have spent much time in the world of spiritual make-believe have eventually seen the childishness of it.
42.
Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to
the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:
43.
Though the family has no religious connections, they may wish
to make contact with or take membership in a religious body.
44.
Such a roster of harms done others -- the kind that make daily living with us as practicing alcoholics
difficult and often unbearable -- could be extended almost indefinitely.
45.
There will be other cases where action ought to be deferred, and still others in which by the very nature of the situation we shall never be able to make direct personal contact at all.
46.
And do not his actions make
each of them wish to retaliate, snatching all
they can get out of the show?
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
We can be the ones who take on
the unspectacular but important tasks that make good Twelfth Step work possible, perhaps arranging for the
coffee and cake after the meetings, where so
many skeptical, suspicious newcomers
have found confidence and
comfort in the laughter
and talk.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
The founder and his friends channel spirituality to newcomers, hire halls, make hospital arrangements,
and entreat their wives to
brew gallons of coffee.
58.
59.
60.
61.
If the man be agnostic or atheist, make it emphatic that he does not have to agree with your conception
of God.
62.
Make it plain he is under no obligation to you, that you hope only that he will try to help other alcoholics when he escapes his own difficulties.
63.
It was really a horrible
nightmare, this earning
money, getting liquor, smuggling it home, getting drunk, morning jitters, taking large doses of sedatives to make it possible for me to earn more money, and so on ad nauseam.
64.
We'd gather up derelicts from skid rows, sort out those who could get well, and make it possible for the rest to earn their livelihood in a kind of quarantined confinement.
65.
Neither its General Service Conference, its Foundation Board,(*) nor the humblest group committee can issue a single directive to an A.A. member and make it stick, let alone mete out any punishment.
66.
67.
68.
69.
Every A.A. has found that he can make little headway in this new adventure of living until he first backtracks and really makes an accurate and unsparing survey of the human wreckage he has left in his wake.
70.
We commenced to make many fast friends and a fellowship
has grown up among us of which it is a wonderful thing to feel a part.
71.
72.
"Lord, make me a channel of thy peace -- that where there is hatred, I may bring love -- that where there is wrong,
I may bring the spirit of forgiveness -- that where there is discord, I may bring harmony -- that where there is error, I may bring truth -- that where there is doubt, I may bring faith -- that where there is despair, I may bring hope -- that where there are shadows, I may bring light -- that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
73.
The quick inventory is aimed at our daily ups and downs, especially those where people or new events throw us off balance and tempt us to make mistakes.
74.
75.
We took this violent new tack because here and there members had tried to make money out
of their A.A. connections,
and we feared we'd be exploited.
76.
We have drunk to escape the
guilt of passions, and then
have drunk again to make more passions possible.
77.
78.
For the wise have always known that no one can make much of his life until self-searching becomes a regular habit, until he is able to admit and accept what he finds, and until he patiently and persistently tries to correct what is wrong.
79.
80.
81.
If he does not argue about religion, he will make new friends and is sure to find new avenues of usefulness and
pleasure.
82.
Telling them what we are trying to do, we make no bones about our drinking; they usually know it anyway, whether we think so or not.
83.
84.
We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only.
85.
There will be those to whom we
can make only partial restitution, lest complete disclosures do
them or others more harm than good.
86.
87.
88.
We had to begin to make our peace, and so we listed the people we had harmed and became willing to set things right.
89.
90.
He proved to be a devil-may-care young fellow whose parents could not make out whether he wanted to stop drinking or not.
91.
92.
Those of us who have come to
make regular use of prayer would no more do without it than we would refuse air, food, or sunshine.
93.
Though in some cases we
cannot make restitution
at all, and in some cases action ought to be deferred, we should nevertheless make an accurate and really exhaustive survey of our past life as it has affected other people.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
But long ago, trustees and staff members alike found they could do no more than make suggestions, and very mild ones at that.
100.
101.
Many less desperate alcoholics tried A.A., but did not succeed because they could
not make the admission of
hopelessness.
102.
Our own conception, however
inadequate, was sufficient to make the approach and to effect a contact with Him.
103.
104.
Wishing to be polite, though I felt very badly, I said, "Let's make the call," and extracted from my wife a promise that we would not stay
over fifteen minutes.
105.
The Seventh Step is where we
make the change in our attitude which permits us,
with humility as our guide,
to move out from ourselves toward others and toward God.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
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.
112.
113.
We know there are difficult
wives and families, but the
man who is getting over alcoholism must remember he did much to make them so.
114.
It may be one of our own family, but we cannot disclose anything to our wives or our parents which will hurt them and make them unhappy.
115.
116.
It is A.A.'s proved willingness to make these sacrifices that gives people their high confidence in our future.
117.
118.
To make this increasingly possible
is the purpose of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, and Step Three opens the door.
119.
120.
121.
122.
More realism and therefore more honesty about ourselves are
the great gains we make under the influence of Step Five.
123.
124.
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.
125.
Women now make up more than
one-fourth of the membership; among newer members, the proportion is nearly one-third.
126.
127.
Instead of developing
new channels of activity for themselves,
mother and children demand that he stay home and make up the deficiency.
128.
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.
129.
130.
For no people have ever loved personal triumphs more than we have loved them; we
drank of success as of a wine which could never fail to make us feel elated.
131.
132.
133.
Most of us sense that real tolerance of other people's shortcomings and
viewpoints and a respect for their opinions
are attitudes which make us
more useful to others.
134.
After your man has gone along without drinking for a few months, you may be able to make use of his services with other employees who are giving you the alcoholic run-around -- provided, of course, they are
willing to have a third party in the picture.
135.
Should you wish them above all
else, and be willing to make use of our experience, we are sure they
will come.
136.
That was great news to us, for
we had assumed we could not make use of spiritual principles unless we accepted many things on faith which seemed difficult to believe.
137.
138.
The only answer I could make
was that if the man followed
the usual pattern, he would
go on a bigger bust than ever.
139.
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