AA AROUND THE WORLD: ADVENTURES IN RECOVERY
He assured me that if I was doing the will of my Higher Power and if, through prayer and mediation, I were to stay in contact with God and with my sponsor, God wouldn't let me get into a situation where I couldn't remain sober. He would always be there to lend me a hand and to give me strength when I felt I was growing weak. Jim pointed out that the name of the game was "trust." "Are you ready to turn your will and your life over to the Higher Power?" he asked.
page 14, paragraph 1, lines 9-15
...it's my responsibility as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous to speak up whenever our common welfare is at stake.
page 37, paragraph 7, lines 3-5
...coincidences are merely a manner in which God protects his anonymity!"
page 38, paragraph 4, lines 1 & 2
...I could act my way into right thinking, but I could never think my way into right action.
page 39, paragraph 1, lines 5 & 6
"Modified" AA didn't seem to produce too many lasting recoveries.
page 51 , paragraph 1, lines 7 & 8
Perhaps those who know just a little about AA think our meetings must become dull and monotonous and our talks collapse into tiresome laments or tortured remembrances. It might seem that once we have left behind the hell we existed in, we shouldn't have to go so assiduously to these meetings, for no new thoughts or experience are to be found there.
Not so!
As AA's, we need these lifesaving contracts to support and maintain our happily found sobriety. We need to see each other regularly, help one another with continuing problems, share them, and share to our personal triumphs and mutually enjoy them. United, we continue to walk together along the upward-winding road we took when we left drinking behind. For us, our meetings are eternally new, each offering something--whether happy or tragic--to encourage, sustain, and reaffirm our precious sobriety.
page 60, paragraphs 1-3
...in the fight against the ravages of alcohol, we are truly brothers and sisters.
page 61, paragraph 4, lines 6 & 7
Sometimes, the question arises: "What is the Big Book really about?" With the usual alcoholic contrariness, I can only answer with a question: "Who is the Big Book about?" In dealing with alcoholism and the program of recovery, the book tells us how the first AAs dealt with the major problems engendered by our disease, problems affecting marriage, family, sex, finance, jobs, careers, and finally sanity. Through the Twelve Steps, AAs were enabled to find a new perspective on those areas of self-imposed conflict.
page 62, paragraph 1
The Big Book tells me, an alcoholic, how I can use the Twelve Steps to cope with my problems and discover who I am.
page 62, paragraph 2, lines 7 & 8
The Big Book is not about social, mental, or medical problems. To my question "Who is the Big Book about?" there is only one answer. The Big Book is about me.
page 62, paragraph 4
The suffering of an alcoholic is not only the suffering of an individual but of all those related to him, especially those in his immediate family.
page 65, paragraph 1
I was a very good student of alcoholism. I studied for twenty-four years. My habit patterns became totally based on how to continue drinking day in and day out. I became a past master of denial, an artist with self-pity, and by the time I heard the thumping of dirt and pebbles as they would soon be shoveled onto the lid of my coffin, by habit patters had become permanent and I couldn't stop drinking even when I wanted to.
Such is the place that some of us find ourselves in when we join the Fellowship of AA--completely enveloped in alcoholism, mentally, spiritually, and physically.
page 65, paragraphs 2 & 3
I was told at meetings that I could now live one day at a time. I didn't need to project the future or cry about the past. Just live to the best of my ability, one day at a time.
page 65, paragraph 5, lines 4-7
...the doctor who was attending me advised me to live "on the will of God, not on my own will."
page 67, paragraph 2, lines 8 & 9
...the first glass is poison for me.
page 67, paragraph 4, line 14
...if I wanted what they had, I would have to follow the Steps and get involved. AA has given me the opportunity to be an active part in my own life and stop putting the blame on others.
page 69, paragraph 5, lines 3-6
...I wanted to escape from myself.
page 70, paragraph 4, line 3
What made my stay in AA more difficult was that I could not conceive of a Superior Being, because of the simple reason that I already had my own superior being--alcohol.
page 72, paragraph 1, lines 2-5
...I lived only for drinking and drank only to live. I no longer had control over alcohol.
page 75, paragraph 3, lines 1 & 2
...my awful past is only a great warning mark on the road of this happy sobriety I have today.
page 75, paragraph 1, lines 1 & 2
In success I drank; in failure I drank.
page 75, paragraph 2, line 9
During my first year of AA I learned a lot, but I don't think I started to live AA or to apply much of what I learned.
page 75, paragraph 3, lines 1 & 2
Thanks to God, I'll soon have ten candles burning on my AA birthday cake. For ten years I have really lived. I didn't live before.
page 75, paragraph 4
AA has replaced hopelessness with hope. Today I live in the knowledge that whatever happens, God is always there by my side.
page 80, paragraph 3, lines 1-3
...AA may or may not get me to heaven, but it surely got me out of hell.
page 80, paragraph 5, lines 1 & 2
Like most alcoholics, I used all the usual "reasons" for not stopping drinking: "I won't be able to sleep at night"; "My life will be too boring if I quit drinking"; "If I stop, people will think I have a problem" (no need to worry; they already knew). But I had one real reason that kept me from stopping: I knew that if I did quit drinking, I would almost certainly have to begin looking into myself, and I was very much afraid of what I would find. I had little enough peace while drinking, but I feared I'd lose even that if I ever stopped.
Yet, like most alcoholic fears, this one proved false.
page 83, paragraphs 1 & 2, line 1
Little by little I drew into my shell, the feelings of depression and lack of self-confidence were constantly deepening.
page 86, paragraph 2, lines 1-3
I have found through personal observations that those who remain within the Fellowship are usually the ones who have been twelfth-stepped by, or have had personal contact with, an AA member.
page 102, paragraph 2, lines 1-3
Dr. Wierzbicki was not an alcoholic himself, and while he participated in the meetings he couldn't transmit to Polish alcoholics what he didn't possess himself--an understanding of the disease based on the alcoholic's own personal experience.
page 104, paragraph 4, lines 6-9
...from those people even who are doing something wrong, some good will come. It was a lesson that AA once established will heal itself.
page 105, paragraph 3, lines 15-17
...the meetings in Poland would always begin with the question, "Does anyone here have an urgent personal problem?" and usually someone did. In the United States, at the meetings I attended, people rarely get into the very personal matters of sex and the details of family arguments and quarrels. Part of that is because AA is more than fifty years old in the U.S., and there are sponsors and AAs can talk about those kind of things on a one-to-one basis. But in Poland there weren't that many people sober long enough to really serve as sponsors. Of course people meet and talk on an individual basis, but it is not really recognized part of the program. In Poland, your group is your sponsor.
page 107, paragraph 2, lines 7-16
...I felt like an outsider, always looking in with my nose pressed on the window pane.
page 116, paragraph 6, lines 1-3
I learned so much--all head knowledge. It hadn't reached my heart. I could talk the talk as they say, but my resentment blocked me from being able to walk the walk.
page 116, paragraph 7
...alcoholism is a progressive disease.
page 117, paragraph 2, line 1
By definition, a Loner is a person who practices the AA program without the benefit of live discussion and active membership in an AA group. The designation does not meant that he is alone.
page 118, paragraph 5
The AA who sits at home and makes himself miserable because he has no contacts has only himself to blame, and is heading for trouble. To be happily sober, we must be active--...
page 120, paragraph 1, lines 1-3
In a physical sense I may be a Loner but never am I alone spiritually.
page 124, paragraph 1, lines 17 & 18
During the twenty-four years of my hard-drinking career, I ventured blindly through the jungle of life, refusing to fact its reality, for feat that it would ruin me if I did fact it. Instead, it ruined me because I didn't have the courage to fact it. The more I drank, the more I needed to drink, so as to shut out the slightest light coming from the dreadful reality of life.
page 125, paragraph 3
...I lacked maturity, calmness, clear thinking, and experience that I saw in older members, but the only way to grow up is to grow up and not run away.
page 158, paragraph 2, lines 11-13
...I sometimes hid in service at the expense of my recovery.
page 139, paragraph 2, line 3
Sometimes I have been a legend in my own mind. I remember once when I was suffering from this problem, my sponsor asked me, "If you leave AA tomorrow, do you know what they will say about you in six months' time?" I said I didn't know. He said, "Simon who?"
page 139, paragraph 3
I think I also owe it to the Fellowship to ask God for guidance when participating in service, rather than just relying on myself.
page 140, paragraph 2, lines 10-12
In AA there is no emphasis on culture, heritage, or race; we meet with one common problem and one common solution.
page 140, paragraph 6, lines 13 & 14
...My sobriety is my life.
page 143, paragraph 1, line 1
When I came into AA I hadn't lost my family, or my job, or many friends--I still had my circle of friends. What I had lost was faith in myself, inner peace, and the desire to live. I still had the material things, but my inner peace was completely gone, and that's what moved me to come into AA: eventually I came to a place where I didn't want to live or to drink.
page 148, paragraph 8, lines 1-6
...one of my greatest satisfactions: to serve others through the General Service Office, buy always guided by God.
page 150, paragraph 2, lines 6 & 7
The best university for me--the best school, the best teaching--was in analyzing mistakes that I'd made and problems I created because of these mistakes.
page 157, paragraph 4, lines 6-8
I came to understand the joy of life, that an alcoholic can be a smiling, happy man.
page 159, paragraph 11, lines 8-10
When a drunk needs help we want the hand of AA to be there.
page 163, paragraph 7, lines 4 & 5
AA is my life today.
page 165, paragraph 6, line 5