Contents

Foreword 		15

		THE TWELVE STEPS


Step One 		21

“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that
our lives had become unmanageable.”

Who cares to admit complete defeat? Admission of powerlessness
is the first step in liberation. Relation of humility
to sobriety. Mental obsession plus physical allergy.
Why must every A.A. hit bottom?



Step Two 		25

“Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves
could restore us to sanity.”

What can we believe in? A.A. does not demand belief;
Twelve Steps are only suggestions. Importance of an open
mind. Variety of ways to faith. Substitution of A.A. as
Higher Power. Plight of the disillusioned. Roadblocks of
indifference and prejudice. Lost faith found in A.A. Problems
of intellectuality and self-sufficiency. Negative and
positive thinking. Self-righteousness. Defiance is an outstanding
characteristic of alcoholics. Step Two is a rallying
point to sanity. Right relation to God.



Step Three 	34

“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to
the care of God, as we understood Him.”

Step Three is like opening of a locked door. How shall we
let God into our lives? Willingness is the key. Dependence
as a means to independence. Dangers of self-suffi-

		5



	6 	CONTENTS

ciency. Turning our will over to Higher Power. Misuse of
willpower. Sustained and personal exertion necessary to
conform to God's will.



Step Four 	42

“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of
ourselves.”

How instincts can exceed their proper function. Step Four
is an effort to discover our liabilities. Basic problem of
extremes in instinctive drives. Misguided moral inventory
can result in guilt, grandiosity, or blaming others. Assets
can be noted with liabilities. Self-justification is dangerous.
Willingness to take inventory brings light and new
confidence. Step Four is beginning of lifetime practice.
Common symptoms of emotional insecurity are worry,
anger, self-pity, and depression. Inventory reviews relationships.
Importance of thoroughness.



Step Five 	55

“Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human
being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

Twelve Steps deflate ego. Step Five is difficult but necessary
to sobriety and peace of mind. Confession is an ancient
discipline. Without fearless admission of defects,
few could stay sober. What do we receive from Step
Five? Beginning of true kinship with man and God. Lose
sense of isolation, receive forgiveness and give it; learn
humility; gain honesty and realism about ourselves. Necessity
for complete honesty. Danger of rationalization.
How to choose the person in whom to confide. Results are
tranquility and consciousness of God. Oneness with God
and man prepares us for following Steps.



Step Six 		63

“Were entirely ready to have God remove all these
defects of character.”

Step Six necessary to spiritual growth. The beginning of a



	CONTENTS 	7

lifetime job. Recognition of difference between striving
for objective—and perfection. Why we must keep trying.
“Being ready” is all-important. Necessity of taking action.
Delay is dangerous. Rebellion may be fatal. Point at
which we abandon limited objectives and move toward
God's will for us.



Step Seven 	70

“Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.”

What is humility? What can it mean to us? The avenue to
true freedom of the human spirit. Necessary aid to survival.
Value of ego-puncturing. Failure and misery transformed
by humility. Strength from weakness. Pain is the
admission price to new life. Self-centered fear chief activator
of defects. Step Seven is change in attitude which
permits us to move out of ourselves toward God.



Step Eight 	77

“Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and
became willing to make amends to them all.”

This and the next two Steps are concerned with personal
relations. Learning to live with others is a fascinating adventure.
Obstacles: reluctance to forgive; nonadmission of
wrongs to others; purposeful forgetting. Necessity of exhaustive
survey of past. Deepening insight results from
thoroughness. Kinds of harm done to others. Avoiding extreme
judgments. Taking the objective view. Step Eight is
the beginning of the end of isolation.



Step Nine 	83

“Made direct amends to such people wherever
possible, except when to do so would injure them or
others.”

A tranquil mood is the first requisite for good judgment.
Good timing is important in making amends. What is
courage? Prudence means taking calculated chances.
Amends begin when we join A.A. Peace of mind cannot



	8 	CONTENTS

be bought at the expense of others. Need for discretion.
Readiness to take consequences of our past and to take responsibility
for well-being of others is spirit of Step Nine.



Step Ten 		88

“Continued to take personal inventory and when we
were wrong promptly admitted it.”

Can we stay sober and keep emotional balance under all
conditions? Self-searching becomes a regular habit. Admit,
accept, and patiently correct defects. Emotional hangover.
When past is settled with, present challenges can be
met. Varieties of inventory. Anger, resentments, jealously,
envy, self-pity, hurt pride—all led to the bottle. Selfrestraint
first objective. Insurance against “big-shot-ism.”
Let's look at credits as well as debits. Examination of motives.



Step Eleven 	96

“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our
conscious contact with God as we understood Him,
praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the
power to carry that out.”

Meditation and prayer main channels to Higher Power.
Connection between self-examination and meditation and
prayer. An unshakable foundation for life. How shall we
meditate? Meditation has no boundaries. An individual
adventure. First result is emotional balance. What about
prayer? Daily petitions for understanding of God's will
and grace to carry it out. Actual results of prayer are beyond
question. Rewards of meditation and prayer.



Step Twelve 	106

“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.”

Joy of living is the theme of the Twelfth Step. Action its



	CONTENTS 	9

keyword. Giving that asks no reward. Love that has no
price tag. What is spiritual awakening? A new state of
consciousness and being is received as a free gift. Readiness
to receive free gift lies in practice of Twelve Steps.
The magnificent reality. Rewards of helping other alcoholics.
Kinds of Twelfth Step work. Problems of Twelfth
Step work. What about the practice of these principles in
all our affairs? Monotony, pain and calamity turned to
good use by practice of Steps. Difficulties of practice.
“Two-stepping.” Switch to “twelve-stepping” and demonstrations
of faith. Growing spiritually is the answer to our
problems. Placing spiritual growth first. Domination and
overdependence. Putting our lives on give-and-take basis.
Dependence upon God necessary to recovery of alcoholics.
“Practicing these principles in all our affairs”: Domestic
relations in A.A. Outlook upon material matters
changes. So do feelings about personal importance. Instincts
restored to true purpose. Understanding is key to
right attitudes, right action key to good living.


	THE TWELVE TRADITIONS



Tradition One 	129

“Our common welfare should come first; personal
recovery depends upon A.A. unity.”

Without unity, A.A. dies. Individual liberty, yet great unity.
Key to paradox: each A.A.'s life depends on obedience
to spiritual principles. The group must survive or the individual
will not. Common welfare comes first. How best to
live and work together as groups.



Tradition Two 	132

“For our group purpose there is but one ultimate



	10 	CONTENTS

authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in
our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted
servants; 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 group
conscience. Formation of a group. Growing pains. Rotating
committees are servants of the group. Leaders do not
govern, they serve. Does A.A. have a real leadership?
“Elder statesmen” and “bleeding deacons.” The group
conscience speaks.



Tradition Three 	139

	“The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire	
	to stop drinking.”

Early intolerance based on fear. To take away any alcoholic's
chance an A.A. was sometimes to pronounce his
death sentence. Membership regulations abandoned. Two
examples of experience. Any alcoholic is a member of
A.A. when he says so.



Tradition Four  	146

	“Each group should be autonomous except in matters
	affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.”

Every group manages its affairs as it pleases, except when
A.A. as a whole is threatened. Is such liberty dangerous?
The group, like the individual, must eventually conform
to principles that guarantee survival. Two storm signals—
a group ought not do anything which would injure A.A. as
a whole, nor affiliate itself with outside interests. An example:
the “A.A. Center” that didn't work.



Tradition Five 	150

	“Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry
	the message to the alcoholic who still suffers.”

Better do one thing well than many badly. The life of our
Fellowship depends on this principle. The ability of each
A.A. to identify himself with and bring recovery to the



	CONTENTS 	11

newcomer is a gift from God . . . passing on this gift to
others is our one aim. Sobriety can't be kept unless it is
given away.



Tradition Six 	155

	“An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance or lend
	the A.A. name to any related facility or outside
	enterprise, lest problems of money, property and
	prestige divert us from our primary purpose.”

Experience proved that we could not endorse any related
enterprise, no matter how good. We could not be all
things to all men. We saw that we could not lend the A.A.
name to any outside activity.



Tradition Seven 	160

	“Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting,
	declining outside contributions.”

No A.A. Tradition had the labor pains this one did. Collective
poverty initially a matter of necessity. Fear of exploitation.
Necessity of separating the spiritual from the
material. Decision to subsist on A.A. voluntary contributions
only. Placing the responsibility of supporting A.A.
headquarters directly upon A.A. members. Bare running
expenses plus a prudent reserve is headquarters policy.



Tradition Eight 	166

	“Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever
	nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ
	special workers.”

You can't mix the Twelfth Step and money. Line of cleavage
between voluntary Twelfth Step work and paid-for
services. A.A. could not function without full-time service
workers. Professional workers are not professional A.A.'s.
Relation of A.A. to industry, education, etc. Twelfth Step
work is never paid for, but those who labor in service for
us are worthy of their hire.



	12 	CONTENTS



Tradition Nine 	172

	“A.A., as such, ought never be organized; but we may
	create service boards or committees directly
	responsible to those they serve.”

Special service boards and committees. The General Service
Conference, the board of trustees, and group committees
cannot issue directives to A.A. members or groups.
A.A.'s can't be dictated to—individually or collectively.
Absence of coercion works because unless each A.A. follows
suggested Steps to recovery, he signs his own death
warrant. Same condition applies to the group. Suffering
and love are A.A.'s disciplinarians. Difference between
spirit of authority and spirit of service. Aim of our services
is to bring sobriety within reach of all who want it.



Tradition Ten 	176

	“Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside
	issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into
	public controversy.”

A.A. does not take sides in any public controversy. Reluctance
to fight is not a special virtue. Survival and spread
of A.A. are our primary aims. Lessons learned from
Washingtonian movement.



Tradition Eleven 	180

	“Our public relations policy is based on attraction
	rather than promotion; we need always maintain
	personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and
	films.”

Public relations are important to A.A. Good public relations
save lives. We seek publicity for A.A. principles,
not A.A. members. The press has cooperated. Personal
anonymity at the public level is the cornerstone of our
public relations policy. Eleventh Tradition is a constannt
reminder that personal ambition has no place in A.A.
Each member becomes an active guardian of our Fellowship.



	CONTENTS 	13



Tradition Twelve 	184

	“Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our
	traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before
	personalities.”

Spiritual substance of anonymity is sacrifice. Subordinating
personal aims to the common good is the essence of
all Twelve Traditions. Why A.A. could not remain a secret
society. Principles come before personalities. One
hundred percent anonymity at the public level. Anonymity
is real humility.

The Twelve Traditions—the Long Form 189


		Foreword

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS is a worldwide fellowship
of more than one hundred thousand alcoholic men
and women who are banded together to solve their common
problems and to help fellow sufferers in recovery from
that age-old, baffling malady, alcoholism.

This book deals with the “Twelve Steps” and the
“Twelve Traditions” of Alcoholics Anonymous. It presents
an explicit view of the principles by which A.A. members
recover and by which their Society functions.
A.A.'s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritual
in their nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel
the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become
happily and usefully whole.

A.A.'s Twelve Traditions apply to the life of the Fellowship
itself. They outline the means by which A.A. maintains
its unity and relates itself to the world about it, the way it
lives and grows.

Though the essays which follow were written mainly
for members, it is thought by many of A.A.'s friends that
these pieces might arouse interest and find application outside
of A.A. itself.

Many people, nonalcoholics, report that as a result of
the practice of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, they have been able to

		15


	16 	FOREWORD

meet other difficulties of life. They think that the Twelve
Steps can mean more than sobriety for problem drinkers.
They see in them a way to happy and effective living for
many, alcoholic or not.

There is, too, a rising interest in the Twelve Traditions
of Alcoholics Anonymous. Students of human relations are
beginning to wonder how and why A.A. functions as a society.
Why is it, they ask, that in A.A. no member can be set
in personal authority over another, that nothing like a central
government can anywhere be seen? How can a set of
traditional principles, having no legal force at all, hold the
Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous in unity and effectiveness?
The second section of this volume, though
designed for A.A.'s membership, will give such inquirers an
inside 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 surgeon
and a New York broker. Both were severe cases of
alcoholism and were destined to become co-founders of the
A.A. Fellowship.

The basic principles of A.A., as they are known today,
were borrowed mainly from the fields of religion and
medicine, though some ideas upon which success finally
depended were the result of noting the behavior and needs
of the Fellowship itself.

After three years of trial and error in selecting the most
workable tenets upon which the Society could be based,
and after a large amount of failure in getting alcoholics to
recover, three successful groups emerged—the first at
Akron, the second in New York, and the third at Cleveland.



	FOREWORD 	17

Even then it was hard to find twoscore of sure recoveries in
all three groups.
	
Nevertheless, the infant Society determined to set down
its experience in a book which finally reached the public in
April 1939. At this time the recoveries numbered about one
hundred. The book was called “Alcoholics Anonymous”
and from it the Fellowship took its name. In it alcoholism
was described from the alcoholic's view, the spiritual idea
of the Society was codified for the first time in the Twelve
Steps, and the application of these Steps to the alcoholic's
dilemma was made clear. The remainder of the book was
devoted to thirty stories or case histories in which the alcoholics
described their drinking experiences and recoveries.
This established identification with alcoholic readers and
proved to them that the virtually impossible had become
possible. The book “Alcoholics Anonymous” became the
basic text of the Fellowship, and it still is. This present volume
proposes to broaden and deepen the understanding of
the Twelve Steps as first written in the earlier work.

With the publication of the book “Alcoholics Anonymous”
in 1939, the pioneering period ended and a
prodigious chain reaction set in as recovered alcoholics carried
their message to still others. In the next years
alcoholics flocked to A.A. by tens of thousands, largely as
the result of excellent and continuous publicity freely given
by magazines and newspapers throughout the world. Clergymen
and doctors alike rallied to the new movement,
giving it unstinted support and endorsement.
This startling expansion brought with it very severe
growing pains. Proof that alcoholics could recover had



	18 	FOREWORD

been made. But it was by no means sure that such great
numbers of yet erratic people could live and work together
with harmony and good effect.

Everywhere there arose threatening questions of membership,
money, personal relations, public relations,
management of groups, clubs, and scores of other perplexities.
It was out of this vast welter of explosive experiences
that A.A.'s Twelve Traditions took form and were first published
in 1946 and later confirmed at A.A.'s First
International Convention held at Cleveland in 1950. The
Tradition section of this volume portrays in some detail the
experience which finally produced the Twelve Traditions
and so gave A.A. its present form, substance, and unity.

As A.A. now enters maturity, it has begun to reach into
forty foreign lands. In the view of its friends, this is but the
beginning of its unique and valuable service.

It is hoped that this volume will afford all who read it a
close-up view of the principles and forces which have made
Alcoholics Anonymous what it is.


	Back to Table of Contents



		
THE TWELVE STEPS



	Step One

“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that
our lives had become unmanageable.”

WHO cares to admit complete defeat? Practically no one,
of course. Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of
personal powerlessness. It is truly awful to admit that, glass
in hand, we have warped our minds into such an obsession
for destructive drinking that only an act of providence can
remove it from us.
	
No other kind of bankruptcy is like this one. Alcohol,
now become the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all selfsufficiency
and all will to resist its demands. Once this stark
fact is accepted, our bankruptcy as going human concerns
is complete. ⇨

But upon entering A.A. we soon take quite another
view of this absolute humiliation. We perceive that only
through utter defeat are we able to take our first steps toward
liberation and strength. Our admissions of personal
powerlessness finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon
which happy and purposeful lives may be built.

We know that little good can come to any alcoholic
who joins A.A. unless he has first accepted his devastating
weakness and all its consequences. Until he so humbles
himself, his sobriety—if any—will be precarious. Of real
happiness he will find none at all. Proved beyond doubt by
an immense experience, this is one of the facts of A.A. life.
		21



	22 	STEP ONE 

The principle that we shall find no enduring strength until
we first admit complete defeat is the main taproot from
which our whole Society has sprung and flowered.

When first challenged to admit defeat, most of us revolted.
We had approached A.A. expecting to be taught
self-confidence. Then we had been told that so far as alcohol
is concerned, self-confidence was no good whatever; in
fact, it was a total liability. Our sponsors declared that we
were the victims of a mental obsession ⇨ so subtly powerful
that no amount of human willpower could break it. There
was, they said, no such thing as the personal conquest of
this compulsion by the unaided will. Relentlessly deepening
our dilemma, our sponsors pointed out our increasing
sensitivity to alcohol—an allergy, they called it. The tyrant
alcohol wielded a double-edged sword over us: first we
were smitten by an ⇦insane urge⇨ that condemned us to go on
drinking, and then by an allergy of the body that insured we
would ultimately destroy ourselves in the process. Few indeed
were those who, so assailed, had ever won through in
singlehanded combat. It was a statistical fact that alcoholics
almost never recovered on their own resources. And this
had been true, apparently, ever since man had first crushed
grapes.

In A.A.'s pioneering time, none but the most desperate
cases could swallow and digest this unpalatable truth. Even
these “last-gaspers” often had difficulty in realizing how
hopeless they actually were. But a few did, and when these
laid hold of A.A. principles with all the fervor with which
the drowning seize life preservers, they almost invariably
got well. That is why the first edition of the book “Alco-


	STEP ONE 	23

holics Anonymous,” published when our membership was
small, dealt with low-bottom cases only. Many less desperate
alcoholics tried A.A., but did not succeed because they
could not make the admission of hopelessness.

It is a tremendous satisfaction to record that in the following
years this changed. Alcoholics who still had their
health, their families, their jobs, and even two cars in the
garage, began to recognize their alcoholism. As this trend
grew, they were joined by young people who were scarcely
more than potential alcoholics. They were spared that last
ten or fifteen years of literal hell the rest of us had gone
through. Since Step One requires an admission that our
lives have become unmanageable, how could people such
as these take this Step?

It was obviously necessary to raise the bottom the rest
of us had hit to the point where it would hit them. By going
back in our own drinking histories, we could show that
years before we realized it we were out of control, that our
drinking even then was no mere habit, that it was indeed
the beginning of a fatal progression. To the doubters we
could say, “Perhaps you're not an alcoholic after all. Why
don't you try some more controlled drinking, bearing in
mind meanwhile what we have told you about
alcoholism?” This attitude brought immediate and practical
results. It was then discovered that when one alcoholic had
planted in the mind of another the true nature of his malady,
that person could never be the same again. Following every
spree, he would say to himself, “Maybe those A.A.'s were
right . . .” After a few such experiences, often years before
the onset of extreme difficulties, he would return to us con-



	24 	STEP ONE

vinced. He had hit bottom as truly as any of us. John Barleycorn
himself had become our best advocate.

Why all this insistence that every A.A. must hit bottom
first? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to
practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom. For
practicing A.A.'s remaining eleven Steps means the adoption
of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who is
still drinking can dream of taking. Who wishes to be rigorously
honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess his faults
to another and make restitution for harm done? Who cares
anything about a Higher Power, let alone meditation and
prayer? Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to
carry A.A.'s message to the next sufferer?  No, the average
alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn't care for this
prospect—unless he has to do these things in order to stay
alive 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 to
conviction and as willing to listen as the dying can be. We
stand ready to do anything which will lift the merciless obsession
from us. ⇨


	Back to Table of Contents




	Step Two

“Came to believe that a Power greater than
ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

THE moment they read Step Two, most A.A. newcomers
are confronted with a dilemma, sometimes a serious one.
How often have we heard them cry out, “Look what you
people have done to us! You have convinced us that we are
alcoholics and that our lives are unmanageable.  Having reduced
us to a state of absolute helplessness, you now
declare that none but a Higher Power can remove our obsession. 
Some of us won't believe in God, others can't, and
still others who do believe that God exists have no faith
whatever He will perform this miracle. Yes, you've got us
over the barrel, all right—but where do we go from here?”

Let's look first at the case of the one who says he won't
believe—the belligerent one. He is in a state of mind which
can be described only as savage. His whole philosophy of
life, in which he so gloried, is threatened. It's bad enough,
he thinks, to admit alcohol has him down for keeps. But
now, still smarting from that admission, he is faced with
something really impossible. How he does cherish the
thought that man, risen so majestically from a single cell in
the primordial ooze, is the spearhead of evolution and
therefore the only god that his universe knows! Must he renounce
all this to save himself?
		
		25



	26 	STEP TWO

At this juncture, his A.A, sponsor usually laughs. This,
the newcomer thinks, is just about the last straw. This is the
beginning of the end. And so it is: the beginning of the end
of his old life, and the beginning of his emergence into a
new one. His sponsor probably says, “Take it easy. The
hoop you have to jump through is a lot wider than you
think. At least I've found it so. So did a friend of mine who
was a one-time vice-president of the American Atheist Society,
but he got through with room to spare.”

“Well,” says the newcomer, “I know you're telling me
the truth. It's no doubt a fact that A.A, is full of people who
once believed as I do. But just how, in these circumstances,
does a fellow 'take it easy'? That's what I want to know.”

“That,” agrees the sponsor, “is a very good question indeed.
I think I can tell you exactly how to relax. You won't
have to work at it very hard, either. Listen, if you will, to
these three statements. First, Alcoholics Anonymous does
not demand that you believe anything. All of its Twelve
Steps are but suggestions. Second, to get sober and to stay
sober, 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 the
debating society and quit bothering yourself with such deep
questions as whether it was the hen or the egg that came
first. Again I say, all you need is the open mind.”

The sponsor continues, “Take, for example, my own
case. I had a scientific schooling. Naturally I respected,
venerated, even worshiped science. As a matter of fact, I
still do—all except the worship part. Time after time, my
instructors held up to me the basic principle of all scientific



		STEP TWO	 27

progress: search and research, again and again, always with
the open mind. When I first looked at A.A., my reaction
was just like yours. This A.A, business, I thought, is totally
unscientific. This I can't swallow. I simply won't consider
such nonsense.
	
“Then I woke up. I had to admit that A.A, showed results,
prodigious results. I saw that my attitude regarding
these had been anything but scientific. It wasn't A.A, that
had the closed mind, it was me. The minute I stopped arguing,
I could begin to see and feel. Right there, Step Two
gently and very gradually began to infiltrate my life. I can't
say upon what occasion or upon what day I came to believe
in a Power greater than myself, but I certainly have that belief
now. To acquire it, I had only to stop fighting and
practice the rest of A.A.'s program as enthusiastically as I
could.

“This is only one man's opinion based on his own experience,
of course. I must quickly assure you that A.A.'s
tread innumerable paths in their quest for faith. If you don't
care for the one I've suggested, you'll be sure to discover
one that suits if only you look and listen. Many a man like
you has begun to solve the problem by the method of substitution.
You can, if you wish, make A.A., itself your
'higher power.' Here's a very large group of people who
have solved their alcohol problem. In this respect they are
certainly a power greater than you, who have not even
come close to a solution. Surely you can have faith in them.
Even this minimum of faith will be enough. You will find
many members who have crossed the threshold just this
way. All of them will tell you that, once across, their faith



		28 	STEP TWO

broadened and deepened. Relieved of the alcohol obsession,
their lives unaccountably transformed, they came to
believe in a Higher Power, and most of them began to talk
of God.”

Consider next the plight of those who once had faith,
but have lost it. There will be those who have drifted into
indifference, those filled with self-sufficiency who have cut
themselves off, those who have become prejudiced against
religion, and those who are downright defiant because God
has failed to fulfill their demands. Can A.A, experience tell
all these they may still find a faith that works?

Sometimes A.A, comes harder to those who have lost
or 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, they
have concluded there is no place whatever for them to go.
The roadblocks of indifference, fancied self-sufficiency,
prejudice, and defiance often prove more solid and
formidable for these people than any erected by the unconvinced
agnostic or even the militant atheist. Religion says
the existence of God can be proved; the agnostic says it
can't be proved; and the atheist claims proof of the nonexistence
of God. Obviously, the dilemma of the wanderer
from faith is that of profound confusion. He thinks himself
lost to the comfort of any conviction at all. He cannot attain
in even a small degree the assurance of the believer, the agnostic,
or the atheist. He is the bewildered one.
Any number of A.A.'s can say to the drifter, “Yes, we
were diverted from our childhood faith, too. The overconfi-



		STEP TWO 	29

dence of youth was too much for us. Of course, we were
glad that good home and religious training had given us
certain values. We were still sure that we ought to be fairly
honest, tolerant, and just, that we ought to be ambitious and
hardworking. We became convinced that such simple rules
of fair play and decency would be enough.

“As material success founded upon no more than these
ordinary attributes began to come to us, we felt we were
winning at the game of life. This was exhilarating, and it
made us happy. Why should we be bothered with theological
abstractions and religious duties, or with the state of our
souls here or hereafter? The here and now was good 
enough for us. The will to win would carry us through. ⇦ But
then alcohol began to have its way with us. Finally, when
all our score cards read 'zero,' and we saw that one more
strike would put us out of the game forever, we had to look
for our lost faith. It was in A.A, that we rediscovered it. And
so can you.” ⇨

Now we come to another kind of problem: the intellectually
self-sufficient man or woman. To these, many A.A.'s
can say, “Yes, we were like you—far too smart for our own
good. We loved to have people call us precocious. We used
our 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 our
brainpower alone. Scientific progress told us there was
nothing man couldn't do. Knowledge was all-powerful. Intellect
could conquer nature. Since we were brighter than
most folks (so we thought), the spoils of victory would be
ours for the thinking. The god of intellect displaced the God



		30 	STEP TWO
	 
our fathers. ⇦But again John Barleycorn had other ideas.
We who had won so handsomely in a walk turned into alltime
losers. We saw that we had to reconsider or die.⇨ We
found many in A.A, who once thought as we did. They
helped us to get down to our right size. By their example
they showed us that humility and intellect could be compatible,
provided we placed humility first. When we began to
do 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 disgusted
with religion and all its works. The Bible, we said,
was full of nonsense; we could cite it chapter and verse, and
we couldn't see the Beatitudes for the 'begats.' In spots its
morality was impossibly good; in others it seemed impossibly
bad. But it was the morality of the religionists
themselves that really got us down. We gloated over the
hypocrisy, bigotry, and crushing self-righteousness that
clung to so many 'believers' even in their Sunday best. How
we loved to shout the damaging fact that millions of the
'good men of religion' were still killing one another off in
the name of God. This all meant, of course, that we had
substituted negative for positive thinking. After we came to
A.A., we had to recognize that this trait had been an egofeeding
proposition. In belaboring the sins of some religious
people, we could feel superior to all of them.
Moreover, we could avoid looking at some of our own
shortcomings. ⇦Self-righteousness, the very thing that we
had contemptuously condemned in others, was our own besetting
evil. This phony form of respectability was our
undoing, so far as faith was concerned. But finally, driven



		STEP TWO	 31

to A.A., we learned better.

“As psychiatrists have often observed, defiance is the
outstanding characteristic of many an alcoholic. So it's not
strange that lots of us have had our day at defying God
Himself. Sometimes it's because God has not delivered us
the good things of life which we specified, as a greedy child
m makes an impossible list for Santa Claus. More often,
though, we had met up with some major calamity, and to
our way of thinking lost out because God deserted us. The
girl we wanted to marry had other notions; we prayed God
that she'd change her mind, but she didn't. We prayed for
healthy children, and were presented with sick ones, or
none at all. We prayed for promotions at business, and none
came. Loved ones, upon whom we heartily depended, were
taken from us by so-called acts of God. Then we became
drunkards, and asked God to stop that. But nothing happened.
This was the unkindest cut of all. 'Damn this faith
business!' we said.

“When we encountered A.A,, the fallacy of our defiance
was revealed. At no time had we asked what God's
will was for us; instead we had been telling Him what it
ought to be. No man, we saw, could believe in God and
defy Him, too. Belief meant reliance, not; defiance. ⇨ In A.A,
we saw the fruits of this belief: men and women spared
from alcohol's final catastrophe. We saw them meet and
transcend their other pains and trials. We saw them calmly
accept impossible situations, seeking neither to run nor to
recriminate. This was not only faith; it was faith that
worked under all conditions. We soon concluded that whatever
price in humility we must pay, we would pay.”



		32 	STEP TWO

Now let's take the guy full of faith, but still reeking of
alcohol. He believes he is devout. His religious observance
is scrupulous. He's sure he still believes in God, but suspects
that God doesn't believe in him. He takes pledges and
more pledges. Following each, he not only drinks again, but
acts worse than the last time. Valiantly he tries to fight alcohol,
imploring God's help, but the help doesn't come. What,
then, can be the matter?
	
To clergymen, doctors, friends, and families, the alcoholic
who means well and tries hard is a heartbreaking
riddle. To most A.A.'s, he is not. There are too many of us
who have been just like him, and have found the riddle's
answer. This answer has to do with the quality of faith
rather than its quantity. This has been our blind spot. We
supposed we had humility when really we hadn't. We supposed
we had been serious about religious practices when,
upon honest appraisal, we found we had been only superficial.
Or, going to the other extreme, we had wallowed in
emotionalism 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 the
grace of God could enter us and expel the obsession. In no
deep or meaningful sense had we ever taken stock of ourselves,
made amends to those we had harmed, or freely
given to any other human being without any demand for reward.
We had not even prayed rightly. We had always said,
“Grant me my wishes” instead of “Thy will be done.” The
love of God and man we understood not at all. Therefore
we remained self-deceived, and so incapable of receiving
enough grace to restore us to sanity.



		STEP TWO 	33

Few indeed are the practicing alcoholics who have any
idea how irrational they are, or seeing their irrationality, can
bear to face it. ⇦Some will be willing to term themselves
“problem drinkers,” but cannot endure the suggestion that
they are in fact mentally ill. They are abetted in this blindness
by a world which does not understand the difference
between sane drinking and alcoholism. “Sanity” is defined
as “soundness of mind.” Yet no alcoholic, soberly analyzing
his destructive behavior, whether the destruction fell on
the dining-room furniture or his own moral fiber, can claim
“soundness of mind” for himself.
	
Therefore, Step Two is the rallying point for all of us.
Whether agnostic, atheist, or former believer, we can stand
together on this Step.⇨ True humility and an open mind can
lead us to faith, and every A.A, meeting is an assurance that
God will restore us to sanity if we rightly relate ourselves to
Him.

	Back to Table of Contents



	Step Three

“Made a decision to turn our will and our
lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.”

PRACTICING Step Three is like the opening of a door
which to all appearances is still closed and locked. All we
need is a key, and the decision to swing the door open.
There is only one key, and it is called willingness. Once unlocked
by willingness, the door opens almost of itself, and
looking through it, we shall see a pathway beside which is
an inscription. It reads: “This is the way to a faith that
works.” In the first two Steps we were engaged in reflection.
We saw that we were powerless over alcohol, but we
also perceived that faith of some kind, if only in A.A. itself,
is possible to anyone. These conclusions did not require action;
they required only acceptance.

Like all the remaining Steps, Step Three calls for affirmative
action, for it is only by action that we can cut away
the self-will which has always blocked the entry of God—
or, if you like, a Higher Power—into our lives. Faith, to be
sure, is necessary, but faith alone can avail nothing. We can
have faith, yet keep God out of our lives. Therefore our
problem now becomes just how and by what specific
means shall we be able to let Him in? Step Three represents
our first attempt to do this. In fact, the effectiveness of the
whole A.A. program will rest upon how well and earnestly
we have tried to come to “a decision to turn our will and

		34



		STEP THREE 	35

our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

To every worldly and practical-minded beginner, this
Step looks hard, even impossible. No matter how much one
wishes to try, exactly how can he turn his own will and his
own life over to the care of whatever God he thinks there
is? Fortunately, we who have tried it, and with equal misgivings,
can testify that anyone, anyone at all, can begin to
do it. We can further add that a beginning, even the smallest,
is all that is needed. Once we have placed the key of
willingness in the lock and have the door ever so slightly
open, we find that we can always open it some more.
Though self-will may slam it shut again, as it frequently
does, it will always respond the moment we again pick up
the key of willingness.

Maybe this all sounds mysterious and remote, something
like Einstein's theory of relativity or a proposition in
nuclear physics. It isn't at all. Let's look at how practical it
actually is. Every man and woman who has joined A.A.
and intends to stick has, without realizing it, made a beginning
on Step Three. Isn't it true that in all matters touching
upon alcohol, each of them has decided to turn his or her
life over to the care, protection, and guidance of Alcoholics
Anonymous? Already a willingness has been achieved to
cast out one's own will and one's own ideas about the alcohol
problem in favor of those suggested by A.A. Any
willing newcomer feels sure A.A. is the only safe harbor for
the foundering vessel he has become. Now if this is not
turning one's will and life over to a newfound Providence,
then what is it?

But suppose that instinct still cries out, as it certainly


		36 	STEP THREE

will, ⇦“Yes, respecting alcohol, I guess I have to be dependent
upon A.A., but in all other matters I must still maintain
my independence.⇨ Nothing is going to turn me into a
nonentity. If I keep on turning my life and my will over to
the care of Something or Somebody else, what will become
of me? I'll look like the hole in the doughnut.” This, of
course, is the process by which instinct and logic always
seek to bolster egotism, and so frustrate spiritual development.
The trouble is that this kind of thinking takes no real
account of the facts. And the facts seem to be these: The
more we become willing to depend upon a Higher Power,
the more independent we actually are. Therefore dependence,
as A.A. practices it, is really a means of gaining true
independence of the spirit.
	
Let's examine for a moment this idea of dependence at
the level of everyday living. In this area it is startling to discover
how dependent we really are, and how unconscious
of that dependence. Every modern house has electric wiring
carrying power and light to its interior. We are delighted
with this dependence; our main hope is that nothing will
ever cut off the supply of current. By so accepting our dependence
upon this marvel of science, we find ourselves
more independent personally. Not only are we more independent,
we are even more comfortable and secure. Power
flows just where it is needed. Silently and surely, electricity,
that strange energy so few people understand, meets our
simplest daily needs, and our most desperate ones, too. Ask
the polio sufferer confined to an iron lung who depends
with complete trust upon a motor to keep the breath of life
in him.



		STEP THREE 	37

But the moment our mental or emotional independence
is in question, how differently we behave. How persistently
we claim the right to decide all by ourselves just what we
shall think and just how we shall act. Oh yes, we'll weigh
the pros and cons of every problem. We'll listen politely to
those who would advise us, but all the decisions are to be
ours alone. Nobody is going to meddle with our personal
independence in such matters. Besides, we think, there is
no one we can surely trust. We are certain that our intelligence,
backed by willpower, can rightly control our inner
lives and guarantee us success in the world we live in. This
brave philosophy, wherein each man plays God, sounds
good in the speaking, but it still has to meet the acid test:
how well does it actually work? One good look in the mirror
ought to be answer enough for any alcoholic.

Should his own image in the mirror be too awful to
contemplate (and it usually is), he might first take a look at
the results normal people are getting from self-sufficiency.
Everywhere he sees people filled with anger and fear, society
breaking up into warring fragments. Each fragment says
to the others, “We are right and you are wrong.” Every such
pressure group, if it is strong enough, self-righteously imposes
its will upon the rest. And everywhere the same thing
is being done on an individual basis. The sum of all this
mighty effort is less peace and less brotherhood than before.
The philosophy of self-sufficiency is not paying off.
Plainly enough, it is a bone-crushing juggernaut whose final
achievement is ruin.

Therefore, we who are alcoholics can consider ourselves
fortunate indeed. Each of us has had his own near-



		38	 STEP THREE

fatal encounter with the juggernaut of self-will, and has suffered
enough under its weight to be willing to look for
something better. So it is by circumstance rather than by
any virtue that we have been driven to A.A., have admitted
defeat, have acquired the rudiments of faith, and now want
to make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to a
Higher Power.
	
⇦We realize that the word “dependence” is as distasteful
to many psychiatrists and psychologists as it is to alcoholics.
Like our professional friends, we, too, are aware that
there are wrong forms of dependence. We have experienced
many of them. No adult man or woman, for
example, should be in too much emotional dependence
upon 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 rebellious
alcoholic to conclude that dependence of any sort
must be intolerably damaging. But dependence upon an
A.A. group or upon a Higher Power hasn't produced any
baleful results.⇨

When World War II broke out, this spiritual principle
had its first major test. A.A.'s entered the services and were
scattered all over the world. Would they be able to take discipline,
stand up under fire, and endure the monotony and
misery of war? Would the kind of dependence they had
learned in A.A. carry them through? Well, it did. They had
even fewer alcoholic lapses or emotional binges than A.A.'s
safe at home did. They were just as capable of endurance
and valor as any other soldiers. Whether in Alaska or on the
Salerno beachhead, their dependence upon a Higher Power



		STEP THREE 	39

worked. And far from being a weakness, this dependence
was their chief source of strength.

So how, exactly, can the willing person continue to turn
his will and his life over to the Higher Power? He made a
beginning, we have seen, when he commenced to rely upon
A.A. for the solution of his alcohol problem. By now,
though, the chances are that he has become convinced that
he has more problems than alcohol, and that some of these
refuse to be solved by all the sheer personal determination
and courage he can muster. They simply will not budge;
they make him desperately unhappy and threaten his newfound
sobriety. Our friend is still victimized by remorse and
guilt when he thinks of yesterday. Bitterness still overpowers
him when he broods upon those he still envies or hates.
His financial insecurity worries him sick, and panic takes
over when he thinks of all the bridges to safety that alcohol
burned behind him. And how shall he ever straighten out
that awful jam that cost him the affection of his family and
separated him from them? ⇦His lone courage and unaided
will cannot do it. Surely he must now depend upon Somebody
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 kill
the pain, can be solved, too. Of course the sponsor points
out that our friend's life is still unmanageable even though
he is sober, that after all, only a bare start on A.A.'s program
has been made. More sobriety brought about by the admission
of alcoholism and by attendance at a few meetings is
very good indeed, but it is bound to be a far cry from per-



		40 	STEP THREE

manent sobriety and a contented, useful life. That is just
where the remaining Steps of the A.A. program come in.
Nothing short of continuous action upon these as a way of
life can bring the much-desired result.

Then it is explained that other Steps of the A.A. program
can be practiced with success only when Step Three
is given a determined and persistent trial. This statement
may surprise newcomers who have experienced nothing
but constant deflation and a growing conviction that human
will is of no value whatever. They have become persuaded,
and rightly so, that many problems besides alcohol will not
yield to a headlong assault powered by the individual alone.
But now it appears that there are certain things which only
the individual can do. All by himself, and in the light of his
own circumstances, he needs to develop the quality of willingness.
When he acquires willingness, he is the only one
who can make the decision to exert himself. Trying to do
this is an act of his own will. All of the Twelve Steps require
sustained and personal exertion to conform to their
principles and so, we trust, to God's will.
	
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. We had tried to bombard our problems
with it instead of attempting to bring it into agreement with
God's intention for us. To make this increasingly possible is
the purpose of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, and Step Three opens
the door.

Once we have come into agreement with these ideas, it
is really easy to begin the practice of Step Three. In all



		STEP THREE 	41

times of emotional disturbance or indecision, we can pause,
ask for quiet, and in the stillness simply say: “God grant me
the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to
change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
Thy will, not mine, be done.” ⇨


	Back to Table of Contents



	Step Four

“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory
of ourselves.”
	
CREATION gave us instincts for a purpose. Without
them we wouldn't be complete human beings. If men and
women didn't exert themselves to be secure in their persons,
made no effort to harvest food or construct shelter,
there would be no survival. If they didn't reproduce, the
earth wouldn't be populated. If there were no social instinct,
if men cared nothing for the society of one another, there
would be no society. So these desires—for the sex relation,
for material and emotional security, and for companionship
—are perfectly necessary and right, and surely God-given.⇨

Yet these instincts, so necessary for our existence, often
far exceed their proper functions. Powerfully, blindly, many
times subtly, they drive us, dominate us, and insist upon
ruling our lives. Our desires for sex, for material and emotional
security, and for an important place in society often
tyrannize us. When thus out of joint, man's natural desires
cause him great trouble, practically all the trouble there is.⇨
No human being, however good, is exempt from these
troubles. Nearly every serious emotional problem can be
seen as a case of misdirected instinct. When that happens,
our great natural assets, the instincts, have turned into physical
and mental liabilities.

Step Four is our vigorous and painstaking effort to discover
what these liabilities in each of us have been, and are.

		42



		STEP FOUR 	43

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. Without a willing and persistent
effort to do this, there can be little sobriety or
contentment for us. Without a searching and fearless moral
inventory, most of us have found that the faith which really
works in daily living is still out of reach.

Before tackling the inventory problem in detail, let's
have a closer look at what the basic problem is. Simple examples
like the following take on a world of meaning when
we think about them. Suppose a person places sex desire
ahead of everything else. In such a case, this imperious urge
can destroy his chances for material and emotional security
as well as his standing in the community. Another may develop
such an obsession for financial security that he wants
to do nothing but hoard money. Going to the extreme, he
can become a miser, or even a recluse who denies himself
both family and friends.

Nor is the quest for security always expressed in terms
of money. ⇦How frequently we see a frightened human being
determined to depend completely upon a stronger
person for guidance and protection.⇨ This weak one, failing
to meet life's responsibilities with his own resources, never
grows up. Disillusionment and helplessness are his lot. In
time all his protectors either flee or die, and he is once more
left alone and afraid.

We have also seen men and women who go powermad,
who devote themselves to attempting to rule their fel-



		44 	STEP FOUR

lows. These people often throw to the winds every chance
for legitimate security and a happy family life. Whenever a
human being becomes a battleground for the instincts, there
can be no peace.
	
But that is not all of the danger. Every time a person imposes
his instincts unreasonably upon others, unhappiness
follows. ⇨ If the pursuit of wealth tramples upon people who
happen to be in the way, then anger, jealousy, and revenge
are likely to be aroused. If sex runs riot, there is a similar
uproar. Demands made upon other people for too much attention,
protection, and love can only invite domination or
revulsion in the protectors themselves—two emotions quite
as unhealthy as the demands which evoked them. When an
individual's desire for prestige becomes uncontrollable,
whether in the sewing circle or at the international conference
table, other people suffer and often revolt. This collision of instincts 
can produce anything from a cold snub to a blazing revolution. In 
these ways we are set in conflict not only with ourselves, but with 
other people who have instincts, too.
	
⇦Alcoholics especially should be able to see that instinct
run wild in themselves is the underlying cause of their destructive
drinking.⇨ We have drunk to drown feelings of fear,
frustration, and depression. We have drunk to escape the
guilt of passions, and then have drunk again to make more
passions possible. We have drunk for vainglory—that we
might the more enjoy foolish dreams of pomp and power.
This perverse soul-sickness is not pleasant to look upon. Instincts
on rampage balk at investigation. The minute we
make a serious attempt to probe them, we are liable to suf-



		STEP FOUR 	45

fer severe reactions.

If temperamentally we are on the depressive side, we
are apt to be swamped with guilt and self-loathing. We wallow
in this messy bog, often getting a misshapen and
painful pleasure out of it. As we morbidly pursue this
melancholy activity, we may sink to such a point of despair
that nothing but oblivion looks possible as a solution. Here,
of course, we have lost all perspective, and therefore all
genuine humility. For this is pride in reverse.⇨ This is not a
moral inventory at all; it is the very process by which the
depressive 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 the
opposite. We will be offended at A.A.'s suggested inventory.
No doubt we shall point with pride to the good lives we
thought we led before the bottle cut us down. We shall
claim that our serious character defects, if we think we have
any at all, have been caused chiefly by excessive drinking.
This being so, we think it logically follows that sobriety—
first, last, and all the time—is the only thing we need to
work for. We believe that our one-time good characters will
be revived the moment we quit alcohol. If we were pretty
nice people all along, except for our drinking, what need is
there for a moral inventory now that we are sober?
We also clutch at another wonderful excuse for avoiding
an inventory. Our present anxieties and troubles, we cry,
are caused by the behavior of other people—people who
really need a moral inventory. We firmly believe that if
only they'd treat us better, we'd be all right. Therefore we
think our indignation is justified and reasonable—that our



		46 	STEP FOUR

resentments are the “right kind.” We aren't the guilty ones.
They are!

At this stage of the inventory proceedings, our sponsors
come to the rescue. They can do this, for they are the carriers
of A.A.'s tested experience with Step Four. They
comfort the melancholy one by first showing him that his
case is not strange or different, that his character defects are
probably not more numerous or worse than those of anyone
else in A.A. This the sponsor promptly proves by talking
freely and easily, and without exhibitionism, about his own
defects, past and present. This calm, yet realistic, stocktaking
is immensely reassuring. The sponsor probably points
out that the newcomer has some assets which can be noted
along with his liabilities. This tends to clear away morbidity
and encourage balance. As soon as he begins to be more
objective, the newcomer can fearlessly, rather than fearfully,
look at his own defects.

The sponsors of those who feel they need no inventory
are confronted with quite another problem. This is because
people who are driven by pride of self unconsciously blind
themselves to their liabilities. These newcomers scarcely
need comforting. The problem is to help them discover a
chink in the walls their ego has built, through which the
light of reason can shine.

First off, they can be told that the majority of A.A.
members have suffered severely from self-justification during
their drinking days. For most of us, self-justification
was the maker of excuses; excuses, of course, for drinking,
and for all kinds of crazy and damaging conduct. We had
made the invention of alibis a fine art. We had to drink be-



		STEP FOUR 	47

cause times were hard or times were good. We had to drink
because at home we were smothered with love or got none
at all. We had to drink because at work we were great successes
or dismal failures. We had to drink because our
nation had won a war or lost a peace. And so it went, ad infinitum.

We thought “conditions” drove us to drink, and when
we tried to correct these conditions and found that we
couldn't to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of
hand and we became alcoholics. It never occurred to us that
we needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever
they were.

But in A.A. we slowly learned that something had to be
done about our vengeful resentments, self-pity, and unwarranted
pride. We had to see that every time we played the
big shot, we turned people against us. We had to see that
when we harbored grudges and planned revenge for such
defeats, we were really beating ourselves with the club of
anger we had intended to use on others. We learned that if
we were seriously disturbed, our first need was to quiet that
disturbance, regardless of who or what we thought caused
it.  ⇨

To see how erratic emotions victimized us often took a
long time. We could perceive them quickly in others, but
only slowly in ourselves. First of all, we had to admit that
we had many of these defects, even though such disclosures
were painful and humiliating. Where other people
were concerned, we had to drop the word “blame” from
our speech and thought.⇨ This required great willingness
even to begin. But once over the first two or three high hur-



		48 	STEP FOUR
	
dles, the course ahead began to look easier. ⇦For we had
started to get perspective on ourselves, which is another
way of saying that we were gaining in humility.⇨

Of course the depressive and the power-driver are personality
extremes, types with which A.A. and the whole
world abound. Often these personalities are just as sharply
defined as the examples given. But just as often some of us
will fit more or less into both classifications. Human beings
are never quite alike, so each of us, when making an inventory,
will need to determine what his individual character
defects are. Having found the shoes that fit, he ought to step
into them and walk with new confidence that he is at last on
the right track.

Now let's ponder the need for a list of the more glaring
personality defects all of us have in varying degrees. To
those having religious training, such a list would set forth
serious violations of moral principles. Some others will
think of this list as defects of character. Still others will call
it an index of maladjustments. Some will become quite annoyed
if there is talk about immorality, let alone sin. But all
who are in the least reasonable will agree upon one point:
that there is plenty wrong with us alcoholics about which
plenty 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 these
defects should be called, let's take a universally recognized
list of major human failings—the Seven Deadly Sins of
pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. It is not
by accident that pride heads the procession. For pride, leading
to self-justification, and always spurred by conscious or



		STEP FOUR 	49

unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most human difficulties,
the chief block to true progress. Pride lures us into
making demands upon ourselves or upon others which cannot
be met without perverting or misusing our God-given
instincts. When the satisfaction of our instincts for sex, security,
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 its
own right. Then fear, in turn, generates more character defects. 
Unreasonable fear that our instincts will not be
satisfied drives us to covet the possessions of others, to lust
for sex and power, to become angry when our instinctive
demands are threatened, to be envious when the ambitions
of others seem to be realized while ours are not.⇨ We eat,
drink, and grab for more of everything than we need, fearing
we shall never have enough. And with genuine alarm at
the prospect of work, we stay lazy. We loaf and procrastinate,
or at best work grudgingly and under half steam.
These fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the
foundations of whatever sort of life we try to build.

So when A.A. suggests a fearless moral inventory, it
must seem to every newcomer that more is being asked of
him than he can do. Both his pride and his fear beat him
back every time he tries to look within himself. Pride says,
“You need not pass this way,” and Fear says, “You dare not
look!” But the testimony of A.A.'s who have really tried a
moral inventory is that pride and fear of this sort turn out to
be bogeymen, nothing else. Once we have a complete willingness
to take inventory, and exert ourselves to do the job
thoroughly, a wonderful light falls upon this foggy scene.



		50 	STEP FOUR

As we persist, a brand-new kind of confidence is born, and
the sense of relief at finally facing ourselves is indescribable.
These are the first fruits of Step Four.
	
By now the newcomer has probably arrived at the following
conclusions: that his character defects, representing
instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of his
drinking and his failure at life; that unless he is now willing
to work hard at the elimination of the worst of these defects,
both sobriety and peace of mind will still elude him;
that all the faulty foundation of his life will have to be torn
out and built anew on bedrock. ⇨ Now willing to commence
the search for his own defects, he will ask, “Just how do I
go about this? How do I take inventory of myself?”

Since Step Four is but the beginning of a lifetime practice,
it can be suggested that he first have a look at those
personal flaws which are acutely troublesome and fairly
obvious. Using his best judgment of what has been right
and what has been wrong, he might make a rough survey of
his conduct with respect to his primary instincts for sex, security,
and society. Looking back over his life, he can
readily get under way by consideration of questions such as
these:
	
When, and how, and in just what instances did my selfish
pursuit of the sex relation damage other people and me?
What people were hurt, and how badly? Did I spoil my
marriage and injure my children? Did I jeopardize my
standing in the community? Just how did I react to these
situations at the time? Did I burn with a guilt that nothing
could extinguish? Or did I insist that I was the pursued and
not the pursuer, and thus absolve myself? How have I re-



		STEP FOUR 	51

acted to frustration in sexual matters? When denied, did I
become vengeful or depressed? Did I take it out on other
people? If there was rejection or coldness at home, did I use
this as a reason for promiscuity?

Also of importance for most alcoholics are the questions
they must ask about their behavior respecting
financial and emotional security. In these areas fear, greed,
possessiveness, and pride have too often done their worst.
Surveying his business or employment record, almost any
alcoholic can ask questions like these: In addition to my
drinking problem, what character defects contributed to my
financial instability? Did fear and inferiority about my fitness
for my job destroy my confidence and fill me with
conflict? Did I try to cover up those feelings of inadequacy
by bluffing, cheating, lying, or evading responsibility? Or
by griping that others failed to recognize my truly exceptional
abilities? Did I overvalue myself and play the big
shot? Did I have such unprincipled ambition that I doublecrossed
and undercut my associates? Was I extravagant?
Did I recklessly borrow money, caring little whether it was
repaid or not? Was I a pinch penny, refusing to support my
family properly? Did I cut corners financially? What about
the “quick money” deals, the stock market, and the races?

Businesswomen in A.A. will naturally find that many of
these questions apply to them, too. But the alcoholic housewife
can also make the family financially insecure. She can
juggle charge accounts, manipulate the food budget, spend
her afternoons gambling, and run her husband into debt by
irresponsibility, waste, and extravagance.
But all alcoholics who have drunk themselves out of



		52 	STEP FOUR

jobs, family, and friends will need to cross-examine themselves
ruthlessly to determine how their own personality
defects have thus demolished their security.

The most common symptoms of emotional insecurity
are worry, anger, self-pity, and depression. These stem from
causes which sometimes seem to be within us, and at other
times to come from without. To take inventory in this respect
we ought to consider carefully all personal
relationships which bring continuous or recurring trouble. It
should be remembered that this kind of insecurity may arise
in any area where instincts are threatened. Questioning directed
to this end might run like this: Looking at both past
and present, what sex situations have caused me anxiety,
bitterness, frustration, or depression? Appraising each situation
fairly, can I see where I have been at fault? Did these
perplexities beset me because of selfishness or unreasonable
demands? Or, if my disturbance was seemingly caused
by the behavior of others, why do I lack the ability to accept
conditions I cannot change? These are the sort of fundamental
inquiries that can disclose the source of my
discomfort and indicate whether I may be able to alter my
own conduct and so adjust myself serenely to self-discipline.

Suppose that financial insecurity constantly arouses
these same feelings. I can ask myself to what extent have
my own mistakes fed my gnawing anxieties. And if the actions
of others are part of the cause, what can I do about
that? If I am unable to change the present state of affairs,
am I willing to take the measures necessary to shape my
life to conditions as they are? Questions like these, more of



		STEP FOUR 	53

which will come to mind easily in each individual case, will
help 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 inability
to form a true partnership with another human being.⇨
Our egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls. ⇦Either we insist
upon dominating the people we know, or we depend upon
them far too much. If we lean too heavily on people, they
will sooner or later fail us, for they are human, too, and cannot
possibly meet our incessant demands.⇨ In this way our
insecurity grows and festers. ⇦When we habitually try to manipulate
others to our own willful desires, they revolt, and
resist us heavily. Then we develop hurt feelings, a sense of
persecution, and a desire to retaliate. As we redouble our efforts
at control, and continue to fail, our suffering becomes
acute and constant. We have not once sought to be one in a
family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among
workers, to be a useful member of society. Always we tried
to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it.
This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation
with any one of those about us. Of true brotherhood we had
small comprehension.⇨

Some will object to many of the questions posed, because
they think their own character defects have not been
so glaring. To these it can be suggested that a conscientious
examination is likely to reveal the very defects the objectionable
questions are concerned with. Because our surface
record hasn't looked too bad, we have frequently been



		54 	STEP FOUR

abashed to find that this is so simply because we have
buried these self same defects deep down in us under thick
layers of self-justification. Whatever the defects, they have
finally ambushed us into alcoholism and misery.
Therefore, thoroughness ought to be the watchword
when taking inventory. In this connection, it is wise to write
out our questions and answers. It will be an aid to clear
thinking and honest appraisal.⇨ It will be the first tangible
evidence of our complete willingness to move forward.


	Back to Table of Contents




	Step Five

“Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another
human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”
	
ALL OF A.A.'s Twelve Steps ask us to go contrary to our
natural desires . . . they all deflate our egos. When it comes
to ego deflation, few Steps are harder to take than Five. But
scarcely any Step is more necessary to longtime sobriety
and peace of mind than this one.

A.A. experience has taught us we cannot live alone
with our pressing problems and the character defects which
cause or aggravate them. If we have swept the searchlight
of Step Four back and forth over our careers, and it has revealed
in stark relief those experiences we'd rather not
remember, if we have come to know how wrong thinking
and action have hurt us and others, then the need to quit living
by ourselves with those tormenting ghosts of yesterday
gets more urgent than ever. We have to talk to somebody
about 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 search
for an easier way—which usually consists of the general
and fairly painless admission that when drinking we were
sometimes bad actors. Then, for good measure, we add dramatic
descriptions of that part of our drinking behavior
which our friends probably know about anyhow.
	
But of the things which really bother and burn us, we

		55



		56 	STEP FIVE

say nothing. Certain distressing or humiliating memories,
we tell ourselves, ought not be shared with anyone.⇨ These
will remain our secret. Not a soul must ever know. We hope
they'll go to the grave with us.

Yet if A.A.'s experience means anything at all, this is
not only unwise, but is actually a perilous resolve. Few
muddled attitudes have caused us more trouble than holding
back on Step Five. Some people are unable to stay
sober at all; others will relapse periodically until they really
clean house. Even A.A. old timers, sober for years, often
pay dearly for skimping this Step. They will tell how they
tried to carry the load alone; how much they suffered of irritability,
anxiety, remorse, and depression; and how,
unconsciously seeking relief, they would sometimes accuse
even their best friends of the very character defects they
themselves were trying to conceal. They always discovered
that relief never came by confessing the sins of other people.
Everybody had to confess his own.

This practice of admitting one's defects to another person
is, of course, very ancient. It has been validated in
every century, and it characterizes the lives of all spiritually
centered and truly religious people. But today religion is by
no means the sole advocate of this saving principle. Psychiatrists
and psychologists point out the deep need every
human being has for practical insight and knowledge of his
own personality flaws and for a discussion of them with an
understanding and trustworthy person. So far as alcoholics
are concerned, A.A. would go even further. Most of us
would declare that without a fearless admission of our defects
to another human being we could not stay sober. It


	
		STEP FIVE 	57

seems plain that the grace of God will not enter to expel our
destructive obsessions until we are willing to try this.
	
What are we likely to receive from Step Five? For one
thing, we shall get rid of that terrible sense of isolation
we've always had. Almost without exception, alcoholics are
tortured by loneliness. Even before our drinking got bad
and people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered the
feeling that we didn't quite belong.⇨ Either we were shy, and
dared not draw near others, or we were apt to be noisy good
fellows craving attention and companionship, but never
getting it—at least to our way of thinking. There was always
that mysterious barrier we could neither surmount nor
understand. It was as if we were actors on a stage, suddenly
realizing that we did not know a single line of our parts.
That's one reason we loved alcohol too well. It did let us act
extemporaneously. 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 our
lives stood among people who seemed to understand, the
sense of belonging was tremendously exciting. We thought
the isolation problem had been solved. But we soon discovered
that while we weren't alone any more in a social sense,
we still suffered many of the old pangs of anxious apartness.
Until we had talked with complete candor of our
conflicts, and had listened to someone else do the same
thing, we still didn't belong. Step Five was the answer. It
was the beginning of true kinship with man and God.

This vital Step was also the means by which we began
to get the feeling that we could be forgiven, no matter what
we had thought or done. Often it was while working on this



		58 	STEP FIVE

Step with our sponsors or spiritual advisers that we first felt
truly able to forgive others, no matter how deeply we felt
they had wronged us. Our moral inventory had persuaded
us that all-round forgiveness was desirable, but it was only
when we resolutely tackled Step Five that we inwardly
knew we'd be able to receive forgiveness and give it, too.

Another great dividend we may expect from confiding
our defects to another human being is ⇦humility—a word often
misunderstood. To those who have made progress in
A.A., it amounts to a clear recognition of what and who we
really are, followed by a sincere attempt to become what
we could be.⇨ Therefore, our first practical move toward humility
must consist of recognizing our deficiencies. No
defect can be corrected unless we clearly see what it is. But
we shall have to do more than see. The objective look at
ourselves we achieved in Step Four was, after all, only a
look. All of us saw, for example, that we lacked honesty
and tolerance, that we were beset at times by attacks of self-pity
or delusions of personal grandeur. But while this was a
humiliating experience, it didn't necessarily mean that we
had yet acquired much actual humility. Though now recognized,
our defects were still there. Something had to be
done about them. And we soon found that we could not
wish or will them away by ourselves.

More realism and therefore more honesty about ourselves
are the great gains we make under the influence of
Step Five. As we took inventory, we began to suspect how
much trouble self-delusion had been causing us. This had
brought a disturbing reflection. If all our lives we had more
or less fooled ourselves, how could we now be so sure that



		STEP FIVE 	59

we weren't still self-deceived? How could we be certain
that we had made a true catalog of our defects and had really
admitted them, even to ourselves? Because we were still
bothered by fear, self-pity, and hurt feelings, it was probable
we couldn't appraise ourselves fairly at all. Too much guilt
and remorse might cause us to dramatize and exaggerate
our shortcomings. Or anger and hurt pride might be the
smoke screen under which we were hiding some of our defects
while we blamed others for them. Possibly, too, we
were 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 help
if we were surely to know and admit the truth about ourselves—the
help of God and another human being. Only by
discussing ourselves, holding back nothing, only by being
willing to take advice and accept direction could we set foot
on the road to straight thinking, solid honesty, and genuine
humility.

Yet many of us still hung back. We said, “Why can't
'God as we understand Him' tell us where we are astray? If
the Creator gave us our lives in the first place, then He must
know in every detail where we have since gone wrong.
Why don't we make our admissions to Him directly? Why
do we need to bring anyone else into this?”

At this stage, the difficulties of trying to deal rightly
with God by ourselves are twofold. Though we may at first



		60 	STEP FIVE

be startled to realize that God knows all about us, we are
apt to get used to that quite quickly. Somehow, being alone
with God doesn't seem as embarrassing as facing up to another
person. Until we actually sit down and talk aloud
about what we have so long hidden, our willingness to
clean house is still largely theoretical. When we are honest
with another person, it confirms that we have been honest
with ourselves and with God.
	
The second difficulty is this: what comes to us alone
may be garbled by our own rationalization and wishful
thinking. The benefit of talking to another person is that we
can 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 many
times have we heard well-intentioned people claim the
guidance of God when it was all too plain that they were
sorely mistaken. Lacking both practice and humility, they
had deluded themselves and were able to justify the most
arrant nonsense on the ground that this was what God had
told them. It is worth noting that people of very high spiritual
development almost always insist on checking with
friends or spiritual advisers the guidance they feel they have
received from God. Surely, then, a novice ought not lay
himself open to the chance of making foolish, perhaps tragic,
blunders in this fashion. While the comment or advice of
others may be by no means infallible, it is likely to be far
more specific than any direct guidance we may receive
while we are still so inexperienced in establishing contact
with a Power greater than ourselves.

Our next problem will be to discover the person in
whom we are to confide. Here we ought to take much care,
remembering that prudence is a virtue which carries a high



		STEP FIVE 	61

rating. Perhaps we shall need to share with this person facts
about ourselves which no others ought to know. We shall
want to speak with someone who is experienced, who not
only has stayed dry but has been able to surmount other serious
difficulties. Difficulties, perhaps, like our own. This
person may turn out to be one's sponsor, but not necessarily
so. If you have developed a high confidence in him, and his
temperament and problems are close to your own, then
such a choice will be good. Besides, your sponsor already
has the advantage of knowing something about your case.
	
Perhaps, though, your relation to him is such that you
would care to reveal only a part of your story. If this is the
situation, by all means do so, for you ought to make a beginning
as soon as you can. It may turn out, however, that
you'll choose someone else for the more difficult and deeper
revelations. This individual may be entirely outside of
A.A.—for example, your clergyman or your doctor. For
some of us, a complete stranger may prove the best bet.

The real tests of the situation are your own willingness
to confide and your full confidence in the one with whom
you share your first accurate self-survey. Even when you've
found the person, it frequently takes great resolution to approach
him or her. No one ought to say the A.A. program
requires no willpower; here is one place you may require
all you've got. Happily, though, the chances are that you
will be in for a very pleasant surprise. When your mission
is carefully explained, and it is seen by the recipient of your
confidence how helpful he can really be, the conversation
will start easily and will soon become eager. Before long,
your listener may well tell a story or two about himself



		62 	STEP FIVE
	
which will place you even more at ease. Provided you hold
back nothing, your sense of relief will mount from minute
to minute. The dammed-up emotions of years break out of
their confinement, and miraculously vanish as soon as they
are exposed. As the pain subsides, a healing tranquility
takes its place. And when humility and serenity are so combined,
something else of great moment is apt to occur.
Many an A.A., once agnostic or atheistic, tells us that it was
during this stage of Step Five that he first actually felt the
presence of God. And even those who had faith already often
become conscious of God as they never were before.

This feeling of being at one with God and man, this
emerging from isolation through the open and honest sharing
of our terrible burden of guilt, brings us to a resting
place where we may prepare ourselves for the following
Steps toward a full and meaningful sobriety.


	Back to Table of Contents




	Step Six

“Were entirely ready to have God remove
all 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 one
of A.A.'s greatest friends. He goes on to explain that any
person capable of enough willingness and honesty to try repeatedly
Step Six on all his faults—without any
reservations whatever—has indeed come a long way spiritually,
and is therefore entitled to be called a man who is
sincerely trying to grow in the image and likeness of his
own Creator.

Of course, the often disputed question of whether God
can—and will, under certain conditions—remove defects
of character will be answered with a prompt affirmative by
almost any A.A. member. To him, this proposition will be
no theory at all; it will be just about the largest fact in his
life. He will usually offer his proof in a statement like this:

“Sure, I was beaten, absolutely licked. My own
will-power just wouldn't work on alcohol. Change of scene,
the best efforts of family, friends, doctors, and clergymen
got no place with my alcoholism. I simply couldn't stop
drinking, and no human being could seem to do the job for
me. But when I became willing to clean house and then
asked a Higher Power, God as I understood Him, to give
me release, my obsession to drink vanished. It was lifted
right out of me.”

		63



		64 	STEP SIX

In A.A. meetings all over the world, statements just like
this are heard daily. It is plain for everybody to see that each
sober A.A. member has been granted a release from this
very obstinate and potentially fatal obsession. So in a very
complete and literal way, all A.A.'s have “become entirely
ready” to have God remove the mania for alcohol from
their 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 same
means a perfect release from every other difficulty or defect?
This is a riddle of our existence, the full answer to
which may be only in the mind of God. Nevertheless, at
least a part of the answer to it is apparent to us.

When men and women pour so much alcohol into
themselves that they destroy their lives, they commit a most
unnatural act. Defying their instinctive desire for self-preservation,
they seem bent upon self-destruction. They
work against their own deepest instinct. As they are humbled
by the terrific beating administered by alcohol, the
grace of God can enter them and expel their obsession.
Here their powerful instinct to live can cooperate fully with
their Creator's desire to give them new life. For nature and
God alike abhor suicide.

But most of our other difficulties don't fall under such a
category at all. Every normal person wants, for example, to
eat, to reproduce, to be somebody in the society of his fellows.
And he wishes to be reasonably safe and secure as he
tries to attain these things. Indeed, God made him that way.
He did not design man to destroy himself by alcohol, but
He did give man instincts to help him to stay alive.



		STEP SIX 	65

It is nowhere evident, at least in this life, that our Creator
expects us fully to eliminate our instinctual drives. So
far as we know, it is nowhere on the record that God has
completely removed from any human being all his natural
drives.

Since most of us are born with an abundance of natural
desires, it isn't strange that we often let these far exceed
their intended purpose. When they drive us blindly, or we
willfully demand that they supply us with more satisfactions
or pleasures than are possible or due us, that is the
point at which we depart from the degree of perfection that
God wishes for us here on earth. That is the measure of our
character 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 keep
us that way without our cooperation. That is something we
are supposed to be willing to work toward ourselves.⇨ He
asks only that we try as best we know how to make
progress in the building of character.⇨

So Step Six—“Were entirely ready to have God remove
all these defects of character”—is A.A.'s way of stating the
best possible attitude one can take in order to make a beginning
on this lifetime job. This does not mean that we expect
all our character defects to be lifted out of us as the drive to
drink was. A few of them may be, but with most of them
we shall have to be content with patient improvement. The
key words “entirely ready” underline the fact that we want
to aim at the very best we know or can learn.

How many of us have this degree of readiness? In an
absolute sense practically nobody has it. The best we can



		66 	STEP SIX

do, with all the honesty that we can summon, is to try to
have it. Even then the best of us will discover to our dismay
that there is always a sticking point, a point at which we
say, “No, I can't give this up yet.” And we shall often tread
on even more dangerous ground when we cry, “This I will
never give up!” Such is the power of our instincts to overreach
themselves. No matter how far we have progressed,
desires will always be found which oppose the grace of
God.

Some who feel they have done well may dispute this,
so let's try to think it through a little further. Practically every
body wishes to be rid of his most glaring and
destructive handicaps. No one wants to be so proud that he
is scorned as a braggart, nor so greedy that he is labeled a
thief. No one wants to be angry enough to murder, lustful
enough to rape, gluttonous enough to ruin his health. No
one wants to be agonized by the chronic pain of envy or to
be paralyzed by sloth. Of course, most human beings don't
suffer these defects at these rock-bottom levels.

We who have escaped these extremes are apt to congratulate
ourselves. Yet can we? After all, hasn't it been self-interest,
pure and simple, that has enabled most of us to escape?
Not much spiritual effort is involved in avoiding
excesses which will bring us punishment anyway. But
when we face up to the less violent aspects of these very
same defects, then where do we stand?
	
What we must recognize now is that we exult in some
of our defects.  We really love them. Who, for example,
doesn't like to feel just a little superior to the next fellow, or
even quite a lot superior? Isn't it true that we like to let
greed masquerade as ambition? To think of liking lust



		STEP SIX 	67

seems impossible. But how many men and women speak
love with their lips, and believe what they say, so that they
can hide lust in a dark corner of their minds? And even
while staying within conventional bounds, many people
have to admit that their imaginary sex excursions are apt to
be all dressed up as dreams of romance.

Self-righteous anger also can be very enjoyable. In a
perverse way we can actually take satisfaction from the fact
that many people annoy us, for it brings a comfortable feeling
of superiority. Gossip barbed with our anger, a polite
form of murder by character assassination, has its satisfactions
for us, too. Here we are not trying to help those we
criticize; we are trying to proclaim our own righteousness.⇨

When gluttony is less than ruinous, we have a milder
word for that, too; we call it “taking our comfort.” We live
in a world riddled with envy. To a greater or less degree,
everybody is infected with it. From this defect we must
surely get a warped yet definite satisfaction. Else why
would we consume such great amounts of time wishing for
what we have not, rather than working for it, or angrily
looking for attributes we shall never have, instead of adjusting
to the fact, and accepting it? And how often we work
hard with no better motive than to be secure and slothful
later on—only we call that “retiring.” Consider, too, our talents
for procrastination, which is really sloth in five
syllables. Nearly anyone could submit a good list of such
defects as these, and few of us would seriously think of giving
them up, at least until they cause us excessive misery.

Some people, of course, may conclude that they are in-



		68 	STEP SIX

deed ready to have all such defects taken from them. But
even these people, if they construct a list of still milder defects,
will be obliged to admit that they prefer to hang on to
some of them.⇨ Therefore, it seems plain that few of us can
quickly or easily become ready to aim at spiritual and
moral perfection; we want to settle for only as much perfection
as will get us by in life, according, of course, to our
various and sundry ideas of what will get us by. So the difference
between “the boys and the men” is the difference
between striving for a self-determined objective and for the
perfect objective which is of God.

Many will at once ask, “How can we accept the entire
implication of Step Six? Why—that is perfection!” This
sounds like a hard question, but practically speaking, it isn't.
Only Step One, where we made the 100 percent admission
we were powerless over alcohol, can be practiced with absolute
perfection. The remaining eleven Steps state perfect
ideals. They are goals toward which we look, and the measuring
sticks by which we estimate our progress. Seen in
this light, Step Six is still difficult, but not at all impossible.
The only urgent thing is that we make a beginning, and
keep trying.

If we would gain any real advantage in the use of this
Step on problems other than alcohol, we shall need to make
a brand new venture into open-mindedness. We shall need
to raise our eyes toward perfection, and be ready to walk in
that direction. It will seldom matter how haltingly we walk.
The only question will be “Are we ready?”

Looking again at those defects we are still unwilling to
give up, we ought to erase the hard-and-fast lines that we



		STEP SIX 	69

have drawn. Perhaps we shall be obliged in some cases still
to say, “This I cannot give up yet . . . ,” but we should not
say to ourselves, “This I will never give up!”

Let's dispose of what appears to be a hazardous open
end we have left. It is suggested that we ought to become
entirely willing to aim toward perfection. We note that
some delay, however, might be pardoned. That word, in the
mind of a rationalizing alcoholic, could certainly be given a
longterm meaning. He could say, “How very easy! Sure, I'll
head toward perfection, but I'm certainly not going to hurry
any. Maybe I can postpone dealing with some of my problems
indefinitely.” Of course, this won't do. Such a bluffing
of oneself will have to go the way of many another pleasant
rationalization. At the very least, we shall have to come to
grips with some of our worst character defects and take action
toward their removal as quickly as we can.

The moment we say, “No, never!” our minds close
against the grace of God. Delay is dangerous, and rebellion
may be fatal. This is the exact point at which we abandon
limited objectives, and move toward God's will for us.


	Back to Table of Contents




	Step Seven

“Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.”

SINCE this Step so specifically concerns itself with humility,
we should pause here to consider what humility is
and what the practice of it can mean to us.

Indeed, the attainment of greater humility is the foundation
principle of each of A.A.'s Twelve Steps. For without
some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all.
Nearly all A.A.'s have found, too, that unless they develop
much more of this precious quality than may be required
just for sobriety, they still haven't much chance of becoming
truly happy. Without it, they cannot live to much useful
purpose, or, in adversity, be able to summon the faith that
can meet any emergency.

Humility, as a word and as an ideal, has a very bad time
of it in our world. Not only is the idea misunderstood; the
word itself is often intensely disliked. Many people haven't
even a nodding acquaintance with humility as a way of life.
Much of the everyday talk we hear, and a great deal of what
we read, highlights man's pride in his own achievements.

With great intelligence, men of science have been forcing
nature to disclose her secrets. The immense resources
now being harnessed promise such a quantity of material
blessings that many have come to believe that a man-made
millennium lies just ahead. Poverty will disappear, and
there will be such abundance that everybody can have all
the security and personal satisfactions he desires. The theo-

		70



		STEP SEVEN 	71

ry seems to be that once everybody's primary instincts are
satisfied, there won't be much left to quarrel about. The
world will then turn happy and be free to concentrate on
culture and character. Solely by their own intelligence and
labor, 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 enter
into debate with the many who still so passionately cling to
the belief that to satisfy our basic natural desires is the main
object of life. But we are sure that no class of people in the
world ever made a worse mess of trying to live by this formula
than alcoholics. For thousands of years we have been
demanding more than our share of security, prestige, and
romance. When we seemed to be succeeding, we drank to
dream still greater dreams. When we were frustrated, even
in part, we drank for oblivion. Never was there enough of
what we thought we wanted.

In all these strivings, so many of them well-intentioned,
our crippling handicap had been our lack of humility. We
had lacked the perspective to see that ⇦character-building⇨
and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfactions
were not the purpose of living. Quite
characteristically, we had gone all out in confusing the ends
with the means. Instead of regarding the satisfaction of our
material desires as the means by which we could live and
function as human beings, we had taken these satisfactions
to be the final end and aim of life.⇨

True, most of us thought good character was desirable,


		72 	STEP SEVEN

but obviously good character was something one needed to
get on with the business of being self-satisfied. With a
proper display of honesty and morality, we'd stand a better
chance of getting what we really wanted. But whenever we
had to choose between character and comfort, the ⇦character-building⇨
was lost in the dust of our chase after what we
thought was happiness. Seldom did we look at character-building
as something desirable in itself, something we
would like to strive for whether our instinctual needs were
met 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, this
blindness to the true purpose of our lives, produced another
bad result. For just so long as we were convinced that we
could live exclusively by our own individual strength and
intelligence, for just that long was a working faith in a
Higher Power impossible.⇨ This was true even when we believed
that God existed. ⇦We could actually have earnest
religious beliefs which remained barren because we were
still trying to play God ourselves. As long as we placed
self-reliance first, a genuine reliance upon a Higher Power
was out of the question.⇨ ⇦That basic ingredient of all humility,
a desire to seek and do God's will, was missing.⇨
	
For us, the process of gaining a new perspective was
unbelievably painful.⇨ It was only by repeated humiliations
that we were forced to learn something about humility. It
was only at the end of a long road, marked by successive
defeats and humiliations, and the final crushing of our self-sufficiency,
that we began to feel humility as something
more than a condition of groveling despair. Every newcomer



		STEP SEVEN 	73

in Alcoholics Anonymous is told, and soon realizes for
himself, that his humble admission of powerlessness over
alcohol is his first step toward liberation from its paralyzing
grip.
	
So it is that we first see humility as a necessity. But this
is the barest beginning. To get completely away from our
aversion to the idea of being humble, to gain a vision of humility
as the avenue to true freedom of the human spirit, to
be willing to work for humility as something to be desired
for itself, takes most of us a long, long time. A whole lifetime
geared to self-centeredness cannot be set in reverse all
at once. ⇨ Rebellion dogs our every step at first.

When we have finally admitted without reservation that
we are powerless over alcohol, we are apt to breathe a great
sigh of relief, saying, “Well, thank God that's over! I'll never
have to go through that again!” Then we learn, often to
our consternation, that this is only the first milestone on the
new road we are walking. ⇦Still goaded by sheer necessity,
we reluctantly come to grips with those serious character
flaws that made problem drinkers of us in the first place,
flaws which must be dealt with to prevent a retreat into alcoholism
once again. We will want to be rid of some of
these defects, but in some instances this will appear to be an
impossible job from which we recoil. ⇦And we cling with a
passionate persistence to others which are just as disturbing
to our equilibrium, because we still enjoy them too much.
How can we possibly summon the resolution and the willingness
to get rid of such overwhelming compulsions and
desires?

But again we are driven on by the inescapable conclusion
which we draw from A.A. experience, that we surely
must try with a will, or else fall by the wayside. At this



		74 	STEP SEVEN

stage of our progress we are under heavy pressure and coercion
to do the right thing. We are obliged to choose
between the pains of trying and the certain penalties of failing
to do so. These initial steps along the road are taken
grudgingly, yet we do take them. We may still have no very
high opinion of humility as a desirable personal virtue, but
we do recognize it as a necessary aid to our survival.

But when we have taken a square look at some of these
defects, have discussed them with another, and have become
willing to have them removed, our thinking about
humility commences to have a wider meaning. By this time
in all probability we have gained some measure of release
from our more devastating handicaps. We enjoy moments
in which there is something like real peace of mind. To
those of us who have hitherto known only excitement, depression,
or anxiety—in other words, to all of us—this
newfound peace is a priceless gift. Something new indeed
has been added. Where humility had formerly stood for a
forced feeding on humble pie, it now begins to mean the
nourishing ingredient which can give us serenity.

This improved perception of humility starts another
revolutionary change in our outlook. Our eyes begin to
open to the immense values which have come straight out
of painful ego-puncturing. Until now, our lives have been
largely devoted to running from pain and problems. We
fled from them as from a plague. We never wanted to deal
with the fact of suffering.⇨ Escape via the bottle was always
our solution. ⇦Character-building⇨ through suffering might be
all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us.




		STEP SEVEN 	75

Then, in A.A., we looked and listened. Everywhere we
saw failure and misery transformed by humility into priceless
assets. We heard story after story of how humility had
brought strength out of weakness. ⇦In every case, pain had
been the price of admission into a new life.⇨ But this admission
price had purchased more than we expected. It brought
a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be a
healer of pain. We began to fear pain less, and desire humility
more than ever.

During this process of learning more about humility, the
most profound result of all was the change in our attitude
toward God. And this was true whether we had been believers
or unbelievers. We began to get over the idea that
the Higher Power was a sort of bush-league pinch hitter, to
be called upon only in an emergency.⇨ The notion that we
would still live our own lives, God helping a little now and
then, began to evaporate. Many of us who had thought ourselves
religious awoke to the limitations of this attitude.
Refusing to place God first, we had deprived ourselves of
His help. But now the words “Of myself I am nothing, the
Father doeth the works” began to carry bright promise and
meaning.

We saw we needn't always be bludgeoned and beaten
into humility. It could come quite as much from our voluntary
reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering. A
great turning point in our lives came when we sought for
humility as something we really wanted, rather than as
something we must have. It marked the time when we
could commence to see the full implication of Step Seven:
“Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.”




		76 	STEP SEVEN

As we approach the actual taking of Step Seven, it
might be well if we A.A.'s inquire once more just what our
deeper objectives are. Each of us would like to live at peace
with himself and with his fellows. We would like to be assured
that the grace of God can do for us what we cannot
do for ourselves. We have seen that character defects based
upon shortsighted or unworthy desires are the obstacles that
block our path toward these objectives. We now clearly see
that we have been making unreasonable demands upon
ourselves, upon others, and upon God.
	
⇦ The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered
fear—primarily fear that we would lose something we already
possessed or would fail to get something we
demanded. ⇨ Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we
were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration.
Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a
means of reducing these demands. The difference between
a demand and a simple request is plain to anyone.

The Seventh Step is where we make the change in our
attitude which permits us, with humility as our guide, to
move out from ourselves toward others and toward God.
The whole emphasis of Step Seven is on humility. It is really
saying to us that we now ought to be willing to try
humility in seeking the removal of our other shortcomings
just as we did when we admitted that we were powerless
over alcohol, and came to believe that a Power greater than
ourselves could restore us to sanity. If that degree of humility
could enable us to find the grace by which such a deadly
obsession could be banished, then there must be hope of the
same result respecting any other problem we could possibly
have.


	Back to Table of Contents





	Step Eight
	
“Made a list of all persons we had harmed,
and became willing to make amends to them all.”

STEPS Eight and Nine are concerned with personal relations.
First, we take a look backward and try to discover
where we have been at fault; next we make a vigorous attempt
to repair the damage we have done; and third, having
thus cleaned away the debris of the past, we consider how,
with our newfound knowledge of ourselves, we may develop
the best possible relations with every human being we
know.

This is a very large order. It is a task which we may perform
with increasing skill, but never really finish. Learning
how to live in the greatest peace, partnership, and brotherhood
with all men and women, of whatever description, is a
moving and fascinating adventure. Every A.A. has found
that he can make little headway in this new adventure of
living until he first backtracks and really makes an accurate
and unsparing survey of the human wreckage he has left in
his wake. To a degree, he has already done this when taking
moral inventory, but now the time has come when he ought
to 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 painfully
festering, will at first look like a purposeless and pointless
piece of surgery. But if a willing start is made, then the

		77



		78 	STEP EIGHT

great advantages of doing this will so quickly reveal themselves
that the pain will be lessened as one obstacle after
another melts away.

These obstacles, however, are very real. The first, and
one of the most difficult, has to do with forgiveness. The
moment we ponder a twisted or broken relationship with
another person, our emotions go on the defensive. ⇦To escape
looking at the wrongs we have done another, we
resentfully focus on the wrong he has done us. This is especially
true if he has, in fact, behaved badly at all.
Triumphantly we seize upon his misbehavior as the perfect
excuse for minimizing or forgetting our own.⇨
	
Right here we need to fetch ourselves up sharply. It
doesn't make much sense when a real toss pot calls a kettle
black. Let's remember that alcoholics are not the only ones
bedeviled by sick emotions. Moreover, it is usually a fact
that our behavior when drinking has aggravated the defects
of others. We've repeatedly strained the patience of our best
friends to a snapping point, and have brought out the very
worst in those who didn't think much of us to begin with. In
many instances we are really dealing with fellow sufferers,
people whose woes we have increased. If we are now about
to ask forgiveness for ourselves, why shouldn't we start out
by forgiving them, one and all? ⇨

When listing the people we have harmed, most of us hit
another solid obstacle. We got a pretty severe shock when
we realized that we were preparing to make a face-to-face
admission of our wretched conduct to those we had hurt. It
had been embarrassing enough when in confidence we had
admitted these things to God, to ourselves, and to another



		STEP EIGHT 	79

human being. But the prospect of actually visiting or even
writing the people concerned now overwhelmed us, especially
when we remembered in what poor favor we stood
with most of them. There were cases, too, where we had
damaged others who were still happily unaware of being
hurt. Why, we cried, shouldn't bygones be bygones? Why
do we have to think of these people at all? These were
some of the ways in which fear conspired with pride to hinder
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 hurt
anybody but ourselves. Our families didn't suffer, because
we always paid the bills and seldom drank at home. Our
business associates didn't suffer, because we were usually
on the job. Our reputations hadn't suffered, because we
were certain few knew of our drinking. Those who did
would sometimes assure us that, after all, a lively bender
was only a good man's fault. What real harm, therefore, had
we done? No more, surely, than we could easily mend with
a few casual apologies.

This attitude, of course, is the end result of purposeful
forgetting. It is an attitude which can only be changed by a
deep 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 should
nevertheless make an accurate and really exhaustive survey
of our past life as it has affected other people. In many instances
we shall find that though the harm done others has
not been great, the emotional harm we have done ourselves
has. Very deep, sometimes quite forgotten, damaging emo-



		80 	STEP EIGHT

tional conflicts persist below the level of consciousness. At
the time of these occurrences, they may actually have given
our emotions violent twists which have since discolored our
personalities and altered our lives for the worse.

While the purpose of making restitution to others is
paramount, it is equally necessary that we extricate from an
examination of our personal relations every bit of information
about ourselves and our fundamental difficulties that 
we can. ⇦ Since defective relations with other human beings
have nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes,
including our alcoholism, no field of investigation could
yield more satisfying and valuable rewards than this one.
Calm, thoughtful reflection upon personal relations can
deepen our insight. We can go far beyond those things
which were superficially wrong with us, to see those flaws
which were basic, flaws which sometimes were responsible
for the whole pattern of our lives.⇨ Thoroughness, we have
found, will pay—and pay handsomely.

We might next ask ourselves what we mean when we
say that we have “harmed” other people. What kinds of
“harm” do people do one another, anyway? To define the
word “harm” in a practical way, we might call it the result
of instincts in collision, which cause physical, mental, emotional,
or spiritual damage to people. If our tempers are
consistently bad, we arouse anger in others. If we lie or
cheat, we deprive others not only of their worldly goods,
but of their emotional security and peace of mind. We really
issue them an invitation to become contemptuous and
vengeful. If our sex conduct is selfish, we may excite jealousy,
misery, and a strong desire to retaliate in kind.



		STEP EIGHT 	81

Such gross misbehavior is not by any means a full catalogue
of the harms we do. Let us think of some of the
subtler 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 attention
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 of
minute directions for just how their lives should be lived
from hour to hour? What happens when we wallow in depression,
self-pity oozing from every pore, and inflict that
upon those about us? Such a roster of harms done others—
the kind that make daily living with us as practicing alcoholics
difficult and often unbearable could be extended
almost indefinitely. When we take such personality traits as
these into shop, office, and the society of our fellows, they
can do damage almost as extensive as that we have caused
at home.

Having carefully surveyed this whole area of human relations,
and having decided exactly what personality traits
in us injured and disturbed others, we can now commence
to ransack memory for the people to whom we have given
offense. To put a finger on the nearby and most deeply
damaged ones shouldn't be hard to do. Then, as year by
year we walk back through our lives as far as memory will
reach, we shall be bound to construct a long list of people
who have, to some extent or other, been affected. We
should, of course, ponder and weigh each instance carefully.
⇦We shall want to hold ourselves to the course of



		82 	STEP EIGHT

admitting the things we have done, meanwhile forgiving
the wrongs done us, real or fancied. We should avoid extreme
judgments, both of ourselves and of others involved.
We must not exaggerate our defects or theirs. A quiet, objective
view will be our steadfast aim.
	
Whenever our pencil falters, we can fortify and cheer
ourselves by remembering what A.A. experience in this
Step has meant to others. It is the beginning of the end of
isolation from our fellows and from God.


	Back to Table of Contents





	Step Nine

“Made direct amends to such people wherever
possible, except when to do so would injure them 
or others.”

GOOD judgment, a careful sense of timing, courage, and
prudence—these are the qualities we shall need when we
take Step Nine.

After we have made the list of people we have harmed,
have reflected carefully upon each instance, and have tried
to possess ourselves of the right attitude in which to proceed,
we will see that the making of direct amends divides
those we should approach into several classes. There will
be those who ought to be dealt with just as soon as we become
reasonably confident that we can maintain our
sobriety. There will be those to whom we can make only
partial restitution, lest complete disclosures do them or others
more harm than good. There will be other cases where
action ought to be deferred, and still others in which by the
very nature of the situation we shall never be able to make
direct personal contact at all.

Most of us begin making certain kinds of direct amends
from the day we join Alcoholics Anonymous. The moment
we tell our families that we are really going to try the program,
the process has begun. In this area there are seldom
any questions of timing or caution. We want to come in the
door shouting the good news. After coming from our first

		83



	84 	STEP NINE

meeting, or perhaps after we have finished reading the book
“Alcoholics Anonymous,” we usually want to sit down
with some member of the family and readily admit the
damage we have done by our drinking. Almost always we
want to go further and admit other defects that have made
us hard to live with. This will be a very different occasion,
and in sharp contrast with those hangover mornings when
we alternated between reviling ourselves and blaming the
family (and everyone else) for our troubles. At this first sitting,
it is necessary only that we make a general admission
of our defects. It may be unwise at this stage to rehash certain
harrowing episodes. Good judgment will suggest that
we ought to take our time. While we may be quite willing
to reveal the very worst, we must be sure to remember that
we cannot buy our own peace of mind at the expense of
others.

Much the same approach will apply at the office or factory.
We shall at once think of a few people who know all
about our drinking, and who have been most affected by it.
But even in these cases, we may need to use a little more
discretion than we did with the family. We may not want to
say anything for several weeks, or longer. First we will
wish to be reasonably certain that we are on the A.A. beam.
Then we are ready to go to these people, to tell them what
A.A. is, and what we are trying to do. Against this background
we can freely admit the damage we have done and
make our apologies. We can pay, or promise to pay, whatever
obligations, financial or otherwise, we owe. The
generous response of most people to such quiet sincerity
will often astonish us. Even our severest and most justified
critics will frequently meet us more than halfway on the
first trial.



	STEP NINE 	85

This atmosphere of approval and praise is apt to be so
exhilarating as to put us off balance by creating an insatiable
appetite for more of the same. Or we may be tipped
over in the other direction when, in rare cases, we get a cool
and skeptical reception. This will tempt us to argue, or to
press our point insistently. Or maybe it will tempt us to discouragement
and pessimism. But if we have prepared
ourselves well in advance, such reactions will not deflect us
from our steady and even purpose.
	
After taking this preliminary trial at making amends,
we may enjoy such a sense of relief that we conclude our
task is finished. We will want to rest on our laurels. ⇦The
temptation to skip the more humiliating and dreaded meetings
that still remain may be great. We will often
manufacture plausible excuses for dodging these issues entirely.
Or we may just procrastinate, telling ourselves the
time is not yet, when in reality we have already passed up
many a fine chance to right a serious wrong. Let's not talk
prudence while practicing evasion.
	
As soon as we begin to feel confident in our new way
of life and have begun, by our behavior and example, to
convince those about us that we are indeed changing for the
better, it is usually safe to talk in complete frankness with
those who have been seriously affected, even those who
may be only a little or not at all aware of what we have
done to them. The only exceptions we will make will be
cases where our disclosure would cause actual harm. These
conversations can begin in a casual or natural way. But if
no such opportunity presents itself, at some point we will
want to summon all our courage, head straight for the person



	86 	STEP NINE

concerned, and lay our cards on the table. We needn't
wallow in excessive remorse before those we have harmed,
but amends at this level should always be forthright and
generous.

There can only be one consideration which should
qualify our desire for a complete disclosure of the damage
we have done. That will arise in the occasional situation
where to make a full revelation would seriously harm the
one to whom we are making amends. Or—quite as important—other
people. We cannot, for example, unload a
detailed account of extramarital adventuring upon the
shoulders of our unsuspecting wife or husband. And even
in those cases where such a matter must be discussed, let's
try to avoid harming third parties, whoever they may be. It
does not lighten our burden when we recklessly make the
crosses of others heavier.

Many a razor-edged question can arise in other departments
of life where this same principle is involved.

Suppose, for instance, that we have drunk up a good chunk
of our firm's money, whether by “borrowing” or on a heavily
padded expense account. Suppose that this may continue
to go undetected, if we say nothing. Do we instantly confess
our irregularities to the firm, in the practical certainty
that we will be fired and become unemployable? Are we
going to be so rigidly righteous about making amends that
we don't care what happens to the family and home? 
Or do we first consult those who are to be gravely affected? Do
we lay the matter before our sponsor or spiritual adviser,
earnestly asking God's help and guidance—meanwhile re-
solving to do the right thing when it becomes clear, cost



	STEP NINE 	87

what it may? Of course, there is no pat answer which can fit
all such dilemmas. But all of them do require a complete
willingness to make amends as fast and as far as may be
possible in a given set of conditions.
	
Above all, we should try to be absolutely sure that we
are not delaying because we are afraid. For the readiness to
take the full consequences of our past acts, and to take responsibility
for the well-being of others at the same time, is
the very spirit of Step Nine.


	Back to Table of Contents





	Step Ten

“Continued to take personal inventory and
when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”

AS we work the first nine Steps, we prepare ourselves for
the adventure of a new life. But when we approach Step
Ten we commence to put our A.A. way of living to practical
use, day by day, in fair weather or foul. Then comes the
acid test: can we stay sober, keep in emotional balance, and
live to good purpose under all conditions?⇨
	
A continuous look at our assets and liabilities, and a real
desire to learn and grow by this means, are necessities for
us. We alcoholics have learned this the hard way. More experienced
people, of course, in all times and places have
practiced unsparing self-survey and criticism. For the wise
have always known that no one can make much of his life
until self-searching becomes a regular habit, until he is able
to admit and accept what he finds, and until he patiently
and persistently tries to correct what is wrong.

When a drunk has a terrific hangover because he drank
heavily yesterday, he cannot live well today. But there is
another kind of hangover which we all experience whether
we are drinking or not. That is the emotional hangover, the
direct result of yesterday's and sometimes today's excesses
of negative emotion—anger, fear, jealousy, and the like. If
we would live serenely today and tomorrow, we certainly
need to eliminate these hangovers. This doesn't mean we

		88



	STEP TEN 	89

need to wander morbidly around in the past. It requires an
admission and correction of errors now. Our inventory enables
us to settle with the past. When this is done, we are
really able to leave it behind us. When our inventory is
carefully taken, and we have made peace with ourselves,
the conviction follows that tomorrow's challenges can be
met as they come.

Although all inventories are alike in principle, the time
factor does distinguish one from another. There's the spotcheck
inventory, taken at any time of the day, whenever we
find ourselves getting tangled up. There's the one we take at
day's end, when we review the happenings of the hours just
past. Here we cast up a balance sheet, crediting ourselves
with things well done, and chalking up debits where due.
Then there are those occasions when alone, or in the company
of our sponsor or spiritual adviser, we make a careful
review of our progress since the last time. Many A.A.'s go
in for annual or semiannual housecleanings. Many of us
also like the experience of an occasional retreat from the
outside world where we can quiet down for an undisturbed
day or so of self-overhaul and meditation.

Aren't these practices joy-killers as well as time-consumers?
Must A.A.'s spend most of their waking hours
drearily rehashing their sins of omission or commission?
Well, hardly. The emphasis on inventory is heavy only because
a great many of us have never really acquired the
habit of accurate self-appraisal. Once this healthy practice
has become grooved, it will be so interesting and profitable
that the time it takes won't be missed. For these minutes
and sometimes hours spent in self-examination are bound



	90 	STEP TEN

to make all the other hours of our day better and happier.
And at length our inventories become a regular part of everyday
living, rather than something unusual or set apart.

Before we ask what a spot-check inventory is, let's look
at the kind of setting in which such an inventory can do its
work.
	
⇦ It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed,
no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with
us. If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the
wrong also. But are there no exceptions to this rule? What
about “justifiable” anger? If somebody cheats us, aren't we
entitled to be mad? Can't we be properly angry with selfrighteous
folk? For us of A.A. these are dangerous exceptions.
We have found that justified anger ought to be left to
those better qualified to handle it.
	
⇦Few people have been more victimized by resentments
than have we alcoholics. It mattered little whether our resentments
were justified or not.⇨ A burst of temper could
spoil a day, and a well-nursed grudge could make us miserably
ineffective. Nor were we ever skillful in separating
justified from unjustified anger. As we saw it, our wrath
was always justified. Anger, that occasional luxury of more
balanced people, could keep us on an emotional jag indefinitely.
These emotional “dry benders” often led straight to
the bottle. Other kinds of disturbances—jealousy, envy,
self-pity, or hurt pride—did the same thing.
	
A spot-check inventory taken in the midst of such disturbances
can be of very great help in quieting stormy
emotions. Today's spot check finds its chief application to
situations which arise in each day's march. The considera-



	STEP TEN 	91

tion of long-standing difficulties had better be postponed,
when possible, to times deliberately set aside for that purpose.
The quick inventory is aimed at our daily ups and
downs, especially those where people or new events throw
us off balance and tempt us to make mistakes.

In all these situations we need self-restraint, honest
analysis of what is involved, a willingness to admit when
the fault is ours, and an equal willingness to forgive when
the fault is elsewhere. We need not be discouraged when
we fall into the error of our old ways, for these disciplines
are not easy. We shall look for progress, not for perfection.
	
Our first objective will be the development of self-restraint.
This carries a top priority rating. When we speak or
act hastily or rashly, the ability to be fair-minded and tolerant
evaporates on the spot. One unkind tirade or one willful
snap judgment can ruin our relation with another person for
a whole day, or maybe a whole year. Nothing pays off like
restraint of tongue and pen. We must avoid quick-tempered
criticism and furious, power-driven argument. The same
goes for sulking or silent scorn. These are emotional booby
traps baited with pride and vengefulness. Our first job is to
sidestep the traps. When we are tempted by the bait, we
should train ourselves to step back and think. For we can
neither think nor act to good purpose until the habit of selfrestraint
has become automatic.

Disagreeable or unexpected problems are not the only
ones that call for self-control. We must be quite as careful
when we begin to achieve some measure of importance and
material success. For no people have ever loved personal



	92 	STEP TEN

triumphs more than we have loved them; we drank of suc-
cess as of a wine which could never fail to make us feel
elated. When temporary good fortune came our way, we indulged
ourselves in fantasies of still greater victories over
people and circumstances. Thus blinded by prideful selfconfidence,
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 the
esteem of our friends and business associates, we find that
we still need to exercise special vigilance. As an insurance
against “big-shot-ism” we can often check ourselves by remembering
that we are today sober only by the grace of
God and that any success we may be having is far more His
success than ours.
	
⇦ Finally, we begin to see that all people, including ourselves,
are to some extent emotionally ill as well as
frequently wrong, and then we approach true tolerance and
see what real love for our fellows actually means. ⇨ It will become
more and more evident as we go forward that it is
pointless 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 assert
that they love everybody. Most of us must admit that we
have loved but a few; that we have been quite indifferent to
the many so long as none of them gave us trouble; and as
for the remainder—well, we have really disliked or hated
them. Although these attitudes are common enough, we
A.A.'s find we need something much better in order to keep
our balance. We can't stand it if we hate deeply. The idea




	STEP TEN 	93

that we can be possessively loving of a few, can ignore the
many, and can continue to fear or hate anybody, has to be
abandoned, if only a little at a time.
	
We can try to stop making unreasonable demands upon
those we love. We can show kindness where we had shown
none. With those we dislike we can begin to practice justice
and courtesy, perhaps going out of our way to understand
and help them. 

Whenever we fail any of these people, we can promptly
admit it—to ourselves always, and to them also, when the
admission would be helpful. Courtesy, kindness, justice,
and love are the keynotes by which we may come into harmony
with practically anybody. ⇦ When in doubt we can
always pause, saying, “Not my will, but Thine, be done.”
And we can often ask ourselves, “Am I doing to others as I
would have them do to me—today?” ⇨
	
When evening comes, perhaps just before going to
sleep, many of us draw up a balance sheet for the day. This
is a good place to remember that inventory-taking is not always
done in red ink. It's a poor day indeed when we
haven't done something right. As a matter of fact, the waking
hours are usually well filled with things that are
constructive. Good intentions, good thoughts, and good acts
are there for us to see. Even when we have tried hard and
failed, we may chalk that up as one of the greatest credits of
all. Under these conditions, the pains of failure are converted
into assets. Out of them we receive the stimulation we
need to go forward. ⇦Someone who knew what he was talking
about once remarked that pain was the touchstone of all
spiritual progress.⇨ How heartily we A.A.'s can agree with



	94 	STEP TEN

him, for we know that the pains of drinking had to come
before 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 thought
or act that appears to be wrong. In most cases our motives
won't be hard to see and understand. When prideful, angry,
jealous, anxious, or fearful, we acted accordingly, and that
was that. Here we need only recognize that we did act or
think badly, try to visualize how we might have done better,
and resolve with God's help to carry these lessons over into
tomorrow, making, of course, any amends still neglected.

But in other instances only the closest scrutiny will reveal
what our true motives were. There are cases where our
ancient enemy, rationalization, has stepped in and has justified
conduct which was really wrong. The temptation here
is to imagine that we had good motives and reasons when
we 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 we
were helping others to understand him, when in actuality
our true motive was to feel superior by pulling him down.
We sometimes hurt those we love because they need to be
“taught a lesson,” when we really want to punish. We were
depressed and complained we felt bad, when in fact we
were mainly asking for sympathy and attention. This odd
trait of mind and emotion, this perverse wish to hide a bad
motive underneath a good one, permeates human affairs
from top to bottom. This subtle and elusive kind of selfrighteousness
can underlie the smallest act or thought.



	STEP TEN 	95
	
Learning daily to spot, admit, and correct these flaws is the
essence of ⇦character-building and good living. An honest
regret for harms done, a genuine gratitude for blessings received,
and a willingness to try for better things tomorrow
will be the permanent assets we shall seek.

Having so considered our day, not omitting to take due
note of things well done, and having searched our hearts
with neither fear nor favor, we can truly thank God for the
blessings we have received and sleep in good conscience.


	Back to Table of Contents





	Step Eleven

“Sought through prayer and meditation to
improve our conscious contact with God as
we understood Him, praying only for knowledge
of His will for us and the power to carry
that out.”

PRAYER and meditation are our principal means of conscious
contact with God.

We A.A.'s are active folk, enjoying the satisfactions of
dealing with the realities of life, usually for the first time in
our lives, and strenuously trying to help the next alcoholic
who comes along. So it isn't surprising that we often tend to
slight serious meditation and prayer as something not really
necessary. ⇦To be sure, we feel it is something that might
help us to meet an occasional emergency, but at first many
of us are apt to regard it as a somewhat mysterious skill of
clergymen, from which we may hope to get a secondhand
benefit. Or perhaps we don't believe in these things at all.

To certain newcomers and to those one-time agnostics
who still cling to the A.A. group as their higher power,
claims for the power of prayer may, despite all the logic and
experience in proof of it, still be unconvincing or quite 
objectionable.Those of us who once felt this way can
certainly understand and sympathize. We well remember
how something deep inside us kept rebelling against the
idea of bowing before any God. Many of us had strong log-

		96



	STEP ELEVEN 	97

ic, too, which “proved” there was no God whatever. What
about all the accidents, sickness, cruelty, and injustice in the
world? What about all those unhappy lives which were the
direct result of unfortunate birth and uncontrollable circumstances?
Surely there could be no justice in this scheme of
things, and therefore no God at all.
	
Sometimes we took a slightly different tack. Sure, we
said to ourselves, the hen probably did come before the
egg. No doubt the universe had a “first cause” of some sort,
the God of the Atom, maybe, hot and cold by turns. But
certainly there wasn't any evidence of a God who knew or
cared about human beings. We liked A.A. all right, and
were quick to say that it had done miracles. But we recoiled
from meditation and prayer as obstinately as the scientist
who refused to perform a certain experiment lest it prove
his pet theory wrong. Of course we finally did experiment,
and when unexpected results followed, we felt different; in
fact we knew different; and so we were sold on meditation
and prayer. And that, we have found, can happen to anybody
who tries. It has been well said that “almost the only
scoffers at prayer are those who never tried it enough.”

Those of us who have come to make regular use of
prayer would no more do without it than we would refuse
air, food, or sunshine. And for the same reason. When we
refuse air, light, or food, the body suffers. And when we
turn away from meditation and prayer, we likewise deprive
our minds, our emotions, and our intuitions of vitally needed
support. As the body can fail its purpose for lack of
nourishment, so can the soul. We all need the light of God's
reality, the nourishment of His strength, and the atmosphere



	98 	STEP ELEVEN

of His grace. To an amazing extent the facts of A.A. Life
confirm this ageless truth.

There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation,
and prayer. Taken separately, these practices can
bring much relief and benefit. But when they are logically
related and interwoven, the result is an unshakable foundation
for life. Now and then we may be granted a glimpse of
that ultimate reality which is God's kingdom. And we will
be comforted and assured that our own destiny in that realm
will be secure for so long as we try, however falteringly, to
⇦find and do the will of our own Creator.⇨

As we have seen, self-searching is the means by which
we bring new vision, action, and grace to bear upon the
dark and negative side of our natures. It is a step in the development
of that kind of humility that makes it possible
for us to receive God's help. Yet it is only a step. We will
want to go further.

We will want the good that is in us all, even in the worst
of us, to flower and to grow. Most certainly we shall need
bracing air and an abundance of food. But first of all we
shall want sunlight; nothing much can grow in the dark.
Meditation is our step out into the sun. How, then, shall we
meditate?
	
The actual experience of meditation and prayer across
the centuries is, of course, immense. The world's libraries
and places of worship are a treasure trove for all seekers. ⇨ It
is to be hoped that every A.A. who has a religious connection
which emphasizes meditation will return to the practice
of that devotion as never before. But what about the rest of



	STEP ELEVEN 	99

us who, less fortunate, don't even know how to begin?

Well, we might start like this. First let's look at a really
good prayer. We won't have far to seek; the great men and
women 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 years
now has been rated as a saint. We won't be biased or scared
off by that fact, because although he was not an alcoholic
he did, like us, go through the emotional wringer. And as he
came out the other side of that painful experience, this
prayer was his expression of what he could then see, feel,
and wish to become:

“Lord, make me a channel of thy peace—that where
there is hatred, I may bring love—that where there is
wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness—that where
there is discord, I may bring harmony—that where there is
error, I may bring truth—that where there is doubt, I may
bring faith—that where there is despair, I may bring hope
—that where there are shadows, I may bring light—that
where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I
may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted—to understand,
than to be understood—to love, than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving
that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal
Life. Amen.”

As beginners in meditation, we might now reread this
prayer several times very slowly, savoring every word and
trying to take in the deep meaning of each phrase and idea.
It will help if we can drop all resistance to what our friend


	
	100 	STEP ELEVEN

says. For in meditation, debate has no place. We rest quietly
with the thoughts of someone who knows, so that we may
experience and learn.

As though lying upon a sunlit beach, let us relax and
breathe deeply of the spiritual atmosphere with which the
grace of this prayer surrounds us. Let us become willing to
partake and be strengthened and lifted up by the sheer spiritual
power, beauty, and love of which these magnificent
words are the carriers. Let us look now upon the sea and
ponder what its mystery is; and let us lift our eyes to the far
horizon, beyond which we shall seek all those wonders still
unseen.

“Shucks!” says somebody. “This is nonsense. It isn't
practical.”

When such thoughts break in, we might recall, a little
ruefully, how much store we used to set by imagination as
it tried to create reality out of bottles. Yes, we reveled in that
sort of thinking, didn't we? And though sober nowadays,
don't we often try to do much the same thing? Perhaps our
trouble was not that we used our imagination. Perhaps the
real trouble was our almost total inability to point imagination
toward the right objectives. There's nothing the matter
with constructive imagination; all sound achievement rests
upon it. After all, no man can build a house until he first envisions
a plan for it. Well, meditation is like that, too; it
helps to envision our spiritual objective before we try to
move toward it. So let's get back to that sunlit beach—or to
the plains or to the mountains, if you prefer.

When, by such simple devices, we have placed ourselves



	STEP ELEVEN 	101

in a mood in which we can focus undisturbed on
constructive imagination, we might proceed like this:

Once more we read our prayer, and again try to see
what its inner essence is. We'll think now about the man
who first uttered the prayer. First of all, he wanted to become
a “channel.” Then he asked for the grace to bring
love, forgiveness, harmony, truth, faith, hope, light, and joy
to every human being he could.
	
Next came the expression of an aspiration and a hope
for himself. He hoped, God willing, that he might be able to
find some of these treasures, too. This he would try to do by
what he called self-forgetting. What did he mean by “selfforgetting,”
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 forgive
than to be forgiven.

This much could be a fragment of what is called meditation,
perhaps our very first attempt at a mood, a flier into
the realm of spirit, if you like. It ought to be followed by a
good look at where we stand now, and a further look at
what might happen in our lives were we able to move closer
to the ideal we have been trying to glimpse. Meditation is
something which can always be further developed. It has
no boundaries, either of width or height. Aided by such instruction
and example as we can find, it is essentially an
individual adventure, something which each one of us
works out in his own way. But its object is always the
same: to improve our conscious contact with God, with His
grace, wisdom, and love. And let's always remember that
meditation is in reality intensely practical. One of its first



	102 	STEP ELEVEN

fruits is emotional balance. With it we can broaden and
deepen the channel between ourselves and God as we understand
Him.

Now, what of prayer? Prayer is the raising of the heart
and mind to God—and in this sense it includes meditation.
How may we go about it? And how does it fit in with meditation?
Prayer, as commonly understood, is a petition to
God. Having opened our channel as best we can, we try to
ask for those right things of which we and others are in the
greatest need. And we think that the whole range of our
needs is well defined by that part of Step Eleven which
says: “. . . knowledge of His will for us and the power to
carry that out.” A request for this fits in any part of our day.
	
In the morning we think of the hours to come. Perhaps
we think of our day's work and the chances it may afford us
to be useful and helpful, or of some special problem that it
may bring. Possibly today will see a continuation of a serious
and as yet unresolved problem left over from yesterday.
Our immediate temptation will be to ask for specific solutions
to specific problems, and for the ability to help other
people 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 its
real merit is. Even so, when making specific requests, it
will be well to add to each one of them this qualification: 
“...if it be Thy will.” We ask simply that throughout the day
God place in us the best understanding of His will that we
can have for that day, and that we be given the grace by
which we may carry it out.
	⇦ As the day goes on, we can pause where situations must



	STEP ELEVEN 	103

be met and decisions made, and renew the simple request:
“Thy will, not mine, be done.” If at these points our emotional
disturbance happens to be great, we will more surely
keep our balance, provided we remember, and repeat to
ourselves, a particular prayer or phrase that has appealed to
us in ⇦our reading or meditation. Just saying it over and over
will often enable us to clear a channel choked up with
anger, fear, frustration, or misunderstanding, and permit us
to return to the surest help of all—our search for God's will,
not our own, in the moment of stress. At these critical moments,
if we remind ourselves that “it is better to comfort
than to be comforted, to understand than to be understood,
to love than to be loved,” we will be following the intent of
Step Eleven.

Of course, it is reasonable and understandable that the
question is often asked: “Why can't we take a specific and
troubling dilemma straight to God, and in prayer secure
from Him sure and definite answers to our requests?”

This can be done, but it has hazards. We have seen
A.A.'s ask with much earnestness and faith for God's explicit
guidance on matters ranging all the way from a
shattering domestic or financial crisis to correcting a minor
personal fault, like tardiness. ⇦Quite often, however, the
thoughts that seem to come from God are not answers at
all. They prove to be well-intentioned unconscious rationalizations.
The A.A., or indeed any man, who tries to run his
life rigidly by this kind of prayer, by this self-serving demand
of God for replies, is a particularly disconcerting
individual. ⇦To any questioning or criticism of his actions he
instantly proffers his reliance upon prayer for guidance in



	104 	STEP ELEVEN

all matters great or small.⇨ He may have forgotten the possibility
that his own wishful thinking and the human
tendency to rationalize have distorted his so-called guid-
ance. With the best of intentions, he tends to force his own
will into all sorts of situations and problems with the comfortable
assurance that he is acting under God's specific
direction. Under such an illusion, he can of course create
great havoc without in the least intending it.

We also fall into another similar temptation. We form
ideas as to what we think God's will is for other people. We
say to ourselves, “This one ought to be cured of his fatal
malady,” or “That one ought to be relieved of his emotional
pain,” and we pray for these specific things. Such prayers,
of course, are fundamentally good acts, but often they are
based upon a supposition that we know God's will for the
person for whom we pray. This means that side by side
with an earnest prayer there can be a certain amount of presumption
and conceit in us. It is A.A.'s experience that
particularly 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 of
prayer are beyond question. They are matters of knowledge
and experience. All those who have persisted have found
strength not ordinarily their own. ⇨ They have found wisdom
beyond their usual capability. And they have increasingly
found a peace of mind which can stand firm in the face of
difficult circumstances.

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. Almost any



	STEP ELEVEN 	105

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. He will also re-
port that out of every season of grief or suffering, when the
hand of God seemed heavy or even unjust, new lessons for
living were learned, ⇦new resources of courage were uncovered,⇨
and that finally, inescapably, the conviction came that
God does “move in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.”

All this should be very encouraging news for those who
recoil from prayer because they don't believe in it, or because
they feel themselves cut off from God's help and
direction. All of us, without exception, pass through times
when we can pray only with the greatest exertion of will.
Occasionally we go even further than this. We are seized
with a rebellion so sickening that we simply won't pray.
When these things happen we should not think too ill of
ourselves. We should simply resume prayer as soon as we
can, doing what we know to be good for us.
	
Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of meditation and
prayer is the sense of belonging that comes to us. We no
longer live in a completely hostile world. We are no longer
lost and frightened and purposeless.⇨ The moment we catch
even a glimpse of God's will, the moment we begin to see
truth, justice, and love as the real and eternal things in life,
we are no longer deeply disturbed by all the seeming evidence
to the contrary that surrounds us in purely human
affairs. We know that God lovingly watches over us. We
know that when we turn to Him, all will be well with us,
here and hereafter.


	Back to Table of Contents






	Step Twelve

“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.” 
	
THE joy of living is the theme of A.A.'s Twelfth Step, and
action is its key word. Here we turn outward toward our
fellow alcoholics who are still in distress. Here we experience
the kind of giving that asks no rewards. Here we begin
to practice all Twelve Steps of the program in our daily
lives so that we and those about us may find emotional sobriety.
When the Twelfth Step is seen in its full implication,
it is really talking about the kind of love that has no price
tag on it.

Our Twelfth Step also says that as a result of practicing
all the Steps, we have each found something called a spiritual
awakening. To new A.A.'s, this often seems like a very
dubious and improbable state of affairs. “What do you
mean when you talk about a 'spiritual awakening'?” they
ask.

Maybe there are as many definitions of spiritual awakening
as there are people who have had them. But certainly
each genuine one has something in common with all the
others. And these things which they have in common are
not too hard to understand. When a man or a woman has a
spiritual awakening, the most important meaning of it is
that he has now become able to do, feel, and believe that

		106



	STEP TWELVE 	107

which he could not do before on his unaided strength and
resources alone. He has been granted a gift which amounts
to a new state of consciousness and being. He has been set
on ⇦a path which tells him he is really going somewhere,
that life is not a dead end, not something to be endured or
mastered. In a very real sense he has been transformed, because
he has laid hold of a ⇦source of strength which, in one
way or another, he had hitherto denied himself. He finds
himself in possession of a degree of honesty, tolerance, unselfishness,
peace of mind, and love of which he had
thought himself quite incapable. What he has received is a
free gift, and yet usually, at least in some small part, ⇦he has
made himself ready to receive it.

A.A.'s manner of making ready to receive this gift lies
in the practice of the Twelve Steps in our program. So let's
consider briefly what we have been trying to do up to this
point:

Step One showed us an amazing paradox: We found
that we were totally unable to be rid of the alcohol obsession
until we first admitted that we were powerless over it.
In Step Two we saw that since we could not restore ourselves
to sanity, some Higher Power must necessarily do so
if we were to survive. Consequently, in Step Three we
turned our will and our lives over to the care of God as we
understood Him. For the time being, we who were atheist
or agnostic discovered that our own group, or A.A. as a
whole, would suffice as a higher power. Beginning with
⇦Step Four, we commenced to search out the things in ourselves
which had brought us to physical, moral, and
spiritual bankruptcy. We made a searching and fearless



	108 	STEP TWELVE

moral inventory. Looking at Step Five, we decided that an
inventory, taken alone, wouldn't be enough. We knew we
would have to quit the deadly business of living alone with
our conflicts, and in honesty confide these to God and another
human being. At Step Six, many of us balked—for
the practical reason that we did not wish to have all our defects
of character removed, because we still loved some of
them too much. Yet we knew we had to make a settlement
with the fundamental principle of Step Six. So we decided
that while we still had some flaws of character that we
could not yet relinquish, we ought nevertheless to quit our
stubborn, rebellious hanging on to them. We said to ourselves,
“This I cannot do today, perhaps, but I can stop
crying out 'No, never!'” Then, in Step Seven, we humbly
asked God to remove our short comings such as He could
or would under the conditions of the day we asked. In Step
Eight, we continued our housecleaning, for we saw that we
were not only in conflict with ourselves, but also with people
and situations in the world in which we lived. We had to
begin to make our peace, and so we listed the people we
had harmed and became willing to set things right. We followed
this up in Step Nine by making direct amends to
those concerned, except when it would injure them or other
people. By this time, at Step Ten, we had begun to get a basis
for daily living, and we keenly realized that we would
need to continue taking personal inventory, and that when
we were in the wrong we ought to admit it promptly. In
Step Eleven we saw that if a Higher Power had restored us
to sanity and had enabled us to live with some peace of
mind in a sorely troubled world, then such a Higher Power



	STEP TWELVE 	109

was worth knowing better, by as direct contact as possible.
The persistent use of meditation and prayer, we found, did
open the channel so that where there had been a trickle,
there now was a river which led to sure power and safe
guidance from God as we were increasingly better able to
understand Him.

So, practicing these Steps, we had a spiritual awakening
about which finally there was no question. Looking at those
who were only beginning and still doubted themselves, the
rest of us were able to see the change setting in. From great
numbers of such experiences, we could predict that the
doubter who still claimed that he hadn't got the “spiritual
angle,” and who still considered his well-loved A.A. group
the higher power, would presently love God and call Him
by name.

Now, what about the rest of the Twelfth Step? The wonderful
energy it releases and the eager action by which it
carries our message to the next suffering alcoholic and
which finally translates the Twelve Steps into action upon
all our affairs is the payoff, the magnificent reality, of Alcoholics
Anonymous.

Even the newest of newcomers finds undreamed rewards
as he tries to help his brother alcoholic, the one who
is even blinder than he. This is indeed the kind of giving
that actually demands nothing. He does not expect his
brother sufferer to pay him, or even to love him. And then
he discovers that by the divine paradox of this kind of giving
he has found his own reward, whether his brother has
yet received anything or not. His own character may still be
gravely defective, but he somehow knows that God has en-
abled him to make a mighty beginning, and he senses that



	110 	STEP TWELVE

he stands at the edge of new mysteries, joys, and experiences
of which he had never even dreamed.
	
Practically every A.A. member declares that no satisfaction
has been deeper and no joy greater than in a Twelfth
Step job well done. To watch the eyes of men and women
open with wonder as they move from darkness into light, to
see their lives quickly fill with new purpose and meaning,
to see whole families reassembled, to see the alcoholic outcast
received back into his community in full citizenship,
and above all to watch these people awaken to the presence
of a loving God in their lives—these things are the substance
of what we receive as we carry A.A.'s message to the
next alcoholic.

Nor is this the only kind of Twelfth Step work. We sit in
A.A. meetings and listen, not only to receive something
ourselves, but to give the reassurance and support which
our presence can bring. If our turn comes to speak at a
meeting, we again try to carry A.A.'s message. Whether our
audience is one or many, it is still Twelfth Step work. There
are many opportunities even for those of us who feel unable
to speak at meetings or who are so situated that we cannot
do much face-to-face Twelfth Step work. We can be the
ones who take on the unspectacular but important tasks that
make good Twelfth Step work possible, perhaps arranging
for the coffee and cake after the meetings, where so many
skeptical, suspicious newcomers have found confidence
and comfort in the laughter and talk. This is Twelfth Step
work in the very best sense of the word. “Freely ye have received;
freely give . . .” is the core of this part of Step
Twelve.

We may often pass through Twelfth Step experiences



	STEP TWELVE 	111

where we will seem to be temporarily off the beam. These
will appear as big setbacks at the time, but will be seen later
as stepping-stones to better things. For example, we may
set our hearts on getting a particular person sobered up, and
after doing all we can for months, we see him relapse. Perhaps
this will happen in a succession of cases, and we may
be deeply discouraged as to our ability to carry A.A.'s message.
Or we may encounter the reverse situation, in which
we are highly elated because we seem to have been successful.
Here the temptation is to become rather possessive
of these newcomers. Perhaps we try to give them advice
about their affairs which we aren't really competent to give
or ought not give at all. Then we are hurt and confused
when the advice is rejected, or when it is accepted and
brings still greater confusion. By a great deal of ardent
Twelfth Step work we sometimes carry the message to so
many alcoholics that they place us in a position of trust.
They make us, let us say, the group's chairman. Here again
we are presented with the temptation to overmanage things,
and sometimes this results in rebuffs and other consequences
which are hard to take.⇨
	
⇦But in the longer run we clearly realize that these are
only the pains of growing up, and nothing but good can
come from them if we turn more and more to the entire
Twelve Steps for the answers.

Now comes the biggest question yet. What about the
practice of these principles in all our affairs? Can we love
the whole pattern of living as eagerly as we do the small
segment of it we discover when we try to help other alcoholics
achieve sobriety? ⇦Can we bring the same spirit of



	112 	STEP TWELVE

love and tolerance into our sometimes deranged family
lives that we bring to our A.A. group? Can we have the
same kind of confidence and faith in these people who have
been infected and sometimes crippled by our own illness
that we have in our sponsors? Can we actually carry the
A.A. spirit into our daily work? Can we meet our newly
recognized responsibilities to the world at large? And can
we bring new purpose and devotion to the religion of our
choice? Can we find a new joy of living in trying to do
something about all these things?
	
⇦Furthermore, how shall we come to terms with seeming
failure or success? Can we now accept and adjust to either
without despair or pride? Can we accept poverty, sickness,
loneliness, and bereavement with courage and serenity?
Can we steadfastly content ourselves with the humbler, yet
sometimes 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 we
see monotony, pain, and even calamity turned to good use
by those who keep on trying to practice A.A.'s Twelve
Steps. And if these are facts of life for the many alcoholics
who have recovered in A.A., they can become the facts of
life for many more.
	
Of course all A.A.'s, even the best, fall far short of such
achievements as a consistent thing. Without necessarily taking
that first drink, we often get quite far off the beam. Our
troubles sometimes begin with indifference. We are sober
and happy in our A.A. work. Things go well at home and
office. We naturally congratulate ourselves on what later



	STEP TWELVE 	113

proves to be a far too easy and superficial point of view. We
temporarily cease to grow because we feel satisfied that
there is no need for all of A.A.'s Twelve Steps for us. We
are doing fine on a few of them. Maybe we are doing fine
on only two of them, the First Step and that part of the
Twelfth where we “carry the message.” In A.A. slang, that
blissful state is known as “two-stepping.” And it can go on
for years.

The best-intentioned of us can fall for the “two-step” illusion.
Sooner or later the pink cloud stage wears off and
things go disappointingly dull. We begin to think that A.A.
doesn't pay off after all. We become puzzled and discouraged.

Then perhaps life, as it has a way of doing, suddenly
hands us a great big lump that we can't begin to swallow, let
alone digest. We fail to get a worked-for promotion. We
lose that good job. Maybe there are serious domestic or romantic
difficulties, or perhaps that boy we thought God was
looking after becomes a military casualty.
	
What then? Have we alcoholics in A.A. got, or can we
get, the resources to meet these calamities which come to
so many? ⇦These were problems of life which we could never
face up to. Can we now, with the help of God as we
understand Him, handle them as well and as bravely as our
nonalcoholic friends often do? Can we transform these
calamities into assets, sources of growth and comfort to
ourselves and those about us? Well, we surely have a
chance if we switch from “two-stepping” to “twelve-step-
ping,” if we are willing to receive that grace of God which
can sustain and strengthen us in any catastrophe.



	114 	STEP TWELVE
	
Our basic troubles are the same as everyone else's, but
when an honest effort is made “to practice these principles
in all our affairs,” well-grounded A.A.'s seem to have the
ability, by God's grace, to take these troubles in stride and
turn them into demonstrations of faith. We have seen A.A.'s
suffer lingering and fatal illness with little complaint, and
often in good cheer. We have sometimes seen families broken
apart by misunderstanding, tensions, or actual
infidelity, who are reunited by the A.A. way of life.

Though the earning power of most A.A.'s is relatively
high, we have some members who never seem to get on
their feet moneywise, and still others who encounter heavy
financial reverses. Ordinarily we see these situations met
with fortitude and faith.
	
Like most people, we have found that we can take our
big lumps as they come. But also like others, we often discover
a greater challenge in the lesser and more continuous
problems of life. Our answer is in still more spiritual development.
Only by this means can we improve our chances
for really happy and useful living. And as we grow spiritually,
we find that our old attitudes toward our instincts need
to undergo drastic revisions. ⇦Our desires for emotional security
and wealth, for personal prestige and power, for
romance, and for family satisfactions—all these have to be
tempered and redirected. ⇦We have learned that the satisfaction
of instincts cannot be the sole end and aim of our lives.
If we place instincts first, we have got the cart before the
horse; 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.



	STEP TWELVE 	115

After we come into A.A., if we go on growing, our attitudes
and actions toward security—emotional security and
financial security—commence to change profoundly. ⇦Our
demand for emotional security, for our own way, had constantly
thrown us into unworkable relations with other
people. Though we were sometimes quite unconscious of
this, the result always had been the same. ⇦Either we had
tried to play God and dominate those about us, or we had
insisted on being overdependent upon them.⇨ Where people
had temporarily let us run their lives as though they were
still children, we had felt very happy and secure ourselves.
But when they finally resisted or ran away, we were bitterly
hurt and disappointed. We blamed them, being quite unable
to 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 of
us or that the world owed us a living, then the result had
been equally unfortunate. This often caused the people we
had loved most to push us aside or perhaps desert us entirely.
Our disillusionment had been hard to bear. We couldn't
imagine people acting that way toward us. We had failed to
see that though adult in years we were still behaving childishly,
trying to turn everybody—friends, wives, husbands,
even the world itself—into protective parents. We had refused
to learn the very hard lesson that overdependence
upon people is unsuccessful because all people are fallible,
and even the best of them will sometimes let us down, especially
when our demands for attention become
unreasonable.

As we made spiritual progress, we saw through these



	116 	STEP TWELVE

fallacies. ⇦It became clear that if we ever were to feel emotionally
secure among grown-up people, we would have to
put our lives on a give-and-take basis; we would have to
develop the sense of being in partnership or brotherhood
with all those around us. We saw that we would need to
give constantly of ourselves without demands for repayment.
When we persistently did this we gradually found
that people were attracted to us as never before. And even if
they failed us, we could be understanding and not too seriously
affected.
		
⇦When we developed still more, we discovered the best
possible source of emotional stability to be God Himself.
We found that dependence upon His perfect justice, forgiveness,
and love was healthy, and that it would work
where nothing else would. ⇦If we really depended upon
God, we couldn't very well play God to our fellows nor
would we feel the urge wholly to rely on human protection
and care.⇨ These were the new attitudes that finally brought
many of us an inner strength and peace that could not be
deeply shaken by the shortcomings of others or by any
calamity not of our own making.

This new outlook was, we learned, something especially
necessary to us alcoholics. ⇦For alcoholism had been a
lonely business, even though we had been surrounded by
people who loved us. ⇦But when self-will had driven everybody
away and our isolation had become complete, it
caused us to play the big shot in cheap barrooms and then
fare forth alone on the street to depend upon the charity of
passersby.⇨ We were still trying to find emotional security by
being dominating or dependent upon others. Even when



	STEP TWELVE 	117

our fortunes had not ebbed that much and we nevertheless
found ourselves alone in the world, we still vainly tried to
be secure by some unhealthy kind of domination or dependence.
For those of us who were like that, A.A. had a very
special meaning. Through it we begin to learn right relations
with people who understand us; we don't have to be
alone any more.

Most married folks in A.A. have very happy homes. To
a surprising extent, A.A. has offset the damage to family
life brought about by years of alcoholism. But just like all
other societies, we do have sex and marital problems, and
sometimes they are distressingly acute. Permanent marriage
breakups and separations, however, are unusual in
A.A. Our main problem is not how we are to stay married;
it is how to be more happily married by eliminating the severe
emotional twists that have so often stemmed from
alcoholism.

Nearly every sound human being experiences, at some
time in life, a compelling desire to find a mate of the opposite
sex with whom the fullest possible union can be made
—spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical. This mighty
urge is the root of great human accomplishments, a creative
energy that deeply influences our lives. God fashioned us
that way. So our question will be this: How, by ignorance,
compulsion, and self-will, do we misuse this gift for our
own destruction? We A.A. cannot pretend to offer full answers
to age-old perplexities, but our own experience does
provide certain answers that work for us.
When alcoholism strikes, very unnatural situations may
develop which work against marriage partnership and compatible



	118 	STEP TWELVE

union. If the man is affected, the wife must become
the head of the house, often the breadwinner. As matters get
worse, the husband becomes a sick and irresponsible child
who needs to be looked after and extricated from endless
scrapes and impasses. Very gradually, and usually without
any realization of the fact, the wife is forced to become the
mother of an erring boy. And if she had a strong maternal
instinct to begin with, the situation is aggravated. Obviously
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 her
maternal care. A pattern is thereby established that may take
a lot of undoing later on. Nevertheless, under the influence
of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, these situations are often set right.
	
⇦When the distortion has been great, however, a long period
of patient striving may be necessary. After the husband
joins A.A., the wife may become discontented, even highly
resentful that Alcoholics Anonymous has done the very
thing that all her years of devotion had failed to do. Her
husband may become so wrapped up in A.A. and his new
friends that he is inconsiderately away from home more
than when he drank. Seeing her unhappiness, he recommends
A.A.'s Twelve Steps and tries to teach her how to
live. She naturally feels that for years she has made a far
better job of living than he has. Both of them blame each
other and ask when their marriage is ever going to be happy



	STEP TWELVE 	119

again. They may even begin to suspect it had never been
any good in the first place.

Compatibility, of course, can be so impossibly damaged
that a separation may be necessary. But those cases are the
unusual ones. The alcoholic, realizing what his wife has endured,
and now fully understanding how much he himself
did to damage her and his children, nearly always takes up
his marriage responsibilities with a willingness to repair
what he can and to accept what he can't. He persistently
tries all of A.A.'s Twelve Steps in his home, often with fine
results. At this point he firmly but lovingly commences to
behave like a partner instead of like a bad boy. And above
all he is finally convinced that reckless romancing is not a
way of life for him.

A.A. has many single alcoholics who wish to marry and
are in a position to do so. Some marry fellow A.A.'s. How
do they come out? On the whole these marriages are very
good ones. Their common suffering as drinkers, their common
interest in A.A. and spiritual things, often enhance
such unions. It is only where “boy meets girl on A.A. campus,”
and love follows at first sight, that difficulties may
develop. The prospective partners need to be solid A.A.'s
and long enough acquainted to know that their compatibility
at spiritual, mental, and emotional levels is a fact and not
wishful thinking. They need to be as sure as possible that
no deep-lying emotional handicap in either will be likely to
rise up under later pressures to cripple them. The considerations
are equally true and important for the A.A.'s who
marry “outside” A.A. With clear understanding and right,
grown-up attitudes, very happy results do follow.



	120 	STEP TWELVE

And what can be said of many A.A. members who, for
a variety of reasons, cannot have a family life? At first
many of these feel lonely, hurt, and left out as they witness
so much domestic happiness about them. If they cannot
have this kind of happiness, can A.A. offer them satisfactions
of similar worth and durability? Yes—whenever they
try hard to seek them out. Surrounded by so many A.A.
friends, these so-called loners tell us they no longer feel
alone. In partnership with others—women and men—they
can devote themselves to any number of ideas, people, and
constructive projects. Free of marital responsibilities, they
can participate in enterprises which would be denied to
family men and women. We daily see such members render
prodigies of service, and receive great joys in return.

Where the possession of money and material things
was concerned, our outlook underwent the same revolutionary
change. With a few exceptions, all of us had been
spendthrifts. We threw money about in every direction with
the purpose of pleasing ourselves and impressing other
people. In our drinking time, we acted as if the money supply
was inexhaustible, though between binges we'd
sometimes go to the other extreme and become almost
miserly. Without realizing it we were just accumulating
funds for the next spree. Money was the symbol of pleasure
and self-importance. When our drinking had become much
worse, money was only an urgent requirement which could
supply us with the next drink and the temporary comfort of
oblivion it brought.

Upon entering A.A., these attitudes were sharply reversed,



	STEP TWELVE 	121

often going much too far in the opposite direction.
The spectacle of years of waste threw us into panic. There
simply wouldn't be time, we thought, to rebuild our shattered
fortunes. How could we ever take care of those awful
debts, possess a decent home, educate the kids, and set
something by for old age? Financial importance was no
longer our principal aim; we now clamored for material security.
Even when we were well reestablished in our
business, these terrible fears often continued to haunt us.
This made us misers and penny pinchers all over again.
Complete financial security we must have—or else. We
forgot that most alcoholics in A.A. have an earning power
considerably above average; we forgot the immense goodwill
of our brother A.A.'s who were only too eager to help
us to better jobs when we deserved them; we forgot the actual
or potential financial insecurity of every human being
in the world. And, worst of all, we forgot God. In money
matters we had faith only in ourselves, and not too much of
that.

This all meant, of course, that we were still far off balance.
⇦ When a job still looked like a mere means of getting
money rather than an opportunity for service, when the acquisition
of money for financial independence looked more
important than a right dependence upon God, we were still
the victims of unreasonable fears. And these were fears
which would make a serene and useful existence, at any financial
level, quite impossible.

But as time passed we found that with the help of A.A.'s
Twelve Steps we could lose those fears, no matter what our
material prospects were. We could cheerfully perform humble
labor without worrying about tomorrow. If our



	122 	STEP TWELVE

circumstances happened to be good, we no longer dreaded
a change for the worse, for we had learned that these troubles
could be turned into great values. It did not matter too
much what our material condition was, but it did matter
what our spiritual condition was. Money gradually became
our servant and not our master. It became a means of exchanging
love and service with those about us. When, with
God's help, we calmly accepted our lot, then we found we
could live at peace with ourselves and show others who still
suffered the same fears that they could get over them, too.
We found that freedom from fear was more important than
freedom from want.

Let's here take note of our improved outlook upon the
problems of personal importance, power, ambition, and
leadership. These were reefs upon which many of us came
to shipwreck during our drinking careers.

Practically every boy in the United States dreams of becoming
our President. He wants to be his country's number
one man. As he gets older and sees the impossibility of this,
he can smile good-naturedly at his childhood dream. In later
life he finds that real happiness is not to be found in just
trying to be a number one man, or even a first-rater in the
heartbreaking struggle for money, romance, or self-importance.
He learns that he can be content as long as he plays
well whatever cards life deals him. He's still ambitious, but
not absurdly so, because he can now see and accept actual
reality. He's willing to stay right size.

But not so with alcoholics. When A.A. was quite
young, a number of eminent psychologists and doctors
made an exhaustive study of a good-sized group of so-called



	STEP TWELVE 	123

problem drinkers. The doctors weren't trying to find
how different we were from one another; they sought to
find whatever personality traits, if any, this group of alcoholics
had in common. They finally came up with a
conclusion that shocked the A.A. members of that time.
These distinguished men had the nerve to say that most of
the alcoholics under investigation were still childish, emotionally
sensitive, and grandiose.

How we alcoholics did resent that verdict! We would
not believe that our adult dreams were often truly childish.
And considering the rough deal life had given us, we felt it
perfectly natural that we were sensitive. As to our grandiose
behavior, we insisted that we had been possessed of nothing
but a high and legitimate ambition to win the battle of
life.

In the years since, however, most of us have come to
agree with those doctors. We have had a much keener look
at ourselves and those about us. ⇦We have seen that we were
prodded by unreasonable fears or anxieties into making a
life business of winning fame, money, and what we thought
was leadership. So false pride became the reverse side of
that ruinous coin marked “Fear.” We simply had to be number
one people to cover up our deep-lying inferiorities. In
fitful successes we boasted of greater feats to be done; in
defeat we were bitter. If we didn't have much of any worldly
success we became depressed and cowed. Then people
said we were of the “inferior” type. But now we see ourselves
as chips off the same old block. At heart we had all
been abnormally fearful. It mattered little whether we had
sat on the shore of life drinking ourselves into forgetfulness
or had plunged in recklessly and willfully beyond our depth



	124 	STEP TWELVE

and ability. The result was the same—all of us had nearly
perished in a sea of alcohol.

But today, in well-matured A.A.'s, these distorted drives
have been restored to something like their true purpose and
direction. We no longer strive to dominate or rule those
about us in order to gain self-importance. We no longer
seek fame and honor in order to be praised. When by devoted
service to family, friends, business, or community we
attract widespread affection and are sometimes singled out
for posts of greater responsibility and trust, we try to be
humbly grateful and exert ourselves the more in a spirit of
love and service. True leadership, we find, depends upon
able example and not upon vain displays of power or glory.

Still more wonderful is the feeling that we do not have
to be specially distinguished among our fellows in order to
be useful and profoundly happy. Not many of us can be
leaders of prominence, nor do we wish to be. Service, gladly
rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well
accepted or solved with God's help, the knowledge that at
home or in the world outside we are partners in a common
effort, the well-understood fact that in God's sight all human
beings are important, the proof that love freely given
surely brings a full return, the certainty that we are no
longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, the
surety that we need no longer be square pegs in round holes
but can fit and belong in God's scheme of things—these are
the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for
which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of
material possessions, could possibly be substitutes. True
ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is



	STEP TWELVE 	125

the deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the
grace of God.

These little studies of A.A. Twelve Steps now come to a
close. We have been considering so many problems that it
may appear that A.A. consists mainly of racking dilemmas
and troubleshooting. To a certain extent, that is true. We
have been talking about problems because we are problem
people who have found a way up and out, and who wish to
share our knowledge of that way with all who can use it.
For it is only by accepting and solving our problems that
we can begin to get right with ourselves and with the world
about us, and with Him who presides over us all. Understanding
is the key to right principles and attitudes, and
right action is the key to good living; therefore the joy of
good living is the theme of A.A. Twelfth Step.

With each passing day of our lives, may every one of us
sense more deeply the inner meaning of A.A.'s simple
prayer:

    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.



	Back to Table of Contents





THE TWELVE TRADITIONS


Tradition One

⇦“Our common welfare should come first;
personal recovery depends upon A.A. unity.”

THE unity of Alcoholics Anonymous is the most cherished
quality our Society has. Our lives, the lives of all to
come, 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-giving
grace of God; His gift to us would be spent aimlessly. Back
again in their caves, alcoholics would reproach us and say,
“What a great thing A.A. might have been!”

“Does this mean,” some will anxiously ask, “that in
A.A. the individual doesn't count for much? Is he to be
dominated by his group and swallowed up in it?”

We may certainly answer this question with a loud
“No!” We believe there isn't a fellowship on earth which
lavishes more devoted care upon its individual members;
surely there is none which more jealously guards the individual's
right to think, talk, and act as he wishes. No A.A.
can compel another to do anything; nobody can be punished
or expelled. Our Twelve Steps to recovery are
suggestions; the Twelve Traditions which guarantee A.A.'s
unity contain not a single “Don't.” They repeatedly say “We
ought . . .” but never “You must!”

To many minds all this liberty for the individual spells
sheer anarchy. Every newcomer, every friend who looks at

		129



	130 	TRADITION ONE

A.A. for the first time is greatly puzzled. They see liberty
verging on license, yet they recognize at once that A.A. has
an irresistible strength of purpose and action. “How,” they
ask, “can such a crowd of anarchists function at all? How
can they possibly place their common welfare first? What
in Heaven's name holds them together?”

Those who look closely soon have the key to this
strange paradox. The A.A. member has to conform to the
principles of recovery. His life actually depends upon obedience
to spiritual principles. If he deviates too far, the
penalty is sure and swift; he sickens and dies. At first he
goes along because he must, but later he discovers a way of
life he really wants to live. Moreover, he finds he cannot
keep this priceless gift unless he gives it away. Neither he
nor anybody else can survive unless he carries the A.A.
message. The moment this Twelfth Step work forms a
group, another discovery is made—that most individuals
cannot recover unless there is a group. Realization dawns
that he is but a small part of a great whole; that no personal
sacrifice is too great for preservation of the Fellowship. He
learns that the clamor of desires and ambitions within him
must be silenced whenever these could damage the group.
It becomes plain that the group must survive or the individual
will not.

So at the outset, how best to live and work together as
groups became the prime question. In the world about us
we saw personalities destroying whole peoples. The struggle
for wealth, power, and prestige was tearing humanity
apart as never before. If strong people were stalemated in
the search for peace and harmony, what was to become of
our erratic band of alcoholics? As we had once struggled



	TRADITION ONE 	131

and prayed for individual recovery, just so earnestly did we
commence to quest for the principles through which A.A.
itself might survive. On anvils of experience, the structure
of our Society was hammered out.

Countless times, in as many cities and hamlets, we reenacted
the story of Eddie Rickenbacker and his courageous
company when their plane crashed in the Pacific.
Like us, they had suddenly found themselves saved from
death, but still floating upon a perilous sea. How well they
saw that their common welfare came first. None might become
selfish of water or bread. Each needed to consider the
others, and in abiding faith they knew they must find their
real strength. And this they did find, in measure to transcend
all the defects of their frail craft, every test of
uncertainty, pain, fear, and despair, and even the death of
one.

Thus has it been with A.A. By faith and by works we
have been able to build upon the lessons of an incredible
experience. They live today in the Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics
Anonymous, which—God willing—shall sustain
us in unity for so long as He may need us.


	Back to Table of Contents






Tradition Two

“For our group purpose there is but one ultimate
authority—a loving God as He may
express Himself in our group conscience.
Our leaders are but trusted servants; they
do not govern.” 

WHERE does A.A. get its direction? Who runs it? This,
too, is a puzzler for every friend and newcomer. When told
that our Society has no president having authority to govern
it, no treasurer who can compel the payment of any dues,
no board of directors who can cast an erring member into
outer darkness, when indeed no A.A. can give another a directive
and enforce obedience, our friends gasp and
exclaim, “This simply can't be. There must be an angle
somewhere.” These practical folk then read Tradition Two,
and learn that the sole authority in A.A. is a loving God as
He may express Himself in the group conscience. They dubiously
ask an experienced A.A. member if this really
works. The member, sane to all appearances, immediately
answers, “Yes! It definitely does.” The friends mutter that
this looks vague, nebulous, pretty naive to them. Then they
commence to watch us with speculative eyes, pick up a
fragment of A.A. history, and soon have the solid facts.

What are these facts of A.A. life which brought us to
this apparently impractical principle?

John Doe, a good A.A., moves—let us say—to Middletown,
U.S.A. Alone now, he reflects that he may not be able

		132



	TRADITION TWO 	133

to stay sober, or even alive, unless he passes on to other 
alcoholics what was so freely given him. He feels a spiritual
and ethical compulsion, because hundreds may be suffering
within reach of his help. Then, too, he misses his home
group. He needs other alcoholics as much as they need him.
He visits preachers, doctors, editors, policemen, and bartenders
. . . with the result that Middletown now has a
group, and he is the founder.

Being the founder, he is at first the boss. Who else could
be? Very soon, though, his assumed authority to run everything
begins to be shared with the first alcoholics he has
helped. At this moment, the benign dictator becomes the
chairman of a committee composed of his friends. These
are the growing group's hierarchy of service—self-appointed,
of course, because there is no other way. In a matter of
months, A.A. booms in Middletown.

The founder and his friends channel spirituality to newcomers,
hire halls, make hospital arrangements, and entreat
their wives to brew gallons of coffee. Being on the human
side, the founder and his friends may bask a little in glory.
They say to one another, “Perhaps it would be a good idea
if we continue to keep a firm hand on A.A. in this town. After
all, we are experienced. Besides, look at all the good
we've done these drunks. They should be grateful!” True,
founders and their friends are sometimes wiser and more
humble than this. But more often at this stage they are not.
Growing pains now beset the group. Panhandlers panhandle.
Lonely hearts pine. Problems descend like an
avalanche. ⇦Still more important, murmurs are heard in the
body politic, which swell into a loud cry: “Do these old-



	134 	TRADITION TWO

timers think they can run this group forever? Let's have an
election.” The founder and his friends are hurt and depressed.
They rush from crisis to crisis and from member to
member, pleading; but it's no use, the revolution is on. The
group conscience is about to take over.

Now comes the election. If the founder and his friends
have served well, they may—to their surprise—be reinstated
for a time. If, however, they have heavily resisted the
rising tide of democracy, they may be summarily beached.
In either case, the group now has a so-called rotating committee,
very sharply limited in its authority. In no sense
whatever can its members govern or direct the group. They
are servants. Theirs is the sometimes thankless privilege of
doing the group's chores. Headed by the chairman, they
look after public relations and arrange meetings. Their treasurer,
strictly accountable, takes money from the hat that is
passed, banks it, pays the rent and other bills, and makes a
regular report at business meetings. The secretary sees that
literature is on the table, looks after the phone-answering
service, answers the mail, and sends out notices of meetings.
Such are the simple services that enable the group to
function. The committee gives no spiritual advice, judges
no one's conduct, issues no orders. Every one of them may
be promptly eliminated at the next election if they try this.
And so they make the belated discovery that they are really
servants, not senators. These are universal experiences.
Thus throughout A.A. does the group conscience decree the
terms upon which its leaders shall serve.

This brings us straight to the question “Does A.A. have
a real leadership?” Most emphatically the answer is “Yes,



	TRADITION TWO 	135

notwithstanding the apparent lack of it.” Let's turn again to
the deposed founder and his friends. What becomes of
them? As their grief and anxiety wear away, a subtle
change begins. Ultimately, they divide into two classes
known in A.A. slang as “elder statesmen” and “bleeding
deacons.” The elder statesman is the one who sees the wisdom
of the group's decision, who holds no resentment over
his reduced status, whose judgment, fortified by considerable
experience, is sound, and who is willing to sit quietly
on the sidelines patiently awaiting developments. The
bleeding deacon is one who is just as surely convinced that
the group cannot get along without him, who constantly
connives for reelection to office, and who continues to be
consumed with self-pity. A few hemorrhage so badly that—
drained of all A.A. spirit and principle—they get drunk. At
times the A.A. landscape seems to be littered with bleeding
forms. Nearly every oldtimer in our Society has gone
through this process in some degree. Happily, most of them
survive and live to become elder statesmen. They become
the real and permanent leadership of A.A. Theirs is the quiet
opinion, the sure knowledge and humble example that
resolve a crisis. When sorely perplexed, the group inevitably
turns to them for advice. They become the voice of
the group conscience; in fact, these are the true voice of Alcoholics
Anonymous. They do not drive by mandate; they
lead by example. This is the experience which has led us to
the conclusion that our group conscience, well-advised by
its elders, will be in the long run wiser than any single leader.

When A.A. was only three years old, an event occurred
demonstrating this principle. One of the first members of



	136 	TRADITION TWO

A.A., entirely contrary to his own desires, was obliged to
conform to group opinion. Here is the story in his words.

“One day I was doing a Twelfth Step job at a hospital in
New York. The proprietor, Charlie, summoned me to his
office. 'Bill,' he said, 'I think it's a shame that you are financially
so hard up. All around you these drunks are getting
well and making money. But you're giving this work full
time, and you're broke. It isn't fair.' Charlie fished in his
desk and came up with an old financial statement. Handing
it to me, he continued, 'This shows the kind of money the
hospital used to make back in the 1920's. Thousands of dollars
a month. It should be doing just as well now, and it
would—if only you'd help me. So why don't you move
your work in here? I'll give you an office, a decent drawing
account, and a very healthy slice of the profits. Three years
ago, when my head doctor, Silkworth, began to tell me of
the idea of helping drunks by spirituality, I thought it was
crackpot stuff, but I've changed my mind. Some day this
bunch of ex-drunks of yours will fill Madison Square Garden,
and I don't see why you should starve meanwhile.
What I propose is perfectly ethical. You can become a lay
therapist, and more successful than anybody in the business.'

“I was bowled over. There were a few twinges of conscience
until I saw how really ethical Charlie's proposal
was. There was nothing wrong whatever with becoming a
lay therapist. I thought of Lois coming home exhausted
from the department store each day, only to cook supper for
a houseful of drunks who weren't paying board. I thought
of the large sum of money still owing my Wall Street creditors.
I thought of a few of my alcoholic friends, who were



	TRADITION TWO 	137

making as much money as ever. Why shouldn't I do as well
as they?

“Although I asked Charlie for a little time to consider it,
my own mind was about made up. Racing back to Brooklyn
on the subway, I had a seeming flash of divine
guidance. It was only a single sentence, but most convincing.
In fact, it came right out of the Bible—a voice kept
saying to me, 'The laborer is worthy of his hire.' Arriving
home, I found Lois cooking as usual, while three drunks
looked hungrily on from the kitchen door. I drew her aside
and told the glorious news. She looked interested, but not as
excited as I thought she should be.

“It was meeting night. Although none of the alcoholics
we boarded seemed to get sober, some others had. With
their wives they crowded into our downstairs parlor. At
once I burst into the story of my opportunity. Never shall I
forget their impassive faces, and the steady gaze they focused
upon me. With waning enthusiasm, my tale trailed
off to the end. There was a long silence.

“Almost timidly, one of my friends began to speak. 'We
know how hard up you are, Bill. It bothers us a lot. We've
often wondered what we might do about it. But I think I
speak for everyone here when I say that what you now propose
bothers us an awful lot more.' The speaker's voice
grew more confident. 'Don't you realize,' he went on, 'that
you can never become a professional? As generous as
Charlie has been to us, don't you see that we can't tie this
thing up with his hospital or any other? You tell us that
Charlie's proposal is ethical. Sure, it's ethical, but what
we've got won't run on ethics only; it has to be better. Sure,



	138 	TRADITION TWO

Charlie's idea is good, but it isn't good enough. This is a
matter of life and death, Bill, and nothing but the very best
will do!' Challengingly, my friends looked at me as their
spokesman continued. 'Bill, haven't you often said right
here in this meeting that sometimes the good is the enemy
of the best? Well, this is a plain case of it. You can't do this
thing to us!'

“So spoke the group conscience. The group was right
and I was wrong; the voice on the subway was not the
voice of God. Here was the true voice, welling up out of
my friends. I listened, and—thank God—I obeyed.”


	Back to Table of Contents





	
Tradition Three

“The only requirement for A.A. membership
is a desire to stop drinking.” 

THIS Tradition is packed with meaning. For A.A. is really
saying to every serious drinker, “You are an A.A. member
if you say so. You can declare yourself in; nobody can keep
you out. No matter who you are, no matter how low you've
gone, no matter how grave your emotional complications
—even your crimes—we still can't deny you A.A. We don't
want to keep you out. We aren't a bit afraid you'll harm us,
never mind how twisted or violent you may be. We just
want to be sure that you get the same great chance for sobriety
that we've had. So you're an A.A. member the minute
you declare yourself.”

To establish this principle of membership took years of
harrowing experience. In our early time, nothing seemed so
fragile, so easily breakable as an A.A. group. Hardly an alcoholic
we approached paid any attention; most of those
who did join us were like flickering candles in a windstorm.
Time after time, their uncertain flames blew out and couldn't
be relighted. Our unspoken, constant thought was
“Which of us may be the next?”

A member gives us a vivid glimpse of those days. “At
one time,” he says, “every A.A. group had many membership
rules. Everybody was scared witless that something or
somebody would capsize the boat and dump us all back

		139



	140 	TRADITION THREE

into the drink. Our Foundation office asked each group to
send in its list of 'protective' regulations. The total list was a
mile long. If all those rules had been in effect everywhere,
nobody could have possibly joined A.A. at all, so great was
the sum of our anxiety and fear.

“We were resolved to admit nobody to A.A.. but that
hypothetical class of people we termed 'pure alcoholics.'
Except for their guzzling, and the unfortunate results thereof,
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 cater
only to pure and respectable alcoholics! Any others would
surely destroy us. Besides, if we took in those odd ones,
what would decent people say about us? We built a finemesh
fence right around A.A.

“Maybe this sounds comical now. Maybe you think we
oldtimers were pretty intolerant. But I can tell you there
was nothing funny about the situation then. We were grim
because we felt our lives and homes were threatened, and
that was no laughing matter. Intolerant, you say? Well, we
were frightened. Naturally, we began to act like most everybody
does when afraid. After all, isn't fear the true basis
of intolerance? Yes, we were intolerant.”

How could we then guess that all those fears were to
prove groundless? How could we know that thousands of
these sometimes frightening people were to make astonishing
recoveries and become our greatest workers and



	TRADITION THREE 		141

intimate friends? Was it credible that A.A. was to have a divorce
rate far lower than average? Could we then foresee
that troublesome people were to become our principal
teachers of patience and tolerance? Could any then imagine
a society which would include every conceivable kind of
character, and cut across every barrier of race, creed, politics,
and language with ease?

Why did A.A. finally drop all its membership regulations?
Why did we leave it to each newcomer to decide
himself whether he was an alcoholic and whether he should
join us? Why did we dare to say, contrary to the experience
of society and government everywhere, that we would neither
punish nor deprive any A.A. of membership, that we
must never compel anyone to pay anything, believe anything,
or conform to anything?

The answer, now seen in Tradition Three, was simplicity
itself. At last experience taught us that to take away any
alcoholic's full chance was sometimes to pronounce his
death sentence, and often to condemn him to endless misery.
Who dared to be judge, jury, and executioner of his
own sick brother?

As group after group saw these possibilities, they finally
abandoned all membership regulations. One dramatic experience
after another clinched this determination until it
became our universal tradition. Here are two examples:

On the A.A. calendar it was Year Two. In that time
nothing could be seen but two struggling, nameless groups
of alcoholics trying to hold their faces up to the light.

A newcomer appeared at one of these groups, knocked
on the door and asked to be let in. He talked frankly with



	142 	TRADITION THREE

that group's oldest member. He soon proved that his was a
desperate case, and that above all he wanted to get well.
“But,” he asked, “will you let me join your group? Since I
am the victim of another addiction even worse stigmatized
than alcoholism, you may not want me among you. Or will
you?”

There was the dilemma. What should the group do?
The oldest member summoned two others, and in confidence
laid the explosive facts in their laps. Said he, “Well,
what about it? If we turn this man away, he'll soon die. If
we allow him in, only God knows what trouble he'll brew.
What shall the answer be—yes or no?”

At first the elders could look only at the objections. “We
deal,” they said, “with alcoholics only. Shouldn't we sacrifice
this one for the sake of the many?” So went the
discussion while the newcomer's fate hung in the balance.
Then one of the three spoke in a very different voice.
“What we are really afraid of,” he said, “is our reputation.
We are much more afraid of what people might say than
the trouble this strange alcoholic might bring. As we've
been talking, five short words have been running through
my mind. Something keeps repeating to me, 'What would
the Master do?'” Not another word was said. What more indeed
could be said?

Overjoyed, the newcomer plunged into Twelfth Step
work. Tirelessly he laid A.A.'s message before scores of
people. Since this was a very early group, those scores have
since multiplied themselves into thousands. Never did he
trouble anyone with his other difficulty. A.A. had taken its
first step in the formation of Tradition Three.



	TRADITION THREE 		143

Not long after the man with the double stigma knocked
for admission, A.A.'s other group received into its membership
a salesman we shall call Ed. A power driver, this one,
and brash as any salesman could possibly be. He had at
least an idea a minute on how to improve A.A. These ideas
he sold to fellow members with the same burning enthusiasm
with which he distributed automobile polish. But he
had one idea that wasn't so salable. Ed was an atheist. His
pet obsession was that A.A. could get along better without
its “God nonsense.” He browbeat everybody, and everybody
expected that he'd soon get drunk—for at the time,
you see, A.A. was on the pious side. There must be a heavy
penalty, it was thought, for blasphemy. Distressingly
enough, 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 fine
tribute to the Fellowship; he told how his family had been
reunited; he extolled the virtue of honesty; he recalled the
joys of Twelfth Step work; and then he lowered the boom.
Cried Ed, “I can't stand this God stuff! It's a lot of malarkey
for weak folks. This group doesn't need it, and I won't have
it! To hell with it!”

A great wave of outraged resentment engulfed the
meeting, sweeping every member to a single resolve: “Out
he goes!”

The elders led Ed aside. They said firmly, “You can't
talk like this around here. You'll have to quit it or get out.”
With great sarcasm Ed came back at them. “Now do tell! Is
that so?” He reached over to a bookshelf and took up a
sheaf of papers. On top of them lay the foreword to the



	144 	TRADITION THREE
book “Alcoholics Anonymous” then under preparation. He
read aloud, “The only requirement for A.A. membership is
a desire to stop drinking.” Relentlessly, Ed went on, “When
you guys wrote that sentence, did you mean it, or didn't
you?”

Dismayed, the elders looked at one another, for they
knew he had them cold. So Ed stayed.
Ed not only stayed, he stayed sober—month after
month. The longer he kept dry, the louder he talked—
against God. The group was in anguish so deep that all fraternal
charity had vanished. “When, oh when,” groaned
members to one another, “will that guy get drunk?”

Quite a while later, Ed got a sales job which took him
out of town. At the end of a few days, the news came in.
He'd sent a telegram for money, and everybody knew what
that meant! Then he got on the phone. In those days, we'd
go anywhere on a Twelfth Step job, no matter how unpromising.
But this time nobody stirred. “Leave him alone!
Let him try it by himself for once; maybe he'll learn a lesson!”

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 friend
drinking their morning coffee. A noise was heard on the
stairs. To their consternation, Ed appeared. A quizzical
smile on his lips, he said, “Have you fellows had your
morning meditation?” They quickly sensed that he was
quite 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
rang in his fevered mind: “They have deserted me. I have



	TRADITION THREE 		145

been deserted by my own kind. This is the end . . . nothing
is left.” As he tossed on his bed, his hand brushed the bureau
near by, touching a book. Opening the book, he read. It
was a Gideon Bible. Ed never confided any more of what
he saw and felt in that hotel room. It was the year 1938. He
hasn't had a drink since.

Nowadays, when oldtimers who know Ed foregather,
they exclaim, “What if we had actually succeeded in throwing
Ed out for blasphemy? What would have happened to
him and all the others he later helped?”

So the hand of Providence early gave us a  sign that any
alcoholic is a member of our Society when he says so.


	Back to Table of Contents





Tradition Four

“Each group should be autonomous except
in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as
a whole.” 

AUTONOMY is a ten-dollar word. But in relation to us,
it means very simply that every A.A. group can manage its
affairs exactly as it pleases, except when A.A. as a whole is
threatened. Comes now the same question raised in Tradition
One. Isn't such liberty foolishly dangerous?

Over the years, every conceivable deviation from our
Twelve Steps and Traditions has been tried. That was sure
to be, since we are so largely a band of ego-driven individualists.
Children of chaos, we have defiantly played with
every brand of fire, only to emerge unharmed and, we
think, wiser. These very deviations created a vast process of
trial and error which, under the grace of God, has brought
us 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 almost
any amount of battering. We saw that the group, exactly
like the individual, must eventually conform to whatever
tested principles would guarantee survival. We had discovered
that there was perfect safety in the process of trial and
error. So confident of this had we become that the original
statement of A.A. tradition carried this significant sentence:
“Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety

		146



	TRADITION FOUR 		147

may call themselves an A.A. group provided that as a group
they have no other affiliation.”

This meant, of course, that we had been given the
courage to declare each A.A. group an individual entity,
strictly reliant on its own conscience as a guide to action. In
charting this enormous expanse of freedom, we found it
necessary to post only two storm signals: A group ought not
do 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 call
some groups “wet,” others “dry,” still others “Republican”
or “Communist,” and yet others “Catholic” or “Protestant”
The A.A. group would have to stick to its course or be
hopelessly lost. Sobriety had to be its sole objective. In all
other 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 were
forming. In a town we'll call Middleton, a real crackerjack
had started up. The townspeople were as hot as firecrackers
about it. Stargazing, the elders dreamed of innovations.
They figured the town needed a great big alcoholic center, a
kind of pilot plant A.A. groups could duplicate everywhere.
Beginning on the ground floor there would be a club; in the
second story they would sober up drunks and hand them
currency for their back debts; the third deck would house
an educational project—quite noncontroversial, of course.
In imagination the gleaming center was to go up several
stories more, but three would do for a start. This would all
take a lot of money—other people's money. Believe it or
not, wealthy townsfolk bought the idea.



	148 	TRADITION FOUR

There were, though, a few conservative dissenters
among the alcoholics. They wrote the Foundation, A.A.'s
headquarters in New York, wanting to know about this sort
of streamlining. They understood that the elders, just to nail
things down good, were about to apply to the Foundation
for a charter. These few were disturbed and skeptical.

Of course, there was a promoter in the deal—a superpromoter.
By his eloquence he allayed all fears, despite advice
from the Foundation that it could issue no charter, and
that ventures which mixed an A.A. group with medication
and education had come to sticky ends elsewhere. To make
things safer, the promoter organized three corporations and
became president of them all. Freshly painted, the new center
shone. The warmth of it all spread through the town.
Soon things began to hum. To insure foolproof, continuous
operation, 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 drunks
yearned for education, but doubted if they were alcoholics.
The personality defects of others could be cured maybe
with a loan. Some were club-minded, but it was just a question
of taking care of the lonely heart. Sometimes the
swarming applicants would go for all three floors. Some
would start at the top and come through to the bottom, becoming
club members; others started in the club, pitched a
binge, were hospitalized, then graduated to education on
the third floor. It was a beehive of activity, all right, but un-



	TRADITION FOUR 		149

like 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 inevitable
explosion—something like that day the boiler burst in
Wombley's Clapboard Factory. A chill chokedamp of fear
and frustration fell over the group.

When that lifted, a wonderful thing had happened. The
head promoter wrote the Foundation office. He said he
wished he'd paid some attention to A.A. experience. Then
he did something else that was to become an A.A. classic. It
all went on a little card about golf-score size. The cover
read: “Middleton Group #1. Rule #62.” Once the card was
unfolded, a single pungent sentence leaped to the eye:
“Don't take yourself too damn seriously.”

Thus it was that under Tradition Four an A.A. group
had exercised its right to be wrong. Moreover, it had performed
a great service for Alcoholics Anonymous, because
it had been humbly willing to apply the lessons it learned. It
had picked itself up with a laugh and gone on to better
things. ⇦Even the chief architect, standing in the ruins of his
dream, could laugh at himself—and that is the very acme of
humility.


	Back to Table of Contents





	
Tradition Five
	
“Each group has but one primary purpose
—to carry the message to the alcoholic who
still suffers.” 

“SHOEMAKER, stick to thy last!”... better do one thing
supremely well than many badly. That is the central theme
of this Tradition. Around it our Society gathers in unity. The
very life of our Fellowship requires the preservation of this
principle.

Alcoholics Anonymous can be likened to a group of
physicians who might find a cure for cancer, and upon
whose concerted work would depend the answer for sufferers
of this disease. True, each physician in such a group
might have his own specialty. Every doctor concerned
would at times wish he could devote himself to his chosen
field rather than work only with the group. But once these
men had hit upon a cure, once it became apparent that only
by their united effort could this be accomplished, then all of
them would feel bound to devote themselves solely to the
relief of cancer. In the radiance of such a miraculous discovery,
any doctor would set his other ambitions aside, at
whatever personal cost.

Just as firmly bound by obligation are the members of
Alcoholics Anonymous, who have demonstrated that they
can help problem drinkers as others seldom can. The
unique ability of each A.A. to identify himself with, and

		150



	TRADITION FIVE 	151

bring recovery to, the newcomer in no way depends upon
his learning, eloquence, or on any special individual skills.
The only thing that matters is that he is an alcoholic who
has found a key to sobriety. These legacies of suffering and
of recovery are easily passed among alcoholics, one to the
other. This is our gift from God, and its bestowal upon others
like us is the one aim that today animates A.A.'s all
around the globe.

There is another reason for this singleness of purpose. It
is the great paradox of A.A. that we know we can seldom
keep the precious gift of sobriety unless we give it away. If
a group of doctors possessed a cancer cure, they might be
conscience-stricken if they failed their mission through selfseeking.
Yet such a failure wouldn't jeopardize their personal
survival. For us, if we neglect those who are still sick,
there is unremitting danger to our own lives and sanity. Under
these compulsions of self-preservation,  duty, and love,
it is not strange that our Society has concluded that it has
but one high mission—to carry the A.A. message to those
who don't know there's a way out.

Highlighting the wisdom of A.A.'s single purpose, a
member tells this story:

“Restless one day, I felt I'd better do some Twelfth Step
work. Maybe I should take out some insurance against a
slip. But first I'd have to find a drunk to work on.

“So I hopped the subway to Towns Hospital, where I
asked Dr. Silkworth if he had a prospect. 'Nothing too
promising,' the little doc said. 'There's just one chap on the
third floor who might be a possibility. But he's an awfully
tough Irishman. I never saw a man so obstinate. He shouts



	152 	TRADITION FIVE

that if his partner would treat him better, and his wife would
leave him alone, he'd soon solve his alcohol problem. He's
had a bad case of D.T.'s, he's pretty foggy, and he's very
suspicious of everybody. Doesn't sound too good, does it?
But working with him may do something for you, so why
don't you have a go at it?'

“I was soon sitting beside a big hulk of a man. Decidedly
unfriendly, he stared at me out of eyes which were slits in
his red and swollen face. I had to agree with the doctor—he
certainly didn't look good. But I told him my own story. I
explained what a wonderful Fellowship we had, how well
we understood each other. I bore down hard on the hopelessness
of the drunk's dilemma. I insisted that few drunks
could ever get well on their own steam, but that in our
groups we could do together what we could not do separately.
He interrupted to scoff at this and asserted he'd fix
his wife, his partner, and his alcoholism by himself. Sarcastically
he asked, 'How much does your scheme cost?'

“I was thankful I could tell him, 'Nothing at all.'

“His next question: 'What are you getting out of it?'

“Of course, my answer was 'My own sobriety and a
mighty happy life.'

“Still dubious, he demanded, 'Do you really mean the
only reason you are here is to try and help me and to help
yourself?'

“'Yes,' I said. 'That's absolutely all there is to it. There's
no angle.'

“Then, hesitantly, I ventured to talk about the spiritual
side of our program. What a freeze that drunk gave me! I'd
no sooner got the word 'spiritual' out of my mouth than he



	TRADITION FIVE 		153

pounced. 'Oh!' he said. 'Now I get it! You're proselytizing
for some damn religious sect or other. Where do you get
that “no angle” stuff? I belong to a great church that means
everything to me. You've got a nerve to come in here talking
religion!'

“Thank heaven I came up with the right answer for that
one. 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. So
I can't tell you anything about religion. I don't even want to
try. I'll bet, too, that you could give me a letter-perfect definition
of humility. But from what you've told me about
yourself and your problems and how you propose to lick
them, I think I know what's wrong.'

“'Okay,' he said. 'Give me the business.'

“'Well,' said I, 'I think you're just a conceited Irishman
who thinks he can run the whole show.'

“This really rocked him. But as he calmed down, he began
to listen while I tried to show him that humility was the
main key to sobriety. Finally, he saw that I wasn't attempting
to change his religious views, that I wanted him to find
the grace in his own religion that would aid his recovery.
From there on we got along fine.

“Now,” concludes the oldtimer, “suppose I'd been
obliged to talk to this man on religious grounds? Suppose
my answer had to be that A.A. needed a lot of money; that
A.A. went in for education, hospitals, and rehabilitation?
Suppose I'd suggested that I'd take a hand in his domestic
and business affairs? Where would we have wound up? No
place, of course.”

	154 	TRADITION FIVE

Years later, this tough Irish customer liked to say, “My
sponsor sold me one idea, and that was sobriety. At the
time, I couldn't have bought anything else.”


	Back to Table of Contents






Tradition Six

“An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance
or lend the A.A. name to any related
facility or outside enterprise, lest problems
of money, property and prestige divert us
from our primary purpose.” 

THE moment we saw that we had an answer for alcoholism,
it was reasonable (or so it seemed at the time) for us
to feel that we might have the answer to a lot of other
things. The A.A. groups, many thought, could go into business,
might finance any enterprise whatever in the total
field of alcoholism. In fact, we felt duty-bound to throw the
whole weight of the A.A. name behind any meritorious
cause.

Here are some of the things we dreamed. Hospitals didn't
like alcoholics, so we thought we'd build a hospital chain
of our own. People needed to be told what alcoholism was,
so we'd educate the public, even rewrite school and medical
textbooks. We'd gather up derelicts from skid rows, sort out
those who could get well, and make it possible for the rest
to earn their livelihood in a kind of quarantined confinement.
Maybe these places would make large sums of
money to carry on our other good works. We seriously
thought of rewriting the laws of the land, and having it declared
that alcoholics are sick people. No more would they
be jailed; judges would parole them in our custody. We'd
spill A.A. into the dark regions of dope addiction and crimi-

		155



	156 	TRADITION SIX

nality. We'd form groups of depressive and paranoid folks;
the deeper the neurosis, the better we'd like it. It stood to
reason that if alcoholism could be licked, so could any
problem.

It occurred to us that we could take what we had into
the factories and cause laborers and capitalists to love each
other. Our uncompromising honesty might soon clean up
politics. With one arm around the shoulder of religion and
the other around the shoulder of medicine, we'd resolve
their differences. Having learned to live so happily, we'd
show everybody else how. Why, we thought, our Society of
Alcoholics Anonymous might prove to be the spearhead of
a new spiritual advance! We might transform the world.

Yes, we of A.A. did dream those dreams. How natural
that was, since most alcoholics are bankrupt idealists. Nearly
every one of us had wished to do great good, perform
great deeds, and embody great ideals. We are all perfectionists
who, failing perfection, have gone to the other extreme
and settled for the bottle and the blackout. Providence,
through A.A., had brought us within reach of our highest
expectations. So why shouldn't we share our way of life
with everyone?

Whereupon we tried A.A. hospitals—they all bogged
down because you cannot put an A.A. group into business;
too many busybody cooks spoil the broth. A.A. groups had
their fling at education, and when they began to publicly
whoop up the merits of this or that brand, people became
confused. Did A.A. fix drunks or was it an educational
project? Was A.A. spiritual or was it medical? Was it a reform
movement? In consternation, we saw ourselves



	TRADITION SIX 	157

getting married to all kinds of enterprises, some good and
some not so good. Watching alcoholics committed willynilly
to prisons or asylums, we began to cry, “There oughtta
be a law!” A.A.'s commenced to thump tables in legislative
committee rooms and agitated for legal reform. That made
good newspaper copy, but little else. We saw we'd soon be
mired in politics. Even inside A.A. we found it imperative
to remove the A.A. name from clubs and Twelfth Step
houses.

These adventures implanted a deep-rooted conviction
that in no circumstances could we endorse any related enterprise,
no matter how good. We of Alcoholics
Anonymous could not be all things to all men, nor should
we try.

Years ago this principle of “no endorsement” was put to
a vital test. Some of the great distilling companies proposed
to go into the field of alcohol education. It would be a good
thing, they believed, for the liquor trade to show a sense of
public responsibility. They wanted to say that liquor should
be enjoyed, not misused; hard drinkers ought to slow down,
and problem drinkers—alcoholics—should not drink at all.

In one of their trade associations, the question arose of
just how this campaign should be handled. Of course, they
would use the resources of radio, press, and films to make
their point. But what kind of person should head the job?
They immediately thought of Alcoholics Anonymous. If
they could find a good public relations man in our ranks,
why wouldn't he be ideal? He'd certainly know the problem.
His connection with A.A. would be valuable, because
the Fellowship stood high in public favor and hadn't an en-



	158 	TRADITION SIX

emy in the world.

Soon they'd spotted their man, an A.A. with the necessary
experience. Straightway he appeared at New York's
A.A. headquarters, asking, “Is there anything in our tradition
that suggests I shouldn't take a job like this one? The
kind of education seems good to me, and is not too controversial.
Do you headquarters folks see any bugs in it?”

At first glance, it did look like a good thing. Then doubt
crept in. The association wanted to use our member's full
name in all its advertising; he was to be described both as
its director of publicity and as a member of Alcoholics
Anonymous. Of course, there couldn't be the slightest objection
if such an association hired an A.A. member solely
because of his public relations ability and his knowledge of
alcoholism. But that wasn't the whole story, for in this case
not only was an A.A. member to break his anonymity at a
public level, he was to link the name Alcoholics Anonymous
to this particular educational project in the minds of
millions. It would be bound to appear that A.A. was now
backing education—liquor trade association style.

The minute we saw this compromising fact for what it
was, we asked the prospective publicity director how he felt
about it. “Great guns!” he said. “Of course I can't take the
job. The ink wouldn't be dry on the first ad before an awful
shriek would go up from the dry camp. They'd be out with
lanterns looking for an honest A.A. to plump for their
brand of education. A.A. would land exactly in the middle
of the wet-dry controversy. Half the people in this country
would think we'd signed up with the drys, the other half
would think we'd joined the wets. What a mess!”



	TRADITION SIX 	159

“Nevertheless,” we pointed out, “you still have a legal
right 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. I
certainly 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. We
saw as never before that we could not lend the A.A. name
to any cause other than our own.


	Back to Table of Contents




Tradition Seven

“Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting,
declining outside contributions.” 

SELF-SUPPORTING alcoholics? Who ever heard of
such a thing? Yet we find that's what we have to be. This
principle is telling evidence of the profound change that
A.A. has wrought in all of us. Everybody knows that active
alcoholics scream that they have no troubles money can't
cure. Always, we've had our hands out. Time out of mind
we've been dependent upon somebody, usually moneywise.
When a society composed entirely of alcoholics says
it's going to pay its bills, that's really news.

Probably no A.A. Tradition had the labor pains this one
did. In early times, we were all broke. When you add to this
the habitual supposition that people ought to give money to
alcoholics trying to stay sober, it can be understood why we
thought we deserved a pile of folding money. What great
things A.A. would be able to do with it! But oddly enough,
people who had money thought otherwise. They figured
that it was high time we now—sober—paid our own way.
So our Fellowship stayed poor because it had to.

There was another reason for our collective poverty. It
was soon apparent that while alcoholics would spend lavishly
on Twelfth Step cases, they had a terrific aversion to
dropping money into a meeting-place hat for group purpos-

		160



	TRADITION SEVEN 		161

es. We were astounded to find that we were as tight as the
bark on a tree. So A.A., the movement, started and stayed
broke, while its individual members waxed prosperous.
	
Alcoholics are certainly all-or-nothing people. Our reactions
to money prove this. As A.A. emerged from its
infancy into adolescence, we swung from the idea that we
needed vast sums of money to the notion that A.A. shouldn't
have any. On every lip were the words “You can't mix
A.A. and money. We shall have to separate the spiritual
from the material.” We took this violent new tack because
here and there members had tried to make money out of
their A.A. connections, and we feared we'd be exploited.
Now and then, grateful benefactors had endowed clubhouses,
and as a result there was sometimes outside interference
in our affairs. We had been presented with a hospital, and
almost immediately the donor's son became its principal
patient and would-be manager. One A.A. group was given
five thousand dollars to do with what it would. The hassle
over that chunk of money played havoc for years. Frightened
by these complications, some groups refused to have a
cent in their treasuries.

Despite these misgivings, we had to recognize the fact
that A.A. had to function. Meeting places cost something.
To save whole areas from turmoil, small offices had to be
set up, telephones installed, and a few full-time secretaries
hired. Over many protests, these things were accomplished.
We saw that if they weren't, the man coming in the door
couldn't get a break. These simple services would require
small sums of money which we could and would pay ourselves.
At last the pendulum stopped swinging and pointed



	162 	TRADITION SEVEN

straight at Tradition Seven as it reads today.

In this connection, Bill likes to tell the following pointed
story. He explains that when Jack Alexander's Saturday
Evening Post piece broke in 1941, thousands of frantic letters
from distraught alcoholics and their families hit the
Foundation letterbox in New York. “Our office staff,” Bill
says, “consisted of two people: one devoted secretary and
myself. How could this landslide of appeals be met? We'd
have to have some more full-time help, that was sure. So
we asked the A.A. groups for voluntary contributions.
Would they send us a dollar a member a year? Otherwise
this heartbreaking mail would have to go unanswered.

“To my surprise, the response of the groups was slow. I
got mighty sore about it. Looking at this avalanche of mail
one morning at the office, I paced up and down ranting
how irresponsible and tightwad my fellow members were.
Just then an old acquaintance stuck a tousled and aching
head in the door. He was our prize slippee. I could see he
had an awful hangover. Remembering some of my own,
my heart filled with pity. I motioned him to my inside cubicle
and produced a five-dollar bill. As my total income was
thirty dollars a week at the time, this was a fairly large donation.
Lois really needed the money for groceries, but that
didn't stop me. The intense relief on my friend's face
warmed my heart. I felt especially virtuous as I thought of
all the ex-drunks who wouldn't even send the Foundation a
dollar apiece, and here I was gladly making a five-dollar in-



	TRADITION SEVEN		 163

vestment to fix a hangover.

“The meeting that night was at New York's old 24th
Street Clubhouse. During the intermission, the treasurer
gave a timid talk on how broke the club was. (That was in
the period when you couldn't mix money and A.A. ) But finally
he said it—the landlord would put us out if we didn't
pay 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 to
convert a newcomer who sat next to me. The hat came in
my direction, and 1 reached into my pocket. Still working
on my prospect, I fumbled and came up with a fifty-cent
piece. Somehow it looked like a very big coin. Hastily, I
dropped it back and fished out a dime, which clinked thinly
as I dropped it in the hat. Hats never got folding money in
those days.

“Then I woke up. I who had boasted my generosity that
morning was treating my own club worse than the distant
alcoholics who had forgotten to send the Foundation their
dollars. I realized that my five-dollar gift to the slippee was
an ego-feeding proposition, bad for him and bad for me.
There was a place in A.A. where spirituality and money
would 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 quarterly
meeting. The agenda discussion included a very important
question. A certain lady had died. When her will was read,
it was discovered she had left Alcoholics Anonymous in
trust with the Alcoholic Foundation a sum of ten thousand
dollars. The question was: Should A.A. take the gift?



	164 	TRADITION SEVEN

What a debate we had on that one! The Foundation was
really hard up just then; the groups weren't sending in
enough for the support of the office; we had been tossing in
all the book income and even that hadn't been enough. The
reserve was melting like snow in springtime. We needed
that ten thousand dollars. “Maybe,” some said, “the groups
will 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 such
donations in the future. We're going to need them.”

Then came the opposition. They pointed out that the
Foundation board already knew of a total of half a million
dollars set aside for A.A. in the wills of people still alive.
Heaven only knew how much there was we hadn't heard
about. If outside donations weren't declined, absolutely cut
off, then the Foundation would one day become rich.
Moreover, at the slightest intimation to the general public
from our trustees that we needed money, we could become
immensely rich. Compared to this prospect, the ten thousand
dollars under consideration wasn't much, but like the
alcoholic's first drink it would, if taken, inevitably set up a
disastrous chain reaction. Where would that land us? Whoever
pays the piper is apt to call the tune, and if the A.A.
Foundation obtained money from outside sources, its
trustees might be tempted to run things without reference to
the wishes of A.A. as a whole. Relieved of responsibility,
every alcoholic would shrug and say, “Oh, the Foundation
is wealthy—why should 1 bother?” The pressure of that fat
treasury would surely tempt the board to invent all kinds of
schemes to do good with such funds, and so divert A.A.
from its primary purpose. The moment that happened, our



	TRADITION SEVEN 		165

Fellowship's confidence would be shaken. The board
would be isolated, and would fall under heavy attack of
criticism from both A..A. and the public. These were the
possibilities, pro and con.

Then our trustees wrote a bright page of A.A. history.
They declared for the principle that A.A. must always stay
poor. Bare running expenses plus a prudent reserve would
henceforth be the Foundation's financial policy. Difficult as
it was, they officially declined that ten thousand dollars, and
adopted a formal, airtight resolution that all such future
gifts would be similarly declined. At that moment, we believe,
the principle of corporate poverty was firmly and
finally embedded in A.A. tradition.

When these facts were printed, there was a profound reaction.
To people familiar with endless drives for charitable
funds, A.A. presented a strange and refreshing spectacle.
Approving editorials here and abroad generated a wave of
confidence in the integrity of Alcoholics Anonymous. They
pointed out that the irresponsible had become responsible,
and that by making financial independence part of its tradition,
Alcoholics Anonymous had revived an ideal that its
era had almost forgotten.


	Back to Table of Contents






Tradition Eight

“Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever
nonprofessional, but our service centers
may employ special workers.” 

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS will never have a professional
class. We have gained some understanding of the
ancient words “Freely ye have received, freely give.” We
have discovered that at the point of professionalism, money
and spirituality do not mix. Almost no recovery from alcoholism
has ever been brought about by the world's best
professionals, whether medical or religious. We do not decry
professionalism in other fields, but we accept the sober
fact that it does not work for us. Every time we have tried
to professionalize our Twelfth Step, the result has been exactly
the same: Our single purpose has been defeated.

Alcoholics simply will not listen to a paid twelfth-stepper.
Almost from the beginning, we have been positive that
face-to-face work with the alcoholic who suffers could be
based only on the desire to help and be helped. When an
A.A. talks for money, whether at a meeting or to a single
newcomer, it can have a very bad effect on him, too. The
money motive compromises him and everything he says
and does for his prospect. This has always been so obvious
that only a very few A.A.'s have ever worked the Twelfth
Step for a fee.

Despite this certainty, it is nevertheless true that few
subjects have been the cause of more contention within our

		166



	TRADITION EIGHT 		167

Fellowship than professionalism. Caretakers who swept
floors, cooks who fried hamburgers, secretaries in offices,
authors writing books—all these we have seen hotly assailed
because they were, as their critics angrily remarked,
“making money out of A.A.” Ignoring the fact that these
labors were not Twelfth Step jobs at all, the critics attacked
as A.A. professionals these workers of ours who were often
doing thankless tasks that no one else could or would do.
Even greater furors were provoked when A.A. members
began to run rest homes and farms for alcoholics, when
some hired out to corporations as personnel men in charge
of the alcoholic problem in industry, when some became
nurses on alcoholic wards, when others entered the field of
alcohol education. In all these instances, and more, it was
claimed that A.A. knowledge and experience were being
sold for money, hence these people, too, were professionals.

At last, however, a plain line of cleavage could be seen
between professionalism and nonprofessionalism. When
we had agreed that the Twelfth Step couldn't be sold for
money, we had been wise. But when we had declared that
our Fellowship couldn't hire service workers nor could any
A.A. member carry our knowledge into other fields, we
were taking the counsel of fear, fear which today has been
largely dispelled in the light of experience.
Take the case of the club janitor and cook. If a club is
going to function, it has to be habitable and hospitable. We
tried volunteers, who were quickly disenchanted with
sweeping floors and brewing coffee seven days a week.
They just didn't show up. Even more important, an empty



	168 	TRADITION EIGHT

club couldn't answer its telephone, but it was an open invitation
to a drunk on a binge who possessed a spare key. So
somebody had to look after the place full time. If we hired
an alcoholic, he'd receive only what we'd have to pay a
nonalcoholic for the same job. The job was not to do
Twelfth Step work; it was to make Twelfth Step work possible.
It was a service proposition, pure and simple.

Neither could A.A. itself function without full-time
workers. At the Foundation and intergroup offices, we
couldn't employ nonalcoholics as secretaries; we had to
have people who knew the A.A. pitch. But the minute we
hired them, the ultraconservative and fearful ones shrilled,
“Professionalism!” At one period, the status of these faithful
servants was almost unbearable. They weren't asked to
speak at A.A. meetings because they were “making money
out of A.A.” At times, they were actually shunned by fellow
members. Even the charitably disposed described them
as “a necessary evil.” Committees took full advantage of
this attitude to depress their salaries. They could regain
some measure of virtue, it was thought, if they worked for
A.A. real cheap. These notions persisted for years. Then we
saw that if a hardworking secretary answered the phone
dozens of times a day, listened to twenty wailing wives, arranged
hospitalization and got sponsorship for ten
newcomers, and was gently diplomatic with the irate drunk
who complained about the job she was doing and how she
was overpaid, then such a person could surely not be called



	TRADITION EIGHT 		169

a professional A.A. She was not professionalizing the
Twelfth Step; she was just making it possible. She was
helping to give the man coming in the door the break he
ought to have. Volunteer committeemen and assistants
could be of great help, but they could not be expected to
carry this load day in and day out.

At the Foundation, the same story repeats itself. Eight
tons of books and literature per month do not package and
channel themselves all over the world. Sacks of letters on
every conceivable A.A. problem ranging from a lonelyheart
Eskimo to the growing pains of thousands of groups
must be answered by people who know. Right contacts
with the world outside have to be maintained. A.A.'s lifelines
have to be tended. So we hire A.A. staff members. We
pay them well, and they earn what they get. They are professional
secretaries, but they certainly are not professional A.A.'s.

Perhaps the fear will always lurk in every A.A. heart
that one day our name will be exploited by somebody for
real cash. Even the suggestion of such a thing never fails to
whip up a hurricane, and we have discovered that hurricanes
have a way of mauling with equal severity both the
just and the unjust. They are always unreasonable.
No individuals have been more buffeted by such emotional
gusts than those A.A.'s bold enough to accept
employment with outside agencies dealing with the alcohol



	170 	TRADITION EIGHT

problem. A university wanted an A.A. member to educate
the public on alcoholism. A corporation wanted a personnel
man familiar with the subject. A state drunk farm wanted a
manager who could really handle inebriates. A city wanted
an experienced social worker who understood what alcohol
could do to a family. A state alcohol commission wanted a
paid researcher. These are only a few of the jobs which
A.A. members as individuals have been asked to fill. Now
and then, A.A. members have bought farms or rest homes
where badly beat-up topers could find needed care. The
question was—and sometimes still is—are such activities
to be branded as professionalism under A.A. tradition?

We think the answer is “No. Members who select such
full-time careers do not professionalize A.A.'s Twelfth
Step.” The road to this conclusion was long and rocky. At
first, we couldn't see the real issue involved. In former days,
the moment an A.A. hired out to such enterprises, he was
immediately tempted to use the name Alcoholics Anonymous
for publicity or money-raising purposes. Drunk
farms, educational ventures, state legislatures, and commissions
advertised the fact that A.A. members served them.
Unthinkingly, A.A.'s so employed recklessly broke
anonymity to thump the tub for their pet enterprise. For this
reason, some very good causes and all connected with them
suffered unjust criticism from A.A. groups. More often than
not, these onslaughts were spearheaded by the cry “Professionalism!
That guy is making money out of A.A.!” Yet not
a single one of them had been hired to do A.A.'s Twelfth
Step work. The violation in these instances was not professionalism
at all; it was breaking anonymity. A.A.'s sole



	TRADITION EIGHT 		171

purpose was being compromised, and the name of Alcoholics
Anonymous was being misused.

 It is significant, now that almost no A.A. in our Fellowship
breaks anonymity at the public level, that nearly all
these fears have subsided. We see that we have no right or
need to discourage A.A.'s who wish to work as individuals
in these wider fields. It would be actually antisocial were
we to forbid them. We cannot declare A.A. such a closed
corporation that we keep our knowledge and experience top
secret. If an A.A. member acting as a citizen can become a
better researcher, educator, personnel officer, then why not?
Everybody gains and we have lost nothing. True, some of
the projects to which A.A.'s have attached themselves have
been ill-conceived, but that makes not the slightest difference
with the principle involved.

This is the exciting welter of events which has finally
cast up A.A.'s Tradition of nonprofessionalism. Our Twelfth
Step is never to be paid for. but those who labor in service
for us are worthy of their hire.


	Back to Table of Contents






Tradition Nine

“A.A., as such, ought never be organized;
but we may create service boards or committees
directly responsible to those they serve.” 


WHEN Tradition Nine was first written, it said that “Alcoholics
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 Alcoholics
Anonymous—A.A. as a whole—should never be organized
at all. Then, in seeming contradiction, we proceed to
create special service boards and committees which in
themselves are organized. How, then, can we have an unorganized
movement which can and does create a service
organization for itself? Scanning this puzzler, people say,
“What do they mean, no organization?”

Well, let's see. Did anyone ever hear of a nation, a
church, a political party, even a benevolent association that
had no membership rules? Did anyone ever hear of a society
which couldn't somehow discipline its members and
enforce obedience to necessary rules and regulations?
Doesn't nearly every society on earth give authority to
some of its members to impose obedience upon the rest and
to punish or expel offenders? Therefore, every nation, in
fact every form of society, has to be a government administered
by human beings. Power to direct or govern is the
essence of organization everywhere.

		172



	TRADITION NINE 		173

Yet Alcoholics Anonymous is an exception. It does not
conform to this pattern. Neither its General Service Confer-
ence, its Foundation Board, nor the humblest group
committee can issue a single directive to an A.A. member
and make it stick, let alone mete out any punishment. We've
tried it lots of times, but utter failure is always the result.
Groups have tried to expel members, but the banished have
come back to sit in the meeting place, saying, “This is life
for us; you can't keep us out.” Committees have instructed
many an A.A. to stop working on a chronic backslider, only
to be told: “How I do my Twelfth Step work is my business.
Who are you to judge?” This doesn't mean an A.A.
won't take advice or suggestions from more experienced
members, but he surely won't take orders. Who is more unpopular
than the oldtime A.A., full of wisdom, who moves
to another area and tries to tell the group there how to run
its business? He and all like him who “view with alarm for
the good of A.A.” meet the most stubborn resistance or,
worse still, laughter.

You might think A.A.'s headquarters in New York
would be an exception. Surely, the people there would have
to have some authority. But long ago, trustees and staff
members alike found they could do no more than make
suggestions, and very mild ones at that. They even had to
coin a couple of sentences which still go into half the letters
they write: “Of course, you are at perfect liberty to handle
this matter any way you please. But the majority experience

	174 	TRADITION NINE

in A.A. does seem to suggest . . .” Now, that attitude is far
removed from central government, isn't it? We recognize
that alcoholics can't be dictated to—individually or collectively.

At this juncture, we can hear a churchman exclaim,
“They are making disobedience a virtue!” He is joined by a
psychiatrist who says, “Defiant brats! They won't grow up
and conform to social usage!” The man in the street says, “I
don't understand it. They must be nuts!” But all these observers
have overlooked something unique in Alcoholics
Anonymous. Unless each A.A. member follows to the best
of his ability our suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost
certainly signs his own death warrant. His
drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties inflicted by
people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience
to spiritual principles.

The same stern threat applies to the group itself. Unless
there is approximate conformity to A.A.'s Twelve Traditions,
the group, too, can deteriorate and die. So we of A.A.
do obey spiritual principles, first because we must, and ultimately
because we love the kind of life such obedience
brings. Great suffering and great love are A.A.'s disciplinarians;
we need no others.

It is clear now that we ought never to name boards to
govern us, but it is equally clear that we shall always need
to authorize workers to serve us. It is the difference between
the spirit of vested authority and the spirit of service,
two concepts which are sometimes poles apart. It is in this
spirit of service that we elect the A.A. group's informal rotating
committee, the intergroup association for the area,



	TRADITION NINE 		175

and the General Service Conferences of Alcoholics Anonymous
for A.A. as a whole. Even our Foundation, once an
independent board, is today directly accountable to our Fellowship.
Its trustees are the caretakers and expediters of our
world services.

Just as the aim of each A.A. member is personal sobriety,
the aim of our services is to bring sobriety within reach
of all who want it. If nobody does the group's chores, if the
area's telephone rings unanswered, if we do not reply to our
mail, then A.A. as we know it would stop. Our communications
lines with those who need our help would be
broken.

A.A. has to function, but at the same time it must avoid
those dangers of great wealth, prestige, and entrenched
power which necessarily tempt other societies. Though Tradition
Nine at first sight seems to deal with a purely
practical matter, in its actual operation it discloses a society
without organization, animated only by the spirit of service
—a true fellowship.


	Back to Table of Contents






Tradition Ten

“Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on
outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought
never be drawn into public controversy.” 

NEVER since it began has Alcoholics Anonymous been
divided by a major controversial issue. Nor has our Fellowship
ever publicly taken sides on any question in an
embattled world. This, however, has been no earned virtue.
It could almost be said that we were born with it, for, as one
oldtimer recently declared, “Practically never have I heard
a heated religious, political, or reform argument among
A.A. members. So long as we don't argue these matters privately,
it's a cinch we never shall publicly.”

As by some deep instinct, we A.A.'s have known from
the very beginning that we must never, no matter what the
provocation, publicly take sides in any fight, even a worthy
one. All history affords us the spectacle of striving nations
and groups finally torn asunder because they were designed
for, or tempted into, controversy. Others fell apart because
of sheer self-righteousness while trying to enforce upon the
rest of mankind some millennium of their own specification.
In our own times, we have seen millions die in
political and economic wars often spurred by religious and
racial difference. We live in the imminent possibility of a
fresh holocaust to determine how men shall be governed,
and how the products of nature and toil shall be divided

		176



	TRADITION TEN 		177

among 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 another
or anybody else is not counted as some special virtue
which makes us feel superior to other people. Nor does it
mean that the members of Alcoholics Anonymous, now restored
as citizens of the world, are going to back away from
their individual responsibilities to act as they see the right
upon issues of our time. But when it comes to A.A. as a
whole, that's quite a different matter. In this respect, we do
not enter into public controversy, because we know that our
Society will perish if it does. We conceive the survival and
spread of Alcoholics Anonymous to be something of far
greater importance than the weight we could collectively
throw back of any other cause. Since recovery from alcoholism
is life itself to us, it is imperative that we preserve in
full strength our means of survival.

Maybe this sounds as though the alcoholics in A.A. had
suddenly gone peaceable, and become one great big happy
family. Of course, this isn't so at all. Human beings that we
are, we squabble. Before we leveled off a bit, A.A. looked
more like one prodigious squabble than anything else, at
least on the surface. A corporation director who had just
voted a company expenditure of a hundred thousand dollars
would appear at an A.A. business meeting and blow his
top over an outlay of twenty-five dollars' worth of needed
postage stamps. Disliking the attempt of some to manage a
group, half its membership might angrily rush off to form
another group more to their liking. Elders, temporarily
turned Pharisee, have sulked. Bitter attacks have been di-



	178 	TRADITION TEN

rected against people suspected of mixed motives. Despite
their din, our puny rows never did A.A. a particle of harm.
They were just part and parcel of learning to work and live
together. Let it be noted, too, that they were almost always
concerned with ways to make A.A. more effective, how to
do the most good for the most alcoholics.

The Washingtonian Society, a movement among alcoholics
which started in Baltimore a century ago, almost
discovered the answer to alcoholism. At first, the society
was composed entirely of alcoholics trying to help one another.
The early members foresaw that they should dedicate
themselves to this sole aim. In many respects, the Washingtonians
were akin to A.A. of today. Their membership
passed the hundred thousand mark. Had they been left to
themselves, and had they stuck to their one goal, they might
have found the rest of the answer. But this didn't happen.
Instead, the Washingtonians permitted politicians and reformers,
both alcoholic and nonalcoholic, to use the society
for their own purposes. Abolition of slavery, for example,
was a stormy political issue then. Soon, Washingtonian
speakers violently and publicly took sides on this question.
Maybe the society could have survived the abolition controversy,
but it didn't have a chance from the moment it
determined to reform America's drinking habits. When the
Washingtonians became temperance crusaders, within a
very few years they had completely lost their effectiveness
in helping alcoholics.

The lesson to be learned from the Washingtonians was
not overlooked by Alcoholics Anonymous. As we surveyed
the wreck of that movement, early A.A. members resolved



	TRADITION TEN 		179

to keep our Society out of public controversy. Thus was
laid the cornerstone for Tradition Ten: “Alcoholics Anonymous
has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A.
name ought never be drawn into public controversy.”


	Back to Table of Contents






Tradition Eleven

“Our public relations policy is based on attraction
rather than promotion; we need always
maintain personal anonymity at the
level of press, radio and films.” ⇨

WITHOUT its legions of well-wishers, A.A. could never
have grown as it has. Throughout the world, immense and
favorable publicity of every description has been the principal
means of bringing alcoholics into our Fellowship. In
A.A. offices, clubs, and homes, telephones ring constantly.
One voice says, “I read a piece in the newspapers . . .”; another,
“We heard a radio program . . .”; and still another,
“We saw a moving picture . . .” or “We saw something
about A.A. on television. . . .” It is no exaggeration to say
that half of A.A.'s membership has been led to us through
channels like these.

The inquiring voices are not all alcoholics or their families.
Doctors read medical papers about Alcoholics
Anonymous and call for more information. Clergymen see
articles in their church journals and also make inquiries.
Employers learn that great corporations have set their approval
upon us, and wish to discover what can be done
about alcoholism in their own firms.

Therefore, a great responsibility fell upon us to develop
the best possible public relations policy for Alcoholics
Anonymous. Through many painful experiences, we think
we have arrived at what that policy ought to be. It is the op-

		180



	TRADITION ELEVEN 	181

posite in many ways of usual promotional practice. We
found that we had to rely upon the principle of attraction
rather than of promotion.

Let's see how these two contrasting ideas—attraction
and promotion—work out. A political party wishes to win
an election, so it advertises the virtues of its leadership to
draw votes. A worthy charity wants to raise money; forthwith,
its letterhead shows the name of every distinguished
person whose support can be obtained. Much of the political,
economic, and religious life of the world is dependent
upon publicized leadership. People who symbolize causes
and ideas fill a deep human need. We of A.A. do not question
that. But we do have to soberly face the fact that being
in the public eye is hazardous, especially for us. By temperament,
nearly every one of us had been an irrepressible
promoter, and the prospect of a society composed almost
entirely of promoters was frightening. Considering this explosive
factor, we knew we had to exercise self-restraint.

The way this restraint paid off was startling. It resulted
in more favorable publicity of Alcoholics Anonymous than
could possibly have been obtained through all the arts and
abilities of A.A.'s best press agents. Obviously, A.A. had to
be publicized somehow, so we resorted to the idea that it
would be far better to let our friends do this for us. Precisely
that has happened, to an unbelievable extent. Veteran newsmen,
trained doubters that they are, have gone all out to
carry A.A.'s message. To them, we are something more
than the source of good stories. On almost every newsfront,
the men and women of the press have attached themselves
to us as friends.



	182 	TRADITION ELEVEN

In the beginning, the press could not understand our refusal
of all personal publicity. They were genuinely baffled
by our insistence upon anonymity. Then they got the point.
Here was something rare in the world—a society which
said it wished to publicize its principles and its work, but
not its individual members. The press was delighted with
this attitude. Ever since, these friends have reported A.A.
with an enthusiasm which the most ardent members would
find hard to match.

There was actually a time when the press of America
thought the anonymity of A.A. was better for us than some
of our own members did. At one point, about a hundred of
our Society were breaking anonymity at the public level.
With perfectly good intent, these folks declared that the
principle of anonymity was horse-and-buggy stuff, something
appropriate to A.A.'s pioneering days. They were sure
that A.A. could go faster and farther if it availed itself of
modern publicity methods. A.A., they pointed out, included
many persons of local, national, or international fame. Provided
they were willing—and many were—why shouldn't
their membership be publicized, thereby encouraging others
to join us? These were plausible arguments, but happily
our friends of the writing profession disagreed with them.

The Foundation wrote letters to practically every news
outlet in North America, setting forth our public relations
policy of attraction rather than promotion, and emphasizing
Since that time, editors and rewrite men have repeatedly
deleted names and pictures of members from A.A. copy;
frequently, they have reminded ambitious individuals of
A.A.'s anonymity policy. They have even sacrificed good



	TRADITION ELEVEN 	183

stories to this end. The force of their cooperation has cer-
tainlyhelped. Only a few A.A. members are left who
deliberately break anonymity at the public level.

This, in brief, is the process by which A.A.'s Tradition
Eleven was constructed. To us, however, it represents far
more than a sound public relations policy. It is more than a
denial 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.


	Back to Table of Contents







Tradition Twelve

 ⇦“Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all
our traditions, ever reminding us to place
principles before personalities.” 

THE spiritual substance of anonymity is sacrifice. Because
A.A.'s Twelve Traditions repeatedly ask us to give up
personal desires for the common good, we realize that the
sacrificial spirit—well symbolized by anonymity—is the
foundation of them all. It is A.A.'s proved willingness to
make these sacrifices that gives people their high confidence
in our future.

But in the beginning, anonymity was not born of confidence;
it was the child of our early fears. Our first nameless
groups of alcoholics were secret societies. New prospects
could find us only through a few trusted friends. The bare
hint of publicity, even for our work, shocked us. Though
ex-drinkers, we still thought we had to hide from public
distrust and contempt.

When the Big Book appeared in 1939, we called it “Alcoholics
Anonymous.” Its foreword made this revealing
statement: “It is important that we remain anonymous because
we are too few, at present, to handle the
overwhelming number of personal appeals which may result
from this publication. Being mostly business or
professional folk, we could not well carry on our occupations
in such an event.” Between these lines, it is easy to
read our fear that large numbers of incoming people might
break our anonymity wide open.

		184



	TRADITION TWELVE 	185

As the A.A. groups multiplied, so did anonymity problems.
Enthusiastic over the spectacular recovery of a
brother alcoholic, we'd sometimes discuss those intimate
and harrowing aspects of his case meant for his sponsor's
ear alone. The aggrieved victim would then tightly declare
that his trust had been broken. When such stories got into
circulation outside of A.A., the loss of confidence in our
anonymity promise was severe. It frequently turned people
from us. Clearly, every A.A. member's name—and story,
too—had to be confidential, if he wished. This was our first
lesson in the practical application of anonymity.

With characteristic intemperance, however, some of our
newcomers cared not at all for secrecy. They wanted to
shout A.A. from the housetops, and did, Alcoholics barely
dry rushed about bright-eyed, buttonholing anyone who
would listen to their stories. Others hurried to place them
selves before microphones and cameras. Sometimes, they
got distressingly drunk and let their groups down with a
bang. 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 anonymous
should an A.A. member be?” Our growth made it plain that
we couldn't be a secret society, but it was equally plain that
we couldn't be a vaudeville circuit, either. The charting of a
safe path between these extremes took a long time.
As a rule, the average newcomer wanted his family to
know immediately what he was trying to do. He also wanted
to tell others who had tried to help him—his doctor, his
minister, and close friends. As he gained confidence, he felt



	186 	TRADITION TWELVE

it right to explain his new way of life to his employer and
business associates. When opportunities to be helpful came
along, he found he could talk easily about A.A. to almost
anyone. These quiet disclosures helped him to lose his fear
of the alcoholic stigma, and spread the news of A.A.'s existence
in his community. Many a new man and woman
came to A.A. because of such conversations. Though not in
the strict letter of anonymity, such communications were
well within its spirit.

But it became apparent that the word-of-mouth method
was too limited. Our work, as such, needed to be publicized.
The A.A. groups would have to reach quickly as
many despairing alcoholics as they could. Consequently,
many groups began to hold meetings which were open to
interested friends and the public, so that the average citizen
could see for himself just what A.A. was all about. The response
to these meetings was warmly sympathetic. Soon,
groups began to receive requests for A.A. speakers to appear
before civic organizations, church groups, and medical
societies. Provided anonymity was maintained on these
platforms, and reporters present were cautioned against the
use of names or pictures, the result was fine.

Then came our first few excursions into major publicity,
which were breathtaking. Cleveland's Plain Dealer articles
about us ran that town's membership from a few into hundreds
overnight. The news stories of Mr. Rockefeller's
dinner for Alcoholics Anonymous helped double our total
membership in a year's time. Jack Alexander's famous Saturday
Evening Post piece made A.A. a national institution.
Such tributes as these brought opportunities for still more



	TRADITION TWELVE 	187

recognition. Other newspapers and magazines wanted A.A.
stories. Film companies wanted to photograph us. Radio,
and finally television, besieged us with requests for appearances.
What should we do?

As this tide offering top public approval swept in, we
realized that it could do us incalculable good or great harm.
Everything would depend upon how it was channeled. We
simply couldn't afford to take the chance of letting self-appointed
members present themselves as messiahs
representing A.A. before the whole public. The promoter
instinct in us might be our undoing. If even one publicly got
drunk, or was lured into using A.A.'s name for his own purposes,
the damage might be irreparable. At this altitude
(press, radio, films, and television), anonymity—100 percent
anonymity—was the only possible answer. Here,
principles would have to come before personalities, without
exception.

These experiences taught us that anonymity is real humility
at work. It is an all-pervading spiritual quality which
today keynotes A.A. life everywhere. Moved by the spirit
of anonymity, we try to give up our natural desires for personal
distinction as A.A. members both among fellow
alcoholics and before the general public. As we lay aside
these very human aspirations, we believe that each of us
takes part in the weaving of a protective mantle which covers
our whole Society and under which we may grow and
work in unity.

We are sure that humility, expressed by anonymity, is
the greatest safeguard that Alcoholics Anonymous can ever
have.


	Back to Table of Contents


     Traditions—Long Form

		(The Twelve Traditions)

Our A.A. experience has taught us that:

One—Each member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but a
small part of a great whole. A.A. must continue to live or
most of us will surely die. Hence our common welfare
comes first. But individual welfare follows close afterward.

Two—For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a
loving God as He may express Himself in our
group conscience.

Three—Our membership ought to include all who suffer
from alcoholism. Hence we may refuse none who wish to
recover. Nor ought A.A. membership ever depend on money
or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered
together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group,
provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.

Four—With respect to its own affairs, each A.A. group
should be responsible to no other authority other than its
own conscience. But when its plans concern the welfare of
neighboring groups also, those groups ought to be consulted.
And no group, regional committee, or individual should
ever take any action that might greatly affect A.A. as a
whole without conferring with the trustees of the General
Service Board. On such issues our common welfare is
paramount.

		189



	190 	TRADITIONS — LONG FORM

Five—Each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a
spiritual entity having but one primary purpose—that of
carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

Six—Problems of money, property, and authority may easily
divert us from our primary spiritual aim. We think,
therefore, that any considerable property of genuine use to
A.A. should be separately incorporated and managed, thus
dividing the material from the spiritual. An A.A. group, as
such, should never go into business. Secondary aids to A.A.
such as clubs or hospitals which require much property or
administration, ought to be incorporated and so set apart
that, if necessary, they can be freely discarded by the
groups. Hence such facilities ought not to use the A.A.
name. Their management should be the sole responsibility
of those people who financially support them. For clubs,
A.A. managers are usually preferred. But hospitals, as well
as other places of recuperation, ought to be well outside
A.A.—and medically supervised. While an A.A. group
may cooperate with anyone, such cooperation ought never
to go so far as affiliation or endorsement, actual or implied.
An A.A. group can bind itself to no one.

Seven—The A.A. groups themselves ought to be fully 
supported by the voluntary contributions of their own
members. We think that each group should soon achieve
this ideal; that any public solicitation of funds using the
name of Alcoholics Anonymous is highly dangerous
whether by groups, clubs, hospitals, or other outside agencies,
that acceptance of large gifts from any source, or of
contributions carrying any obligation whatever, is unwise.



	TRADITIONS — LONG FORM 		191

Then, too, we view with much concern those A.A. treasuries
which continue, beyond prudent reserves, to
accumulate funds for no stated A.A. purpose. Experience
has often warned us that nothing can so surely destroy our
spiritual heritage as futile disputes over property, money,
and authority.

Eight—Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever
nonprofessional. We define professionalism as the occupation
of counseling alcoholics for fees or hire. But we may
employ alcoholics where they are going to perform those
services for which we might otherwise have to engage nonalcoholics.
Such special services may be well
recompensed. But our usual A.A. Twelfth Step work is
never to be paid for.

Nine—Each A.A. group needs the least possible organization.
Rotating leadership is the best. The small group may
elect its secretary, the large group its rotating committee,
and the groups of a large metropolitan area their central or
intergroup committee, which often employs a full-time secretary.
The trustees of the General Service Board are, in
effect, our A.A. General Service Committee. They are the
custodians of our A.A. Tradition and the receivers of voluntary
A.A. contributions by which we maintain our A.A.
General Service Office in New York. They are authorized
by the groups to handle our overall public relations, and
they guarantee the integrity of our principal newspaper, the
A.A. Grapevine. All such representatives are to be guided
in the spirit of service, for true leaders in A.A. are but trusted
and experienced servants of the whole. They derive no



	192 	TRADITIONS — LONG FORM

real authority from their titles; they do not govern. Universal
respect is the key to their usefulness.

Ten—No A.A. group or member should ever, in such a
way as to implicate A.A., express any opinion on outside
controversial issues—particularly those of politics, alcohol
reform, or sectarian religion. The Alcoholics Anonymous
groups oppose no one. Concerning such matters they can
express no views whatsoever.

Eleven—Our relations with the general public should be
characterized by personal anonymity. We think A.A. should
avoid sensational advertising. Our names and pictures as
A.A. members ought not be broadcast, filmed, or publicly
printed. Our public relations should be guided by the principle
of attraction rather than promotion. There is never
need to praise ourselves. We feel it better that our friends
recommend us.

Twelve—And finally, we of Alcoholics Anonymous believe
that the principle of anonymity has an immense
spiritual significance. It reminds us that we are to place
principles before personalities; that we are to practice a
genuine humility. This to the end that our great blessings
may never spoil us; that we shall forever live in thankful
contemplation of Him who presides over us all.


	Back to Table of Contents