Page 89 AA Big Book 4th Edition
Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as
intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail. This is our twelfth suggestion:
Carry this message to other alcoholics! You can help when no one else can. You can secure their
confidence when others fail. Remember they are very ill.
Life will take on new meaning. To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness
vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends—this is an experience you must not
miss. We know you will not want to miss it. Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other
is the bright spot of our lives.
Perhaps you are not acquainted with any drinkers who want to recover. You can easily find some by
asking a few doctors, ministers, priests or hospitals. They will be only too glad to assist you. Don’t start
out as an evangelist or reformer. Unfortunately a lot of prejudice exists. You will be handicapped if you
arouse it. Ministers and doctors are competent and you can learn much from them if you wish, but it
happens that because of your own drinking experience you can be uniquely useful to other alcoholics. So
cooperate; never criticize. To be helpful is our only aim. .............................
Page 103
.......We are careful never to show intolerance or hatred of drinking as an institution. Experience shows that
such an attitude is not helpful to anyone. Every new alcoholic looks for this spirit among us and is
immensely relieved when he finds we are not witch burners. A spirit of intolerance might repel alcoholics
whose lives could have been saved, had it not been for such stupidity. We would not even do the cause of
temperate drinking any good, for not one drinker in a thousand likes to be told anything about alcohol by
one who hates it.
Some day we hope that Alcoholics Anonymous will help the public to a better realization of the gravity
of the alcoholic problem, but we shall be of little use if our attitude is one of bitterness or hostility. Drinkers
will not stand for it.
After all, our problems were of our own making. Bottles were only a symbol. Besides, we have stopped
fighting anybody or anything. We have to!