Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition

We agreed we were drinking too much. We tried the switch technique, the time control schedule, the drink-only-on-weekends ploy.

We went straight out drinking, and I picked up right where I left off. Always the object was to go out and “get wasted.” Though I sometimes had trouble holding my liquor, I was willing to try harder. I felt the key to successful drinking was the same as it is in musicianship—practice, practice, practice.

and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.

At this point I surrendered. I admitted I was an alcoholic without a clue what to do about it.

He cannot picture life without alcohol. Some day he will be unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it. Then he will know loneliness such as few do. He will be at the jumping-off place. He will wish for the end. We have shown how we got out from under. You say, “Yes, I’m willing. But am I to be consigned to a life where I shall be stu

I did stay sober. One summer with people who enjoyed life sober was all it took for me to want sobriety more than I wanted a drink.

Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.

Our human resources, as marshaled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly.

It helped me a great deal to become convinced that alcoholism was a disease, not a moral issue; that I had been drinking as a result of a compulsion, even though I had not been aware of the compulsion at the time; and that sobriety was not a matter of willpower.