Carrying the Message as the Result of a Spiritual Awakening – 1947 – Bill W.

rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves there are such unfortunates they are not at fault they seem to have been born that way they are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty their chances are less than average there are those two who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like what happened and what we are like now if you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it then you are ready to take certain steps at some of these we bought we thought we could find an easier softer way but we could not with all the earnestness as our command we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely remember that we deal with alcohol cunning baffling powerful without help it is too much for us but there is one who has all power that one is God may you find him now half measures availed us nothing we stood at the turning point we asked his protection and care with complete abandoned here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery one we admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable two came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity three made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him for made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves five admitted to God to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs six were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character seven humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings eight made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all nine made direct amends to such people whenever possible except when to do so would injure them or others ten continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it 11 saw through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out 12 having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs many of us exclaimed what an order I can't go through with it do not be discouraged no one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles we are not Saints the point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines the principles we have set down our guides to progress we claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection there are two ways of looking at Alcoholics Anonymous, to our friends seated here among us, Alcoholics Anonymous doubtless seems a huge and spectacular success. They may be thinking of us as the people who have won brilliant personal victories by fighting great odds. But every AA in this audience knows his friends give him too much credit that in actuality his recovery did not happen that way at all. Each in his heart knows that he became too weak to fight alone, that he had to confess his life had become unmanageable and therefore unbearable. He remembers how his power of will to conquer alcohol was crushed, how he finally saw he could never win through under his own strength. Nevertheless, he will tell you that this bitter admission, the hardest a human being can make, was the beginning of his new life. That new life of which this meeting is such a glowing and grateful testimony. Hence no AA meeting can ever be a boast of personal victory. It is instead our humble demonstration of that saving grace which all of us have found in a simple reliance on a power greater than ourselves. But, our friends may object, isn't this contrary to most human experience nowadays? Each of you quits the fight You form in a group, then you help each other. Meanwhile, depending upon some higher power. We admit it works. We have seen the proof. Still, your philosophy doesn't entirely make sense. How can you win wars without fighting battles? Nowadays, when almost everybody feels he must fight, even to survive, Here is the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous telling us, yes, proving to the whole world, that in their experience they have found a new life only by first admitting they could not personally control the old one, let alone managing anything or anybody else. By what strange paradox, then, has this new strength arisen out of your bygone weakness? whence out of complete defeat comes your astounding transformation. Explain, if you can, the secret of this seeming contradiction, this divine paradox. These are the very natural questions of those who first observe us. Intuitively, our friends sense a mystery. Most of them feel they have seen a miracle. for so powerful has been the alcoholic obsession that all through the ages few victims have ever survived now comes this wholesale liberation thousands every month is this miracle of recovery do only to the fact that we alcoholics have gotten together telling each other that we are sick advising each other to fetch in more sufferers and exhorting each other to be more honest and tolerant? Is that all there is to it? Have we only constructed one more psychological gadget, this time operated by the patient rather than the doctors? Few people who have taken a good look at AA believe this to be the full explanation. Some years ago a prominent physician was asked to explain Alcoholics Anonymous to a group of his colleagues. Said he, when declining the invitation, These AAs have assembled many powerful psychological resources. Yet the sum total of these resources does not explain to me the results I have witnessed. In days and weeks, I have seen unbelievable changes in their behavior and motivation. Changes in alcoholics which formerly, if at all possible, should have taken years at best. I can only say this, there is a power at work among these people for which I cannot account. I have to call it the X-factor. Most AA's call it God. I have no scientific explanation for this mystery. Like our friend the doctor, any AA will also admit that he cannot fully explain the inner mystery of his own transformation. He can only tell the story of it as best he can so that others may, if they wish, find their own freedom. Mine is a simple tale to tell. As with countless other thousands who had gone before me down the left-hand path to alcohol oblivion, I came finally to the jumping-off place and could not turn back. It was midsummer 1934 at a New York hospital for alcoholics. I was lying on one of those grim beds of physical and mental anguish we AAs know so well. I had been there before, but this time it was different. This time I had no hope. This was the finish, the curtain, it seemed to me. What a devastating blow to my pride! I, who had thought so well of myself and my ability, of my capacity to surmount obstacles, was cornered at last. So I was soon to plunge out into the dark, joining that endless procession who had gone on before. I thought of my poor wife. There had been much happiness after all. What would I not give to make amends? But that was over now. No words can tell of the loneliness and bitter despair I found in that morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I had met my match, alcohol was my master. Tense and anxious, my wife Lois sat downstairs with a staff physician. kindly man, Dr. William Silkworth, a medical saint if ever there was one, was trying in his gentle way to explain my alcoholic dilemma to her. But doctor, she pleaded, tell me. Don't spare my feelings. Tell me truly just why can't Bill stop? He has desperately wanted to for these several years. About other things, he always had great willpower and perseverance. He well knows that alcohol means ruin. Oh, tell me the truth, Doc. Why can't he stop? As considerably as he could, the good man explained how my drinking, once but a habit, had now become a veritable obsession. How my body, which could once tolerate alcohol, had now becomes highly sensitized to it. Allergic, he called it. So my dilemma was twofold. An obsession as powerful as that of a kleptomaniac to steal and a physical intolerance to alcohol as grim as that of a diabetic to sugar. The obsession condemned me to drink in spite of myself. My bodily intolerance ensured that I would die or go mad if I kept it up. My only hope, therefore, was the expulsion of my self-destructive obsession, a rare occurrence once it had taken firm hold. At first, the doctor had felt that I might be one of those rare exceptions, but now seemingly I was too far gone. I would, he thought, have to be confined somewhere if I were to live very long. Such was my sentence. Though not told me in so many words, I well knew what it was. I had tried too many times and had failed too often. I had no more strength to resist. I was through. But it was darkest before dawn, for then came a friend with a message. He was an alcoholic who had been relieved of his obsession. He stood before me as living proof of what he had to say. One alcoholic talking to another. he could convince where others could not. Despite my reluctance, for I was an agnostic, I knew I must heed his message or die. Though not easy to take, his message was simple and direct in the extreme. But within its seeming simplicity, it did carry the miraculous power to expel my alcohol obsession and catapult me into a new world. In my case, this occurred the very moment I was willing to lay aside my prejudice, admit my personal helplessness, and try without reservation what he offered me. Perhaps this is not the time or place to talk at length of my own recovery, of our AA program in detail or of our astounding growth. This room is filled with fellow alcoholics who know and practice the AA way of life as well as I. The accomplishments of Alcoholics Anonymous are headlined in the press of the world. So I shall be content if I can remind myself and any who would hear that Alcoholics Anonymous is not, after all, a personal success story. It is instead the story of our colossal human failure now converted into the happiest kind of usefulness by that divine alchemy, the living grace of God. For all those who would know us a little better or who, perchance, might wish to try our simple message for themselves, I can do no better than leave with them the last seven lines of our book of experience, Alcoholics Anonymous. These lines read as follows. Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your fault to him and your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of the past, give freely of what you find, and join us. We shall be with you in the fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet more of us as you trudge our road of happy destiny. May God bless you and keep you until then.