"These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve."
The Doctor's Opinion

"Understanding myself now, I fared forth in high hope. For three or four months the goose hung high. I went to town regularly and even made a little money. Surely this was the answer--self-knowledge.

"But it was not, for the frightful day came when I drank once more."
Page 7, Bill's Story

"No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity."
Page 8, Bill's Story

"Belief in the power of God, plus enough willingness, honesty and humility to establish and maintain the new order of things, were the essential requirements.

"Simple, but not easy; a price had to be paid. It meant destruction of self-centeredness."
Page 13-4, Bill's Story

"I was not too well at the time, and was plagued by waves of self-pity and resentment. This sometimes nearly drove me back to drink, but I soon found that when all other measure s failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day."
Page 15, Bill's Story

"An exceptional man, he remained bone dry for twenty-five years and retired at the age of fifty-five, after a successful and happy business career. Then he fell victim to a belief which practically every alcoholic has--that his long period of sobriety and self-discipline had qualified him to drink as other men. Out came his carpet slippers and a bottle. In two months he was in a hospital, puzzled and humiliated."
Page 32, More About Alcoholism

"The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success...

"Most people try to live by self-propulsion. Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way."
Page 60, How It Works, Step Three

"Still the play does not suit him. Admitting he may be somewhat at fault, he is sure that other people are more to blame. He becomes angry, indignant, self-pitying. What is his basic trouble? Is he not really a self-seeker even when trying to be kind? Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well? Is it not evident to all the rest of the players that these are the things he wants? And do not his actions make each of them wish to retaliate, snatching all they can get out of the show? Is he not, even in his best moments, a producer of confusion rather than harmony?

"Our actor is self-centered--ego-centric, as people like to call it nowadays... Whatever our protestations, are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, or our self-pity?

"Selfishness--self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at s ome time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt.

"So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They a rise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn't think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kill us! God makes that possible. And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid. Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore, but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have God's help."
Page 61-2, How It Works, Step Three

" 'God, I offer myself to Thee--to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witnes s to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!' "
Page 63, How It Works, Third Step Prayer

"First, we searched out the flaws in our make-up which caused our failure. Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations."
Page 64, Step Four

"Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened?"
Page 67, How It Works, Step Four

"We reviewed our fears thoroughly. We put them on paper, even though we had no resentment in connection with them. We asked ourselves why we had them. Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us? Self-reliance was good as far as it went, but it didn't go far enough. Some of us once had great self-confidence, but it didn't fully solve the fear problem, or any other. When it made us cocky, it was worse."
Page 68, How It Works, Step Four

"We hope you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from Him."
Page 70, How It Works, Step Four

"In actual practice, we usually find a solitary self-appraisal insufficient."
Page 72, Into Action, step Five

"We attempt to sweep away the debris which has accumulated out of our effort to live on self-will and run the show ourselves."
Page 76, Into Action, Steps Eight and Nine

"On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives."
Page 86, Into Action, Step Eleven

"We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only."
Page 87, Into Action, Step Eleven

"As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day 'Thy will be done.' We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions."
Page 87-8, Into Action, Step Eleven

"We have traveled rocky roads, there is no mistake about that. We have had long rendezvous with hurt pride, frustration, self-pity, misunderstanding and fear. These are not pleasant companions."
Page 104, To Wives

"When you have carefully explained to such people that he is a sick person, you will have created a new atmosphere. Barriers which have sprung up between you and your friends will disappear with the growth of sympathetic understanding. You will no longer be self-conscious or feel that you must apologize as though your husband were a weak character. He may be anything but that. Your new courage, good nature and lack of self-consciousness will do wonders for you socially."
Page 115, To Wives

"If God can solve the age-old riddle of alcoholism, He can solve your problems too. We wives found that, like everybody else, we were afflicted with pride, self-pity, vanity and all the things which go to make up the self-centered person; and we were not above selfishness or dishonesty. As our husbands began to apply spiritual principles in their lives, we began to see the desirability of doing so too."
Page 116, To Wives

"The family may be possessed by the idea that future happiness can be based only upon forgetfulness of the past. We think that such a view is self-centered and in direct conflict with the new way of living."
Page 123-4, The Family Afterward

"More than these attributes, they [Akron Oxford Group] seemed to be happy. I was self conscious and ill at ease most of the time, my health was at the breaking point, and I was thoroughly miserable."
Page 178, Dr. Bob's Nightmare

12 & 12:

"No other kind of bankruptcy is like this one. Alcohol, now become the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all self-sufficiency and all will to resist its demands."
Page 21, Step One

"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."
Page 22, Step One

"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."
Page 23, Step One

"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...

"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."
Page 28, Step Two

"Now we come to another kind of problem: the intellectually self-sufficient man or woman."
Page 29, Step Two

"Self-righteousness, the very thing that we had contemptuously condemned in others, was our own besetting evil."
Page 30, Step Two

"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."
Page 31, Step Two

"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."
Page 34, Step Three

"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."
Page 35, Step Three

"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."
Page 37, Step Three

"Therefore, we who are alcoholics can consider ourselves fortunate indeed. Each of us has had his own near-fatal encounter with the juggernaut of self-will, and has suffered enough under its weight to be willing to look for something better."
Page 37-8, Step Three

"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."

"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."
Page 45, Step Four

"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."
Page 46, Step Four

"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."
Page 46-7, Step Four

"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."
Page 46, Step Four

"It is not by accident that pride heads the procession. For pride, leading to self-justification, and always spurred by conscious or unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most human difficulties, the chief block to true progress."
Page 48-9, Step Four

"The most common symptoms of emotional insecurity are worry, anger, self-pity, and depression."
Page 52, Step Four

"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."
Page 53, Step Four

"Because our surface record hasn't looked too bad, we have frequently been 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."
Page 53-4, Step Four

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."

"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 we weren't still self-deceived?"
Page 58, Step Five

"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."
Page 59, Step Five

"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?"
Page 66, Step Six

"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."
Page 67, Step Six

"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."
Page 68, Step Six

"True, most of us thought good character was desirable, 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."
Page 71-2, Step Seven

"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."

"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."

"A whole lifetime geared to self-centeredness cannot be set in reverse all at once. Rebellion dogs our every step at first."
Page 72, Step Seven

"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."
Page 76, Step Seven

"What happens when we wallow in depression, self-pity oozing from every pore, and inflict that upon those about us?"
Page 81, Step Eight

"If somebody cheats us, aren't we entitled to be mad? Can't we be properly angry with self-righteous folk?"
Page 90, Step Ten

"Thus blinded by prideful self confidence, we were apt to play the big shot."
Page 92, Step Ten

"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 self-righteousness can underlie the smallest act or thought."
Page 94-5, Step Ten

"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."
Page 116, Step Twelve

"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."
Page 117, Step Twelve

"Money was the symbol of pleasure and self-importance."
Page 120, Step Twelve

"In later life he [grown up child] 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."
Page 122, Step Twelve

"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."
Page 124, Step Twelve

Counter-examples:

"We have been unselfish and self-sacrificing."
Big Book, Page 105, To Wives

"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."
12 & 12, Page 52, Step Four

"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." [Self-preservation is positive or neutral in this passage]
12 & 12, Page 64, Step Six

"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. "
12 & 12, Page 88, Step Ten

"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."

"The emphasis on inventory is heavy only because a great many of us have never really acquired the habit of accurate self-appraisal... For these minutes and sometimes hours spent in self-examination are bound to make all the other hours of our day better and happier."
12 & 12, Page 89, Step Ten

"In all these situations [when disturbed] 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."

"Our first objective will be the development of self restraint... For we can neither think nor act to good purpose until the habit of self-restraint has become automatic."

"Disagreeable or unexpected problems are not the only ones that call for self-control."
12 & 12, Page 91, Step Ten

"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."
12 & 12, Page 98, Step Eleven