Big Book Study

  We, of Alcoholics /anonymous, are more than one hundred neb abd wineb who have recovered from a seemingly hepeless state of mind and body. To show others akcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book. View Publication

  Men and women drink because they essentially like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive, that while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. View Publication

  It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make a beginning. View Publication

  The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we  have discovered a common solution. We have a way  out on which we can absolutely agree, and upon which  we can join in brotherly and harmonious action. This  is the great news this book carries to those who suffer  from alcoholism. View Publication

Once more, the alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power. View Publication

  Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously. But where and how were we to find this  Power? View Publication

We want to find exactly how, when, and where our natural desires have warped us. We wish to look squarely at the  unhappiness this has caused others and ourselves. By discovering what our emotional deformities are, we can move  toward their correction. View Publication

And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone—  even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. View Publication

In the earliest days of AA, the term "sponsor" was not in the AA jargon. Sponsorship turned out to be such a good way to help people get established in AA that it has become a custom followed throughout the AA world. View Publication

Almost any experienced A.A. will tell how his affairs have taken  remarkable and unexpected turns for the better as he tried  to improve his conscious contact with God. View Publication

  It is when we try to make our will conform with God’s  that we begin to use it rightly. To all of us, this was a most  wonderful revelation. Our whole trouble had been the misuse of willpower. View Publication

We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking,  especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity,  dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our  thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane  when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives. View Publication

  We discover that we do receive guidance for our lives to  just about the extent that we stop making demands upon  God to give it to us on order and on our terms. View Publication V