Question: What are the main points discussed in this section of AA-12-Steps-12-Traditions.pdf?

Answer: TWELVE STEPSandTWELVE TRADITIONS  TWELVESTEPSandTWELVETRADITIONSxALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS WORLD SERVICES, INC.BOX 459, GRAND CENTRAL STATIONNEW YORK, NY 10163 Copyright 1952, 1953, 1981 by The A.A. Grapevine,Inc. and Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing (nowknown as )All rights reservedFirst Printing, April 1953Sixty-fourth Printing, January 2003Windows Help version, July 1994*Electronic .PDF version, September 2005+ This edition is NOT A.A. General Service Conference approved literature ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS and A.A. are registeredtrademarks of A.A. World Services, Inc.ISBN 0-916856-01-1Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 53-5454Printed in the United States of America* Transcribed by M r. D.. Sof tware dev el opm en t b y cy b .+ .PDF version based upon the text of the Windows Help versionand published by ARID Media. A.A. World Services and itssubsidiaries were not involved within the production of thisspecific work. ContentsForeword15THE TWELVE STEPSStep One21W e admitted we were powerless over alcoholthatour lives had become unmanageable.Who cares to admit complete defeat? Admission of pow-erlessness is the first step in liberation. Relation of humili-ty to sobriety. Mental obsession plus physical allergy.Why must every A.A. hit bottom?Step Two25Came to believe that a P ow er greater than ourselvescould restore us to sanity.What can we believe in? A.A. does not demand belief;Twelve Steps are only suggestions. Importance of an openmind. Variety of ways to faith. Substitution of A.A. asHigher Power. Plight of the disillusioned. Roadblocks ofindifference and prejudice. Lost faith found in A.A. Prob-lems of intellectuality and self-sufficiency. Negative andpositive thinking. Self-righteousness. Defiance is an out-standing characteristic of alcoholics. Step Two is a rally-ing point to sanity. Right relation to God.Step Three34Made a decision to turn our w ill and our lives over tothe care of God, as we understood Him.Step Three is like opening of a locked door. How shall welet God into our lives? Willingness is the key. Depen-dence as a means to independence. Dangers of self-suffi-5 6CONTENTSciency. Turning our will over to Higher Power. Misuse ofwillpower. Sustained and personal exertion necessary toconform to God's will. Step Four42Made a searching and fearless moral inventory ofourselves.How instincts can exceed their proper function. Step Fouris an effort to discover our liabilities. Basic problem ofextremes in instinctive drives. Misguided moral inventorycan result in guilt, grandiosity, or blaming others. Assetscan be noted with liabilities. Self-justification is danger-ous. Willingness to take inventory brings light and newconfidence. Step Four is beginning of lifetime practice.Common symptoms of emotional insecurity are worry,anger, self-pity, and depression. Inventory reviews rela-tionships. Importance of thoroughness.Step Five55Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another humanbeing the exact nature of our wrongs.Twelve Steps deflate ego. Step Five is difficult but neces-sary to sobriety and peace of mind. Confession is an an-cient discipline. Without fearless admission of defects,few could stay sober. What do we receive from StepFive? Beginning of true kinship with man and God. Losesense of isolation, receive forgiveness and give it; learnhumility; gain honesty and realism about ourselves. Ne-cessity for complete honesty. Danger of rationalization.How to choose the person in whom to confide. Results aretranquility and consciousness of God. Oneness with Godand man prepares us for following Steps.Step Six63W ere entirely ready to have God remove all thesedefects of character.Step Six necessary to spiritual growth. The beginning of a CONTENTS7lifetime job. Recognition of difference between strivingfor objectiveand perfection. Why we must keep trying.Bei n g ready i s al l -i m portan t. Neces s i ty of taki n g acti on .Delay is dangerous. Rebellion may be fatal. Point atwhich we abandon limited objectives and move towardGod's will for us.Step Seven70Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.What is humility? What can it mean to us? The avenue totrue freedom of the human spirit. Necessary aid to sur-vival. Value of ego-puncturing. Failure and misery trans-formed by humility. Strength from weakness. Pain is theadmission price to new life. Self-centered fear chief acti-vator of defects. Step Seven is change in attitude whichpermits us to move out of ourselves toward God.Step Eight77Made a list of all persons we had harmed, andbecame willing to make amends to them all.This and the next two Steps are concerned with personalrelations. Learning to live with others is a fascinating ad-venture. Obstacles: reluctance to forgive; nonadmission ofwrongs to others; purposeful forgetting. Necessity of ex-haustive survey of past. Deepening insight results fromthoroughness. Kinds of harm done to others. Avoiding ex-treme judgments. Taking the objective view. Step Eight isthe beginning of the end of isolation.Step Nine83Made direct amends to such people whereverpossible, except when to do so would injure them orothers.A tranquil mood is the first requisite for good judgment.Good timing is important in making amends. What iscourage? Prudence means taking calculated chances.Amends begin when we join A.A. Peace of mind cannot 8CONTENTSbe bought at the expense of others. Need for discretion.Readiness to take consequences of our past and to take re-sponsibility for well-being of others is spirit of Step Nine.Step Ten88Continued to take personal inventory and when wewere wrong promptly admitted it.Can we stay sober and keep emotional balance under allconditions? Self-searching becomes a regular habit. Ad-mit, accept, and patiently correct defects. Emotional hang-over. When past is settled with, present challenges can bemet. Varieties of inventory. Anger, resentments, jealous-ly, envy, self-pity, hurt prideall led to the bottle. Self-restraint first objective. Insurance against big-shot-ism.Let's look at credits as well as debits. Examination of mo-tives.Step Eleven96Sought through prayer and meditation to improve ourconscious contact with God as we understood Him,praying only for knowledge of His will for us and thepower to carry that out.Meditation and prayer main channels to Higher Power.Connection between self-examination and meditation andprayer. An unshakable foundation for life. How shall wemeditate? Meditation has no boundaries. An individualadventure. First result is emotional balance. What aboutprayer? Daily petitions for understanding of God's willand grace to carry it out. Actual results of prayer are be-yond question. Rewards of meditation and prayer.Step Twelve106Having had a spiritual awakening as the result ofthese steps, we tried to carry this message toalcoholics, and to practice these principles in all ouraffairs.Joy of living is the theme of the Twelfth Step. Action its CONTENTS9keyword. Giving that asks no reward. Love that has noprice tag. What is spiritual awakening? A new state ofconsciousness and being is received as a free gift. Readi-ness to receive free gift lies in practice of Twelve Steps.The magnificent reality. Rewards of helping other alco-holics. Kinds of Twelfth Step work. Problems of TwelfthStep work. What about the practice of these principles inall o ur affairs? Monotony, pain and calamity turned togood use by practice of Steps. Difficulties of practice.Two-stepping. Switch to twelve-stepping and demon-strations of faith. Growing spiritually is the answer to ourproblems. Placing spiritual growth first. Domination andoverdependence. Putting our lives on give-and-take basis.Dependence upon God necessary to recovery of alco-holics. Practicing these principles in all our affairs: Do-mestic relations in A.A. Outlook upon material matterschanges. So do feelings about personal importance. In-stincts restored to true purpose. Understanding is key toright attitudes, right action key to good living.THE TWELVE TRADITIONSTradition One129Our common welfare should come first; personalrecovery depends upon A.A. unity.Without unity, A.A. dies. Individual liberty, yet great uni-ty. Key to paradox: each A.A.'s life depends on obedienceto spiritual principles. The group must survive or the indi-vidual will not. Common welfare comes first. How best tolive and work together as groups.Tradition Two132F or our group purpose there is but one ultimate 10CONTENTSauthoritya loving God as He may express Himself inour group conscience. Our leaders are but trustedservants; they do not govern.Where does A.A. get its direction? Sole authority in A.A.is loving God as He may express Himself in the groupconscience. Formation of a group. Growing pains. Rotat-ing committees are servants of the group. Leaders do notgovern, they serve. Does A.A. have a real leadership?Elder statesmen and bleeding deacons. The groupconscience speaks.Tradition Three139The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desireto stop drinking.Early intolerance based on fear. To take away any alco-holic's chance an A.A. was sometimes to pronounce hisdeath sentence. Membership regulations abandoned. Twoexamples of experience. Any alcoholic is a member ofA.A. when he says so.Tradition Four146Each group should be autonomous except in mattersaffecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.Every group manages its affairs as it pleases, except whenA.A. as a whole is threatened. Is such liberty dangerous?The group, like the individual, must eventually conformto principles that guarantee survival. Two storm signalsa group ought not do anything which would injure A.A. asa whole, nor affiliate itself with outside interests. An ex-ample: the A.A. Center that didn't work.Tradition Five150Each group has but one primary purposeto carrythe message to the alcoholic who still suffers.Better do one thing well than many badly. The life of ourFellowship depends on this principle. The ability of eachA.A. to identify himself with and bring recovery to the CONTENTS11newcomer is a gift from God . . . passing on this gift toothers is our one aim. Sobriety can't be kept unless it isgiven away.Tradition Six155An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance or lendthe A.A. name to any related facility or outsideenterprise, lest problems of money, property andprestige divert us from our primary purpose.Experience proved that we could not endorse any relatedenterprise, no matter how good. We could not be allthings to all men. We saw that we could not lend the A.A.name to any outside activity.Tradition Seven160Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting,declining outside contributions.No A.A. Tradition had the labor pains this one did. Col-lective poverty initially a matter of necessity. Fear of ex-ploitation. Necessity of separating the spiritual from thematerial. Decision to subsist on A.A. voluntary contribu-tions only. Placing the responsibility of supporting A.A.headquarters directly upon A.A. members. Bare runningexpenses plus a prudent reserve is headquarters policy.Tradition Eight166Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forevernonprofessional, but our service centers may employspecial workers.You can't mix the Twelfth Step and money. Line of cleav-age between voluntary Twelfth Step work and paid-forservices. A.A. could not function without full-time serviceworkers. Professional workers are not professional A.A.'s.Relation of A.A. to industry, education, etc. Twelfth Stepwork is never paid for, but those who labor in service forus are worthy of their hire. 12CONTENTSTradition Nine172A.A., as such, ought never be organized; but w e maycreate service boards or committees directlyresponsible to those they serve.Special service boards and committees. The General Ser-vice Conference, the board of trustees, and group commit-tees cannot issue directives to A.A. members or groups.A.A.'s can't be dictated toindividually or collectively.Absence of coercion works because unless each A.A. fol-lows suggested Steps to recovery, he signs his own deathwarrant. Same condition applies to the group. Sufferingand love are A.A.'s disciplinarians. Difference betweenspirit of authority and spirit of service. Aim of our ser-vices is to bring sobriety within reach of all who want it.Tradition Ten176Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outsideissues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn intopublic controversy.A.A. does not take sides in any public controversy. Reluc-tance to fight is not a special virtue. Survival and spreadof A.A. are our primary aims. Lessons learned fromWashingtonian movement.Tradition Eleven180Our public relations policy is based on attractionrather than promotion; we need always maintainpersonal anonymity at the level of press, radio andfilms.Public relations are important to A.A. Good public rela-tions save lives. We seek publicity for A.A. principles,not A.A. members. The press has cooperated. Personalanonymity at the public level is the cornerstone of ourpublic relations policy. Eleventh Tradition is a constantreminder that personal ambition has no place in A.A.Each member becomes an active guardian of our Fellow-ship. CONTENTS13Tradition Twelve184Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all ourtraditions, ever reminding us to place principles beforepersonalities.Spiritual substance of anonymity is sacrifice. Subordinat-ing personal aims to the common good is the essence ofall Twelve Traditions. Why A.A. could not remain a se-cret society. Principles come before personalities. Onehundred percent anonymity at the public level. Anonymi-ty is real humility.The Twelve Traditionsthe Long Form189  ForewordALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS is a worldwide fellow-ship of more than one hundred thousand* a l c o h o l ic menand women who are banded together to solve their com-mon problems and to help fellow sufferers in recovery fromthat age-old, baffling malady, alcoholism.This book deals with the Twelve Steps and theTwelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. It presentsan explicit view of the principles by which A.A. membersrecover and by which their Society functions.A.A.'s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritualin their nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can ex-pel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to becomehappily and usefully whole.A.A.'s Twelve Traditions apply to the life of the Fellow-ship itself. They outline the means by which A.A. maintainsits unity and relates itself to the world about it, the way itlives and grows.Though the essays which follow were written mainlyfor members, it is thought by many of A.A.'s friends thatthese pieces might arouse interest and find application out-side of A.A. itself.Many people, nonalcoholics, report that as a result ofthe practice of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, they have been able to*In 2003 it is estimated that over two million have recoveredthrough A.A.15 16FOREWORDmeet other difficulties of life. They think that the TwelveSteps can mean more than sobriety for problem drinkers.They see in them a way to happy and effective living formany, alcoholic or not.There is, too, a rising interest in the Twelve Traditionsof Alcoholics Anonymous. Students of human relations arebeginning to wonder how and why A.A. functions as a so-ciety. Why is it, they ask, that in A.A. no member can be setin personal authority over another, that nothing like a cen-tral government can anywhere be seen? How can a set oftraditional principles, having no legal force at all, hold theFellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous in unity and effec-tiveness? The second section of this volume, thoughdesigned for A.A.'s membership, will give such inquirers aninside view of A.A. never before possible.Alcoholics Anonymous began in 1935 in Akron, Ohio,as the outcome of a meeting between a well-known sur-geon and a New York broker. Both were severe cases ofalcoholism and were destined to become co-founders of theA.A. Fellowship.The basic principles of A.A., as they are known today,were borrowed mainly from the fields of religion andmedicine, though some ideas upon which success finallydepended were the result of noting the behavior and needsof the Fellowship itself.After three years of trial and error in selecting the mostworkable tenets upon which the Society could be based,and after a large amount of failure in getting alcoholics torecover, three successful groups emergedthe first atAkron, the second in New York, and the third at Cleveland. FOREWORD17Even then it was hard to find twoscore of sure recoveries inall three groups.Nevertheless, the infant Society determined to set downits experience in a book which finally reached the public inApril 1939. At this time the recoveries numbered about onehundred. The book was called Alcoholics Anonymousand from it the Fellowship took its name. In it alcoholismwas described from the alcoholic's view, the spiritual ideaof the Society was codified for the first time in the TwelveSteps, and the application of these Steps to the alcoholic'sdilemma was made clear. The remainder of the book wasdevoted to thirty stories or case histories in which the alco-holics described their drinking experiences and recoveries.This established identification with alcoholic readers andproved to them that the virtually impossible had becomepossible. The book Alcoholics Anonymous became thebasic text of the Fellowship, and it still is. This present vol-ume proposes to broaden and deepen the understanding ofthe Twelve Steps as first written in the earlier work.With the publication of the book Alcoholics Anony-mous in 1939, the pioneering period ended and aprodigious chain reaction set in as recovered alcoholics car-ried their message to still others. In the next yearsalcoholics flocked to A.A. by tens of thousands, largely asthe result of excellent and continuous publicity freely givenby magazines and newspapers throughout the world. Cler-gymen and doctors alike rallied to the new movement,giving it unstinted support and endorsement.This startling expansion brought with it very severegrowing pains. Proof that alcoholics could recover had 18FOREWORDbeen made. But it was by no means sure that such greatnumbers of yet erratic people could live and work togetherwith harmony and good effect.Everywhere there arose threatening questions of mem-bership, money, personal relations, public relations,management of groups, clubs, and scores of other perplexi-ties. It was out of this vast welter of explosive experiencesthat A.A.'s Twelve Traditions took form and were first pub-lished in 1946 and later confirmed at A.A.'s FirstInternational Convention held at Cleveland in 1950. TheTradition section of this volume portrays in some detail theexperience which finally produced the Twelve Traditionsand so gave A.A. its present form, substance, and unity.As A.A. now enters maturity, it has begun to reach intoforty foreign lands.* In the view of its friends, this is but thebeginning of its unique and valuable service.It is hoped that this volume will afford all who read it aclose-up view of the principles and forces which have madeAlcoholics Anonymous what it is.(A.A.'s General Service Office may be reached by writing:Alcoholics Anonymous, P.O. Box 459,Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163, U.S.A.) *In 2003, A.A. is established in approximately 150 countries. THE TWELVE STEPS  Step OneW e admitted w e w ere pow erless over alco-holthat our lives had become unmanage-able.WHO cares to admit complete defeat? Practically no one,of course. Every natural instinct cries out against the idea ofpersonal powerlessness. It is truly awful to admit that, glassin hand, we have warped our minds into such an obsessionfor destructive drinking that only an act of providence canremove it from us.No other kind of bankruptcy is like this one. Alcohol,now become the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all self-sufficiency and all will to resist its demands. Once this starkfact is accepted, our bankruptcy as going human concernsis complete. But upon entering A.A. we soon take quite anotherview of this absolute humiliation. We perceive that onlythrough utter defeat are we able to take our first steps to-ward liberation and strength. Our admissions of personalpowerlessness finally turn out to be firm bedrock uponwhich happy and purposeful lives may be built.We know that little good can come to any alcoholicwho joins A.A. unless he has first accepted his devastatingweakness and all its consequences. Until he so humbleshimself, his sobrietyif anywill be precarious. Of realhappiness he will find none at all. Proved beyond doubt byan immense experience, this is one of the facts of A.A. life.21 22STEP ONEThe principle that we shall find no enduring strength untilwe first admit complete defeat is the main taproot fromwhich our whole Society has sprung and flowered.When first challenged to admit defeat, most of us re-volted. We had approached A.A. expecting to be taughtself-confidence. Then we had been told that so far as alco-hol is concerned, self-confidence was no good whatever; infact, it was a total liability. Our sponsors declared that wewere the victims of a mental obsession so subtly powerfulthat no amount of human willpower could break it. Therewas, they said, no such thing as the personal conquest ofthis compulsion by the unaided will. Relentlessly deepen-ing our dilemma, our sponsors pointed out our increasingsensitivity to alcoholan allergy, they called it. The tyrantalcohol wielded a double-edged sword over us: first wewere smitten by an insane urge that condemned us to go ondrinking, and then by an allergy of the body that insured wewould ultimately destroy ourselves in the process. Few in-deed were those who, so assailed, had ever won through insinglehanded combat. It was a statistical fact that alcoholicsalmost never recovered on their own resources. And thishad been true, apparently, ever since man had first crushedgrapes.In A.A.'s pioneering time, none but the most desperatecases could swallow and digest this unpalatable truth. Eventhese last-gaspers often had difficulty in realizing howhopeless they actually were. But a few did, and when theselaid hold of A.A. principles with all the fervor with whichthe drowning seize life preservers, they almost invariablygot well. That is why the first edition of the book Alco- STEP ONE23holics Anonymous, pub l i s h ed wh en our m em b ers h i p wassmall, dealt with low-bottom cases only. Many less desper-ate alcoholics tried A.A., but did not succeed because theycould not make the admission of hopelessness.It is a tremendous satisfaction to record that in the fol-lowing years this changed. Alcoholics who still had theirhealth, their families, their jobs, and even two cars in thegarage, began to recognize their alcoholism. As this trendgrew, they were joined by young people who were scarcelymore than potential alcoholics. They were spared that lastten or fifteen years of literal hell the rest of us had gonethrough. Since Step One requires an admission that ourlives have become unmanageable, how could people suchas these take this Step?It was obviously necessary to raise the bottom the restof us had hit to the point where it would hit them. By goingback in our own drinking histories, we could show thatyears before we realized it we were out of control, that ourdrinking even then was no mere habit, that it was indeedthe beginning of a fatal progression. To the doubters wecould say, Perhaps you're not an alcoholic after all. Whydon't you try some more controlled drinking, bearing inmind meanwhile what we have told you aboutalcoholism? Th i s atti tude b rough t i m m edi ate an d practi calresults. It was then discovered that when one alcoholic hadplanted in the mind of another the true nature of his malady,that person could never be the same again. Following everyspree, he would say to himself, M ay b e th os e A .A .' s wereright . . . A f ter a f ew s uch ex peri en ces , of ten y ears b ef orethe onset of extreme difficulties, he would return to us con- 24STEP ONEvinced. He had hit bottom as truly as any of us. John Barl-eycorn himself had become our best advocate.Why all this insistence that every A.A. must hit bottomfirst? The answer is that few people will sincerely try topractice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom. Forpracticing A.A.'s remaining eleven Steps means the adop-tion of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who isstill drinking can dream of taking. Who wishes to be rigor-ously honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess his faultsto another and make restitution for harm done? Who caresanything about a Higher Power, let alone meditation andprayer? Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying tocarry A.A.'s message to the next sufferer? No, the averagealcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn't care for thisprospectunless he has to do these things in order to stayalive himself.Under the lash of alcoholism, we are driven to A.A.,and there we discover the fatal nature of our situation.Then, and only then, do we become as open-minded toconviction and as willing to listen as the dying can be. Westand ready to do anything which will lift the merciless ob-session from us. Step TwoCame to believe that a P ow er greater thanourselves could restore us to sanity.THE moment they read Step Two, most A.A. newcomersare confronted with a dilemma, sometimes a serious one.How often have we heard them cry out, Look what youpeople have done to us! You have convinced us that we arealcoholics and that our lives are unmanageable. Having re-duced us to a state of absolute helplessness, you nowdeclare that none but a Higher Power can remove our ob-session. Some of us won't believe in God, others can't, andstill others who do believe that God exists have no faithwhatever He will perform this miracle. Yes, you've got usover the barrel, all rightbut where do we go from here?Let's look first at the case of the one who says he won'tbelievethe belligerent one. He is in a state of mind whichcan be described only as savage. His whole philosophy oflife, in which he so gloried, is threatened. It's bad enough,he thinks, to admit alcohol has him down for keeps. Butnow, still smarting from that admission, he is faced withsomething really impossible. How he does cherish thethought that man, risen so majestically from a single cell inthe primordial ooze, is the spearhead of evolution andtherefore the only god that his universe knows! Must he re-nounce all this to save himself?25 26STEP TWOAt this juncture, his A.A, sponsor usually laughs. This,the newcomer thinks, is just about the last straw. This is thebeginning of the end. And so it is: the beginning of the endof his old life, and the beginning of his emergence into anew one. His sponsor probably says, Take it easy. Thehoop you have to jump through is a lot wider than youthink. At least I've found it so. So did a friend of mine whowas a one-time vice-president of the American Atheist So-ciety, but he got through with room to spare.Well, says the newcomer, I know you're telling methe truth. It's no doubt a fact that A.A, is full of people whoonce believed as I do. But just how, in these circumstances,does a fellow 'take it easy'? That's what I want to know.Th at, agrees th e s pon s or, is a very good question in-deed. I think I can tell you exactly how to relax. You won'thave to work at it very hard, either. Listen, if you will, tothese three statements. First, Alcoholics Anonymous doesnot demand that you believe anything. All of its TwelveSteps are but suggestions. Second, to get sober and to staysober, you don't have to swallow all of Step Two right now.Looking back, I find that I took it piecemeal myself. Third,all you really need is a truly open mind. Just resign from thedebating society and quit bothering yourself with such deepquestions as whether it was the hen or the egg that camefirst. Again I say, all you need is the open mind.The sponsor continues, Take, for example, my owncase. I had a scientific schooling. Naturally I respected,venerated, even worshiped science. As a matter of fact, Istill doall except the worship part. Time after time, myinstructors held up to me the basic principle of all scientific STEP TWO27progress: search and research, again and again, always withthe open mind. When I first looked at A.A., my reactionwas just like yours. This A.A, business, I thought, is totallyunscientific. This I can't swallow. I simply won't considersuch nonsense.Th en I woke up. I h ad to adm i t th at A .A , s h owed re-sults, prodigious results. I saw that my attitude regardingthese had been anything but scientific. It wasn't A.A, thathad the closed mind, it was me. The minute I stopped argu-ing, I could begin to see and feel. Right there, Step Twogently and very gradually began to infiltrate my life. I can'tsay upon what occasion or upon what day I came to believein a Power greater than myself, but I certainly have that be-lief now. To acquire it, I had only to stop fighting andpractice the rest of A.A.'s program as enthusiastically as Icould.Th i s i s on l y on e m an ' s opi n i on b as ed on h i s own ex pe-rience, of course. I must quickly assure you that A.A.'stread innumerable paths in their quest for faith. If you don'tcare for the one I've suggested, you'll be sure to discoverone that suits if only you look and listen. Many a man likeyou has begun to solve the problem by the method of sub-stitution. You can, if you wish, make A.A., itself your'higher power.' Here's a very large group of people whohave solved their alcohol problem. In this respect they arecertainly a power greater than you, who have not evencome close to a solution. Surely you can have faith in them.Even this minimum of faith will be enough. You will findmany members who have crossed the threshold just thisway. All of them will tell you that, once across, their faith 28STEP TWObroadened and deepened. Relieved of the alcohol obses-sion, their lives unaccountably transformed, they came tobelieve in a Higher Power, and most of them began to talkof God.Consider next the plight of those who once had faith,but have lost it. There will be those who have drifted intoindifference, those filled with self-sufficiency who have cutthemselves off, those who have become prejudiced againstreligion, and those who are downright defiant because Godhas failed to fulfill their demands. Can A.A, experience tellall these they may still find a faith that works?Sometimes A.A, comes harder to those who have lostor rejected faith than to those who never had any faith at all,for they think they have tried faith and found it wanting.They have tried the way of faith and the way of no faith.Since both ways have proved bitterly disappointing, theyhave concluded there is no place whatever for them to go.The roadblocks of indifference, fancied self-sufficiency,prejudice, and defiance often prove more solid andformidable for these people than any erected by the uncon-vinced agnostic or even the militant atheist. Religion saysthe existence of God can be proved; the agnostic says itcan't be proved; and the atheist claims proof of the nonexis-tence of God. Obviously, the dilemma of the wandererfrom faith is that of profound confusion. He thinks himselflost to the comfort of any conviction at all. He cannot attainin even a small degree the assurance of the believer, the ag-nostic, or the atheist. He is the bewildered one.Any number of A.A.'s can say to the drifter, Yes, wewere diverted from our childhood faith, too. The overconfi- STEP TWO29dence of youth was too much for us. Of course, we wereglad that good home and religious training had given uscertain values. We were still sure that we ought to be fairlyhonest, tolerant, and just, that we ought to be ambitious andhardworking. We became convinced that such simple rulesof fair play and decency would be enough.As material success founded upon no more than theseordinary attributes began to come to us, we felt we werewinning at the game of life. This was exhilarating, and itmade us happy. Why should we be bothered with theologi-cal abstractions and religious duties, or with the state of oursouls here or hereafter? The here and now was goodenough for us. The will to win would carry us through. Butthen alcohol began to have its way with us. Finally, whenall our score cards read 'zero,' and we saw that one morestrike would put us out of the game forever, we had to lookfor our lost faith. It was in A.A, that we rediscovered it. Andso can you.Now we come to another kind of problem: the intellec-tually self-sufficient man or woman. To these, many A.A.'scan say, Yes, we were like youfar too smart for our owngood. We loved to have people call us precocious. We usedour education to blow ourselves up into prideful balloons,though we were careful to hide this from others. Secretly,we felt we could float above the rest of the folks on ourbrainpower alone. Scientific progress told us there wasnothing man couldn't do. Knowledge was all-powerful. In-tellect could conquer nature. Since we were brighter thanmost folks (so we thought), the spoils of victory would beours for the thinking. The god of intellect displaced the God 30STEP TWOof our fathers. But again John Barleycorn had other ideas.We who had won so handsomely in a walk turned into all-time losers. We saw that we had to reconsider or die. Wefound many in A.A, who once thought as we did. Theyhelped us to get down to our right size. By their examplethey showed us that humility and intellect could be compat-ible, provided we placed humility first. When we began todo that, we received the gift of faith, a faith which works.This faith is for you, too.Another crowd of A.A.'s says: We were plumb dis-gusted with religion and all its works. The Bible, we said,was full of nonsense; we could cite it chapter and verse, andwe couldn't see the Beatitudes for the 'begats.' In spots itsmorality was impossibly good; in others it seemed impossi-bly bad. But it was the morality of the religioniststhemselves that really got us down. We gloated over thehypocrisy, bigotry, and crushing self-righteousness thatclung to so many 'believers' even in their Sunday best. Howwe loved to shout the damaging fact that millions of the'good men of religion' were still killing one another off inthe name of God. This all meant, of course, that we hadsubstituted negative for positive thinking. After we came toA.A., we had to recognize that this trait had been an ego-feeding proposition. In belaboring the sins of some reli-gious people, we could feel superior to all of them.Moreover, we could avoid looking at some of our ownshortcomings. Self-righteousness, the very thing that wehad contemptuously condemned in others, was our own be-setting evil. This phony form of respectability was ourundoing, so far as faith was concerned. But finally, driven STEP TWO31to A.A., we learned better.As psychiatrists have often observed, defiance is theoutstanding characteristic of many an alcoholic. So it's notstrange that lots of us have had our day at defying GodHimself. Sometimes it's because God has not delivered usthe good things of life which we specified, as a greedy childm makes an impossible list for Santa Claus. More often,though, we had met up with some major calamity, and toour way of thinking lost out because God deserted us. Thegirl we wanted to marry had other notions; we prayed Godthat she'd change her mind, but she didn't. We prayed forhealthy children, and were presented with sick ones, ornone at all. We prayed for promotions at business, and nonecame. Loved ones, upon whom we heartily depended, weretaken from us by so-called acts of God. Then we becamedrunkards, and asked God to stop that. But nothing hap-pened. This was the unkindest cut of all. 'Damn this faithbusiness!' we said.W h en we en coun tered A .A ,, th e f al l acy of our defi-ance was revealed. At no time had we asked what God'swill was for us; instead we had been telling Him what itought to be. No man, we saw, could believe in God anddefy Him, too. Belief meant reliance, not; defiance. In A.A,we saw the fruits of this belief: men and women sparedfrom alcohol's final catastrophe. We saw them meet andtranscend their other pains and trials. We saw them calmlyaccept impossible situations, seeking neither to run nor torecriminate. This was not only faith; it was faith thatworked under all conditions. We soon concluded that what-ever price in humility we must pay, we would pay. 32STEP TWONow let's take the guy full of faith, but still reeking ofalcohol. He believes he is devout. His religious observanceis scrupulous. He's sure he still believes in God, but sus-pects that God doesn't believe in him. He takes pledges andmore pledges. Following each, he not only drinks again, butacts worse than the last time. Valiantly he tries to fight alco-hol, imploring God's help, but the help doesn't come. What,then, can be the matter?To clergymen, doctors, friends, and families, the alco-holic who means well and tries hard is a heartbreakingriddle. To most A.A.'s, he is not. There are too many of uswho have been just like him, and have found the riddle'sanswer. This answer has to do with the quality of faithrather than its quantity. This has been our blind spot. Wesupposed we had humility when really we hadn't. We sup-posed we had been serious about religious practices when,upon honest appraisal, we found we had been only superfi-cial. Or, going to the other extreme, we had wallowed inemotionalism and had mistaken it for true religious feeling.In both cases, we had been asking something for nothing.The fact was we really hadn't cleaned house so that thegrace of God could enter us and expel the obsession. In nodeep or meaningful sense had we ever taken stock of our-selves, made amends to those we had harmed, or freelygiven to any other human being without any demand for re-ward. We had not even prayed rightly. We had always said,Gran t m e m y wi s h es instead of Th y wi l l b e don e. Th elove of God and man we understood not at all. Thereforewe remained self-deceived, and so incapable of receivingenough grace to restore us to sanity. STEP TWO33Few indeed are the practicing alcoholics who have anyidea how irrational they are, or seeing their irrationality, canbear to face it. Some will be willing to term themselvesprob l em drinkers, but cannot endure the suggestion thatthey are in fact mentally ill. They are abetted in this blind-ness by a world which does not understand the differencebetween sane drinking and alcoholism. Sanity is definedas soundness of mind. Yet no alcoholic, soberly analyz-ing his destructive behavior, whether the destruction fell onthe dining-room furniture or his own moral fiber, can claimsoundness of mind for himself.Therefore, Step Two is the rallying point for all of us.Whether agnostic, atheist, or former believer, we can standtogether on this Step. True humility and an open mind canlead us to faith, and every A.A, meeting is an assurance thatGod will restore us to sanity if we rightly relate ourselves toHim. Step ThreeMade a decision to turn our w ill and ourlives over to the care of God, as we under-stood Him.PRACTICING S tep Three is like the opening of a doorwhich to all appearances is still closed and locked. All weneed is a key, and the decision to swing the door open.There is only one key, and it is called willingness. Once un-locked by willingness, the door opens almost of itself, andlooking through it, we shall see a pathway beside which isan inscription. It reads: Th i s i s th e way to a f ai th th atworks. In the first two Steps we were engaged in reflec-tion. We saw that we were powerless over alcohol, but wealso perceived that faith of some kind, if only in A.A. itself,is possible to anyone. These conclusions did not require ac-tion; they required only acceptance.Like all the remaining Steps, Step Three calls for affir-mative action, for it is only by action that we can cut awaythe self-will which has always blocked the entry of Godor, if you like, a Higher Powerinto our lives. Faith, to besure, is necessary, but faith alone can avail nothing. We canhave faith, yet keep God out of our lives. Therefore ourproblem now becomes just how and by what specificmeans shall we be able to let Him in? Step Three representsour first attempt to do this. In fact, the effectiveness of thewhole A.A. program will rest upon how well and earnestlywe have tried to come to a decision to turn our will and34 STEP THREE35our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.To every worldly and practical-minded beginner, thisStep looks hard, even impossible. No matter how much onewishes to try, exactly how can he turn his own will and hisown life over to the care of whatever God he thinks thereis? Fortunately, we who have tried it, and with equal mis-givings, can testify that anyone, anyone at all, can begin todo it. We can further add that a beginning, even the small-est, is all that is needed. Once we have placed the key ofwillingness in the lock and have the door ever so slightlyopen, we find that we can always open it some more.Though self-will may slam it shut again, as it frequentlydoes, it will always respond the moment we again pick upthe key of willingness.Maybe this all sounds mysterious and remote, some-thing like Einstein's theory of relativity or a proposition innuclear physics. It isn't at all. Let's look at how practical itactually is. Every man and woman who has joined A.A.and intends to stick has, without realizing it, made a begin-ning on Step Three. Isn't it true that in all matters touchingupon alcohol, each of them has decided to turn his or herlife over to the care, protection, and guidance of AlcoholicsAnonymous? Already a willingness has been achieved tocast out one's own will and one's own ideas about the alco-hol problem in favor of those suggested by A.A. Anywilling newcomer feels sure A.A. is the only safe harbor forthe foundering vessel he has become. Now if this is notturning one's will and life over to a newfound Providence,then what is it?But suppose that instinct still cries out, as it certainly 36STEP THREEwill, Yes, respecting alcohol, I guess I have to be depen-dent upon A.A., but in all other matters I must still maintainmy independence. Nothing is going to turn me into anonentity. If I keep on turning my life and my will over tothe care of Something or Somebody else, what will becomeof me? I'll look like the hole in the doughnut. This, ofcourse, is the process by which instinct and logic alwaysseek to bolster egotism, and so frustrate spiritual develop-ment. The trouble is that this kind of thinking takes no realaccount of the facts. And the facts seem to be these: Themore we become willing to depend upon a Higher Power,the more independent we actually are. Therefore depen-dence, as A.A. practices it, is really a means of gaining trueindependence of the spirit.Let's examine for a moment this idea of dependence atthe level of everyday living. In this area it is startling to dis-cover how dependent we really are, and how unconsciousof that dependence. Every modern house has electric wiringcarrying power and light to its interior. We are delightedwith this dependence; our main hope is that nothing willever cut off the supply of current. By so accepting our de-pendence upon this marvel of science, we find ourselvesmore independent personally. Not only are we more inde-pendent, we are even more comfortable and secure. Powerflows just where it is needed. Silently and surely, electricity,that strange energy so few people understand, meets oursimplest daily needs, and our most desperate ones, too. Askthe polio sufferer confined to an iron lung who dependswith complete trust upon a motor to keep the breath of lifein him. STEP THREE37But the moment our mental or emotional independenceis in question, how differently we behave. How persistentlywe claim the right to decide all by ourselves just what weshall think and just how we shall act. Oh yes, we'll weighthe pros and cons of every problem. We'll listen politely tothose who would advise us, but all the decisions are to beours alone. Nobody is going to meddle with our personalindependence in such matters. Besides, we think, there isno one we can surely trust. We are certain that our intelli-gence, backed by willpower, can rightly control our innerlives and guarantee us success in the world we live in. Thisbrave philosophy, wherein each man plays God, soundsgood in the speaking, but it still has to meet the acid test:how well does it actually work? One good look in the mir-ror ought to be answer enough for any alcoholic.Should his own image in the mirror be too awful tocontemplate (and it usually is), he might first take a look atthe results normal people are getting from self-sufficiency.Everywhere he sees people filled with anger and fear, soci-ety breaking up into warring fragments. Each fragment saysto the others, We are right and you are wrong. Every suchpressure group, if it is strong enough, self-righteously im-poses its will upon the rest. And everywhere the same thingis being done on an individual basis. The sum of all thismighty effort is less peace and less brotherhood than be-fore. The philosophy of self-sufficiency is not paying off.Plainly enough, it is a bone-crushing juggernaut whose fi-nal achievement is ruin.Therefore, we who are alcoholics can consider our-selves fortunate indeed. Each of us has had his own near- 38STEP THREEfatal encounter with the juggernaut of self-will, and has suf-fered enough under its weight to be willing to look forsomething better. So it is by circumstance rather than byany virtue that we have been driven to A.A., have admitteddefeat, have acquired the rudiments of faith, and now wantto make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to aHigher Power.We realize that the word dependence is as distastefulto many psychiatrists and psychologists as it is to alco-holics. Like our professional friends, we, too, are aware thatthere are wrong forms of dependence. We have experi-enced many of them. No adult man or woman, forexample, should be in too much emotional dependenceupon a parent. They should have been weaned long before,and if they have not been, they should wake up to the fact.This very form of faulty dependence has caused many a re-bellious alcoholic to conclude that dependence of any sortmust be intolerably damaging. But dependence upon anA.A. group or upon a Higher Power hasn't produced anybaleful results.When World War II broke out, this spiritual principlehad its first major test. A.A.'s entered the services and werescattered all over the world. Would they be able to take dis-cipline, stand up under fire, and endure the monotony andmisery of war? Would the kind of dependence they hadlearned in A.A. carry them through? Well, it did. They hadeven fewer alcoholic lapses or emotional binges than A.A.'ssafe at home did. They were just as capable of enduranceand valor as any other soldiers. Whether in Alaska or on theSalerno beachhead, their dependence upon a Higher Power STEP THREE39worked. And far from being a weakness, this dependencewas their chief source of strength.So how, exactly, can the willing person continue to turnhis will and his life over to the Higher Power? He made abeginning, we have seen, when he commenced to rely uponA.A. for the solution of his alcohol problem. By now,though, the chances are that he has become convinced thathe has more problems than alcohol, and that some of theserefuse to be solved by all the sheer personal determinationand courage he can muster. They simply will not budge;they make him desperately unhappy and threaten his new-found sobriety. Our friend is still victimized by remorse andguilt when he thinks of yesterday. Bitterness still overpow-ers him when he broods upon those he still envies or hates.His financial insecurity worries him sick, and panic takesover when he thinks of all the bridges to safety that alcoholburned behind him. And how shall he ever straighten outthat awful jam that cost him the affection of his family andseparated him from them? His lone courage and unaidedwill cannot do it. Surely he must now depend upon Some-body or Something else.At first that somebody is likely to be his closest A.A.friend. He relies upon the assurance that his many troubles,now made more acute because he cannot use alcohol to killthe pain, can be solved, too. Of course the sponsor pointsout that our friend's life is still unmanageable even thoughhe is sober, that after all, only a bare start on A.A.'s programhas been made. More sobriety brought about by the admis-sion of alcoholism and by attendance at a few meetings isvery good indeed, but it is bound to be a far cry from per- 40STEP THREEmanent sobriety and a contented, useful life. That is justwhere the remaining Steps of the A.A. program come in.Nothing short of continuous action upon these as a way oflife can bring the much-desired result.Then it is explained that other Steps of the A.A. pro-gram can be practiced with success only when Step Threeis given a determined and persistent trial. This statementmay surprise newcomers who have experienced nothingbut constant deflation and a growing conviction that humanwill is of no value whatever. They have become persuaded,and rightly so, that many problems besides alcohol will notyield to a headlong assault powered by the individual alone.But now it appears that there are certain things which onlythe individual can do. A11 by himself, and in the light of hisown circumstances, he needs to develop the quality of will-ingness. When he acquires willingness, he is the only onewho can make the decision to exert himself. Trying to dothis is an act of his own will. All of the Twelve Steps re-quire sustained and personal exertion to conform to theirprinciples and so, we trust, to God's will.It is when we try to make our will conform with God'sthat we begin to use it rightly. To all of us, this was a mostwonderful revelation. Our whole trouble had been the mis-use of willpower. We had tried to bombard our problemswith it instead of attempting to bring it into agreement withGod's intention for us. To make this increasingly possible isthe purpose of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, and Step Three opensthe door.Once we have come into agreement with these ideas, itis really easy to begin the practice of Step Three. In all STEP THREE41times of emotional disturbance or indecision, we can pause,ask for quiet, and in the stillness simply say: God gran t m ethe serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage tochange the things I can, and wisdom to know the differ-ence. Thy will, not mine, be done. Step FourMade a searching and fearless moral in-ventory of ourselves.CREATION g a ve us instincts for a purpose. Withoutthem we wouldn't be complete human beings. If men andwomen didn't exert themselves to be secure in their per-sons, made no effort to harvest food or construct shelter,there would be no survival. If they didn't reproduce, theearth wouldn't be populated. If there were no social instinct,if men cared nothing for the society of one another, therewould be no society. So these desiresfor the sex relation,for material and emotional security, and for companionshipare perfectly necessary and right, and surely God-given.Yet these instincts, so necessary for our existence, oftenfar exceed their proper functions. Powerfully, blindly, manytimes subtly, they drive us, dominate us, and insist uponruling our lives. Our desires for sex, for material and emo-tional security, and for an important place in society oftentyrannize us. When thus out of joint, man's natural desirescause him great trouble, practically all the trouble there is.No human being, however good, is exempt from thesetroubles. Nearly every serious emotional problem can beseen as a case of misdirected instinct. When that happens,our great natural assets, the instincts, have turned into phys-ical and mental liabilities.Step Four is our vigorous and painstaking effort to dis-cover what these liabilities in each of us have been, and are.42 STEP FOUR43We want to find exactly how, when, and where our naturaldesires have warped us. We wish to look squarely at the un-happiness this has caused others and ourselves. Bydiscovering what our emotional deformities are, we canmove toward their correction. Without a willing and persis-tent effort to do this, there can be little sobriety orcontentment for us. Without a searching and fearless moralinventory, most of us have found that the faith which reallyworks in daily living is still out of reach.Before tackling the inventory problem in detail, let'shave a closer look at what the basic problem is. Simple ex-amples like the following take on a world of meaning whenwe think about them. Suppose a person places sex desireahead of everything else. In such a case, this imperious urgecan destroy his chances for material and emotional securityas well as his standing in the community. Another may de-velop such an obsession for financial security that he wantsto do nothing but hoard money. Going to the extreme, hecan become a miser, or even a recluse who denies himselfboth family and friends.Nor is the quest for security always expressed in termsof money. How frequently we see a frightened human be-ing determined to depend completely upon a strongerperson for guidance and protection. This weak one, failingto meet life's responsibilities with his own resources, nevergrows up. Disillusionment and helplessness are his lot. Intime all his protectors either flee or die, and he is once moreleft alone and afraid.We have also seen men and women who go power-mad, who devote themselves to attempting to rule their fel- 44STEP FOURlows. These people often throw to the winds every chancefor legitimate security and a happy family life. Whenever ahuman being becomes a battleground for the instincts, therecan be no peace.But that is not all of the danger. Every time a person im-poses his instincts unreasonably upon others, unhappinessfollows. If the pursuit of wealth tramples upon people whohappen to be in the way, then anger, jealousy, and revengeare likely to be aroused. If sex runs riot, there is a similaruproar. Demands made upon other people for too much at-tention, protection, and love can only invite domination orrevulsion in the protectors themselvestwo emotions quiteas unhealthy as the demands which evoked them. When anindividual's desire for prestige becomes uncontrollable,whether in the sewing circle or at the international confer-ence table, other people suffer and often revolt. Thiscollision of instincts can produce anything from a cold snubt to a blazing revolution. In these ways we are set in conflictnot only with ourselves, but with other people who have in-stincts, too.Alcoholics especially should be able to see that instinctrun wild in themselves is the underlying cause of their de-structive drinking. We have drunk to drown feelings of fear,frustration, and depression. We have drunk to escape theguilt of passions, and then have drunk again to make morepassions possible. We have drunk for vainglorythat wemight the more enjoy foolish dreams of pomp and power.This perverse soul-sickness is not pleasant to look upon. In-stincts on rampage balk at investigation. The minute wemake a serious attempt to probe them, we are liable to suf- STEP FOUR45fer severe reactions.If temperamentally we are on the depressive side, weare apt to be swamped with guilt and self-loathing. We wal-low in this messy bog, often getting a misshapen andpainful pleasure out of it. As we morbidly pursue thismelancholy activity, we may sink to such a point of despairthat nothing but oblivion looks possible as a solution. Here,of course, we have lost all perspective, and therefore allgenuine humility. For this is pride in reverse. This is not amoral inventory at all; it is the very process by which thedepressive has so often been led to the bottle and extinction.If, however, our natural disposition is inclined to self-righteousness or grandiosity, our reaction will be just theopposite. We will be offended at A.A.'s suggested invento-ry. No doubt we shall point with pride to the good lives wethought we led before the bottle cut us down. We shallclaim that our serious character defects, if we think we haveany at all, have been caused chiefly by excessive drinking.This being so, we think it logically follows that sobrietyfirst, last, and all the timeis the only thing we need towork for. We believe that our one-time good characters willbe revived the moment we quit alcohol. If we were prettynice people all along, except for our drinking, what need isthere for a moral inventory now that we are sober?We also clutch at another wonderful excuse for avoid-ing an inventory. Our present anxieties and troubles, we cry,are caused by the behavior of other peoplepeople whoreally n e ed a moral inventory. We firmly believe that ifonly they'd treat us better, we'd be all right. Therefore wethink our indignation is justified and reasonablethat our 46STEP FOURresentments are the right kind. We aren't the guilty ones.They are!At this stage of the inventory proceedings, our sponsorscome to the rescue. They can do this, for they are the carri-ers of A.A.'s tested experience with Step Four. Theycomfort the melancholy one by first showing him that hiscase is not strange or different, that his character defects areprobably not more numerous or worse than those of anyoneelse in A.A. This the sponsor promptly proves by talkingfreely and easily, and without exhibitionism, about his owndefects, past and present. This calm, yet realistic, stocktak-ing is immensely reassuring. The sponsor probably pointsout that the newcomer has some assets which can be notedalong with his liabilities. This tends to clear away morbidityand encourage balance. As soon as he begins to be moreobjective, the newcomer can fearlessly, rather than fearful-ly, look at his own defects.The sponsors of those who feel they need no inventoryare confronted with quite another problem. This is becausepeople who are driven by pride of self unconsciously blindthemselves to their liabilities. These newcomers scarcelyneed comforting. The problem is to help them discover achink in the walls their ego has built, through which thelight of reason can shine.First off, they can be told that the majority of A.A.members have suffered severely from self-justification dur-ing their drinking days. For most of us, self-justificationwas the maker of excuses; excuses, of course, for drinking,and for all kinds of crazy and damaging conduct. We hadmade the invention of alibis a fine art. We had to drink be- STEP FOUR47cause times were hard or times were good. We had to drinkbecause at home we were smothered with love or got noneat all. We had to drink because at work we were great suc-cesses or dismal failures. We had to drink because ournation had won a war or lost a peace. And so it went, ad in-finitum.We thought conditions drove us to drink, and whenwe tried to correct these conditions and found that wecouldn't to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out ofhand and we became alcoholics. It never occurred to us thatwe needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatev-er they were.But in A.A. we slowly learned that something had to bedone about our vengeful resentments, self-pity, and unwar-ranted pride. We had to see that every time we played thebig shot, we turned people against us. We had to see thatwhen we harbored grudges and planned revenge for suchdefeats, we were really beating ourselves with the club ofanger we had intended to use on others. We learned that ifwe were seriously disturbed, our first need was to quiet thatdisturbance, regardless of who or what we thought causedit.To see how erratic emotions victimized us often took along time. We could perceive them quickly in others, butonly slowly in ourselves. First of all, we had to admit thatwe had many of these defects, even though such disclo-sures were painful and humiliating. Where other peoplewere concerned, we had to drop the word blame fromour speech and thought. This required great willingnesseven to begin. But once over the first two or three high hur- 48STEP FOURdles, the course ahead began to look easier. For we hadstarted to get perspective on ourselves, which is anotherway of saying that we were gaining in humility.Of course the depressive and the power-driver are per-sonality extremes, types with which A.A. and the wholeworld abound. Often these personalities are just as sharplydefined as the examples given. But just as often some of uswill fit more or less into both classifications. Human beingsare never quite alike, so each of us, when making an inven-tory, will need to determine what his individual characterdefects are. Having found the shoes that fit, he ought to stepinto them and walk with new confidence that he is at last onthe right track.Now let's ponder the need for a list of the more glaringpersonality defects all of us have in varying degrees. Tothose having religious training, such a list would set forthserious violations of moral principles. Some others willthink of this list as defects of character. Still others will callit an index of maladjustments. Some will become quite an-noyed if there is talk about immorality, let alone sin. But allwho are in the least reasonable will agree upon one point:that there is plenty wrong with us alcoholics about whichplenty will have to be done if we are to expect sobriety,progress, and any real ability to cope with life.To avoid falling into confusion over the names thesedefects should be called, let's take a universally recognizedlist of major human failingsthe Seven Deadly Sins ofpride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. It is notby accident that pride heads the procession. For pride, lead-ing to self-justification, and always spurred by conscious or STEP FOUR49unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most human diffi-culties, the chief block to true progress. Pride lures us intomaking demands upon ourselves or upon others which can-not be met without perverting or misusing our God-giveninstincts. When the satisfaction of our instincts for sex, se-curity, and society becomes the sole object of our lives,then pride steps in to justify our excesses.All these failings generate fear, a soul-sickness in itsown right. Then fear, in turn, generates more character de-fects. Unreasonable fear that our instincts will not besatisfied drives us to covet the possessions of others, to lustfor sex and power, to become angry when our instinctivedemands are threatened, to be envious when the ambitionsof others seem to be realized while ours are not. We eat,drink, and grab for more of everything than we need, fear-ing we shall never have enough. And with genuine alarm atthe prospect of work, we stay lazy. We loaf and procrasti-nate, or at best work grudgingly and under half steam.These fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour thefoundations of whatever sort of life we try to build.So when A.A. suggests a fearless moral inventory, itmust seem to every newcomer that more is being asked ofhim than he can do. Both his pride and his fear beat himback every time he tries to look within himself. Pride says,You need not pass this way, and Fear says, You dare notlook! But the testimony of A.A.'s who have really tried amoral inventory is that pride and fear of this sort turn out tobe bogeymen, nothing else. Once we have a complete will-ingness to take inventory, and exert ourselves to do the jobthoroughly, a wonderful light falls upon this foggy scene. 50STEP FOURAs we persist, a brand-new kind of confidence is born, andthe sense of relief at finally facing ourselves is indescrib-able. These are the first fruits of Step Four.By now the newcomer has probably arrived at the fol-lowing conclusions: that his character defects, representinginstincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of hisdrinking and his failure at life; that unless he is now willingto work hard at the elimination of the worst of these de-fects, both sobriety and peace of mind will still elude him;that all the faulty foundation of his life will have to be tornout and built anew on bedrock. Now willing to commencethe search for his own defects, he will ask, Just how do Igo about this? How do I take inventory of myself?Since Step Four is but the beginning of a lifetime prac-tice, it can be suggested that he first have a look at thosepersonal flaws which are acutely troublesome and fairlyobvious. Using his best judgment of what has been rightand what has been wrong, he might make a rough survey ofhis conduct with respect to his primary instincts for sex, se-curity, and society. Looking back over his life, he canreadily get under way by consideration of questions such asthese:When, and how, and in just what instances did my self-ish pursuit of the sex relation damage other people and me?What people were hurt, and how badly? Did I spoil mymarriage and injure my children? Did I jeopardize mystanding in the community? Just how did I react to thesesituations at the time? Did I burn with a guilt that nothingcould extinguish? Or did I insist that I was the pursued andnot the pursuer, and thus absolve myself? How have I re- STEP FOUR51acted to frustration in sexual matters? When denied, did Ibecome vengeful or depressed? Did I take it out on otherpeople? If there was rejection or coldness at home, did I usethis as a reason for promiscuity?Also of importance for most alcoholics are the ques-tions they must ask about their behavior respectingfinancial and emotional security. In these areas fear, greed,possessiveness, and pride have too often done their worst.Surveying his business or employment record, almost anyalcoholic can ask questions like these: In addition to mydrinking problem, what character defects contributed to myfinancial instability? Did fear and inferiority about my fit-ness for my job destroy my confidence and fill me withconflict? Did I try to cover up those feelings of inadequacyby bluffing, cheating, lying, or evading responsibility? Orby griping that others failed to recognize my truly excep-tional abilities? Did I overvalue myself and play the bigshot? Did I have such unprincipled ambition that I double-crossed and undercut my associates? Was I extravagant?Did I recklessly borrow money, caring little whether it wasrepaid or not? Was I a pinch penny, refusing to support myfamily properly? Did I cut corners financially? What aboutthe qui ck m on ey deals, the stock market, and the races?Businesswomen in A.A. will naturally find that many ofthese questions apply to them, too. But the alcoholic house-wife can also make the family financially insecure. She canjuggle charge accounts, manipulate the food budget, spendher afternoons gambling, and run her husband into debt byirresponsibility, waste, and extravagance.But all alcoholics who have drunk themselves out of 52STEP FOURjobs, family, and friends will need to cross-examine them-selves ruthlessly to determine how their own personalitydefects have thus demolished their security.The most common symptoms of emotional insecurityare worry, anger, self-pity, and depression. These stem fromcauses which sometimes seem to be within us, and at othert times to come from without. To take inventory in this re-spect we ought to consider carefully all personalrelationships which bring continuous or recurring trouble. Itshould be remembered that this kind of insecurity may arisein any area where instincts are threatened. Questioning di-rected to this end might run like this: Looking at both pastand present, what sex situations have caused me anxiety,bitterness, frustration, or depression? Appraising each situa-tion fairly, can I see where I have been at fault? Did theseperplexities beset me because of selfishness or unreason-able demands? Or, if my disturbance was seemingly causedby the behavior of others, why do I lack the ability to acceptconditions I cannot change? These are the sort of funda-mental inquiries that can disclose the source of mydiscomfort and indicate whether I may be able to alter myown conduct and so adjust myself serenely to self-disci-pline.Suppose that financial insecurity constantly arousesthese same feelings. I can ask myself to what extent havemy own mistakes fed my gnawing anxieties. And if the ac-tions of others are part of the cause, what can I do aboutthat? If I am unable to change the present state of affairs,am I willing to take the measures necessary to shape mylife to conditions as they are? Questions like these, more of STEP FOUR53which will come to mind easily in each individual case, willhelp turn up the root causes.But it is from our twisted relations with family, friends,and society at large that many of us have suffered the most.We have been especially stupid and stubborn about them.The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inabil-ity to form a true partnership with another human being.Our egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls. Either we insistupon dominating the people we know, or we depend uponthem far too much. If we lean too heavily on people, theywill sooner or later fail us, for they are human, too, and can-not possibly meet our incessant demands. In this way ourinsecurity grows and festers. When we habitually try to ma-nipulate others to our own willful desires, they revolt, andresist us heavily. Then we develop hurt feelings, a sense ofpersecution, and a desire to retaliate. As we redouble our ef-forts at control, and continue to fail, our suffering becomesacute and constant. We have not once sought to be one in afamily, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker amongworkers, to be a useful member of society. Always we triedto struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it.This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relationwith any one of those about us. Of true brotherhood we hadsmall comprehension.Some will object to many of the questions posed, be-cause they think their own character defects have not beenso glaring. To these it can be suggested that a conscientiousexamination is likely to reveal the very defects the objec-tionable questions are concerned with. Because our surfacerecord hasn't looked too bad, we have frequently been 54STEP FOURabashed to find that this is so simply because we haveburied these self same defects deep down in us under thicklayers of self-justification. Whatever the defects, they havefinally ambushed us into alcoholism and misery.Therefore, thoroughness ought to be the watchwordwhen taking inventory. In this connection, it is wise to writeout our questions and answers. It will be an aid to clearthinking and honest appraisal. It will be the first tangibleevidence of our complete willingness to move forward. Step FiveAdmitted to God, to ourselves, and to an-other human being the exact nature of ourwrongs.ALL OF A.A.'s Twelve Steps ask us to go contrary to ournatural desires . . . they all deflate our egos. When it comesto ego deflation, few Steps are harder to take than Five. Butscarcely any Step is more necessary to longtime sobrietyand peace of mind than this one.A.A. experience has taught us we cannot live alonewith our pressing problems and the character defects whichcause or aggravate them. If we have swept the searchlightof Step Four back and forth over our careers, and it has re-vealed in stark relief those experiences we'd rather notremember, if we have come to know how wrong thinkingand action have hurt us and others, then the need to quit liv-ing by ourselves with those tormenting ghosts of yesterdaygets more urgent than ever. We have to talk to somebodyabout them.So intense, though, is our fear and reluctance to do this,that many A.A.'s at first try to bypass Step Five. We searchfor an easier waywhich usually consists of the generaland fairly painless admission that when drinking we weresometimes bad actors. Then, for good measure, we add dra-matic descriptions of that part of our drinking behaviorwhich our friends probably know about anyhow.But of the things which really bother and burn us, we55 56STEP FIVEsay nothing. Certain distressing or humiliating memories,we tell ourselves, ought not be shared with anyone. Thesewill remain our secret. Not a soul must ever know. We hopethey'll go to the grave with us.Yet if A.A.'s experience means anything at all, this isnot only unwise, but is actually a perilous resolve. Fewmuddled attitudes have caused us more trouble than hold-ing back on Step Five. Some people are unable to staysober at all; others will relapse periodically until they reallyclean house. Even A.A. old timers, sober for years, oftenpay dearly for skimping this Step. They will tell how theytried to carry the load alone; how much they suffered of ir-ritability, anxiety, remorse, and depression; and how,unconsciously seeking relief, they would sometimes accuseeven their best friends of the very character defects theythemselves were trying to conceal. They always discoveredthat relief never came by confessing the sins of other peo-ple. Everybody had to confess his own.This practice of admitting one's defects to another per-son is, of course, very ancient. It has been validated inevery century, and it characterizes the lives of all spirituallycentered and truly religious people. But today religion is byno means the sole advocate of this saving principle. Psychi-atrists and psychologists point out the deep need everyhuman being has for practical insight and knowledge of hisown personality flaws and for a discussion of them with anunderstanding and trustworthy person. So far as alcoholicsare concerned, A.A. would go even further. Most of uswould declare that without a fearless admission of our de-fects to another human being we could not stay sober. It STEP FIVE57seems plain that the grace of God will not enter to expel ourdestructive obsessions until we are willing to try this.What are we likely to receive from Step Five? For onething, we shall get rid of that terrible sense of isolationwe've always had. Almost without exception, alcoholics aretortured by loneliness. Even before our drinking got badand people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered thefeeling that we didn't quite belong. Either we were shy, anddared not draw near others, or we were apt to be noisy goodfellows craving attention and companionship, but nevergetting itat least to our way of thinking. There was al-ways that mysterious barrier we could neither surmount norunderstand. It was as if we were actors on a stage, suddenlyrealizing that we did not know a single line of our parts.That's one reason we loved alcohol too well. It did let us actextemporaneously. But even Bacchus boomeranged on us;we were finally struck down and left in terrified loneliness.When we reached A.A., and for the first time in ourlives stood among people who seemed to understand, thesense of belonging was tremendously exciting. We thoughtthe isolation problem had been solved. But we soon discov-ered that while we weren't alone any more in a social sense,we still suffered many of the old pangs of anxious apart-ness. Until we had talked with complete candor of ourconflicts, and had listened to someone else do the samething, we still didn't belong. Step Five was the answer. Itwas the beginning of true kinship with man and God.This vital Step was also the means by which we beganto get the feeling that we could be forgiven, no matter whatwe had thought or done. Often it was while working on this 58STEP FIVEStep with our sponsors or spiritual advisers that we first felttruly able to forgive others, no matter how deeply we feltthey had wronged us. Our moral inventory had persuadedus that all-round forgiveness was desirable, but it was onlywhen we resolutely tackled Step Five that we inwardlyknew we'd be able to receive forgiveness and give it, too.Another great dividend we may expect from confidingour defects to another human being is humilitya word of-ten misunderstood. To those who have made progress inA.A., it amounts to a clear recognition of what and who wereally are, followed by a sincere attempt to become whatwe could be. Therefore, our first practical move toward hu-mility must consist of recognizing our deficiencies. Nodefect can be corrected unless we clearly see what it is. Butwe shall have to do more than see. The objective look atourselves we achieved in Step Four was, after all, only alook. All of us saw, for example, that we lacked honestyand tolerance, that we were beset at times by attacks of self-pity or delusions of personal grandeur. But while this was ahumiliating experience, it didn't necessarily mean that wehad yet acquired much actual humility. Though now recog-nized, our defects were still there. Something had to bedone about them. And we soon found that we could notwish or will them away by ourselves.More realism and therefore more honesty about our-selves are the great gains we make under the influence ofStep Five. As we took inventory, we began to suspect howmuch trouble self-delusion had been causing us. This hadbrought a disturbing reflection. If all our lives we had moreor less fooled ourselves, how could we now be so sure that STEP FIVE59we weren't still self-deceived? How could we be certainthat we had made a true catalog of our defects and had real-ly admitted them, even to ourselves? Because we were stillbothered by fear, self-pity, and hurt feelings, it was probablewe couldn't appraise ourselves fairly at all. Too much guiltand remorse might cause us to dramatize and exaggerateour shortcomings. Or anger and hurt pride might be thesmoke screen under which we were hiding some of our de-fects while we blamed others for them. Possibly, too, wewere still handicapped by many liabilities, great and small,we never knew we had.Hence it was most evident that a solitary self-appraisal,and the admission of our defects based upon that alone,wouldn't be nearly enough. We'd have to have outside helpif we were surely to know and admit the truth about our-selvesthe help of God and another human being. Only bydiscussing ourselves, holding back nothing, only by beingwilling to take advice and accept direction could we set footon the road to straight thinking, solid honesty, and genuinehumility.Yet many of us still hung back. We said, W hy can't'God as we understand Him' tell us where we are astray? Ifthe Creator gave us our lives in the first place, then He mustknow in every detail where we have since gone wrong.Why don't we make our admissions to Him directly? Whydo we need to bring anyone else into this?At this stage, the difficulties of trying to deal rightlywith God by ourselves are twofold. Though we may at firstbe startled to realize that God knows all about us, we areapt to get used to that quite quickly. Somehow, being alone 60STEP FIVEwith God doesn't seem as embarrassing as facing up to an-other person. Until we actually sit down and talk aloudabout what we have so long hidden, our willingness toclean house is still largely theoretical. When we are honestwith another person, it confirms that we have been honestwith ourselves and with God.The second difficulty is this: what comes to us alonemay be garbled by our own rationalization and wishfulthinking. The benefit of talking to another person is that wecan get his direct comment and counsel on our situation,and there can be no doubt in our minds what that advice is.Going it alone in spiritual matters is dangerous. How manytimes have we heard well-intentioned people claim theguidance of God when it was all too plain that they weresorely mistaken. Lacking both practice and humility, theyhad deluded themselves and were able to justify the mostarrant nonsense on the ground that this was what God hadtold them. It is worth noting that people of very high spiri-tual development almost always insist on checking withfriends or spiritual advisers the guidance they feel they havereceived from God. Surely, then, a novice ought not layhimself open to the chance of making foolish, perhaps trag-ic, blunders in this fashion. While the comment or advice ofothers may be by no means infallible, it is likely to be farmore specific than any direct guidance we may receivewhile we are still so inexperienced in establishing contactwith a Power greater than ourselves.Our next problem will be to discover the person inwhom we are to confide. Here we ought to take much care,remembering that prudence is a virtue which carries a high STEP FIVE61rating. Perhaps we shall need to share with this person factsabout ourselves which no others ought to know. We shallwant to speak with someone who is experienced, who notonly has stayed dry but has been able to surmount other se-rious difficulties. Difficulties, perhaps, like our own. Thisperson may turn out to be one's sponsor, but not necessarilyso. If you have developed a high confidence in him, and histemperament and problems are close to your own, thensuch a choice will be good. Besides, your sponsor alreadyhas the advantage of knowing something about your case.Perhaps, though, your relation to him is such that youwould care to reveal only a part of your story. If this is thesituation, by all means do so, for you ought to make a be-ginning as soon as you can. It may turn out, however, thatyou'll choose someone else for the more difficult and deep-er revelations. This individual may be entirely outside ofA.A.for example, your clergyman or your doctor. Forsome of us, a complete stranger may prove the best bet.The real tests of the situation are your own willingnessto confide and your full confidence in the one with whomyou share your first accurate self-survey. Even when you'vefound the person, it frequently takes great resolution to ap-proach him or her. No one ought to say the A.A. programrequires no willpower; here is one place you may requireall you've got. Happily, though, the chances are that youwill be in for a very pleasant surprise. When your missionis carefully explained, and it is seen by the recipient of yourconfidence how helpful he can really be, the conversationwill start easily and will soon become eager. Before long,your listener may well tell a story or two about himself 62STEP FIVEwhich will place you even more at ease. Provided you holdback nothing, your sense of relief will mount from minuteto minute. The dammed-up emotions of years break out oftheir confinement, and miraculously vanish as soon as theyare exposed. As the pain subsides, a healing tranquilitytakes its place. And when humility and serenity are so com-bined, something else of great moment is apt to occur.Many an A.A., once agnostic or atheistic, tells us that it wasduring this stage of Step Five that he first actually felt thepresence of God. And even those who had faith already of-ten become conscious of God as they never were before.This feeling of being at one with God and man, thisemerging from isolation through the open and honest shar-ing of our terrible burden of guilt, brings us to a restingplace where we may prepare ourselves for the followingSteps toward a full and meaningful sobriety. Step SixWere entirely ready to have God removeall these defects of character.THIS is the Step that separates the men from the boys.So declares a well-loved clergyman who happens to be oneof A.A.'s greatest friends. He goes on to explain that anyperson capable of enough willingness and honesty to try re-peatedly Step Six on all his faultswithout anyreservations whateverhas indeed come a long way spiri-tually, and is therefore entitled to be called a man who issincerely trying to grow in the image and likeness of hisown Creator.Of course, the often disputed question of whether Godcanand will, under certain conditionsremove defectsof character will be answered with a prompt affirmative byalmost any A.A. member. To him, this proposition will beno theory at all; it will be just about the largest fact in hislife. He will usually offer his proof in a statement like this:Sure, I was beaten, absolutely licked. My ownwillpower just wouldn't work on alcohol. Change of scene,the best efforts of family, friends, doctors, and clergymengot no place with my alcoholism. I simply couldn't stopdrinking, and no human being could seem to do the job forme. But when I became willing to clean house and thenasked a Higher Power, God as I understood Him, to giveme release, my obsession to drink vanished. It was liftedright out of me.63 64STEP SIXIn A.A. meetings all over the world, statements just likethis are heard daily. It is plain for everybody to see that eachsober A.A. member has been granted a release from thisvery obstinate and potentially fatal obsession. So in a verycomplete and literal way, all A.A.'s have become entirelyready to have God remove the mania for alcohol fromtheir lives. And God has proceeded to do exactly that.Having been granted a perfect release from alcoholism,why then shouldn't we be able to achieve by the samemeans a perfect release from every other difficulty or de-fect? This is a riddle of our existence, the full answer towhich may be only in the mind of God. Nevertheless, atleast a part of the answer to it is apparent to us.When men and women pour so much alcohol intothemselves that they destroy their lives, they commit a mostunnatural act. Defying their instinctive desire for self-preservation, they seem bent upon self-destruction. Theywork against their own deepest instinct. As they are hum-bled by the terrific beating administered by alcohol, thegrace of God can enter them and expel their obsession.Here their powerful instinct to live can cooperate fully withtheir Creator's desire to give them new life. For nature andGod alike abhor suicide.But most of our other difficulties don't fall under such acategory at all. Every normal person wants, for example, toeat, to reproduce, to be somebody in the society of his fel-lows. And he wishes to be reasonably safe and secure as hetries to attain these things. Indeed, God made him that way.He did not design man to destroy himself by alcohol, butHe did give man instincts to help him to stay alive. STEP SIX65It is nowhere evident, at least in this life, that our Cre-ator expects us fully to eliminate our instinctual drives. Sofar as we know, it is nowhere on the record that God hascompletely removed from any human being all his naturaldrives.Since most of us are born with an abundance of naturaldesires, it isn't strange that we often let these far exceedtheir intended purpose. When they drive us blindly, or wewillfully demand that they supply us with more satisfac-tions or pleasures than are possible or due us, that is thepoint at which we depart from the degree of perfection thatGod wishes for us here on earth. That is the measure of ourcharacter defects, or, if you wish, of our sins.If we ask, God will certainly forgive our derelictions.But in no case does He render us white as snow and keepus that way without our cooperation. That is something weare supposed to be willing to work toward ourselves. Heasks only that we try as best we know how to makeprogress in the building of character.So Step SixWere entirely ready to have God removeall these defects of characteris A.A.'s way of stating thebest possible attitude one can take in order to make a begin-ning on this lifetime job. This does not mean that we expectall our character defects to be lifted out of us as the drive todrink was. A few of them may be, but with most of themwe shall have to be content with patient improvement. Thekey words entirely ready un derl i n e th e f act th at we wan tto aim at the very best we know or can learn.How many of us have this degree of readiness? In anabsolute sense practically nobody has it. The best we can 66STEP SIXdo, with all the honesty that we can summon, is to try tohave it. Even then the best of us will discover to our dismaythat there is always a sticking point, a point at which wesay, No, I can ' t gi v e th i s up y et. A n d we s h al l of ten treadon even more dangerous ground when we cry, Th i s I wi l lnever give up! Such i s th e power of our i n s ti n cts to ov er-reach themselves. No matter how far we have progressed,desires will always be found which oppose the grace ofGod.Some who feel they have done well may dispute this,so let's try to think it through a little further. Practically ev-ery body wishes to be rid of his most glaring anddestructive handicaps. No one wants to be so proud that heis scorned as a braggart, nor so greedy that he is labeled athief. No one wants to be angry enough to murder, lustfulenough to rape, gluttonous enough to ruin his health. Noone wants to be agonized by the chronic pain of envy or tobe paralyzed by sloth. Of course, most human beings don'tsuffer these defects at these rock-bottom levels.We who have escaped these extremes are apt to con-gratulate ourselves. Yet can we? After all, hasn't it been self-interest, pure and simple, that has enabled most of us to es-cape? Not much spiritual effort is involved in avoidingexcesses which will bring us punishment anyway. Butwhen we face up to the less violent aspects of these verysame defects, then where do we stand?What we must recognize now is that we exult in someof our defects. We really love them. Who, for example,doesn't like to feel just a little superior to the next fellow, oreven quite a lot superior? Isn't it true that we like to let STEP SIX67greed masquerade as ambition? To think of liking l u s tseems impossible. But how many men and women speaklove with their lips, and believe what they say, so that theycan hide lust in a dark corner of their minds? And evenwhile staying within conventional bounds, many peoplehave to admit that their imaginary sex excursions are apt tobe all dressed up as dreams of romance.Self-righteous anger also can be very enjoyable. In aperverse way we can actually take satisfaction from the factthat many people annoy us, for it brings a comfortable feel-ing of superiority. Gossip barbed with our anger, a politeform of murder by character assassination, has its satisfac-tions for us, too. Here we are not trying to help those wecriticize; we are trying to proclaim our own righteousness. When gluttony is less than ruinous, we have a milderword for that, too; we call it taking our comfort. We livein a world riddled with envy. To a greater or less degree,everybody is infected with it. From this defect we mustsurely get a warped yet definite satisfaction. Else whywould we consume such great amounts of time wishing forwhat we have not, rather than working for it, or angrilylooking for attributes we shall never have, instead of adjust-ing to the fact, and accepting it? And how often we workhard with no better motive than to be secure and slothfullater ononly we call that retiring. Consider, too, our tal-ents for procrastination, which is really sloth in fivesyllables. Nearly anyone could submit a good list of suchdefects as these, and few of us would seriously think of giv-ing them up, at least until they cause us excessive misery.Some people, of course, may conclude that they are in- 68STEP SIXdeed ready to have all such defects taken from them. Buteven these people, if they construct a list of still milder de-fects, will be obliged to admit that they prefer to hang on tosome of them. Therefore, it seems plain that few of us canquickly or easily become ready to aim at spiritual andmoral perfection; we want to settle for only as much perfec-tion as will get us by in life, according, of course, to ourvarious and sundry ideas of what will get us by. So the dif-ference between the boys and the men is the differencebetween striving for a self-determined objective and for theperfect objective which is of God.Many will at once ask, How can we accept the entireimplication of Step Six? Whythat is perfection! Thissounds like a hard question, but practically speaking, it isn't.Only Step One, where we made the 100 percent admissionwe were powerless over alcohol, can be practiced with ab-solute perfection. The remaining eleven Steps state perfectideals. They are goals toward which we look, and the mea-suring sticks by which we estimate our progress. Seen inthis light, Step Six is still difficult, but not at all impossible.The only urgent thing is that we make a beginning, andkeep trying.If we would gain any real advantage in the use of thisStep on problems other than alcohol, we shall need to makea brand new venture into open-mindedness. We shall needto raise our eyes toward perfection, and be ready to walk inthat direction. It will seldom matter how haltingly we walk.The only question will be A re we ready ?Looking again at those defects we are still unwilling togive up, we ought to erase the hard-and-fast lines that we STEP SIX69have drawn. Perhaps we shall be obliged in some cases stillto say, Th i s I can n ot gi v e up y et . . . , but we should notsay to ourselves, This I will never give up!Let's dispose of what appears to be a hazardous openend we have left. It is suggested that we ought to becomeentirely willing to aim toward perfection. We note thatsome delay, however, might be pardoned. That word, in themind of a rationalizing alcoholic, could certainly be given alongterm meaning. He could say, How v ery eas y ! Sure, I' l lhead toward perfection, but I'm certainly not going to hurryany. Maybe I can postpone dealing with some of my prob-lems indefinitely. Of cours e, th i s won ' t do. Such a b l uf f i n gof oneself will have to go the way of many another pleasantrationalization. At the very least, we shall have to come togrips with some of our worst character defects and take ac-tion toward their removal as quickly as we can.The moment we say, No, never! our minds closeagainst the grace of God. Delay is dangerous, and rebellionmay be fatal. This is the exact point at which we abandonlimited objectives, and move toward God's will for us. Step SevenHumbly asked Him to remove our short-comings.SINCE this Step so specifically concerns itself with hu-mility, we should pause here to consider what humility isand what the practice of it can mean to us.Indeed, the attainment of greater humility is the founda-tion principle of each of A.A.'s Twelve Steps. For withoutsome degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all.Nearly all A.A.'s have found, too, that unless they developmuch more of this precious quality than may be requiredjust for sobriety, they still haven't much chance of becom-ing truly happy. Without it, they cannot live to much usefulpurpose, or, in adversity, be able to summon the faith thatcan meet any emergency.Humility, as a word and as an ideal, has a very bad timeof it in our world. Not only is the idea misunderstood; theword itself is often intensely disliked. Many people haven'teven a nodding acquaintance with humility as a way of life.Much of the everyday talk we hear, and a great deal of whatwe read, highlights man's pride in his own achievements. With great intelligence, men of science have been forc-ing nature to disclose her secrets. The immense resourcesnow being harnessed promise such a quantity of materialblessings that many have come to believe that a man-mademillennium lies just ahead. Poverty will disappear, andthere will be such abundance that everybody can have allthe security and personal satisfactions he desires. The theo-70 STEP SEVEN71ry seems to be that once everybody's primary instincts aresatisfied, there won't be much left to quarrel about. Theworld will then turn happy and be free to concentrate onculture and character. Solely by their own intelligence andlabor, men will have shaped their own destiny.Certainly no alcoholic, and surely no member of A.A.,wants to deprecate material achievement. Nor do we enterinto debate with the many who still so passionately cling tothe belief that to satisfy our basic natural desires is the mainobject of life. But we are sure that no class of people in theworld ever made a worse mess of trying to live by this for-mula than alcoholics. For thousands of years we have beendemanding more than our share of security, prestige, andromance. When we seemed to be succeeding, we drank todream still greater dreams. When we were frustrated, evenin part, we drank for oblivion. Never was there enough ofwhat we thought we wanted.In all these strivings, so many of them well-intentioned,our crippling handicap had been our lack of humility. Wehad lacked the perspective to see that character-buildingand spiritual values had to come first, and that material sat-isfactions were not the purpose of living. Quitecharacteristically, we had gone all out in confusing the endswith the means. Instead of regarding the satisfaction of ourmaterial desires as the means by which we could live andfunction as human beings, we had taken these satisfactionsto be the final end and aim of life.True, most of us thought good character was desirable,but obviously good character was something one needed toget on with the business of being self-satisfied. With a 72STEP SEVENproper display of honesty and morality, we'd stand a betterchance of getting what we really wanted. But whenever wehad to choose between character and comfort, the charac-ter-building was lost in the dust of our chase after what wethought was happiness. Seldom did we look at character-building as something desirable in itself, something wewould like to strive for whether our instinctual needs weremet or not. We never thought of making honesty, tolerance,and true love of man and God the daily basis of living.This lack of anchorage to any permanent values, thisblindness to the true purpose of our lives, produced anotherbad result. For just so long as we were convinced that wecould live exclusively by our own individual strength andintelligence, for just that long was a working faith in aHigher Power impossible. This was true even when we be-lieved that God existed. We could actually have earnestreligious beliefs which remained barren because we werestill trying to play God ourselves. As long as we placedself-reliance first, a genuine reliance upon a Higher Powerwas out of the question. That basic ingredient of all humili-ty, a desire to seek and do God's will, was missing.For us, the process of gaining a new perspective wasunbelievably painful. It was only by repeated humiliationsthat we were forced to learn something about humility. Itwas only at the end of a long road, marked by successivedefeats and humiliations, and the final crushing of our self-sufficiency, that we began to feel humility as somethingmore than a condition of groveling despair. Every newcom-er in Alcoholics Anonymous is told, and soon realizes forhimself, that his humble admission of powerlessness over STEP SEVEN73alcohol is his first step toward liberation from its paralyzinggrip.So it is that we first see humility as a necessity. But thisis the barest beginning. To get completely away from ouraversion to the idea of being humble, to gain a vision of hu-mility as the avenue to true freedom of the human spirit, tobe willing to work for humility as something to be desiredfor itself, takes most of us a long, long time. A whole life-time geared to self-centeredness cannot be set in reverse allat once. Rebellion dogs our every step at first.When we have finally admitted without reservation thatwe are powerless over alcohol, we are apt to breathe a greatsigh of relief, saying, Well, thank God that's over! I'll nev-er have to go through that again! Th en we l earn , of ten toour consternation, that this is only the first milestone on thenew road we are walking. Still goaded by sheer necessity,we reluctantly come to grips with those serious characterflaws that made problem drinkers of us in the first place,flaws which must be dealt with to prevent a retreat into al-coholism once again. We will want to be rid of some ofthese defects, but in some instances this will appear to be animpossible job from which we recoil. And we cling with apassionate persistence to others which are just as disturbingto our equilibrium, because we still enjoy them too much.How can we possibly summon the resolution and the will-ingness to get rid of such overwhelming compulsions anddesires?But again we are driven on by the inescapable conclu-sion which we draw from A.A. experience, that we surelymust try with a will, or else fall by the wayside. At this 74STEP SEVENstage of our progress we are under heavy pressure and co-ercion to do the right thing. We are obliged to choosebetween the pains of trying and the certain penalties of fail-ing to do so. These initial steps along the road are takengrudgingly, yet we do take them. We may still have no veryhigh opinion of humility as a desirable personal virtue, butwe do recognize it as a necessary aid to our survival.But when we have taken a square look at some of thesedefects, have discussed them with another, and have be-come willing to have them removed, our thinking abouthumility commences to have a wider meaning. By this timein all probability we have gained some measure of releasefrom our more devastating handicaps. We enjoy momentsin which there is something like real peace of mind. Tothose of us who have hitherto known only excitement, de-pression, or anxietyin other words, to all of usthisnewfound peace is a priceless gift. Something new indeedhas been added. Where humility had formerly stood for aforced feeding on humble pie, it now begins to mean thenourishing ingredient which can give us serenity.This improved perception of humility starts anotherrevolutionary change in our outlook. Our eyes begin toopen to the immense values which have come straight outof painful ego-puncturing. Until now, our lives have beenlargely devoted to running from pain and problems. Wefled from them as from a plague. We never wanted to dealwith the fact of suffering. Escape via the bottle was alwaysour solution. Character-building through suffering might beall right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us.Then, in A.A., we looked and listened. Everywhere we STEP SEVEN75saw failure and misery transformed by humility into price-less assets. We heard story after story of how humility hadbrought strength out of weakness. In every case, pain hadbeen the price of admission into a new life. But this admis-sion price had purchased more than we expected. It broughta measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be ahealer of pain. We began to fear pain less, and desire humil-ity more than ever.During this process of learning more about humility, themost profound result of all was the change in our attitudetoward God. And this was true whether we had been be-lievers or unbelievers. We began to get over the idea thatthe Higher Power was a sort of bush-league pinch hitter, tobe called upon only in an emergency. The notion that wewould still live our own lives, God helping a little now andthen, began to evaporate. Many of us who had thought our-selves religious awoke to the limitations of this attitude.Refusing to place God first, we had deprived ourselves ofHis help. But now the words Of m y s el f I am n oth i n g, th eFather doeth the works began to carry bright promise andmeaning.We saw we needn't always be bludgeoned and beateninto humility. It could come quite as much from our volun-tary reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering. Agreat turning point in our lives came when we sought forhumility as something we really wanted, rather than assomething we must h a v e. It marked the time when wecould commence to see the full implication of Step Seven:Hum b l y as ked Hi m to rem ov e our s h ortcom i n gs .As we approach the actual taking of Step Seven, it 76STEP SEVENmight be well if we A.A.'s inquire once more just what ourdeeper objectives are. Each of us would like to live at peacewith himself and with his fellows. We would like to be as-sured that the grace of God can do for us what we cannotdo for ourselves. We have seen that character defects basedupon shortsighted or unworthy desires are the obstacles thatblock our path toward these objectives. We now clearly seethat we have been making unreasonable demands uponourselves, upon others, and upon God.The chief activator of our defects has been self-centeredfearprimarily fear that we would lose something we al-ready possessed or would fail to get something wedemanded. Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, wewere in a state of continual disturbance and frustration.Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find ameans of reducing these demands. The difference betweena demand and a simple request is plain to anyone.The Seventh Step is where we make the change in ourattitude which permits us, with humility as our guide, tomove out from ourselves toward others and toward God.The whole emphasis of Step Seven is on humility. It is real-ly saying to us that we now ought to be willing to tryhumility in seeking the removal of our other shortcomingsjust as we did when we admitted that we were powerlessover alcohol, and came to believe that a Power greater thanourselves could restore us to sanity. If that degree of humili-ty could enable us to find the grace by which such a deadlyobsession could be banished, then there must be hope of thesame result respecting any other problem we could possiblyhave. Step EightMade a list of all persons we had harmed,and became willing to make amends to themall.STEPS Eight and Nine are concerned with personal rela-tions. First, we take a look backward and try to discoverwhere we have been at fault; next we make a vigorous at-tempt to repair the damage we have done; and third, havingthus cleaned away the debris of the past, we consider how,with our newfound knowledge of ourselves, we may devel-op the best possible relations with every human being weknow.This is a very large order. It is a task which we may per-form with increasing skill, but never really finish. Learninghow to live in the greatest peace, partnership, and brother-hood with all men and women, of whatever description, is amoving and fascinating adventure. Every A.A. has foundthat he can make little headway in this new adventure ofliving until he first backtracks and really makes an accurateand unsparing survey of the human wreckage he has left inhis wake. To a degree, he has already done this when takingmoral inventory, but now the time has come when he oughtto redouble his efforts to see how many people he has hurt,and in what ways. This reopening of emotional wounds,some old, some perhaps forgotten, and some still painfullyfestering, will at first look like a purposeless and pointlesspiece of surgery. But if a willing start is made, then the77 78STEP EIGHTgreat advantages of doing this will so quickly reveal them-selves that the pain will be lessened as one obstacle afteranother melts away.These obstacles, however, are very real. The first, andone of the most difficult, has to do with forgiveness. Themoment we ponder a twisted or broken relationship withanother person, our emotions go on the defensive. To es-cape looking at the wrongs we have done another, weresentfully focus on the wrong he has done us. This is espe-cially true if he has, in fact, behaved badly at all.Triumphantly we seize upon his misbehavior as the perfectexcuse for minimizing or forgetting our own.Right here we need to fetch ourselves up sharply. Itdoesn't make much sense when a real toss pot calls a kettleblack. Let's remember that alcoholics are not the only onesbedeviled by sick emotions. Moreover, it is usually a factthat our behavior when drinking has aggravated the defectsof others. We've repeatedly strained the patience of our bestfriends to a snapping point, and have brought out the veryworst in those who didn't think much of us to begin with. Inmany instances we are really dealing with fellow sufferers,people whose woes we have increased. If we are now aboutto ask forgiveness for ourselves, why shouldn't we start outby forgiving them, one and all?When listing the people we have harmed, most of us hitanother solid obstacle. We got a pretty severe shock whenwe realized that we were preparing to make a face-to-faceadmission of our wretched conduct to those we had hurt. Ithad been embarrassing enough when in confidence we hadadmitted these things to God, to ourselves, and to another STEP EIGHT79human being. But the prospect of actually visiting or evenwriting the people concerned now overwhelmed us, espe-cially when we remembered in what poor favor we stoodwith most of them. There were cases, too, where we haddamaged others who were still happily unaware of beinghurt. Why, we cried, shouldn't bygones be bygones? Whydo we have to think of these people at all? These weresome of the ways in which fear conspired with pride to hin-der our making a list of all the people we had harmed.Some of us, though, tripped over a very different snag.We clung to the claim that when drinking we never hurtanybody but ourselves. Our families didn't suffer, becausewe always paid the bills and seldom drank at home. Ourbusiness associates didn't suffer, because we were usuallyon the job. Our reputations hadn't suffered, because wewere certain few knew of our drinking. Those who didwould sometimes assure us that, after all, a lively benderwas only a good man's fault. What real harm, therefore, hadwe done? No more, surely, than we could easily mend witha few casual apologies.This attitude, of course, is the end result of purposefulforgetting. It is an attitude which can only be changed by adeep and honest search of our motives and actions.Though in some cases we cannot make restitution at all,and in some cases action ought to be deferred, we shouldnevertheless make an accurate and really exhaustive surveyof our past life as it has affected other people. In many in-stances we shall find that though the harm done others hasnot been great, the emotional harm we have done ourselveshas. Very deep, sometimes quite forgotten, damaging emo- 80STEP EIGHTtional conflicts persist below the level of consciousness. Atthe time of these occurrences, they may actually have givenour emotions violent twists which have since discolored ourpersonalities and altered our lives for the worse.While the purpose of making restitution to others isparamount, it is equally necessary that we extricate from anexamination of our personal relations every bit of informa-tion about ourselves and our fundamental difficulties thatwe can. Since defective relations with other human beingshave nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes,including our alcoholism, no field of investigation couldyield more satisfying and valuable rewards than this one.Calm, thoughtful reflection upon personal relations candeepen our insight. We can go far beyond those thingswhich were superficially wrong with us, to see those flawswhich were basic, flaws which sometimes were responsiblefor the whole pattern of our lives. Thoroughness, we havefound, will payand pay handsomely.We might next ask ourselves what we mean when wesay that we have harmed other people. What kinds ofharm do people do one another, anyway? To define theword harm in a practical way, we might call it the resultof instincts in collision, which cause physical, mental, emo-tional, or spiritual damage to people. If our tempers areconsistently bad, we arouse anger in others. If we lie orcheat, we deprive others not only of their worldly goods,but of their emotional security and peace of mind. We real-ly issue them an invitation to become contemptuous andvengeful. If our sex conduct is selfish, we may excite jeal-ousy, misery, and a strong desire to retaliate in kind. STEP EIGHT81Such gross misbehavior is not by any means a full cata-logue of the harms we do. Let us think of some of thesubtler ones which can sometimes be quite as damaging.Suppose that in our family lives we happen to be miserly,irresponsible, callous, or cold. Suppose that we are irritable,critical, impatient, and humorless. Suppose we lavish atten-tion upon one member of the family and neglect the others.What happens when we try to dominate the whole family,either by a rule of iron or by a constant outpouring ofminute directions for just how their lives should be livedfrom hour to hour? What happens when we wallow in de-pression, self-pity oozing from every pore, and inflict thatupon those about us? Such a roster of harms done othersthe kind that make daily living with us as practicing alco-holics difficult and often unbearable could be extendedalmost indefinitely. When we take such personality traits asthese into shop, office, and the society of our fellows, theycan do damage almost as extensive as that we have causedat home.Having carefully surveyed this whole area of human re-lations, and having decided exactly what personality traitsin us injured and disturbed others, we can now commenceto ransack memory for the people to whom we have givenoffense. To put a finger on the nearby and most deeplydamaged ones shouldn't be hard to do. Then, as year byyear we walk back through our lives as far as memory willreach, we shall be bound to construct a long list of peoplewho have, to some extent or other, been affected. Weshould, of course, ponder and weigh each instance careful-ly. We shall want to hold ourselves to the course of 82STEP EIGHTadmitting the things we h a ve done, meanwhile forgivingthe wrongs done us, real or fancied. We should avoid ex-treme judgments, both of ourselves and of others involved.We must not exaggerate our defects or theirs. A quiet, ob-jective view will be our steadfast aim.Whenever our pencil falters, we can fortify and cheerourselves by remembering what A.A. experience in thisStep has meant to others. It is the beginning of the end ofisolation from our fellows and from God. Step NineMade direct amends to such people wher-ever possible, except when to do so wouldinjure them or others.GOOD judgment, a careful sense of timing, courage, andprudencethese are the qualities we shall need when wetake Step Nine.After we have made the list of people we have harmed,have reflected carefully upon each instance, and have triedto possess ourselves of the right attitude in which to pro-ceed, we will see that the making of direct amends dividesthose we should approach into several classes. There willbe those who ought to be dealt with just as soon as we be-come reasonably confident that we can maintain oursobriety. There will be those to whom we can make onlypartial restitution, lest complete disclosures do them or oth-ers more harm than good. There will be other cases whereaction ought to be deferred, and still others in which by thevery nature of the situation we shall never be able to makedirect personal contact at all.Most of us begin making certain kinds of direct amendsfrom the day we join Alcoholics Anonymous. The momentwe tell our families that we are really going to try the pro-gram, the process has begun. In this area there are seldomany questions of timing or caution. We want to come in thedoor shouting the good news. After coming from our firstmeeting, or perhaps after we have finished reading the book83 84STEP NINEAlcoholics Anonymous, we usually want to sit downwith some member of the family and readily admit thedamage we have done by our drinking. Almost always wewant to go further and admit other defects that have madeus hard to live with. This will be a very different occasion,and in sharp contrast with those hangover mornings whenwe alternated between reviling ourselves and blaming thefamily (and everyone else) for our troubles. At this first sit-ting, it is necessary only that we make a general admissionof our defects. It may be unwise at this stage to rehash cer-tain harrowing episodes. Good judgment will suggest thatwe ought to take our time. While we may be quite willingto reveal the very worst, we must be sure to remember thatwe cannot buy our own peace of mind at the expense ofothers.Much the same approach will apply at the office or fac-tory. We shall at once think of a few people who know allabout our drinking, and who have been most affected by it.But even in these cases, we may need to use a little morediscretion than we did with the family. We may not want tosay anything for several weeks, or longer. First we willwish to be reasonably certain that we are on the A.A. beam.Then we are ready to go to these people, to tell them whatA.A. is, and what we are trying to do. Against this back-ground we can freely admit the damage we have done andmake our apologies. We can pay, or promise to pay, what-ever obligations, financial or otherwise, we owe. Thegenerous response of most people to such quiet sinceritywill often astonish us. Even our severest and most justifiedcritics will frequently meet us more than halfway on the STEP NINE85first trial.This atmosphere of approval and praise is apt to be soexhilarating as to put us off balance by creating an insa-tiable appetite for more of the same. Or we may be tippedover in the other direction when, in rare cases, we get a cooland skeptical reception. This will tempt us to argue, or topress our point insistently. Or maybe it will tempt us to dis-couragement and pessimism. But if we have preparedourselves well in advance, such reactions will not deflect usfrom our steady and even purpose.After taking this preliminary trial at making amends,we may enjoy such a sense of relief that we conclude ourtask is finished. We will want to rest on our laurels. Thetemptation to skip the more humiliating and dreaded meet-ings that still remain may be great. We will oftenmanufacture plausible excuses for dodging these issues en-tirely. Or we may just procrastinate, telling ourselves thetime is not yet, when in reality we have already passed upmany a fine chance to right a serious wrong. Let's not talkprudence while practicing evasion.As soon as we begin to feel confident in our new wayof life and have begun, by our behavior and example, toconvince those about us that we are indeed changing for thebetter, it is usually safe to talk in complete frankness withthose who have been seriously affected, even those whomay be only a little or not at all aware of what we havedone to them. The only exceptions we will make will becases where our disclosure would cause actual harm. Theseconversations can begin in a casual or natural way. But ifno such opportunity presents itself, at some point we will 86STEP NINEwant to summon all our courage, head straight for the per-son concerned, and lay our cards on the table. We needn'twallow in excessive remorse before those we have harmed,but amends at this level should always be forthright andgenerous.There can only be one consideration which shouldqualify our desire for a complete disclosure of the damagewe have done. That will arise in the occasional situationwhere to make a full revelation would seriously harm theone to whom we are making amends. Orquite as impor-tantother people. We cannot, for example, unload adetailed account of extramarital adventuring upon theshoulders of our unsuspecting wife or husband. And evenin those cases where such a matter must be discussed, let'stry to avoid harming third parties, whoever they may be. Itdoes not lighten our burden when we recklessly make thecrosses of others heavier.Many a razor-edged question can arise in other depart-ments of life where this same principle is involved.Suppose, for instance, that we have drunk up a good chunkof our firm's money, whether by borrowing or on a h eavi-ly padded expense account. Suppose that this may continueto go undetected, if we say nothing. Do we instantly con-fess our irregularities to the firm, in the practical certaintythat we will be fired and become unemployable? Are wegoing to be so rigidly righteous about making amends thatwe don't care what happens to the family and home? Or dowe first consult those who are to be gravely affected? Dowe lay the matter before our sponsor or spiritual adviser,earnestly asking God's help and guidancemeanwhile re- STEP NINE87solving to do the right thing when it becomes clear, costwhat it may? Of course, there is no pat answer which can fitall such dilemmas. But all of them do require a completewillingness to make amends as fast and as far as may bepossible in a given set of conditions.Above all, we should try to be absolutely sure that weare not delaying because we are afraid. For the readiness totake the full consequences of our past acts, and to take re-sponsibility for the well-being of others at the same time, isthe very spirit of Step Nine. Step TenContinued to take personal inventory andwhen we were wrong promptly admitted it.AS we work the first nine Steps, we prepare ourselves forthe adventure of a new life. But when we approach StepTen we commence to put our A.A. way of living to practi-cal use, day by day, in fair weather or foul. Then comes theacid test: can we stay sober, keep in emotional balance, andlive to good purpose under all conditions?A continuous look at our assets and liabilities, and a realdesire to learn and grow by this means, are necessities forus. We alcoholics have learned this the hard way. More ex-perienced people, of course, in all times and places havepracticed unsparing self-survey and criticism. For the wisehave always known that no one can make much of his lifeuntil self-searching becomes a regular habit, until he is ableto admit and accept what he finds, and until he patientlyand persistently tries to correct what is wrong.When a drunk has a terrific hangover because he drankheavily yesterday, he cannot live well today. But there isanother kind of hangover which we all experience whetherwe are drinking or not. That is the emotional hangover, thedirect result of yesterday's and sometimes today's excessesof negative emotionanger, fear, jealousy, and the like. Ifwe would live serenely today and tomorrow, we certainlyneed to eliminate these hangovers. This doesn't mean we88 STEP TEN89need to wander morbidly around in the past. It requires anadmission and correction of errors now. Our inventory en-ables us to settle with the past. When this is done, we arereally able to leave it behind us. When our inventory iscarefully taken, and we have made peace with ourselves,the conviction follows that tomorrow's challenges can bemet as they come.Although all inventories are alike in principle, the timefactor does distinguish one from another. There's the spot-check inventory, taken at any time of the day, whenever wefind ourselves getting tangled up. There's the one we take atday's end, when we review the happenings of the hours justpast. Here we cast up a balance sheet, crediting ourselveswith things well done, and chalking up debits where due.Then there are those occasions when alone, or in the com-pany of our sponsor or spiritual adviser, we make a carefulreview of our progress since the last time. Many A.A.'s goin for annual or semiannual housecleanings. Many of usalso like the experience of an occasional retreat from theoutside world where we can quiet down for an undisturbedday or so of self-overhaul and meditation.Aren't these practices joy-killers as well as time-con-sumers? Must A.A.'s spend most of their waking hoursdrearily rehashing their sins of omission or commission?Well, hardly. The emphasis on inventory is heavy only be-cause a great many of us have never really acquired thehabit of accurate self-appraisal. Once this healthy practicehas become grooved, it will be so interesting and profitablethat the time it takes won't be missed. For these minutesand sometimes hours spent in self-examination are bound 90STEP TENto make all the other hours of our day better and happier.And at length our inventories become a regular part of ev-eryday living, rather than something unusual or set apart.Before we ask what a spot-check inventory is, let's lookat the kind of setting in which such an inventory can do itswork.It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed,no matter what the cause, there is something wrong withus. If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in thewrong also. But are there no exceptions to this rule? Whatabout justifiable anger? If somebody cheats us, aren't weentitled to be mad? Can't we be properly angry with self-righteous folk? For us of A.A. these are dangerous excep-tions. We have found that justified anger ought to be left tothose better qualified to handle it.Few people have been more victimized by resentmentsthan have we alcoholics. It mattered little whether our re-sentments were justified or not. A burst of temper couldspoil a day, and a well-nursed grudge could make us miser-ably ineffective. Nor were we ever skillful in separatingjustified from unjustified anger. As we saw it, our wrathwas always justified. Anger, that occasional luxury of morebalanced people, could keep us on an emotional jag indefi-nitely. These emotional dry benders often led straight tothe bottle. Other kinds of disturbancesjealousy, envy,self-pity, or hurt pridedid the same thing.A spot-check inventory taken in the midst of such dis-turbances can be of very great help in quieting stormyemotions. Today's spot check finds its chief application tosituations which arise in each day's march. The considera- STEP TEN91tion of long-standing difficulties had better be postponed,when possible, to times deliberately set aside for that pur-pose. The quick inventory is aimed at our daily ups anddowns, especially those where people or new events throwus off balance and tempt us to make mistakes.In all these situations we need self-restraint, honestanalysis of what is involved, a willingness to admit whenthe fault is ours, and an equal willingness to forgive whenthe fault is elsewhere. We need not be discouraged whenwe fall into the error of our old ways, for these disciplinesare not easy. We shall look for progress, not for perfection.Our first objective will be the development of self-re-straint. This carries a top priority rating. When we speak oract hastily or rashly, the ability to be fair-minded and toler-ant evaporates on the spot. One unkind tirade or one willfulsnap judgment can ruin our relation with another person fora whole day, or maybe a whole year. Nothing pays off likerestraint of tongue and pen. We must avoid quick-temperedcriticism and furious, power-driven argument. The samegoes for sulking or silent scorn. These are emotional boobytraps baited with pride and vengefulness. Our first job is tosidestep the traps. When we are tempted by the bait, weshould train ourselves to step back and think. For we canneither think nor act to good purpose until the habit of self-restraint has become automatic.Disagreeable or unexpected problems are not the onlyones that call for self-control. We must be quite as carefulwhen we begin to achieve some measure of importance andmaterial success. For no people have ever loved personaltriumphs more than we have loved them; we drank of suc- 92STEP TENcess as of a wine which could never fail to make us feelelated. When temporary good fortune came our way, we in-dulged ourselves in fantasies of still greater victories overpeople and circumstances. Thus blinded by prideful self-confidence, we were apt to play the big shot. Of course,people turned away from us, bored or hurt.Now that we're in A.A. and sober, and winning back theesteem of our friends and business associates, we find thatwe still need to exercise special vigilance. As an insuranceagainst big-shot-ism we can of ten ch eck ours el v es b y re-membering that we are today sober only by the grace ofGod and that any success we may be having is far more Hissuccess than ours.Finally, we begin to see that all people, including our-selves, are to some extent emotionally ill as well asfrequently wrong, and then we approach true tolerance andsee what real love for our fellows actually means. It will be-come more and more evident as we go forward that it ispointless to become angry, or to get hurt by people who,like us, are suffering from the pains of growing up.Such a radical change in our outlook will take time,maybe a lot of time. Not many people can truthfully assertthat they love everybody. Most of us must admit that wehave loved but a few; that we have been quite indifferent tothe many so long as none of them gave us trouble; and asfor the remainderwell, we have really disliked or hatedthem. Although these attitudes are common enough, weA.A.'s find we need something much better in order to keepour balance. We can't stand it if we hate deeply. The ideathat we can be possessively loving of a few, can ignore the STEP TEN93many, and can continue to fear or hate anybody, has to beabandoned, if only a little at a time.We can try to stop making unreasonable demands uponthose we love. We can show kindness where we had shownnone. With those we dislike we can begin to practice justiceand courtesy, perhaps going out of our way to understandand help them.Whenever we fail any of these people, we can promptlyadmit itto ourselves always, and to them also, when theadmission would be helpful. Courtesy, kindness, justice,and love are the keynotes by which we may come into har-mony with practically anybody. When in doubt we canalways pause, saying, Not m y wi l l , b ut Th i n e, b e don e.And we can often ask ourselves, Am I doing to others as Iwould have them do to metoday?When evening comes, perhaps just before going tosleep, many of us draw up a balance sheet for the day. Thisis a good place to remember that inventory-taking is not al-ways done in red ink. It's a poor day indeed when wehaven't done something right. As a matter of fact, the wak-ing hours are usually well filled with things that areconstructive. Good intentions, good thoughts, and good actsare there for us to see. Even when we have tried hard andfailed, we may chalk that up as one of the greatest credits ofall. Under these conditions, the pains of failure are convert-ed into assets. Out of them we receive the stimulation weneed to go forward. Someone who knew what he was talk-ing about once remarked that pain was the touchstone of allspiritual progress. How heartily we A.A.'s can agree withhim, for we know that the pains of drinking had to come 94STEP TENbefore sobriety, and emotional turmoil before serenity.As we glance down the debit side of the day's ledger,we should carefully examine our motives in each thoughtor act that appears to be wrong. In most cases our motiveswon't be hard to see and understand. When prideful, angry,jealous, anxious, or fearful, we acted accordingly, and thatwas that. Here we need only recognize that we did act orthink badly, try to visualize how we might have done better,and resolve with God's help to carry these lessons over intotomorrow, making, of course, any amends still neglected.But in other instances only the closest scrutiny will re-veal what our true motives were. There are cases where ourancient enemy, rationalization, has stepped in and has justi-fied conduct which was really wrong. The temptation hereis to imagine that we had good motives and reasons whenwe really didn't.We constructively criticized someone who needed it,when our real motive was to win a useless argument. Or,the person concerned not being present, we thought wewere helping others to understand him, when in actualityour true motive was to feel superior by pulling him down.We sometimes hurt those we love because they need to betaught a lesson, wh en we real l y wan t to pun i s h . W e weredepressed and complained we felt bad, when in fact wewere mainly asking for sympathy and attention. This oddtrait of mind and emotion, this perverse wish to hide a badmotive underneath a good one, permeates human affairsfrom top to bottom. This subtle and elusive kind of self-righteousness can underlie the smallest act or thought.Learning daily to spot, admit, and correct these flaws is the STEP TEN95essence of character-building and good living. An honestregret for harms done, a genuine gratitude for blessings re-ceived, and a willingness to try for better things tomorrowwill be the permanent assets we shall seek.Having so considered our day, not omitting to take duenote of things well done, and having searched our heartswith neither fear nor favor, we can truly thank God for theblessings we have received and sleep in good conscience. Step ElevenSought through prayer and meditation toimprove our conscious contact with God aswe understood Him, praying only for knowl-edge of His will for us and the power to car-ry that out.PRAYER and meditation are our principal means of con-scious contact with God.We A.A.'s are active folk, enjoying the satisfactions ofdealing with the realities of life, usually for the first time inour lives, and strenuously trying to help the next alcoholicwho comes along. So it isn't surprising that we often tend toslight serious meditation and prayer as something not reallynecessary. To be sure, we feel it is something that mighthelp us to meet an occasional emergency, but at first manyof us are apt to regard it as a somewhat mysterious skill ofclergymen, from which we may hope to get a secondhandbenefit. Or perhaps we don't believe in these things at all.To certain newcomers and to those one-time agnosticswho still cling to the A.A. group as their higher power,claims for the power of prayer may, despite all the logic andexperience in proof of it, still be unconvincing or quite ob-jectionable. Those of us who once felt this way cancertainly understand and sympathize. We well rememberhow something deep inside us kept rebelling against theidea of bowing before any God. Many of us had strong log-96 STEP ELEVEN97ic, too, which proved there was no God whatever. Whatabout all the accidents, sickness, cruelty, and injustice in theworld? What about all those unhappy lives which were thedirect result of unfortunate birth and uncontrollable circum-stances? Surely there could be no justice in this scheme ofthings, and therefore no God at all.Sometimes we took a slightly different tack. Sure, wesaid to ourselves, the hen probably did come before theegg. No doubt the universe had a first cause of some sort,the God of the Atom, maybe, hot and cold by turns. Butcertainly there wasn't any evidence of a God who knew orcared about human beings. We liked A.A. all right, andwere quick to say that it had done miracles. But we recoiledfrom meditation and prayer as obstinately as the scientistwho refused to perform a certain experiment lest it provehis pet theory wrong. Of course we finally did experiment,and when unexpected results followed, we felt different; infact we knew different; and so we were sold on meditationand prayer. And that, we have found, can happen to any-body who tries. It has been well said that almost the onlyscoffers at prayer are those who never tried it enough.Those of us who have come to make regular use ofprayer would no more do without it than we would refuseair, food, or sunshine. And for the same reason. When werefuse air, light, or food, the body suffers. And when weturn away from meditation and prayer, we likewise depriveour minds, our emotions, and our intuitions of vitally need-ed support. As the body can fail its purpose for lack ofnourishment, so can the soul. We all need the light of God'sreality, the nourishment of His strength, and the atmosphere 98STEP ELEVENof His grace. To an amazing extent the facts of A.A. Lifeconfirm this ageless truth.There is a direct linkage among self-examination, medi-tation, and prayer. Taken separately, these practices canbring much relief and benefit. But when they are logicallyrelated and interwoven, the result is an unshakable founda-tion for life. Now and then we may be granted a glimpse ofthat ultimate reality which is God's kingdom. And we willbe comforted and assured that our own destiny in that realmwill be secure for so long as we try, however falteringly, tofind and do the will of our own Creator.As we have seen, self-searching is the means by whichwe bring new vision, action, and grace to bear upon thedark and negative side of our natures. It is a step in the de-velopment of that kind of humility that makes it possiblefor us to receive God's help. Yet it is only a step. We willwant to go further.We will want the good that is in us all, even in the worstof us, to flower and to grow. Most certainly we shall needbracing air and an abundance of food. But first of all weshall want sunlight; nothing much can grow in the dark.Meditation is our step out into the sun. How, then, shall wemeditate?The actual experience of meditation and prayer acrossthe centuries is, of course, immense. The world's librariesand places of worship are a treasure trove for all seekers. Itis to be hoped that every A.A. who has a religious connec-tion which emphasizes meditation will return to the practiceof that devotion as never before. But what about the rest ofus who, less fortunate, don't even know how to begin? STEP ELEVEN99Well, we might start like this. First let's look at a reallygood prayer. We won't have far to seek; the great men andwomen of all religions have left us a wonderful supply.Here let us consider one that is a classic.Its author was a man who for several hundred yearsnow has been rated as a saint. We won't be biased or scaredoff by that fact, because although he was not an alcoholiche did, like us, go through the emotional wringer. And as hecame out the other side of that painful experience, thisprayer was his expression of what he could then see, feel,and wish to become:Lord, make me a channel of thy peacethat wherethere is hatred, I may bring lovethat where there iswrong, I may bring the spirit of forgivenessthat wherethere is discord, I may bring harmonythat where there iserror, I may bring truththat where there is doubt, I maybring faiththat where there is despair, I may bring hopethat where there are shadows, I may bring lightthatwhere there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant that Imay seek rather to comfort than to be comfortedto un-derstand, than to be understoodto love, than to be loved.For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgivingthat one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to Eter-nal Life. Amen.As beginners in meditation, we might now reread thisprayer several times very slowly, savoring every word andtrying to take in the deep meaning of each phrase and idea.It will help if we can drop all resistance to what our friendsays. For in meditation, debate has no place. We rest quietlywith the thoughts of someone who knows, so that we may 100STEP ELEVENexperience and learn.As though lying upon a sunlit beach, let us relax andbreathe deeply of the spiritual atmosphere with which thegrace of this prayer surrounds us. Let us become willing topartake and be strengthened and lifted up by the sheer spiri-tual power, beauty, and love of which these magnificentwords are the carriers. Let us look now upon the sea andponder what its mystery is; and let us lift our eyes to the farhorizon, beyond which we shall seek all those wonders stillunseen.Shucks! says somebody. Th i s i s n on s en s e. It i s n ' tpractical.When such thoughts break in, we might recall, a littleruefully, how much store we used to set by imagination asit tried to create reality out of bottles. Yes, we reveled in thatsort of thinking, didn't we? And though sober nowadays,don't we often try to do much the same thing? Perhaps ourtrouble was not that we used our imagination. Perhaps thereal trouble was our almost total inability to point imagina-tion toward the right objectives. There's nothing the matterwith constructive imagination; all sound achievement restsupon it. After all, no man can build a house until he first en-visions a plan for it. Well, meditation is like that, too; ithelps to envision our spiritual objective before we try tomove toward it. So let's get back to that sunlit beachor tothe plains or to the mountains, if you prefer.When, by such simple devices, we have placed our-selves in a mood in which we can focus undisturbed onconstructive imagination, we might proceed like this:Once more we read our prayer, and again try to see STEP ELEVEN101what its inner essence is. We'll think now about the manwho first uttered the prayer. First of all, he wanted to be-come a channel. Then he asked for the grace to bringlove, forgiveness, harmony, truth, faith, hope, light, and joyto every human being he could.Next came the expression of an aspiration and a hopefor himself. He hoped, God willing, that he might be able tofind some of these treasures, too. This he would try to do bywhat he called self-forgetting. What did he mean by self-forgetting, and how did he propose to accomplish that?He thought it better to give comfort than to receive it;better to understand than to be understood; better to forgivethan to be forgiven.This much could be a fragment of what is called medi-tation, perhaps our very first attempt at a mood, a flier intothe realm of spirit, if you like. It ought to be followed by agood look at where we stand now, and a further look atwhat might happen in our lives were we able to move clos-er to the ideal we have been trying to glimpse. Meditation issomething which can always be further developed. It hasno boundaries, either of width or height. Aided by such in-struction and example as we can find, it is essentially anindividual adventure, something which each one of usworks out in his own way. But its object is always thesame: to improve our conscious contact with God, with Hisgrace, wisdom, and love. And let's always remember thatmeditation is in reality intensely practical. One of its firstfruits is emotional balance. With it we can broaden anddeepen the channel between ourselves and God as we un-derstand Him. 102STEP ELEVENNow, what of prayer? Prayer is the raising of the heartand mind to Godand in this sense it includes meditation.How may we go about it? And how does it fit in with medi-tation? Prayer, as commonly understood, is a petition toGod. Having opened our channel as best we can, we try toask for those right things of which we and others are in thegreatest need. And we think that the whole range of ourneeds is well defined by that part of Step Eleven whichsays: . . . knowledge of His will for us and the power tocarry that out. A request for this fits in any part of our day.In the morning we think of the hours to come. Perhapswe think of our day's work and the chances it may afford usto be useful and helpful, or of some special problem that itmay bring. Possibly today will see a continuation of a seri-ous and as yet unresolved problem left over from yesterday.Our immediate temptation will be to ask for specific solu-tions to specific problems, and for the ability to help otherpeople as we have already thought they should be helped.In that case, we are asking God to do it our way. Therefore,we ought to consider each request carefully to see what itsreal merit is. Even so, when making specific requests, itwill be well to add to each one of them this qualification: .. . if it be Thy will. We ask simply that throughout the dayGod place in us the best understanding of His will that wecan have for that day, and that we be given the grace bywhich we may carry it out.As the day goes on, we can pause where situations mustbe met and decisions made, and renew the simple request:Thy will, not mine, be done. If at these points our emo-tional disturbance happens to be great, we will more surely STEP ELEVEN103keep our balance, provided we remember, and repeat toourselves, a particular prayer or phrase that has appealed tous in our reading or meditation. Just saying it over and overwill often enable us to clear a channel choked up withanger, fear, frustration, or misunderstanding, and permit usto return to the surest help of allour search for God's will,not our own, in the moment of stress. At these critical mo-ments, if we remind ourselves that it is better to comfortthan to be comforted, to understand than to be understood,to love than to be loved, we wi l l b e f ol l owi n g th e i n ten t ofStep Eleven.Of course, it is reasonable and understandable that thequestion is often asked: Why can't we take a specific andtroubling dilemma straight to God, and in prayer securefrom Him sure and definite answers to our requests?This can be done, but it has hazards. We have seenA.A.'s ask with much earnestness and faith for God's ex-plicit guidance on matters ranging all the way from ashattering domestic or financial crisis to correcting a minorpersonal fault, like tardiness. Quite often, however, thethoughts that seem to come from God are not answers atall. They prove to be well-intentioned unconscious rational-izations. The A.A., or indeed any man, who tries to run hislife rigidly by this kind of prayer, by this self-serving de-mand of God for replies, is a particularly disconcertingindividual. To any questioning or criticism of his actions heinstantly proffers his reliance upon prayer for guidance inall matters great or small. He may have forgotten the possi-bility that his own wishful thinking and the humantendency to rationalize have distorted his so-called guid- 104STEP ELEVENance. With the best of intentions, he tends to force his ownwill into all sorts of situations and problems with the com-fortable assurance that he is acting under God's specificdirection. Under such an illusion, he can of course creategreat havoc without in the least intending it.We also fall into another similar temptation. We formideas as to what we think God's will is for other people. Wesay to ourselves, Th i s on e ough t to b e cured of h i s f atalmalady, or Th at on e ough t to b e rel i ev ed of h i s em oti on alpain, an d we pray for these specific things. Such prayers,of course, are fundamentally good acts, but often they arebased upon a supposition that we know God's will for theperson for whom we pray. This means that side by sidewith an earnest prayer there can be a certain amount of pre-sumption and conceit in us. It is A.A.'s experience thatparticularly in these cases we ought to pray that God's will,whatever it is, be done for others as well as for ourselves.In A.A. we have found that the actual good results ofprayer are beyond question. They are matters of knowledgeand experience. All those who have persisted have foundstrength not ordinarily their own. They have found wisdombeyond their usual capability. And they have increasinglyfound a peace of mind which can stand firm in the face ofdifficult circumstances.We discover that we do receive guidance for our livesto just about the extent that we stop making demands uponGod to give it to us on order and on our terms. Almost anyexperienced A.A. will tell how his affairs have taken re-markable and unexpected turns for the better as he tried toimprove his conscious contact with God. He will also re- STEP ELEVEN105port that out of every season of grief or suffering, when thehand of God seemed heavy or even unjust, new lessons forliving were learned, new resources of courage were uncov-ered, and that finally, inescapably, the conviction came thatGod does move in a mysterious way His wonders to per-form.All this should be very encouraging news for those whorecoil from prayer because they don't believe in it, or be-cause they feel themselves cut off from God's help anddirection. All of us, without exception, pass through timeswhen we can pray only with the greatest exertion of will.Occasionally we go even further than this. We are seizedwith a rebellion so sickening that we simply won't pray.When these things happen we should not think too ill ofourselves. We should simply resume prayer as soon as wecan, doing what we know to be good for us.Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of meditation andprayer is the sense of belonging that comes to us. We nolonger live in a completely hostile world. We are no longerlost and frightened and purposeless. The moment we catcheven a glimpse of God's will, the moment we begin to seetruth, justice, and love as the real and eternal things in life,we are no longer deeply disturbed by all the seeming evi-dence to the contrary that surrounds us in purely humanaffairs. We know that God lovingly watches over us. Weknow that when we turn to Him, all will be well with us,here and hereafter. Step TwelveHaving had a spiritual awakening as theresult of these steps, we tried to carry thismessage to alcoholics, and to practice theseprinciples in all our affairs.THE joy of living is the theme of A.A.'s Twelfth Step, andaction is its key word. Here we turn outward toward ourfellow alcoholics who are still in distress. Here we experi-ence the kind of giving that asks no rewards. Here we beginto practice all Twelve Steps of the program in our dailylives so that we and those about us may find emotional so-briety. When the Twelfth Step is seen in its full implication,it is really talking about the kind of love that has no pricetag on it.Our Twelfth Step also says that as a result of practicingall the Steps, we have each found something called a spiri-tual awakening. To new A.A.'s, this often seems like a verydubious and improbable state of affairs. What do youmean when you talk about a 'spiritual awakening'? theyask.Maybe there are as many definitions of spiritual awak-ening as there are people who have had them. But certainlyeach genuine one has something in common with all theothers. And these things which they have in common arenot too hard to understand. When a man or a woman has aspiritual awakening, the most important meaning of it isthat he has now become able to do, feel, and believe that106 STEP TWELVE107which he could not do before on his unaided strength andresources alone. He has been granted a gift which amountsto a new state of consciousness and being. He has been seton a path which tells him he is really going somewhere,that life is not a dead end, not something to be endured ormastered. In a very real sense he has been transformed, be-cause he has laid hold of a source of strength which, in oneway or another, he had hitherto denied himself. He findshimself in possession of a degree of honesty, tolerance, un-selfishness, peace of mind, and love of which he hadthought himself quite incapable. What he has received is afree gift, and yet usually, at least in some small part, he hasmade himself ready to receive it.A.A.'s manner of making ready to receive this gift liesin the practice of the Twelve Steps in our program. So let'sconsider briefly what we have been trying to do up to thispoint:Step One showed us an amazing paradox: We foundthat we were totally unable to be rid of the alcohol obses-sion until we first admitted that we were powerless over it.In Step Two we saw that since we could not restore our-selves to sanity, some Higher Power must necessarily do soif we were to survive. Consequently, in Step Three weturned our will and our lives over to the care of God as weunderstood Him. For the time being, we who were atheistor agnostic discovered that our own group, or A.A. as awhole, would suffice as a higher power. Beginning withStep Four, we commenced to search out the things in our-selves which had brought us to physical, moral, andspiritual bankruptcy. We made a searching and fearless 108STEP TWELVEmoral inventory. Looking at Step Five, we decided that aninventory, taken alone, wouldn't be enough. We knew wewould have to quit the deadly business of living alone withour conflicts, and in honesty confide these to God and an-other human being. At Step Six, many of us balkedforthe practical reason that we did not wish to have all our de-fects of character removed, because we still loved some ofthem too much. Yet we knew we had to make a settlementwith the fundamental principle of Step Six. So we decidedthat while we still had some flaws of character that wecould not yet relinquish, we ought nevertheless to quit ourstubborn, rebellious hanging on to them. We said to our-selves, Th i s I can n ot do today , perh aps , b ut I can stopcrying out 'No, never!' Then, in Step Seven, we humblyasked God to remove our short comings such as He couldor would under the conditions of the day we asked. In StepEight, we continued our housecleaning, for we saw that wewere not only in conflict with ourselves, but also with peo-ple and situations in the world in which we lived. We had tobegin to make our peace, and so we listed the people wehad harmed and became willing to set things right. We fol-lowed this up in Step Nine by making direct amends tothose concerned, except when it would injure them or otherpeople. By this time, at Step Ten, we had begun to get a ba-sis for daily living, and we keenly realized that we wouldneed to continue taking personal inventory, and that whenwe were in the wrong we ought to admit it promptly. InStep Eleven we saw that if a Higher Power had restored usto sanity and had enabled us to live with some peace ofmind in a sorely troubled world, then such a Higher Power STEP TWELVE109was worth knowing better, by as direct contact as possible.The persistent use of meditation and prayer, we found, didopen the channel so that where there had been a trickle,there now was a river which led to sure power and safeguidance from God as we were increasingly better able tounderstand Him.So, practicing these Steps, we had a spiritual awakeningabout which finally there was no question. Looking at thosewho were only beginning and still doubted themselves, therest of us were able to see the change setting in. From greatnumbers of such experiences, we could predict that thedoubter who still claimed that he hadn't got the spiritualangle, an d wh o s ti l l con s i dered h i s wel l -l ov ed A .A . groupthe higher power, would presently love God and call Himby name.Now, what about the rest of the Twelfth Step? The won-derful energy it releases and the eager action by which itcarries our message to the next suffering alcoholic andwhich finally translates the Twelve Steps into action uponall our affairs is the payoff, the magnificent reality, of Alco-holics Anonymous.Even the newest of newcomers finds undreamed re-wards as he tries to help his brother alcoholic, the one whois even blinder than he. This is indeed the kind of givingthat actually demands nothing. He does not expect hisbrother sufferer to pay him, or even to love him. And thenhe discovers that by the divine paradox of this kind of giv-ing he has found his own reward, whether his brother hasyet received anything or not. His own character may still begravely defective, but he somehow knows that God has en- 110STEP TWELVEabled him to make a mighty beginning, and he senses thathe stands at the edge of new mysteries, joys, and experi-ences of which he had never even dreamed.Practically every A.A. member declares that no satis-faction has been deeper and no joy greater than in a TwelfthStep job well done. To watch the eyes of men and womenopen with wonder as they move from darkness into light, tosee their lives quickly fill with new purpose and meaning,to see whole families reassembled, to see the alcoholic out-cast received back into his community in full citizenship,and above all to watch these people awaken to the presenceof a loving God in their livesthese things are the sub-stance of what we receive as we carry A.A.'s message to thenext alcoholic.Nor is this the only kind of Twelfth Step work. We sit inA.A. meetings and listen, not only to receive somethingourselves, but to give the reassurance and support whichour presence can bring. If our turn comes to speak at ameeting, we again try to carry A.A.'s message. Whether ouraudience is one or many, it is still Twelfth Step work. Thereare many opportunities even for those of us who feel unableto speak at meetings or who are so situated that we cannotdo much face-to-face Twelfth Step work. We can be theones who take on the unspectacular but important tasks thatmake good Twelfth Step work possible, perhaps arrangingfor the coffee and cake after the meetings, where so manyskeptical, suspicious newcomers have found confidenceand comfort in the laughter and talk. This is Twelfth Stepwork in the very best sense of the word. Freely ye have re-ceived; freely give . . . is the core of this part of Step STEP TWELVE111Twelve.We may often pass through Twelfth Step experienceswhere we will seem to be temporarily off the beam. Thesewill appear as big setbacks at the time, but will be seen lateras stepping-stones to better things. For example, we mayset our hearts on getting a particular person sobered up, andafter doing all we can for months, we see him relapse. Per-haps this will happen in a succession of cases, and we maybe deeply discouraged as to our ability to carry A.A.'s mes-sage. Or we may encounter the reverse situation, in whichwe are highly elated because we seem to have been suc-cessful. Here the temptation is to become rather possessiveof these newcomers. Perhaps we try to give them adviceabout their affairs which we aren't really competent to giveor ought not give at all. Then we are hurt and confusedwhen the advice is rejected, or when it is accepted andbrings still greater confusion. By a great deal of ardentTwelfth Step work we sometimes carry the message to somany alcoholics that they place us in a position of trust.They make us, let us say, the group's chairman. Here againwe are presented with the temptation to overmanage things,and sometimes this results in rebuffs and other conse-quences which are hard to take.But in the longer run we clearly realize that these areonly the pains of growing up, and nothing but good cancome from them if we turn more and more to the entireTwelve Steps for the answers.Now comes the biggest question yet. What about thepractice of these principles in all our affairs? Can we lovethe whole pattern of living as eagerly as we do the small 112STEP TWELVEsegment of it we discover when we try to help other alco-holics achieve sobriety? Can we bring the same spirit oflove and tolerance into our sometimes deranged familylives that we bring to our A.A. group? Can we have thesame kind of confidence and faith in these people who havebeen infected and sometimes crippled by our own illnessthat we have in our sponsors? Can we actually carry theA.A. spirit into our daily work? Can we meet our newlyrecognized responsibilities to the world at large? And canwe bring new purpose and devotion to the religion of ourchoice? Can we find a new joy of living in trying to dosomething about all these things?Furthermore, how shall we come to terms with seemingfailure or success? Can we now accept and adjust to eitherwithout despair or pride? Can we accept poverty, sickness,loneliness, and bereavement with courage and serenity?Can we steadfastly content ourselves with the humbler, yetsometimes more durable, satisfactions when the brighter,more glittering achievements are denied us?The A.A. answer to these questions about living is Yes,all of these things are possible. We know this because wesee monotony, pain, and even calamity turned to good useby those who keep on trying to practice A.A.'s TwelveSteps. And if these are facts of life for the many alcoholicswho have recovered in A.A., they can become the facts oflife for many more.Of course all A.A.'s, even the best, fall far short of suchachievements as a consistent thing. Without necessarily tak-ing that first drink, we often get quite far off the beam. Ourtroubles sometimes begin with indifference. We are sober STEP TWELVE113and happy in our A.A. work. Things go well at home andoffice. We naturally congratulate ourselves on what laterproves to be a far too easy and superficial point of view. Wetemporarily cease to grow because we feel satisfied thatthere is no need for all of A.A.'s Twelve Steps for us. Weare doing fine on a few of them. Maybe we are doing fineon only two of them, the First Step and that part of theTwelfth where we carry the message. In A.A. slang, thatblissful state is known as two-stepping. A n d i t can go onfor years.The best-intentioned of us can fall for the two-step il-lusion. Sooner or later the pink cloud stage wears off andthings go disappointingly dull. We begin to think that A.A.doesn't pay off after all. We become puzzled and discour-aged. Then perhaps life, as it has a way of doing, suddenlyhands us a great big lump that we can't begin to swallow, letalone digest. We fail to get a worked-for promotion. Welose that good job. Maybe there are serious domestic or ro-mantic difficulties, or perhaps that boy we thought God waslooking after becomes a military casualty.What then? Have we alcoholics in A.A. got, or can weget, the resources to meet these calamities which come toso many? These were problems of life which we could nev-er face up to. Can we now, with the help of God as weunderstand Him, handle them as well and as bravely as ournonalcoholic friends often do? Can we transform thesecalamities into assets, sources of growth and comfort toourselves and those about us? Well, we surely have achance if we switch from two-stepping to twelve-step- 114STEP TWELVEping, if we are willing to receive that grace of God whichcan sustain and strengthen us in any catastrophe.Our basic troubles are the same as everyone else's, butwhen an honest effort is made to practice these principlesin all our affairs, wel l -groun ded A .A .' s s eem to have theability, by God's grace, to take these troubles in stride andturn them into demonstrations of faith. We have seen A.A.'ssuffer lingering and fatal illness with little complaint, andoften in good cheer. We have sometimes seen families bro-ken apart by misunderstanding, tensions, or actualinfidelity, who are reunited by the A.A. way of life.Though the earning power of most A.A.'s is relativelyhigh, we have some members who never seem to get ontheir feet moneywise, and still others who encounter heavyfinancial reverses. Ordinarily we see these situations metwith fortitude and faith.Like most people, we have found that we can take ourbig lumps as they come. But also like others, we often dis-cover a greater challenge in the lesser and more continuousproblems of life. Our answer is in still more spiritual devel-opment. Only by this means can we improve our chancesfor really happy and useful living. And as we grow spiritu-ally, we find that our old attitudes toward our instincts needto undergo drastic revisions. Our desires for emotional se-curity and wealth, for personal prestige and power, forromance, and for family satisfactionsall these have to betempered and redirected. We have learned that the satisfac-tion of instincts cannot be the sole end and aim of our lives.If we place instincts first, we have got the cart before thehorse; we shall be pulled backward into disillusionment. STEP TWELVE115But when we are willing to place spiritual growth firstthen and only then do we have a real chance.After we come into A.A., if we go on growing, our atti-tudes and actions toward securityemotional security andfinancial securitycommence to change profoundly. Ourdemand for emotional security, for our own way, had con-stantly thrown us into unworkable relations with otherpeople. Though we were sometimes quite unconscious ofthis, the result always had been the same. Either we hadtried to play God and dominate those about us, or we hadinsisted on being overdependent upon them. Where peoplehad temporarily let us run their lives as though they werestill children, we had felt very happy and secure ourselves.But when they finally resisted or ran away, we were bitterlyhurt and disappointed. We blamed them, being quite unableto see that our unreasonable demands had been the cause. When we had taken the opposite tack and had insisted,like infants ourselves, that people protect and take care ofus or that the world owed us a living, then the result hadbeen equally unfortunate. This often caused the people wehad loved most to push us aside or perhaps desert us entire-ly. Our disillusionment had been hard to bear. We couldn'timagine people acting that way toward us. We had failed tosee that though adult in years we were still behaving child-ishly, trying to turn everybodyfriends, wives, husbands,even the world itselfinto protective parents. We had re-fused to learn the very hard lesson that overdependenceupon people is unsuccessful because all people are fallible,and even the best of them will sometimes let us down, es-pecially when our demands for attention become 116STEP TWELVEunreasonable.As we made spiritual progress, we saw through thesefallacies. It became clear that if we ever were to feel emo-tionally secure among grown-up people, we would have toput our lives on a give-and-take basis; we would have todevelop the sense of being in partnership or brotherhoodwith all those around us. We saw that we would need togive constantly of ourselves without demands for repay-ment. When we persistently did this we gradually foundthat people were attracted to us as never before. And even ifthey failed us, we could be understanding and not too seri-ously affected.When we developed still more, we discovered the bestpossible source of emotional stability to be God Himself.We found that dependence upon His perfect justice, for-giveness, and love was healthy, and that it would workwhere nothing else would. If we really depended uponGod, we couldn't very well play God to our fellows norwould we feel the urge wholly to rely on human protectionand care. These were the new attitudes that finally broughtmany of us an inner strength and peace that could not bedeeply shaken by the shortcomings of others or by anycalamity not of our own making.This new outlook was, we learned, something especial-ly necessary to us alcoholics. For alcoholism had been alonely business, even though we had been surrounded bypeople who loved us. But when self-will had driven every-body away and our isolation had become complete, itcaused us to play the big shot in cheap barrooms and thenfare forth alone on the street to depend upon the charity of STEP TWELVE117passersby. We were still trying to find emotional security bybeing dominating or dependent upon others. Even whenour fortunes had not ebbed that much and we neverthelessfound ourselves alone in the world, we still vainly tried tobe secure by some unhealthy kind of domination or depen-dence. For those of us who were like that, A.A. had a veryspecial meaning. Through it we begin to learn right rela-tions with people who understand us; we don't have to bealone any more.Most married folks in A.A. have very happy homes. Toa surprising extent, A.A. has offset the damage to familylife brought about by years of alcoholism. But just like allother societies, we do have sex and marital problems, andsometimes they are distressingly acute. Permanent mar-riage breakups and separations, however, are unusual inA.A. Our main problem is not how we are to stay married;it is how to be more happily married by eliminating the se-vere emotional twists that have so often stemmed fromalcoholism.Nearly every sound human being experiences, at sometime in life, a compelling desire to find a mate of the oppo-site sex with whom the fullest possible union can be madespiritual, mental, emotional, and physical. This mightyurge is the root of great human accomplishments, a creativeenergy that deeply influences our lives. God fashioned usthat way. So our question will be this: How, by ignorance,compulsion, and self-will, do we misuse this gift for ourown destruction? We A.A. cannot pretend to offer full an-swers to age-old perplexities, but our own experience doesprovide certain answers that work for us. 118STEP TWELVEWhen alcoholism strikes, very unnatural situations maydevelop which work against marriage partnership and com-patible union. If the man is affected, the wife must becomethe head of the house, often the breadwinner. As matters getworse, the husband becomes a sick and irresponsible childwho needs to be looked after and extricated from endlessscrapes and impasses. Very gradually, and usually withoutany realization of the fact, the wife is forced to become themother of an erring boy. And if she had a strong maternalinstinct to begin with, the situation is aggravated. Obvious-ly not much partnership can exist under these conditions.The wife usually goes on doing the best she knows how,but meanwhile the alcoholic alternately loves and hates hermaternal care. A pattern is thereby established that may takea lot of undoing later on. Nevertheless, under the influenceof A.A.'s Twelve Steps, these situations are often set right.*When the distortion has been great, however, a long pe-riod of patient striving may be necessary. After the husbandjoins A.A., the wife may become discontented, even highlyresentful that Alcoholics Anonymous has done the verything that all her years of devotion had failed to do. Herhusband may become so wrapped up in A.A. and his newfriends that he is inconsiderately away from home morethan when he drank. Seeing her unhappiness, he recom-mends A.A.'s Twelve Steps and tries to teach her how tolive. She naturally feels that for years she has made a far*In adapted form, the Steps are also used by Al-Anon FamilyGroups. Not a part of A.A., this worldwide fellowship consists ofspouses and other relatives or friends of alcoholics (in A.A. or stilldrinking). Its headquarters address is 1600 Corporate LandingParkway, Virgina Beach, VA 23456. STEP TWELVE119better job of living than he has. Both of them blame eachother and ask when their marriage is ever going to be happyagain. They may even begin to suspect it had never beenany good in the first place.Compatibility, of course, can be so impossibly damagedthat a separation may be necessary. But those cases are theunusual ones. The alcoholic, realizing what his wife has en-dured, and now fully understanding how much he himselfdid to damage her and his children, nearly always takes uphis marriage responsibilities with a willingness to repairwhat he can and to accept what he can't. He persistentlytries all of A.A.'s Twelve Steps in his home, often with fineresults. At this point he firmly but lovingly commences tobehave like a partner instead of like a bad boy. And aboveall he is finally convinced that reckless romancing is not away of life for him.A.A. has many single alcoholics who wish to marry andare in a position to do so. Some marry fellow A.A.'s. Howdo they come out? On the whole these marriages are verygood ones. Their common suffering as drinkers, their com-mon interest in A.A. and spiritual things, often enhancesuch unions. It is only where boy meets girl on A.A. cam-pus, and love follows at first sight, that difficulties maydevelop. The prospective partners need to be solid A.A.'sand long enough acquainted to know that their compatibili-ty at spiritual, mental, and emotional levels is a fact and notwishful thinking. They need to be as sure as possible thatno deep-lying emotional handicap in either will be likely torise up under later pressures to cripple them. The considera-tions are equally true and important for the A.A.'s who 120STEP TWELVEmarry outside A.A. With clear understanding and right,grown-up attitudes, very happy results do follow. And what can be said of many A.A. members who, fora variety of reasons, cannot have a family life? At firstmany of these feel lonely, hurt, and left out as they witnessso much domestic happiness about them. If they cannothave this kind of happiness, can A.A. offer them satisfac-tions of similar worth and durability? Yeswhenever theytry hard to seek them out. Surrounded by so many A.A.friends, these so-called loners tell us they no longer feelalone. In partnership with otherswomen and mentheycan devote themselves to any number of ideas, people, andconstructive projects. Free of marital responsibilities, theycan participate in enterprises which would be denied tofamily men and women. We daily see such members renderprodigies of service, and receive great joys in return.Where the possession of money and material thingswas concerned, our outlook underwent the same revolu-tionary change. With a few exceptions, all of us had beenspendthrifts. We threw money about in every direction withthe purpose of pleasing ourselves and impressing otherpeople. In our drinking time, we acted as if the money sup-ply was inexhaustible, though between binges we'dsometimes go to the other extreme and become almostmiserly. Without realizing it we were just accumulatingfunds for the next spree. Money was the symbol of pleasureand self-importance. When our drinking had become muchworse, money was only an urgent requirement which couldsupply us with the next drink and the temporary comfort ofoblivion it brought. STEP TWELVE121Upon entering A.A., these attitudes were sharply re-versed, often going much too far in the opposite direction.The spectacle of years of waste threw us into panic. Theresimply wouldn't be time, we thought, to rebuild our shat-tered fortunes. How could we ever take care of those awfuldebts, possess a decent home, educate the kids, and setsomething by for old age? Financial importance was nolonger our principal aim; we now clamored for material se-curity. Even when we were well reestablished in ourbusiness, these terrible fears often continued to haunt us.This made us misers and penny pinchers all over again.Complete financial security we must haveor else. Weforgot that most alcoholics in A.A. have an earning powerconsiderably above average; we forgot the immense good-will of our brother A.A.'s who were only too eager to helpus to better jobs when we deserved them; we forgot the ac-tual or potential financial insecurity of every human beingin the world. And, worst of all, we forgot God. In moneymatters we had faith only in ourselves, and not too much ofthat.This all meant, of course, that we were still far off bal-ance. When a job still looked like a mere means of gettingmoney rather than an opportunity for service, when the ac-quisition of money for financial independence looked moreimportant than a right dependence upon God, we were stillthe victims of unreasonable fears. And these were fearswhich would make a serene and useful existence, at any fi-nancial level, quite impossible.But as time passed we found that with the help of A.A.'sTwelve Steps we could lose those fears, no matter what our 122STEP TWELVEmaterial prospects were. We could cheerfully perform hum-ble labor without worrying about tomorrow. If ourcircumstances happened to be good, we no longer dreadeda change for the worse, for we had learned that these trou-bles could be turned into great values. It did not matter toomuch what our material condition was, but it did matterwhat our spiritual condition was. Money gradually becameour servant and not our master. It became a means of ex-changing love and service with those about us. When, withGod's help, we calmly accepted our lot, then we found wecould live at peace with ourselves and show others who stillsuffered the same fears that they could get over them, too.We found that freedom from fear was more important thanfreedom from want.Let's here take note of our improved outlook upon theproblems of personal importance, power, ambition, andleadership. These were reefs upon which many of us cameto shipwreck during our drinking careers.Practically every boy in the United States dreams of be-coming our President. He wants to be his country's numberone man. As he gets older and sees the impossibility of this,he can smile good-naturedly at his childhood dream. In lat-er life he finds that real happiness is not to be found in justtrying to be a number one man, or even a first-rater in theheartbreaking struggle for money, romance, or self-impor-tance. He learns that he can be content as long as he playswell whatever cards life deals him. He's still ambitious, butnot absurdly so, because he can now see and accept actualreality. He's willing to stay right size.But not so with alcoholics. When A.A. was quite STEP TWELVE123young, a number of eminent psychologists and doctorsmade an exhaustive study of a good-sized group of so-called problem drinkers. The doctors weren't trying to findhow different we were from one another; they sought tofind whatever personality traits, if any, this group of alco-holics had in common. They finally came up with aconclusion that shocked the A.A. members of that time.These distinguished men had the nerve to say that most ofthe alcoholics under investigation were still childish, emo-tionally sensitive, and grandiose.How we alcoholics did resent that verdict! We wouldnot believe that our adult dreams were often truly childish.And considering the rough deal life had given us, we felt itperfectly natural that we were sensitive. As to our grandiosebehavior, we insisted that we had been possessed of noth-ing but a high and legitimate ambition to win the battle oflife.In the years since, however, most of us have come toagree with those doctors. We have had a much keener lookat ourselves and those about us. We have seen that we wereprodded by unreasonable fears or anxieties into making alife business of winning fame, money, and what we thoughtwas leadership. So false pride became the reverse side ofthat ruinous coin marked Fear. We simply had to be num-ber one people to cover up our deep-lying inferiorities. Infitful successes we boasted of greater feats to be done; indefeat we were bitter. If we didn't have much of any world-ly success we became depressed and cowed. Then peoplesaid we were of the inferior type. But now we see our-selves as chips off the same old block. At heart we had all 124STEP TWELVEbeen abnormally fearful. It mattered little whether we hadsat on the shore of life drinking ourselves into forgetfulnessor had plunged in recklessly and willfully beyond our depthand ability. The result was the sameall of us had nearlyperished in a sea of alcohol.But today, in well-matured A.A.'s, these distorted driveshave been restored to something like their true purpose anddirection. We no longer strive to dominate or rule thoseabout us in order to gain self-importance. We no longerseek fame and honor in order to be praised. When by de-voted service to family, friends, business, or community weattract widespread affection and are sometimes singled outfor posts of greater responsibility and trust, we try to behumbly grateful and exert ourselves the more in a spirit oflove and service. True leadership, we find, depends uponable example and not upon vain displays of power or glory.Still more wonderful is the feeling that we do not haveto be specially distinguished among our fellows in order tobe useful and profoundly happy. Not many of us can beleaders of prominence, nor do we wish to be. Service, glad-ly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles wellaccepted or solved with God's help, the knowledge that athome or in the world outside we are partners in a commoneffort, the well-understood fact that in God's sight all hu-man beings are important, the proof that love freely givensurely brings a full return, the certainty that we are nolonger isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, thesurety that we need no longer be square pegs in round holesbut can fit and belong in God's scheme of thingsthese arethe permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for STEP TWELVE125which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap ofmaterial possessions, could possibly be substitutes. Trueambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition isthe deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under thegrace of God. These little studies of A.A. Twelve Steps now come to aclose. We have been considering so many problems that itmay appear that A.A. consists mainly of racking dilemmasand troubleshooting. To a certain extent, that is true. Wehave been talking about problems because we are problempeople who have found a way up and out, and who wish toshare our knowledge of that way with all who can use it.For it is only by accepting and solving our problems thatwe can begin to get right with ourselves and with the worldabout us, and with Him who presides over us all. Under-standing is the key to right principles and attitudes, andright action is the key to good living; therefore the joy ofgood living is the theme of A.A. Twelfth Step.With each passing day of our lives, may every one of ussense more deeply the inner meaning of A.A.'s simpleprayer:God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change,Courage to change the things we can,And wisdom to know the difference.  THE TWELVE TRADITIONS  Tradition OneOur common welfare should come first;personal recovery depends upon A.A. uni-ty.THE u n i ty of Alcoholics Anonymous is the most cher-ished quality our Society has. Our lives, the lives of all tocome, depend squarely upon it. We stay whole, or A.A.dies. Without unity, the heart of A.A. would cease to beat;our world arteries would no longer carry the life-givinggrace of God; His gift to us would be spent aimlessly. Backagain in their caves, alcoholics would reproach us and say,W h at a great th i n g A .A . m i gh t h av e b een !Does this mean, some will anxiously ask, that inA.A. the individual doesn't count for much? Is he to bedominated by his group and swallowed up in it?We may certainly answer this question with a loudNo! We believe there isn't a fellowship on earth whichlavishes more devoted care upon its individual members;surely there is none which more jealously guards the indi-vidual's right to think, talk, and act as he wishes. No A.A.can compel another to do anything; nobody can be pun-ished or expelled. Our Twelve Steps to recovery aresuggestions; the Twelve Traditions which guarantee A.A.'sunity contain not a single Don ' t. Th ey repeatedl y s ay Weought . . . but never You must!To many minds all this liberty for the individual spellssheer anarchy. Every newcomer, every friend who looks at129 130TRADITION ONEA.A. for the first time is greatly puzzled. They see libertyverging on license, yet they recognize at once that A.A. hasan irresistible strength of purpose and action. How, th eyask, can such a crowd of anarchists function at all? Howcan they possibly place their common welfare first? Whatin Heaven's name holds them together?Those who look closely soon have the key to thisstrange paradox. The A.A. member has to conform to theprinciples of recovery. His life actually depends upon obe-dience to spiritual principles. If he deviates too far, thepenalty is sure and swift; he sickens and dies. At first hegoes along because he must, but later he discovers a way oflife he really wants to live. Moreover, he finds he cannotkeep this priceless gift unless he gives it away. Neither henor anybody else can survive unless he carries the A.A.message. The moment this Twelfth Step work forms agroup, another discovery is madethat most individualscannot recover unless there is a group. Realization dawnsthat he is but a small part of a great whole; that no personalsacrifice is too great for preservation of the Fellowship. Helearns that the clamor of desires and ambitions within himmust be silenced whenever these could damage the group.It becomes plain that the group must survive or the individ-ual will not.So at the outset, how best to live and work together asgroups became the prime question. In the world about uswe saw personalities destroying whole peoples. The strug-gle for wealth, power, and prestige was tearing humanityapart as never before. If strong people were stalemated inthe search for peace and harmony, what was to become of TRADITION ONE131our erratic band of alcoholics? As we had once struggledand prayed for individual recovery, just so earnestly did wecommence to quest for the principles through which A.A.itself might survive. On anvils of experience, the structureof our Society was hammered out.Countless times, in as many cities and hamlets, we re-enacted the story of Eddie Rickenbacker and his coura-geous company when their plane crashed in the Pacific.Like us, they had suddenly found themselves saved fromdeath, but still floating upon a perilous sea. How well theysaw that their common welfare came first. None might be-come selfish of water or bread. Each needed to consider theothers, and in abiding faith they knew they must find theirreal strength. And this they did find, in measure to tran-scend all the defects of their frail craft, every test ofuncertainty, pain, fear, and despair, and even the death ofone.Thus has it been with A.A. By faith and by works wehave been able to build upon the lessons of an incredibleexperience. They live today in the Twelve Traditions of Al-coholics Anonymous, whichGod willingshall sustainus in unity for so long as He may need us. Tradition TwoFor our group purpose there is but one ul-timate authoritya loving God as He mayexpress Himself in our group conscience.Our leaders are but trusted servants; theydo not govern.WHERE does A.A. get its direction? Who runs it? This,too, is a puzzler for every friend and newcomer. When toldthat our Society has no president having authority to governit, no treasurer who can compel the payment of any dues,no board of directors who can cast an erring member intoouter darkness, when indeed no A.A. can give another a di-rective and enforce obedience, our friends gasp andexclaim, This simply can't be. There must be an anglesomewhere. These practical folk then read Tradition Two,and learn that the sole authority in A.A. is a loving God asHe may express Himself in the group conscience. They du-biously ask an experienced A.A. member if this reallyworks. The member, sane to all appearances, immediatelyanswers, Yes! It definitely does. The friends mutter thatthis looks vague, nebulous, pretty naive to them. Then theycommence to watch us with speculative eyes, pick up afragment of A.A. history, and soon have the solid facts.What are these facts of A.A. life which brought us tothis apparently impractical principle?John Doe, a good A.A., moveslet us sayto Middle-town, U.S.A. Alone now, he reflects that he may not be able132 TRADITION TWO133to stay sober, or even alive, unless he passes on to other al-coholics what was so freely given him. He feels a spiritualand ethical compulsion, because hundreds may be sufferingwithin reach of his help. Then, too, he misses his homegroup. He needs other alcoholics as much as they need him.He visits preachers, doctors, editors, policemen, and bar-tenders . . . with the result that Middletown now has agroup, and he is the founder.Being the founder, he is at first the boss. Who else couldbe? Very soon, though, his assumed authority to run every-thing begins to be shared with the first alcoholics he hashelped. At this moment, the benign dictator becomes thechairman of a committee composed of his friends. Theseare the growing group's hierarchy of serviceself-appoint-ed, of course, because there is no other way. In a matter ofmonths, A.A. booms in Middletown.The founder and his friends channel spirituality to new-comers, hire halls, make hospital arrangements, and entreattheir wives to brew gallons of coffee. Being on the humanside, the founder and his friends may bask a little in glory.They say to one another, Perhaps it would be a good ideaif we continue to keep a firm hand on A.A. in this town. Af-ter all, we are experienced. Besides, look at all the goodwe've done these drunks. They should be grateful! True,founders and their friends are sometimes wiser and morehumble than this. But more often at this stage they are not.Growing pains now beset the group. Panhandlers pan-handle. Lonely hearts pine. Problems descend like anavalanche. Still more important, murmurs are heard in thebody politic, which swell into a loud cry: Do these old- 134TRADITION TWOtimers think they can run this group forever? Let's have anelection. The founder and his friends are hurt and de-pressed. They rush from crisis to crisis and from member tomember, pleading; but it's no use, the revolution is on. Thegroup conscience is about to take over.Now comes the election. If the founder and his friendshave served well, they mayto their surprisebe reinstat-ed for a time. If, however, they have heavily resisted therising tide of democracy, they may be summarily beached.In either case, the group now has a so-called rotating com-mittee, very sharply limited in its authority. In no sensewhatever can its members govern or direct the group. Theyare servants. Theirs is the sometimes thankless privilege ofdoing the group's chores. Headed by the chairman, theylook after public relations and arrange meetings. Their trea-surer, strictly accountable, takes money from the hat that ispassed, banks it, pays the rent and other bills, and makes aregular report at business meetings. The secretary sees thatliterature is on the table, looks after the phone-answeringservice, answers the mail, and sends out notices of meet-ings. Such are the simple services that enable the group tofunction. The committee gives no spiritual advice, judgesno one's conduct, issues no orders. Every one of them maybe promptly eliminated at the next election if they try this.And so they make the belated discovery that they are reallyservants, not senators. These are universal experiences.Thus throughout A.A. does the group conscience decree theterms upon which its leaders shall serve.This brings us straight to the question Does A .A . h av ea real leadership? Most emphatically the answer is Yes, TRADITION TWO135notwithstanding the apparent lack of it. Let's turn again tothe deposed founder and his friends. What becomes ofthem? As their grief and anxiety wear away, a subtlechange begins. Ultimately, they divide into two classesknown in A.A. slang as elder statesmen and bleedingdeacons. The elder statesman is the one who sees the wis-dom of the group's decision, who holds no resentment overhis reduced status, whose judgment, fortified by consider-able experience, is sound, and who is willing to sit quietlyon the sidelines patiently awaiting developments. Thebleeding deacon is one who is just as surely convinced thatthe group cannot get along without him, who constantlyconnives for reelection to office, and who continues to beconsumed with self-pity. A few hemorrhage so badly thatdrained of all A.A. spirit and principlethey get drunk. Attimes the A.A. landscape seems to be littered with bleedingforms. Nearly every oldtimer in our Society has gonethrough this process in some degree. Happily, most of themsurvive and live to become elder statesmen. They becomethe real and permanent leadership of A.A. Theirs is the qui-et opinion, the sure knowledge and humble example thatresolve a crisis. When sorely perplexed, the group in-evitably turns to them for advice. They become the voice ofthe group conscience; in fact, these are the true voice of Al-coholics Anonymous. They do not drive by mandate; theylead by example. This is the experience which has led us tothe conclusion that our group conscience, well-advised byits elders, will be in the long run wiser than any single lead-er.When A.A. was only three years old, an event occurred 136TRADITION TWOdemonstrating this principle. One of the first members ofA.A., entirely contrary to his own desires, was obliged toconform to group opinion. Here is the story in his words.On e day I was doi n g a Twelfth Step job at a hospital inNew York. The proprietor, Charlie, summoned me to hisoffice. 'Bill,' he said, 'I think it's a shame that you are finan-cially so hard up. All around you these drunks are gettingwell and making money. But you're giving this work fulltime, and you're broke. It isn't fair.' Charlie fished in hisdesk and came up with an old financial statement. Handingit to me, he continued, 'This shows the kind of money thehospital used to make back in the 1920's. Thousands of dol-lars a month. It should be doing just as well now, and itwouldif only you'd help me. So why don't you moveyour work in here? I'll give you an office, a decent drawingaccount, and a very healthy slice of the profits. Three yearsago, when my head doctor, Silkworth, began to tell me ofthe idea of helping drunks by spirituality, I thought it wascrackpot stuff, but I've changed my mind. Some day thisbunch of ex-drunks of yours will fill Madison Square Gar-den, and I don't see why you should starve meanwhile.What I propose is perfectly ethical. You can become a laytherapist, and more successful than anybody in the busi-ness.'I was bowled over. There were a few twinges of con-science until I saw how really ethical Charlie's proposalwas. There was nothing wrong whatever with becoming alay therapist. I thought of Lois coming home exhaustedfrom the department store each day, only to cook supper fora houseful of drunks who weren't paying board. I thought TRADITION TWO137of the large sum of money still owing my Wall Street credi-tors. I thought of a few of my alcoholic friends, who weremaking as much money as ever. Why shouldn't I do as wellas they?Although I asked Charlie for a little time to consider it,my own mind was about made up. Racing back to Brook-lyn on the subway, I had a seeming flash of divineguidance. It was only a single sentence, but most convinc-ing. In fact, it came right out of the Biblea voice keptsaying to me, 'The laborer is worthy of his hire.' Arrivinghome, I found Lois cooking as usual, while three drunkslooked hungrily on from the kitchen door. I drew her asideand told the glorious news. She looked interested, but not asexcited as I thought she should be.It was meeting night. Although none of the alcoholicswe boarded seemed to get sober, some others had. Withtheir wives they crowded into our downstairs parlor. Atonce I burst into the story of my opportunity. Never shall Iforget their impassive faces, and the steady gaze they fo-cused upon me. With waning enthusiasm, my tale trailedoff to the end. There was a long silence.Almost timidly, one of my friends began to speak. 'Weknow how hard up you are, Bill. It bothers us a lot. We'veoften wondered what we might do about it. But I think Ispeak for everyone here when I say that what you now pro-pose bothers us an awful lot more.' The speaker's voicegrew more confident. 'Don't you realize,' he went on, 'thatyou can never become a professional? As generous asCharlie has been to us, don't you see that we can't tie thisthing up with his hospital or any other? You tell us that 138TRADITION TWOCharlie's proposal is ethical. Sure, it's ethical, but whatwe've got won't run on ethics only; it has to be better. Sure,Charlie's idea is good, but it isn't good enough. This is amatter of life and death, Bill, and nothing but the very bestwill do!' Challengingly, my friends looked at me as theirspokesman continued. 'Bill, haven't you often said righthere in this meeting that sometimes the good is the enemyof the best? Well, this is a plain case of it. You can't do thisthing to us!'So spoke the group conscience. The group was rightand I was wrong; the voice on the subway was not thevoice of God. Here was the true voice, welling up out ofmy friends. I listened, andthank GodI obeyed. Tradition ThreeThe only requirement for A.A. membershipis a desire to stop drinking.THIS Tradition is packed with meaning. For A.A. is reallysaying to every serious drinker, You are an A.A. memberif you say so. You can declare yourself in; nobody can keepyou out. No matter who you are, no matter how low you'vegone, no matter how grave your emotional complicationseven your crimeswe still can't deny you A.A. We don'twant to keep you out. We aren't a bit afraid you'll harm us,never mind how twisted or violent you may be. We justwant to be sure that you get the same great chance for so-briety that we've had. So you're an A.A. member the minuteyou declare yourself.To establish this principle of membership took years ofharrowing experience. In our early time, nothing seemed sofragile, so easily breakable as an A.A. group. Hardly an al-coholic we approached paid any attention; most of thosewho did join us were like flickering candles in a windstorm.Time after time, their uncertain flames blew out and could-n't be relighted. Our unspoken, constant thought wasW h i ch of us m ay b e th e n ex t?A member gives us a vivid glimpse of those days. Atone time, he says, every A.A. group had many member-ship rules. Everybody was scared witless that something orsomebody would capsize the boat and dump us all back139 140TRADITION THREEinto the drink. Our Foundation office* asked each group tosend in its list of 'protective' regulations. The total list was amile long. If all those rules had been in effect everywhere,nobody could have possibly joined A.A. at all, so great wasthe sum of our anxiety and fear.We were resolved to admit nobody to A.A.. but thathypothetical class of people we termed 'pure alcoholics.'Except for their guzzling, and the unfortunate results there-of, they could have no other complications. So beggars,tramps, asylum inmates, prisoners, queers, plain crackpots,and fallen women were definitely out. Yes sir, we'd cateronly to pure and respectable alcoholics! Any others wouldsurely destroy us. Besides, if we took in those odd ones,what would decent people say about us? We built a fine-mesh fence right around A.A.M ay b e th i s s oun ds com i cal n ow. M ay b e y ou th i n k weoldtimers were pretty intolerant. But I can tell you therewas nothing funny about the situation then. We were grimbecause we felt our lives and homes were threatened, andthat was no laughing matter. Intolerant, you say? Well, wewere frightened. Naturally, we began to act like most ev-erybody does when afraid. After all, isn't fear the true basisof intolerance? Yes, we were intolerant.How could we then guess that all those fears were toprove groundless? How could we know that thousands ofthese sometimes frightening people were to make astonish-ing recoveries and become our greatest workers and*In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation, Inc., waschanged to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous,Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office. TRADITION THREE141intimate friends? Was it credible that A.A. was to have a di-vorce rate far lower than average? Could we then foreseethat troublesome people were to become our principalteachers of patience and tolerance? Could any then imaginea society which would include every conceivable kind ofcharacter, and cut across every barrier of race, creed, poli-tics, and language with ease?Why did A.A. finally drop all its membership regula-tions? Why did we leave it to each newcomer to decidehimself whether he was an alcoholic and whether he shouldjoin us? Why did we dare to say, contrary to the experienceof society and government everywhere, that we would nei-ther punish nor deprive any A.A. of membership, that wemust never compel anyone to pay anything, believe any-thing, or conform to anything?The answer, now seen in Tradition Three, was simplici-ty itself. At last experience taught us that to take away anyalcoholic's full chance was sometimes to pronounce hisdeath sentence, and often to condemn him to endless mis-ery. Who dared to be judge, jury, and executioner of hisown sick brother?As group after group saw these possibilities, they finallyabandoned all membership regulations. One dramatic expe-rience after another clinched this determination until itbecame our universal tradition. Here are two examples:On the A.A. calendar it was Year Two. In that timenothing could be seen but two struggling, nameless groupsof alcoholics trying to hold their faces up to the light.A newcomer appeared at one of these groups, knockedon the door and asked to be let in. He talked frankly with 142TRADITION THREEthat group's oldest member. He soon proved that his was adesperate case, and that above all he wanted to get well.But, he asked, wi l l y ou l et m e j oi n y our group? Si n ce Iam the victim of another addiction even worse stigmatizedthan alcoholism, you may not want me among you. Or willyou?There was the dilemma. What should the group do?The oldest member summoned two others, and in confi-dence laid the explosive facts in their laps. Said he, Well,what about it? If we turn this man away, he'll soon die. Ifwe allow him in, only God knows what trouble he'll brew.What shall the answer beyes or no?At first the elders could look only at the objections. Wedeal, they said, with alcoholics only. Shouldn't we sacri-fice this one for the sake of the many? So went thediscussion while the newcomer's fate hung in the balance.Then one of the three spoke in a very different voice.W h at we are real l y af rai d of , he said, is our reputation.We are much more afraid of what people might say thanthe trouble this strange alcoholic might bring. As we'vebeen talking, five short words have been running throughmy mind. Something keeps repeating to me, 'What wouldthe Master do?' Not an oth er word was s ai d. W h at m ore i n-deed could be said?Overjoyed, the newcomer plunged into Twelfth Stepwork. Tirelessly he laid A.A.'s message before scores ofpeople. Since this was a very early group, those scores havesince multiplied themselves into thousands. Never did hetrouble anyone with his other difficulty. A.A. had taken itsfirst step in the formation of Tradition Three. TRADITION THREE143Not long after the man with the double stigma knockedfor admission, A.A.'s other group received into its member-ship a salesman we shall call Ed. A power driver, this one,and brash as any salesman could possibly be. He had atleast an idea a minute on how to improve A.A. These ideashe sold to fellow members with the same burning enthusi-asm with which he distributed automobile polish. But hehad one idea that wasn't so salable. Ed was an atheist. Hispet obsession was that A.A. could get along better withoutits God nonsense. He browbeat everybody, and every-body expected that he'd soon get drunkfor at the time,you see, A.A. was on the pious side. There must be a heavypenalty, it was thought, for blasphemy. Distressinglyenough, Ed proceeded to stay sober.At length the time came for him to speak in a meeting.We shivered, for we knew what was coming. He paid a finetribute to the Fellowship; he told how his family had beenreunited; he extolled the virtue of honesty; he recalled thejoys of Twelfth Step work; and then he lowered the boom.Cried Ed, I can't stand this God stuff! It's a lot of malarkeyfor weak folks. This group doesn't need it, and I won't haveit! To hell with it!A great wave of outraged resentment engulfed themeeting, sweeping every member to a single resolve: Outhe goes!The elders led Ed aside. They said firmly, You can'ttalk like this around here. You'll have to quit it or get out.With great sarcasm Ed came back at them. Now do tel l ! Isthat so? He reached over to a bookshelf and took up asheaf of papers. On top of them lay the foreword to the 144TRADITION THREEbook Alcoholics Anonymous then under preparation. Heread aloud, Th e on l y requi rem en t f or A .A . m em b ers h i p i sa desire to stop drinking. Rel en tl es s l y , Ed wen t on , W h enyou guys wrote that sentence, did you mean it, or didn'tyou?Dismayed, the elders looked at one another, for theyknew he had them cold. So Ed stayed.Ed not only stayed, he stayed sobermonth aftermonth. The longer he kept dry, the louder he talkedagainst God. The group was in anguish so deep that all fra-ternal charity had vanished. W h en, oh when, groanedmembers to one another, wi l l th at guy get drun k?Quite a while later, Ed got a sales job which took himout of town. At the end of a few days, the news came in.He'd sent a telegram for money, and everybody knew whatthat meant! Then he got on the phone. In those days, we'dgo anywhere on a Twelfth Step job, no matter how un-promising. But this time nobody stirred. Leave him alone!Let him try it by himself for once; maybe he'll learn a les-son!About two weeks later, Ed stole by night into an A.A.member's house and, unknown to the family, went to bed.Daylight found the master of the house and another frienddrinking their morning coffee. A noise was heard on thestairs. To their consternation, Ed appeared. A quizzicalsmile on his lips, he said, Have you fellows had yourmorning meditation? They quickly sensed that he wasquite in earnest. In fragments, his story came out.In a neighboring state, Ed had holed up in a cheap hotel.After all his pleas for help had been rebuffed, these words TRADITION THREE145rang in his fevered mind: Th ey have deserted me. I havebeen deserted by my own kind. This is the end . . . nothingis left. A s h e tos s ed on h i s b ed, h i s h an d b rus h ed th e b u-reau near by, touching a book. Opening the book, he read. Itwas a Gideon Bible. Ed never confided any more of whathe saw and felt in that hotel room. It was the year 1938. Hehasn't had a drink since.Nowadays, when oldtimers who know Ed foregather,they exclaim, W h at i f we h ad actual l y s ucceeded i n th row-ing Ed out for blasphemy? What would have happened tohim and all the others he later helped?So the hand of Providence early gave us a sign that anyalcoholic is a member of our Society when he says so. Tradition FourEach group should be autonomous exceptin matters affecting other groups or A.A. asa whole.AUTONOMY is a ten-dollar word. But in relation to us,it means very simply that every A.A. group can manage itsaffairs exactly as it pleases, except when A.A. as a whole isthreatened. Comes now the same question raised in Tradi-tion One. Isn't such liberty foolishly dangerous?Over the years, every conceivable deviation from ourTwelve Steps and Traditions has been tried. That was sureto be, since we are so largely a band of ego-driven individ-ualists. Children of chaos, we have defiantly played withevery brand of fire, only to emerge unharmed and, wethink, wiser. These very deviations created a vast process oftrial and error which, under the grace of God, has broughtus to where we stand today.When A.A.'s Traditions were first published, in 1946,we had become sure that an A.A. group could stand almostany amount of battering. We saw that the group, exactlylike the individual, must eventually conform to whatevertested principles would guarantee survival. We had discov-ered that there was perfect safety in the process of trial anderror. So confident of this had we become that the originalstatement of A.A. tradition carried this significant sentence:Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety146 TRADITION FOUR147may call themselves an A.A. group provided that as a groupthey have no other affiliation.This meant, of course, that we had been given thecourage to declare each A.A. group an individual entity,strictly reliant on its own conscience as a guide to action. Incharting this enormous expanse of freedom, we found itnecessary to post only two storm signals: A group ought notdo anything which would greatly injure A.A. as a whole,nor ought it affiliate itself with anything or anybody else.There would be real danger should we commence to callsome groups wet, oth ers dry , s till others Republicanor Communist, an d y et oth ers Catholic or ProtestantThe A.A. group would have to stick to its course or behopelessly lost. Sobriety had to be its sole objective. In allother respects there was perfect freedom of will and action.Every group had the right to be wrong.When A.A. was still young, lots of eager groups wereforming. In a town we'll call Middleton, a real crackerjackhad started up. The townspeople were as hot as firecrackersabout it. Stargazing, the elders dreamed of innovations.They figured the town needed a great big alcoholic center, akind of pilot plant A.A. groups could duplicate everywhere.Beginning on the ground floor there would be a club; in thesecond story they would sober up drunks and hand themcurrency for their back debts; the third deck would housean educational projectquite noncontroversial, of course.In imagination the gleaming center was to go up severalstories more, but three would do for a start. This would alltake a lot of moneyother people's money. Believe it ornot, wealthy townsfolk bought the idea. 148TRADITION FOURThere were, though, a few conservative dissentersamong the alcoholics. They wrote the Foundation* , A.A.'sheadquarters in New York, wanting to know about this sortof streamlining. They understood that the elders, just to nailthings down good, were about to apply to the Foundationfor a charter. These few were disturbed and skeptical.Of course, there was a promoter in the deala super-promoter. By his eloquence he allayed all fears, despite ad-vice from the Foundation that it could issue no charter, andthat ventures which mixed an A.A. group with medicationand education had come to sticky ends elsewhere. To makethings safer, the promoter organized three corporations andbecame president of them all. Freshly painted, the new cen-ter shone. The warmth of it all spread through the town.Soon things began to hum. To insure foolproof, continuousoperation, sixty-one rules and regulations were adopted.But alas, this bright scene was not long in darkening.Confusion replaced serenity. It was found that some drunksyearned for education, but doubted if they were alcoholics.The personality defects of others could be cured maybewith a loan. Some were club-minded, but it was just a ques-tion of taking care of the lonely heart. Sometimes theswarming applicants would go for all three floors. Somewould start at the top and come through to the bottom, be-coming club members; others started in the club, pitched abinge, were hospitalized, then graduated to education onthe third floor. It was a beehive of activity, all right, but un-*In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation, Inc., waschanged to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous,Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office. TRADITION FOUR149like a beehive, it was confusion compounded. An A.A.group, as such, simply couldn't handle this sort of project.All too late that was discovered. Then came the inevitableexplosionsomething like that day the boiler burst inWombley's Clapboard Factory. A chill chokedamp of fearand frustration fell over the group.When that lifted, a wonderful thing had happened. Thehead promoter wrote the Foundation office. He said hewished he'd paid some attention to A.A. experience. Thenhe did something else that was to become an A.A. classic. Itall went on a little card about golf-score size. The coverread: M i ddl eton Group #1. Rul e #62. On ce th e card wasunfolded, a single pungent sentence leaped to the eye:Don ' t take y ours el f too dam n s eri ous l y .Thus it was that under Tradition Four an A.A. grouphad exercised its right to be wrong. Moreover, it had per-formed a great service for Alcoholics Anonymous, becauseit had been humbly willing to apply the lessons it learned. Ithad picked itself up with a laugh and gone on to betterthings. Even the chief architect, standing in the ruins of hisdream, could laugh at himselfand that is the very acme ofhumility. Tradition FiveEach group has but one primary purposeto carry the message to the alcoholic whostill suffers. SHOEMAKER, stick to thy last!... better do one thingsupremely well than many badly. That is the central themeof this Tradition. Around it our Society gathers in unity. Thevery life of our Fellowship requires the preservation of thisprinciple.Alcoholics Anonymous can be likened to a group ofphysicians who might find a cure for cancer, and uponwhose concerted work would depend the answer for suffer-ers of this disease. True, each physician in such a groupmight have his own specialty. Every doctor concernedwould at times wish he could devote himself to his chosenfield rather than work only with the group. But once thesemen had hit upon a cure, once it became apparent that onlyby their united effort could this be accomplished, then all ofthem would feel bound to devote themselves solely to therelief of cancer. In the radiance of such a miraculous dis-covery, any doctor would set his other ambitions aside, atwhatever personal cost.Just as firmly bound by obligation are the members ofAlcoholics Anonymous, who have demonstrated that theycan help problem drinkers as others seldom can. Theunique ability of each A.A. to identify himself with, and150 TRADITION FIVE151bring recovery to, the newcomer in no way depends uponhis learning, eloquence, or on any special individual skills.The only thing that matters is that he is an alcoholic whohas found a key to sobriety. These legacies of suffering andof recovery are easily passed among alcoholics, one to theother. This is our gift from God, and its bestowal upon oth-ers like us is the one aim that today animates A.A.'s allaround the globe.There is another reason for this singleness of purpose. Itis the great paradox of A.A. that we know we can seldomkeep the precious gift of sobriety unless we give it away. Ifa group of doctors possessed a cancer cure, they might beconscience-stricken if they failed their mission through self-seeking. Yet such a failure wouldn't jeopardize their person-al survival. For us, if we neglect those who are still sick,there is unremitting danger to our own lives and sanity. Un-der these compulsions of self-preservation, duty, and love,it is not strange that our Society has concluded that it hasbut one high missionto carry the A.A. message to thosewho don't know there's a way out.Highlighting the wisdom of A.A.'s single purpose, amember tells this story:Restless one day, I felt I'd better do some Twelfth Stepwork. Maybe I should take out some insurance against aslip. But first I'd have to find a drunk to work on.So I hopped the subway to Towns Hospital, where Iasked Dr. Silkworth if he had a prospect. 'Nothing toopromising,' the little doc said. 'There's just one chap on thethird floor who might be a possibility. But he's an awfullytough Irishman. I never saw a man so obstinate. He shouts 152TRADITION FIVEthat if his partner would treat him better, and his wife wouldleave him alone, he'd soon solve his alcohol problem. He'shad a bad case of D.T.'s, he's pretty foggy, and he's verysuspicious of everybody. Doesn't sound too good, does it?But working with him may do something for you, so whydon't you have a go at it?'I was soon sitting beside a big hulk of a man. Decided-ly unfriendly, he stared at me out of eyes which were slits inhis red and swollen face. I had to agree with the doctorhecertainly didn't look good. But I told him my own story. Iexplained what a wonderful Fellowship we had, how wellwe understood each other. I bore down hard on the hope-lessness of the drunk's dilemma. I insisted that few drunkscould ever get well on their own steam, but that in ourgroups we could do together what we could not do sepa-rately. He interrupted to scoff at this and asserted he'd fixhis wife, his partner, and his alcoholism by himself. Sarcas-tically he asked, 'How much does your scheme cost?'I was thankful I could tell him, 'Nothing at all.'Hi s n ex t ques ti on : ' W h at are you getting out of it?'Of course, my answer was 'My own sobriety and amighty happy life.'Still dubious, he demanded, 'Do you really mean theonly reason you are here is to try and help me and to helpyourself?''Yes,' I said. 'That's absolutely all there is to it. There'sno angle.'Th en , h es i tan tl y , I v en tured to tal k ab out th e s pi ri tualside of our program. What a freeze that drunk gave me! I'dno sooner got the word 'spiritual' out of my mouth than he TRADITION FIVE153pounced. 'Oh!' he said. 'Now I get it! You're proselytizingfor some damn religious sect or other. Where do you getthat no angle stuff? I belong to a great church that meanseverything to me. You've got a nerve to come in here talk-ing religion!'Th an k h eav en I cam e up wi th th e ri gh t an s wer f or th atone. It was based foursquare on the single purpose of A.A.'You have faith,' I said. 'Perhaps far deeper faith than mine.No doubt you're better taught in religious matters than I. SoI can't tell you anything about religion. I don't even want totry. I'll bet, too, that you could give me a letter-perfect defi-nition of humility. But from what you've told me aboutyourself and your problems and how you propose to lickthem, I think I know what's wrong.''Okay,' he said. 'Give me the business.''Well,' said I, 'I think you're just a conceited Irishmanwho thinks he can run the whole show.'Th i s real l y rocked h i m . But as h e cal m ed down , h e b e-gan to listen while I tried to show him that humility was themain key to sobriety. Finally, he saw that I wasn't attempt-ing to change his religious views, that I wanted him to findthe grace in his own religion that would aid his recovery.From there on we got along fine.Now, con cl udes the oldtimer, suppose I'd beenobliged to talk to this man on religious grounds? Supposemy answer had to be that A.A. needed a lot of money; thatA.A. went in for education, hospitals, and rehabilitation?Suppose I'd suggested that I'd take a hand in his domesticand business affairs? Where would we have wound up? Noplace, of course. 154TRADITION FIVEYears later, this tough Irish customer liked to say, M ysponsor sold me one idea, and that was sobriety. At thetime, I couldn't have bought anything else. Tradition SixAn A.A. group ought never endorse, fi-nance or lend the A.A. name to any relatedfacility or outside enterprise, lest problemsof money, property and prestige divert usfrom our primary purpose.THE m o m e n t we saw that we had an answer for alco-holism, it was reasonable (or so it seemed at the time) for usto feel that we might have the answer to a lot of otherthings. The A.A. groups, many thought, could go into busi-ness, might finance any enterprise whatever in the totalfield of alcoholism. In fact, we felt duty-bound to throw thewhole weight of the A.A. name behind any meritoriouscause.Here are some of the things we dreamed. Hospitals did-n't like alcoholics, so we thought we'd build a hospital chainof our own. People needed to be told what alcoholism was,so we'd educate the public, even rewrite school and medicaltextbooks. We'd gather up derelicts from skid rows, sort outthose who could get well, and make it possible for the restto earn their livelihood in a kind of quarantined confine-ment. Maybe these places would make large sums ofmoney to carry on our other good works. We seriouslythought of rewriting the laws of the land, and having it de-clared that alcoholics are sick people. No more would theybe jailed; judges would parole them in our custody. We'dspill A.A. into the dark regions of dope addiction and crimi-155 156TRADITION SIXnality. We'd form groups of depressive and paranoid folks;the deeper the neurosis, the better we'd like it. It stood toreason that if alcoholism could be licked, so could anyproblem.It occurred to us that we could take what we had intothe factories and cause laborers and capitalists to love eachother. Our uncompromising honesty might soon clean uppolitics. With one arm around the shoulder of religion andthe other around the shoulder of medicine, we'd resolvetheir differences. Having learned to live so happily, we'dshow everybody else how. Why, we thought, our Society ofAlcoholics Anonymous might prove to be the spearhead ofa new spiritual advance! We might transform the world.Yes, we of A.A. did dream those dreams. How naturalthat was, since most alcoholics are bankrupt idealists. Near-ly every one of us had wished to do great good, performgreat deeds, and embody great ideals. We are all perfection-ists who, failing perfection, have gone to the other extremeand settled for the bottle and the blackout. Providence,through A.A., had brought us within reach of our highestexpectations. So why shouldn't we share our way of lifewith everyone?Whereupon we tried A.A. hospitalsthey all boggeddown because you cannot put an A.A. group into business;too many busybody cooks spoil the broth. A.A. groups hadtheir fling at education, and when they began to publiclywhoop up the merits of this or that brand, people becameconfused. Did A.A. fix drunks or was it an educationalproject? Was A.A. spiritual or was it medical? Was it a re-form movement? In consternation, we saw ourselves TRADITION SIX157getting married to all kinds of enterprises, some good andsome not so good. Watching alcoholics committed willy-nilly to prisons or asylums, we began to cry, Th ere ough ttabe a law! A .A .' s com m en ced to th um p tab l es i n l egi s l ati v ecommittee rooms and agitated for legal reform. That madegood newspaper copy, but little else. We saw we'd soon bemired in politics. Even inside A.A. we found it imperativeto remove the A.A. name from clubs and Twelfth Stephouses.These adventures implanted a deep-rooted convictionthat in no circumstances could we endorse any related en-terprise, no matter how good. We of AlcoholicsAnonymous could not be all things to all men, nor shouldwe try.Years ago this principle of no endorsement was put toa vital test. Some of the great distilling companies proposedto go into the field of alcohol education. It would be a goodthing, they believed, for the liquor trade to show a sense ofpublic responsibility. They wanted to say that liquor shouldbe enjoyed, not misused; hard drinkers ought to slow down,and problem drinkersalcoholicsshould not drink at all.In one of their trade associations, the question arose ofjust how this campaign should be handled. Of course, theywould use the resources of radio, press, and films to maketheir point. But what kind of person should head the job?They immediately thought of Alcoholics Anonymous. Ifthey could find a good public relations man in our ranks,why wouldn't he be ideal? He'd certainly know the prob-lem. His connection with A.A. would be valuable, becausethe Fellowship stood high in public favor and hadn't an en- 158TRADITION SIXemy in the world.Soon they'd spotted their man, an A.A. with the neces-sary experience. Straightway he appeared at New York'sA.A. headquarters, asking, Is there anything in our tradi-tion that suggests I shouldn't take a job like this one? Thekind of education seems good to me, and is not too contro-versial. Do you headquarters folks see any bugs in it?At first glance, it did look like a good thing. Then doubtcrept in. The association wanted to use our member's fullname in all its advertising; he was to be described both asits director of publicity and as a member of AlcoholicsAnonymous. Of course, there couldn't be the slightest ob-jection if such an association hired an A.A. member solelybecause of his public relations ability and his knowledge ofalcoholism. But that wasn't the whole story, for in this casenot only was an A.A. member to break his anonymity at apublic level, he was to link the name Alcoholics Anony-mous to this particular educational project in the minds ofmillions. It would be bound to appear that A.A. was nowbacking educationliquor trade association style.The minute we saw this compromising fact for what itwas, we asked the prospective publicity director how he feltabout it. Great guns! he said. Of cours e I can ' t take th ejob. The ink wouldn't be dry on the first ad before an awfulshriek would go up from the dry camp. They'd be out withlanterns looking for an honest A.A. to plump for theirbrand of education. A.A. would land exactly in the middleof the wet-dry controversy. Half the people in this countrywould think we'd signed up with the drys, the other halfwould think we'd joined the wets. What a mess! TRADITION SIX159Nev erth el es s , we poi n ted out, you still have a legalright to take this job.I know that, he said. But this is no time for legalities.Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life, and it comes first. Icertainly won't be the guy to land A.A. in big-time trouble,and this would really do it!Concerning endorsements, our friend had said it all. Wesaw as never before that we could not lend the A.A. nameto any cause other than our own. Tradition SevenEvery A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contribu-tions.SELF-SUPPORTING a l c o h o l i c s? Who ever heard ofsuch a thing? Yet we find that's what we have to be. Thisprinciple is telling evidence of the profound change thatA.A. has wrought in all of us. Everybody knows that activealcoholics scream that they have no troubles money can'tcure. Always, we've had our hands out. Time out of mindwe've been dependent upon somebody, usually money-wise. When a society composed entirely of alcoholics saysit's going to pay its bills, that's really news.Probably no A.A. Tradition had the labor pains this onedid. In early times, we were all broke. When you add to thisthe habitual supposition that people ought to give money toalcoholics trying to stay sober, it can be understood why wethought we deserved a pile of folding money. What greatthings A.A. would be able to do with it! But oddly enough,people who had money thought otherwise. They figuredthat it was high time we nowsoberpaid our own way.So our Fellowship stayed poor because it had to.There was another reason for our collective poverty. Itwas soon apparent that while alcoholics would spend lav-ishly on Twelfth Step cases, they had a terrific aversion todropping money into a meeting-place hat for group purpos-160 TRADITION SEVEN161es. We were astounded to find that we were as tight as thebark on a tree. So A.A., the movement, started and stayedbroke, while its individual members waxed prosperous.Alcoholics are certainly all-or-nothing people. Our re-actions to money prove this. As A.A. emerged from itsinfancy into adolescence, we swung from the idea that weneeded vast sums of money to the notion that A.A. should-n't have any. On every lip were the words You can't mixA.A. and money. We shall have to separate the spiritualfrom the material. We took this violent new tack becausehere and there members had tried to make money out oftheir A.A. connections, and we feared we'd be exploited.Now and then, grateful benefactors had endowed clubhous-es, and as a result there was sometimes outside interferencein our affairs. We had been presented with a hospital, andalmost immediately the donor's son became its principalpatient and would-be manager. One A.A. group was givenfive thousand dollars to do with what it would. The hassleover that chunk of money played havoc for years. Fright-ened by these complications, some groups refused to have acent in their treasuries.Despite these misgivings, we had to recognize the factthat A.A. had to function. Meeting places cost something.To save whole areas from turmoil, small offices had to beset up, telephones installed, and a few full-time secretarieshired. Over many protests, these things were accomplished.We saw that if they weren't, the man coming in the doorcouldn't get a break. These simple services would requiresmall sums of money which we could and would pay our-selves. At last the pendulum stopped swinging and pointed 162TRADITION SEVENstraight at Tradition Seven as it reads today.In this connection, Bill likes to tell the following point-ed story. He explains that when Jack Alexander's SaturdayEvening Post piece broke in 1941, thousands of frantic let-ters from distraught alcoholics and their families hit theFoundation* letterbox in New York. Our of f i ce s taf f , Bi l lsays, consisted of two people: one devoted secretary andmyself. How could this landslide of appeals be met? We'dhave to have some more full-time help, that was sure. Sowe asked the A.A. groups for voluntary contributions.Would they send us a dollar a member a year? Otherwisethis heartbreaking mail would have to go unanswered.To my surprise, the response of the groups was slow. Igot mighty sore about it. Looking at this avalanche of mailone morning at the office, I paced up and down rantinghow irresponsible and tightwad my fellow members were.Just then an old acquaintance stuck a tousled and achinghead in the door. He was our prize slippee. I could see hehad an awful hangover. Remembering some of my own,my heart filled with pity. I motioned him to my inside cubi-cle and produced a five-dollar bill. As my total income wasthirty dollars a week at the time, this was a fairly large do-nation. Lois really needed the money for groceries, but thatdidn't stop me. The intense relief on my friend's facewarmed my heart. I felt especially virtuous as I thought ofall the ex-drunks who wouldn't even send the Foundation adollar apiece, and here I was gladly making a five-dollar in-*In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation, Inc., waschanged to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous,Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office. TRADITION SEVEN163vestment to fix a hangover.Th e m eeti n g th at n i gh t was at New York's old 24thStreet Clubhouse. During the intermission, the treasurergave a timid talk on how broke the club was. (That was inthe period when you couldn't mix money and A.A. ) But fi-nally he said itthe landlord would put us out if we didn'tpay up. He concluded his remarks by saying, 'Now boys,please go heavier on the hat tonight, will you?'I heard all this quite plainly, as I was piously trying toconvert a newcomer who sat next to me. The hat came inmy direction, and 1 reached into my pocket. Still workingon my prospect, I fumbled and came up with a fifty-centpiece. Somehow it looked like a very big coin. Hastily, Idropped it back and fished out a dime, which clinked thinlyas I dropped it in the hat. Hats never got folding money inthose days.Th en I woke up. I wh o h ad b oas ted m y gen eros i ty th atmorning was treating my own club worse than the distantalcoholics who had forgotten to send the Foundation theirdollars. I realized that my five-dollar gift to the slippee wasan ego-feeding proposition, bad for him and bad for me.There was a place in A.A. where spirituality and moneywould mix, and that was in the hat!There is another story about money. One night in 1948,the trustees of the Foundation were having their quarterlymeeting. The agenda discussion included a very importantquestion. A certain lady had died. When her will was read,it was discovered she had left Alcoholics Anonymous intrust with the Alcoholic Foundation a sum of ten thousanddollars. The question was: Should A.A. take the gift? 164TRADITION SEVENWhat a debate we had on that one! The Foundation wasreally hard up just then; the groups weren't sending inenough for the support of the office; we had been tossing inall the book income and even that hadn't been enough. Thereserve was melting like snow in springtime. We neededthat ten thousand dollars. M ay b e, s om e s ai d, the groupswill never fully support the office. We can't let it shut down;it's far too vital. Yes, let's take the money. Let's take all suchdonations in the future. We're going to need them.Then came the opposition. They pointed out that theFoundation board already knew of a total of half a milliondollars set aside for A.A. in the wills of people still alive.Heaven only knew how much there was we hadn't heardabout. If outside donations weren't declined, absolutely cutoff, then the Foundation would one day become rich.Moreover, at the slightest intimation to the general publicfrom our trustees that we needed money, we could becomeimmensely rich. Compared to this prospect, the ten thou-sand dollars under consideration wasn't much, but like thealcoholic's first drink it would, if taken, inevitably set up adisastrous chain reaction. Where would that land us? Who-ever pays the piper is apt to call the tune, and if the A.A.Foundation obtained money from outside sources, itstrustees might be tempted to run things without reference tothe wishes of A.A. as a whole. Relieved of responsibility,every alcoholic would shrug and say, Oh , th e F oun dati onis wealthywhy should 1 bother? Th e pres s ure of th at f attreasury would surely tempt the board to invent all kinds ofschemes to do good with such funds, and so divert A.A.from its primary purpose. The moment that happened, our TRADITION SEVEN165Fellowship's confidence would be shaken. The boardwould be isolated, and would fall under heavy attack ofcriticism from both A..A. and the public. These were thepossibilities, pro and con.Then our trustees wrote a bright page of A.A. history.They declared for the principle that A.A. must always staypoor. Bare running expenses plus a prudent reserve wouldhenceforth be the Foundation's financial policy. Difficult asit was, they officially declined that ten thousand dollars, andadopted a formal, airtight resolution that all such futuregifts would be similarly declined. At that moment, we be-lieve, the principle of corporate poverty was firmly andfinally embedded in A.A. tradition.When these facts were printed, there was a profound re-action. To people familiar with endless drives for charitablefunds, A.A. presented a strange and refreshing spectacle.Approving editorials here and abroad generated a wave ofconfidence in the integrity of Alcoholics Anonymous. Theypointed out that the irresponsible had become responsible,and that by making financial independence part of its tradi-tion, Alcoholics Anonymous had revived an ideal that itsera had almost forgotten. Tradition EightAlcoholics Anonymous should remain for-ever nonprofessional, but our service cen-ters may employ special workers.ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS wi ll never have a pro-fessional class. We have gained some understanding of theancient words Freely ye have received, freely give. Wehave discovered that at the point of professionalism, moneyand spirituality do not mix. Almost no recovery from alco-holism has ever been brought about by the world's bestprofessionals, whether medical or religious. We do not de-cry professionalism in other fields, but we accept the soberfact that it does not work for us. Every time we have triedto professionalize our Twelfth Step, the result has been ex-actly the same: Our single purpose has been defeated.Alcoholics simply will not listen to a paid twelfth-step-per. Almost from the beginning, we have been positive thatface-to-face work with the alcoholic who suffers could bebased only on the desire to help and be helped. When anA.A. talks for money, whether at a meeting or to a singlenewcomer, it can have a very bad effect on him, too. Themoney motive compromises him and everything he saysand does for his prospect. This has always been so obviousthat only a very few A.A.'s have ever worked the TwelfthStep for a fee.Despite this certainty, it is nevertheless true that fewsubjects have been the cause of more contention within our166 TRADITION EIGHT167Fellowship than professionalism. Caretakers who sweptfloors, cooks who fried hamburgers, secretaries in offices,authors writing booksall these we have seen hotly as-sailed because they were, as their critics angrily remarked,making money out of A.A. Ignoring the fact that theselabors were not Twelfth Step jobs at all, the critics attackedas A.A. professionals these workers of ours who were oftendoing thankless tasks that no one else could or would do.Even greater furors were provoked when A.A. membersbegan to run rest homes and farms for alcoholics, whensome hired out to corporations as personnel men in chargeof the alcoholic problem in industry, when some becamenurses on alcoholic wards, when others entered the field ofalcohol education. In all these instances, and more, it wasclaimed that A.A. knowledge and experience were beingsold for money, hence these people, too, were profession-als.At last, however, a plain line of cleavage could be seenbetween professionalism and nonprofessionalism. Whenwe had agreed that the Twelfth Step couldn't be sold formoney, we had been wise. But when we had declared thatour Fellowship couldn't hire service workers nor could anyA.A. member carry our knowledge into other fields, wewere taking the counsel of fear, fear which today has beenlargely dispelled in the light of experience.Take the case of the club janitor and cook. If a club isgoing to function, it has to be habitable and hospitable. Wetried volunteers, who were quickly disenchanted withsweeping floors and brewing coffee seven days a week.They just didn't show up. Even more important, an empty 168TRADITION EIGHTclub couldn't answer its telephone, but it was an open invi-tation to a drunk on a binge who possessed a spare key. Sosomebody had to look after the place full time. If we hiredan alcoholic, he'd receive only what we'd have to pay anonalcoholic for the same job. The job was not to doTwelfth Step work; it was to make Twelfth Step work pos-sible. It was a service proposition, pure and simple.Neither could A.A. itself function without full-timeworkers. At the Foundation* a nd intergroup offices, wecouldn't employ nonalcoholics as secretaries; we had tohave people who knew the A.A. pitch. But the minute wehired them, the ultraconservative and fearful ones shrilled,Professionalism! A t on e peri od, th e s tatus of th es e f ai th-ful servants was almost unbearable. They weren't asked tospeak at A.A. meetings because they were making moneyout of A.A. A t ti m es , th ey were actually shunned by fel-low members. Even the charitably disposed described themas a necessary evil. Committees took full advantage ofthis attitude to depress their salaries. They could regainsome measure of virtue, it was thought, if they worked forA.A. real cheap. These notions persisted for years. Then wesaw that if a hardworking secretary answered the phonedozens of times a day, listened to twenty wailing wives, ar-ranged hospitalization and got sponsorship for tennewcomers, and was gently diplomatic with the irate drunkwho complained about the job she was doing and how shewas overpaid, then such a person could surely not be called*In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation, Inc., waschanged to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous,Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office. TRADITION EIGHT169a professional A.A. She was not professionalizing theTwelfth Step; she was just making it possible. She washelping to give the man coming in the door the break heought to have. Volunteer committeemen and assistantscould be of great help, but they could not be expected tocarry this load day in and day out.At the Foundation, the same story repeats itself. Eighttons of books and literature per month do not package andchannel themselves all over the world. Sacks of letters onevery conceivable A.A. problem ranging from a lonely-heart Eskimo to the growing pains of thousands of groupsmust be answered by people who know. Right contactswith the world outside have to be maintained. A.A.'s life-lines have to be tended. So we hire A.A. staff members. Wepay them well, and they earn what they get. They are pro-fessional secretaries,* but they certainly are not professionalA.A.'s.Perhaps the fear will always lurk in every A.A. heartthat one day our name will be exploited by somebody forreal cash. Even the suggestion of such a thing never fails towhip up a hurricane, and we have discovered that hurri-canes have a way of mauling with equal severity both thejust and the unjust. They are always unreasonable.No individuals have been more buffeted by such emo-tional gusts than those A.A.'s bold enough to acceptemployment with outside agencies dealing with the alcohol*The work of present-day staff members has no counterpartamong the job categories of commercial organizations. TheseA.A.'s bring a wide range of business and professional experienceto their service at G.S.O. 170TRADITION EIGHTproblem. A university wanted an A.A. member to educatethe public on alcoholism. A corporation wanted a personnelman familiar with the subject. A state drunk farm wanted amanager who could really handle inebriates. A city wantedan experienced social worker who understood what alcoholcould do to a family. A state alcohol commission wanted apaid researcher. These are only a few of the jobs whichA.A. members as individuals have been asked to fill. Nowand then, A.A. members have bought farms or rest homeswhere badly beat-up topers could find needed care. Thequestion wasand sometimes still isare such activitiesto be branded as professionalism under A.A. tradition?We think the answer is No. M em b ers wh o s el ect s uchfull-time careers do not professionalize A.A.'s TwelfthStep. Th e road to th i s con cl us i on was l on g an d rocky . A tfirst, we couldn't see the real issue involved. In former days,the moment an A.A. hired out to such enterprises, he wasimmediately tempted to use the name Alcoholics Anony-mous for publicity or money-raising purposes. Drunkfarms, educational ventures, state legislatures, and commis-sions advertised the fact that A.A. members served them.Unthinkingly, A.A.'s so employed recklessly brokeanonymity to thump the tub for their pet enterprise. For thisreason, some very good causes and all connected with themsuffered unjust criticism from A.A. groups. More often thannot, these onslaughts were spearheaded by the cry Profes-sionalism! That guy is making money out of A.A.! Yet nota single one of them had been hired to do A.A.'s TwelfthStep work. The violation in these instances was not profes-sionalism at all; it was breaking anonymity. A.A.'s sole TRADITION EIGHT171purpose was being compromised, and the name of Alco-holics Anonymous was being misused. It is significant, now that almost no A.A. in our Fellow-ship breaks anonymity at the public level, that nearly allthese fears have subsided. We see that we have no right orneed to discourage A.A.'s who wish to work as individualsin these wider fields. It would be actually antisocial werewe to forbid them. We cannot declare A.A. such a closedcorporation that we keep our knowledge and experience topsecret. If an A.A. member acting as a citizen can become abetter researcher, educator, personnel officer, then why not?Everybody gains and we have lost nothing. True, some ofthe projects to which A.A.'s have attached themselves havebeen ill-conceived, but that makes not the slightest differ-ence with the principle involved.This is the exciting welter of events which has finallycast up A.A.'s Tradition of nonprofessionalism. Our TwelfthStep is never to be paid for. but those who labor in servicefor us are worthy of their hire. Tradition NineA.A., as such, ought never be organized;but we may create service boards or com-mittees directly responsible to those theyserve.WHEN Tradition Nine was first written, it said that Al-coholics Anonymous needs the least possible organization.In years since then, we have changed our minds about that.Today, we are able to say with assurance that AlcoholicsAnonymousA.A. as a wholeshould never be orga-nized at all. Then, in seeming contradiction, we proceed tocreate special service boards and committees which inthemselves are organized. How, then, can we have an unor-ganized movement which can and does create a serviceorganization for itself? Scanning this puzzler, people say,W h at do th ey m ean , n o organ i zati on ?Well, let's see. Did anyone ever hear of a nation, achurch, a political party, even a benevolent association thathad no membership rules? Did anyone ever hear of a soci-ety which couldn't somehow discipline its members andenforce obedience to necessary rules and regulations?Doesn't nearly every society on earth give authority tosome of its members to impose obedience upon the rest andto punish or expel offenders? Therefore, every nation, infact every form of society, has to be a government adminis-tered by human beings. Power to direct or govern is theessence of organization everywhere.172 TRADITION NINE173Yet Alcoholics Anonymous is an exception. It does notconform to this pattern. Neither its General Service Confer-ence, its Foundation Board,* n or the humblest groupcommittee can issue a single directive to an A.A. memberand make it stick, let alone mete out any punishment. We'vetried it lots of times, but utter failure is always the result.Groups have tried to expel members, but the banished havecome back to sit in the meeting place, saying, This is lifefor us; you can't keep us out. Com m i ttees h av e i n s tructedmany an A.A. to stop working on a chronic backslider, onlyto be told: How I do my Twelfth Step work is my busi-ness. Who are you to judge? This doesn't mean an A.A.won't take advice or suggestions from more experiencedmembers, but he surely won't take orders. Who is more un-popular than the oldtime A.A., full of wisdom, who movesto another area and tries to tell the group there how to runits business? He and all like him who view with alarm forthe good of A.A. meet the most stubborn resistance or,worse still, laughter.You might think A.A.'s headquarters in New Yorkwould be an exception. Surely, the people there would haveto have some authority. But long ago, trustees and staffmembers alike found they could do no more than makesuggestions, and very mild ones at that. They even had tocoin a couple of sentences which still go into half the lettersthey write: Of course, you are at perfect liberty to handlethis matter any way you please. But the majority experience*In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation, Inc., waschanged to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous,Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office. 174TRADITION NINEin A.A. does seem to suggest . . . Now, that attitude is farremoved from central government, isn't it? We recognizethat alcoholics can't be dictated toindividually or collec-tively.At this juncture, we can hear a churchman exclaim,Th ey are m aki n g di s ob edi en ce a v i rtue! He i s j oi n ed b y apsychiatrist who says, Def i an t b rats ! Th ey won ' t grow upand conform to social usage! Th e m an i n th e s treet s ay s , Idon't understand it. They must be nuts! But all these ob-servers have overlooked something unique in AlcoholicsAnonymous. Unless each A.A. member follows to the bestof his ability our suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he al-most certainly signs his own death warrant. Hisdrunkenness and dissolution are not penalties inflicted bypeople in authority; they result from his personal disobedi-ence to spiritual principles.The same stern threat applies to the group itself. Unlessthere is approximate conformity to A.A.'s Twelve Tradi-tions, the group, too, can deteriorate and die. So we of A.A.do obey spiritual principles, first because we must, and ulti-mately because we love the kind of life such obediencebrings. Great suffering and great love are A.A.'s disciplinar-ians; we need no others.It is clear now that we ought never to name boards togovern us, but it is equally clear that we shall always needto authorize workers to serve us. It is the difference be-tween the spirit of vested authority and the spirit of service,two concepts which are sometimes poles apart. It is in thisspirit of service that we elect the A.A. group's informal ro-tating committee, the intergroup association for the area, TRADITION NINE175and the General Service Conferences of Alcoholics Anony-mous for A.A. as a whole. Even our Foundation, once anindependent board, is today directly accountable to our Fel-lowship. Its trustees are the caretakers and expediters of ourworld services.Just as the aim of each A.A. member is personal sobri-ety, the aim of our services is to bring sobriety within reachof all who want it. If nobody does the group's chores, if thearea's telephone rings unanswered, if we do not reply to ourmail, then A.A. as we know it would stop. Our communi-cations lines with those who need our help would bebroken.A.A. has to function, but at the same time it must avoidthose dangers of great wealth, prestige, and entrenchedpower which necessarily tempt other societies. Though Tra-dition Nine at first sight seems to deal with a purelypractical matter, in its actual operation it discloses a societywithout organization, animated only by the spirit of servicea true fellowship. Tradition TenAlcoholics Anonymous has no opinion onoutside issues; hence the A.A. name oughtnever be drawn into public controversy.NEVER since it began has Alcoholics Anonymous beendivided by a major controversial issue. Nor has our Fellow-ship ever publicly taken sides on any question in anembattled world. This, however, has been no earned virtue.It could almost be said that we were born with it, for, as oneoldtimer recently declared, Practically never have I hearda heated religious, political, or reform argument amongA.A. members. So long as we don't argue these matters pri-vately, it's a cinch we never shall publicly.As by some deep instinct, we A.A.'s have known fromthe very beginning that we must never, no matter what theprovocation, publicly take sides in any fight, even a worthyone. All history affords us the spectacle of striving nationsand groups finally torn asunder because they were designedfor, or tempted into, controversy. Others fell apart becauseof sheer self-righteousness while trying to enforce upon therest of mankind some millennium of their own specifica-tion. In our own times, we have seen millions die inpolitical and economic wars often spurred by religious andracial difference. We live in the imminent possibility of afresh holocaust to determine how men shall be governed,and how the products of nature and toil shall be divided176 TRADITION TEN177among them. That is the spiritual climate in which A.A.was born, and by God's grace has nevertheless flourished.Let us reemphasize that this reluctance to fight one an-other or anybody else is not counted as some special virtuewhich makes us feel superior to other people. Nor does itmean that the members of Alcoholics Anonymous, now re-stored as citizens of the world, are going to back away fromtheir individual responsibilities to act as they see the rightupon issues of our time. But when it comes to A.A. as awhole, that's quite a different matter. In this respect, we donot enter into public controversy, because we know that ourSociety will perish if it does. We conceive the survival andspread of Alcoholics Anonymous to be something of fargreater importance than the weight we could collectivelythrow back of any other cause. Since recovery from alco-holism is life itself to us, it is imperative that we preserve infull strength our means of survival.Maybe this sounds as though the alcoholics in A.A. hadsuddenly gone peaceable, and become one great big happyfamily. Of course, this isn't so at all. Human beings that weare, we squabble. Before we leveled off a bit, A.A. lookedmore like one prodigious squabble than anything else, atleast on the surface. A corporation director who had justvoted a company expenditure of a hundred thousand dol-lars would appear at an A.A. business meeting and blow histop over an outlay of twenty-five dollars' worth of neededpostage stamps. Disliking the attempt of some to manage agroup, half its membership might angrily rush off to formanother group more to their liking. Elders, temporarilyturned Pharisee, have sulked. Bitter attacks have been di- 178TRADITION TENrected against people suspected of mixed motives. Despitetheir din, our puny rows never did A.A. a particle of harm.They were just part and parcel of learning to work and livetogether. Let it be noted, too, that they were almost alwaysconcerned with ways to make A.A. more effective, how todo the most good for the most alcoholics.The Washingtonian Society, a movement among alco-holics which started in Baltimore a century ago, almostdiscovered the answer to alcoholism. At first, the societywas composed entirely of alcoholics trying to help one an-other. The early members foresaw that they should dedicatethemselves to this sole aim. In many respects, the Washing-tonians were akin to A.A. of today. Their membershippassed the hundred thousand mark. Had they been left tothemselves, and had they stuck to their one goal, they mighthave found the rest of the answer. But this didn't happen.Instead, the Washingtonians permitted politicians and re-formers, both alcoholic and nonalcoholic, to use the societyfor their own purposes. Abolition of slavery, for example,was a stormy political issue then. Soon, Washingtonianspeakers violently and publicly took sides on this question.Maybe the society could have survived the abolition con-troversy, but it didn't have a chance from the moment itdetermined to reform America's drinking habits. When theWashingtonians became temperance crusaders, within avery few years they had completely lost their effectivenessin helping alcoholics.The lesson to be learned from the Washingtonians wasnot overlooked by Alcoholics Anonymous. As we surveyedthe wreck of that movement, early A.A. members resolved TRADITION TEN179to keep our Society out of public controversy. Thus waslaid the cornerstone for Tradition Ten: Alcoholics Anony-mous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A.name ought never be drawn into public controversy. Tradition ElevenOur public relations policy is based on at-traction rather than promotion; we need al-ways maintain personal anonymity at thelevel of press, radio and films.WITHOUT its legions of well-wishers, A.A. could neverhave grown as it has. Throughout the world, immense andfavorable publicity of every description has been the princi-pal means of bringing alcoholics into our Fellowship. InA.A. offices, clubs, and homes, telephones ring constantly.One voice says, I read a piece in the newspapers . . .; an-other, We heard a radio program . . .; and still another,We saw a moving picture . . . or We saw somethingabout A.A. on television. . . . It is no exaggeration to saythat half of A.A.'s membership has been led to us throughchannels like these.The inquiring voices are not all alcoholics or their fami-lies. Doctors read medical papers about AlcoholicsAnonymous and call for more information. Clergymen seearticles in their church journals and also make inquiries.Employers learn that great corporations have set their ap-proval upon us, and wish to discover what can be doneabout alcoholism in their own firms.Therefore, a great responsibility fell upon us to developthe best possible public relations policy for AlcoholicsAnonymous. Through many painful experiences, we thinkwe have arrived at what that policy ought to be. It is the op-180 TRADITION ELEVEN181posite in many ways of usual promotional practice. Wefound that we had to rely upon the principle of attractionrather than of promotion.Let's see how these two contrasting ideasattractionand promotionwork out. A political party wishes to winan election, so it advertises the virtues of its leadership todraw votes. A worthy charity wants to raise money; forth-with, its letterhead shows the name of every distinguishedperson whose support can be obtained. Much of the politi-cal, economic, and religious life of the world is dependentupon publicized leadership. People who symbolize causesand ideas fill a deep human need. We of A.A. do not ques-tion that. But we do have to soberly face the fact that beingin the public eye is hazardous, especially for us. By temper-ament, nearly every one of us had been an irrepressiblepromoter, and the prospect of a society composed almostentirely of promoters was frightening. Considering this ex-plosive factor, we knew we had to exercise self-restraint.The way this restraint paid off was startling. It resultedin more favorable publicity of Alcoholics Anonymous thancould possibly have been obtained through all the arts andabilities of A.A.'s best press agents. Obviously, A.A. had tobe publicized somehow, so we resorted to the idea that itwould be far better to let our friends do this for us. Preciselythat has happened, to an unbelievable extent. Veteran news-men, trained doubters that they are, have gone all out tocarry A.A.'s message. To them, we are something morethan the source of good stories. On almost every newsfront,the men and women of the press have attached themselvesto us as friends. 182TRADITION ELEVENIn the beginning, the press could not understand our re-fusal of all personal publicity. They were genuinely baffledby our insistence upon anonymity. Then they got the point.Here was something rare in the worlda society whichsaid it wished to publicize its principles and its work, butnot its individual members. The press was delighted withthis attitude. Ever since, these friends have reported A.A.with an enthusiasm which the most ardent members wouldfind hard to match.There was actually a time when the press of Americathought the anonymity of A.A. was better for us than someof our own members did. At one point, about a hundred ofour Society were breaking anonymity at the public level.With perfectly good intent, these folks declared that theprinciple of anonymity was horse-and-buggy stuff, some-thing appropriate to A.A.'s pioneering days. They were surethat A.A. could go faster and farther if it availed itself ofmodern publicity methods. A.A., they pointed out, includedmany persons of local, national, or international fame. Pro-vided they were willingand many werewhy shouldn'ttheir membership be publicized, thereby encouraging oth-ers to join us? These were plausible arguments, but happilyour friends of the writing profession disagreed with them.The Foundation* wrote letters to practically every newsoutlet in North America, setting forth our public relationspolicy of attraction rather than promotion, and emphasizingSince that time, editors and rewrite men have repeatedlydeleted names and pictures of members from A.A. copy;frequently, they have reminded ambitious individuals ofA.A.'s anonymity policy. They have even sacrificed good TRADITION ELEVEN183stories to this end. The force of their cooperation has cer-tainly helped. Only a few A.A. members are left whodeliberately break anonymity at the public level.This, in brief, is the process by which A.A.'s TraditionEleven was constructed. To us, however, it represents farmore than a sound public relations policy. It is more than adenial of self-seeking. This Tradition is a constant and prac-tical reminder that personal ambition has no place in A.A.In it, each member becomes an active guardian of our Fel-lowship. Tradition TwelveAnonymity is the spiritual foundation of allour traditions, ever reminding us to placeprinciples before personalities.THE s p i r i t u al substance of anonymity is sacrifice. Be-cause A.A.'s Twelve Traditions repeatedly ask us to give uppersonal desires for the common good, we realize that thesacrificial spiritwell symbolized by anonymityis thefoundation of them all. It is A.A.'s proved willingness tomake these sacrifices that gives people their high confi-dence in our future.But in the beginning, anonymity was not born of confi-dence; it was the child of our early fears. Our first namelessgroups of alcoholics were secret societies. New prospectscould find us only through a few trusted friends. The barehint of publicity, even for our work, shocked us. Thoughex-drinkers, we still thought we had to hide from publicdistrust and contempt.When the Big Book appeared in 1939, we called it Al-coholics Anonymous. Its foreword made this revealingstatement: It is important that we remain anonymous be-cause we are too few, at present, to handle theoverwhelming number of personal appeals which may re-sult from this publication. Being mostly business orprofessional folk, we could not well carry on our occupa-tions in such an event. Between these lines, it is easy toread our fear that large numbers of incoming people mightbreak our anonymity wide open.184 TRADITION TWELVE185As the A.A. groups multiplied, so did anonymity prob-lems. Enthusiastic over the spectacular recovery of abrother alcoholic, we'd sometimes discuss those intimateand harrowing aspects of his case meant for his sponsor'sear alone. The aggrieved victim would then tightly declarethat his trust had been broken. When such stories got intocirculation outside of A.A., the loss of confidence in ouranonymity promise was severe. It frequently turned peoplefrom us. Clearly, every A.A. member's nameand story,toohad to be confidential, if he wished. This was our firstlesson in the practical application of anonymity.With characteristic intemperance, however, some of ournewcomers cared not at all for secrecy. They wanted toshout A.A. from the housetops, and did, Alcoholics barelydry rushed about bright-eyed, buttonholing anyone whowould listen to their stories. Others hurried to place themselves before microphones and cameras. Sometimes, theygot distressingly drunk and let their groups down with abang. They had changed from A.A. members into A.A.show-offs.This phenomenon of contrast really set us thinking.Squarely before us was the question How anonymousshould an A.A. member be? Our growth m ade i t pl ai n th atwe couldn't be a secret society, but it was equally plain thatwe couldn't be a vaudeville circuit, either. The charting of asafe path between these extremes took a long time.As a rule, the average newcomer wanted his family toknow immediately what he was trying to do. He also want-ed to tell others who had tried to help himhis doctor, hisminister, and close friends. As he gained confidence, he felt 186TRADITION TWELVEit right to explain his new way of life to his employer andbusiness associates. When opportunities to be helpful camealong, he found he could talk easily about A.A. to almostanyone. These quiet disclosures helped him to lose his fearof the alcoholic stigma, and spread the news of A.A.'s exis-tence in his community. Many a new man and womancame to A.A. because of such conversations. Though not inthe strict letter of anonymity, such communications werewell within its spirit.But it became apparent that the word-of-mouth methodwas too limited. Our work, as such, needed to be publi-cized. The A.A. groups would have to reach quickly asmany despairing alcoholics as they could. Consequently,many groups began to hold meetings which were open tointerested friends and the public, so that the average citizencould see for himself just what A.A. was all about. The re-sponse to these meetings was warmly sympathetic. Soon,groups began to receive requests for A.A. speakers to ap-pear before civic organizations, church groups, and medicalsocieties. Provided anonymity was maintained on theseplatforms, and reporters present were cautioned against theuse of names or pictures, the result was fine.Then came our first few excursions into major publicity,which were breathtaking. Cleveland's Plain Dealer articlesabout us ran that town's membership from a few into hun-dreds overnight. The news stories of Mr. Rockefeller'sdinner for Alcoholics Anonymous helped double our totalmembership in a year's time. Jack Alexander's famous Sat-urday Evening Post piece made A.A. a national institution.Such tributes as these brought opportunities for still more TRADITION TWELVE187recognition. Other newspapers and magazines wanted A.A.stories. Film companies wanted to photograph us. Radio,and finally television, besieged us with requests for appear-ances. What should we do?As this tide offering top public approval swept in, werealized that it could do us incalculable good or great harm.Everything would depend upon how it was channeled. Wesimply couldn't afford to take the chance of letting self-ap-pointed members present themselves as messiahsrepresenting A.A. before the whole public. The promoterinstinct in us might be our undoing. If even one publicly gotdrunk, or was lured into using A.A.'s name for his own pur-poses, the damage might be irreparable. At this altitude(press, radio, films, and television), anonymity100 per-cent anonymitywas the only possible answer. Here,principles would have to come before personalities, withoutexception.These experiences taught us that anonymity is real hu-mility at work. It is an all-pervading spiritual quality whichtoday keynotes A.A. life everywhere. Moved by the spiritof anonymity, we try to give up our natural desires for per-sonal distinction as A.A. members both among fellowalcoholics and before the general public. As we lay asidethese very human aspirations, we believe that each of ustakes part in the weaving of a protective mantle which cov-ers our whole Society and under which we may grow andwork in unity.We are sure that humility, expressed by anonymity, isthe greatest safeguard that Alcoholics Anonymous can everhave.  TraditionsLong Form(The Twelve Traditions)Our A.A. experience has taught us that:OneEach member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but asmall part of a great whole. A.A. must continue to live ormost of us will surely die. Hence our common welfarecomes first. But individual welfare follows close afterward.TwoFor our group purpose there is but one ultimate au-thoritya loving God as He may express Himself in ourgroup conscience. ThreeOur membership ought to include all who sufferfrom alcoholism. Hence we may refuse none who wish torecover. Nor ought A.A. membership ever depend on mon-ey or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gatheredtogether for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group,provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation. FourWith respect to its own affairs, each A.A. groupshould be responsible to no other authority other than itsown conscience. But when its plans concern the welfare ofneighboring groups also, those groups ought to be consult-ed. And no group, regional committee, or individual shouldever take any action that might greatly affect A.A. as awhole without conferring with the trustees of the GeneralService Board. On such issues our common welfare isparamount.189 190TRADITIONSLONG FORMFiveEach Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be aspiritual entity having but one primary purposethat ofcarrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.SixProblems of money, property, and authority may eas-ily divert us from our primary spiritual aim. We think,therefore, that any considerable property of genuine use toA.A. should be separately incorporated and managed, thusdividing the material from the spiritual. An A.A. group, assuch, should never go into business. Secondary aids to A.A.such as clubs or hospitals which require much property oradministration, ought to be incorporated and so set apartthat, if necessary, they can be freely discarded by thegroups. Hence such facilities ought not to use the A.A.name. Their management should be the sole responsibilityof those people who financially support them. For clubs,A.A. managers are usually preferred. But hospitals, as wellas other places of recuperation, ought to be well outsideA.A.and medically supervised. While an A.A. groupmay cooperate with anyone, such cooperation ought neverto go so far as affiliation or endorsement, actual or implied.An A.A. group can bind itself to no one.SevenThe A.A. groups themselves ought to be fully sup-ported by the voluntary contributions of their ownmembers. We think that each group should soon achievethis ideal; that any public solicitation of funds using thename of Alcoholics Anonymous is highly dangerouswhether by groups, clubs, hospitals, or other outside agen-cies, that acceptance of large gifts from any source, or ofcontributions carrying any obligation whatever, is unwise. TRADITIONSLONG FORM191Then, too, we view with much concern those A.A. trea-suries which continue, beyond prudent reserves, toaccumulate funds for no stated A.A. purpose. Experiencehas often warned us that nothing can so surely destroy ourspiritual heritage as futile disputes over property, money,and authority. EightAlcoholics Anonymous should remain forevernonprofessional. We define professionalism as the occupa-tion of counseling alcoholics for fees or hire. But we mayemploy alcoholics where they are going to perform thoseservices for which we might otherwise have to engage non-alcoholics. Such special services may be wellrecompensed. But our usual A.A. Twelfth Step work isnever to be paid for.NineEach A.A. group needs the least possible organiza-tion. Rotating leadership is the best. The small group mayelect its secretary, the large group its rotating committee,and the groups of a large metropolitan area their central orintergroup committee, which often employs a full-time sec-retary. The trustees of the General Service Board are, ineffect, our A.A. General Service Committee. They are thecustodians of our A.A. Tradition and the receivers of volun-tary A.A. contributions by which we maintain our A.A.General Service Office in New York. They are authorizedby the groups to handle our overall public relations, andthey guarantee the integrity of our principal newspaper, theA.A. Grapevine. All such representatives are to be guidedin the spirit of service, for true leaders in A.A. are but trust-ed and experienced servants of the whole. They derive no 192TRADITIONSLONG FORMreal authority from their titles; they do not govern. Univer-sal respect is the key to their usefulness.TenNo A.A. group or member should ever, in such away as to implicate A.A., express any opinion on outsidecontroversial issuesparticularly those of politics, alcoholreform, or sectarian religion. The Alcoholics Anonymousgroups oppose no one. Concerning such matters they canexpress no views whatsoever. ElevenOur relations with the general public should becharacterized by personal anonymity. We think A.A. shouldavoid sensational advertising. Our names and pictures asA.A. members ought not be broadcast, filmed, or publiclyprinted. Our public relations should be guided by the prin-ciple of attraction rather than promotion. There is neverneed to praise ourselves. We feel it better that our friendsrecommend us. TwelveAnd finally, we of Alcoholics Anonymous be-lieve that the principle of anonymity has an immensespiritual significance. It reminds us that we are to placeprinciples before personalities; that we are to practice agenuine humility. This to the end that our great blessingsmay never spoil us; that we shall forever live in thankfulcontemplation of Him who presides over us all.

AA-12-Steps-12-Traditions.pdf