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I had gone steadily downhill, and on that day in 1934 I lay upstairs in the hospital, knowing for the first time that I was utterly hopeless.
Lois was downstairs, and Dr. Silkworth was trying in his gentle way to tell her what was wrong with me and that I was hopeless. “But Bill has a tremendous amount of will power,” she said. “He has tried desperately to get well. We have tried everything. Doctor, why can’t he stop?
He explained that my drinking, once a habit, had become an obsession, a true insanity that condemned me to drink against my will.
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In the late stages of our drinking, the will to resist has fled. Yet when we admit complete defeat and when we become entirely ready to try A.A. principles, our obsession leaves us and we enter a new dimension—freedom under God as we understand Him.
~ 1. A.A. COME OF AGE, P. 52 ~
~ 2. LETTER, 1966 ~
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Alike When The Chips Are Down, p. 24
In the beginning, it was four whole years before A.A. brought permanent sobriety to even one alcoholic woman. Like the “high bottoms,” the women said they were different; A.A. couldn’t be for them. But as the communication was perfected, mostly by the women themselves, the picture changed.
This process of identification and transmission has gone on and on. The Skid-Rower said he was different. Even more loudly, the socialite (or Park Avenue stumblebum) said the same–so did the artists and the professional people, the rich, the poor, the religious, the agnostic, the Indians and the Eskimos, the veterans, and the prisoners.
But nowadays all of these, and legions more, soberly talk about how very much alike all of us alcoholics are when we admit that the chips are finally down.
Grapevine, October 1959
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Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for complete approval, utter security, and perfect romance—urges quite appropriate to age seventeen—prove to be an impossible way of life at forty-seven or fifty-seven.
Since A.A. began, I’ve taken huge wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up, emotionally and spiritually.
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As we grow spiritually, we find that our old attitudes toward our instinctual drives need to undergo drastic revisions. Our demands for emotional security and wealth, for personal prestige and power all have to be tempered and redirected.
We learn that the full satisfaction of these demands cannot be the sole end and aim of our lives. We cannot place the cart before the horse, or we shall be pulled backward into disillusionment. But when we are willing to place spiritual growth first—then and only then do we have a real chance to grow in healthy awareness and mature love.
1. GRAPEVINE, JANUARY 1959
2. TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 114
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