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Old 01-26-2008, 01:03 AM
  # 4 (permalink)  
nandm
Life the gift of recovery!
 
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Home is where the heart is
Posts: 7,061
18:1-5, 8-9, and 18:10-19:1

1-5
An illness of this sort---and we have come to believe it an illness---involves those about us in a way no other human sickness can. If a person has cancer all are sorry for him and no one is angry or hurt. But not so with the alcoholic illness, for with it there goes annihilation of all the things worth while in life. It engulfs all whose lives touch the sufferer's. It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children, sad wives and parents---anyone can increase the list.
This is a picture of an alcoholic life. It helps us to understand that alcoholism is not a moral deficiency. If these symptoms are present in our lives we may be alcoholics also. These are the opposite of the promises listed on pages 83 & 84. We find relief comes as a result of working the 12 steps.

8-9
Highly compentent psychiatrists who have dealt with us found it sometimes impossible to persuade an alcoholic to discuss his situation without reserve. Strangely enough, wives, parents and intimate friends usually find us even more unapproachable than do the psychiatrist and the doctor.
One reason we may not have been candid with others in the past is because we felt that they could not understand. Worse yet, we weren't sure ourselves why it was that we continued on in the way we did. Those close to us would give us advice that we knew we could not follow, even though many times we tried. We found it almost impossible to discuss our powerlessness over alcohol with those who did not understand.

18:10-19:1
But the ex-alcoholic who has found this solution, who is properly aremed with facts about himself, can gernerally win the entire confidence of another alcoholic in a few hours. Until such an understanding is reached, little or nothing can be accomplished.

That the man who is making the approach has had the same difficulty, that he obviously knows what he is talking about, that his whole deportment shouts at the new prospect that he is a man with a real answer, taht he has no attitude of holier than thou, nothing whatever except the sincere desire to be helpful; that there are no fees to pay, no axes to grind, no people to please, no lectures to be endured---these are the conditions we found most effective. After such an approach many take up their beds and walk again.
We have found this solution to be a design for living that really works. We have practical experience applying the program of action including knowledge of who and what we really are, obtained by working steps four through nine, which gives us the ability to relay our message with a depth and weight certain to establish an understanding with a fellow alcoholic.

We are not armed with ideas about what the other person should do, but rather facts about who we are and how we have overcome our problem with the aid of a Power greater than ourselves. This is a take it or leave it program. No one is saying we have to do these things or even that we should do them, but only that others have done them and that they have worked for them. We did not do this because we are better than others, but only because we had nowhere else to turn and someone who had a real solution approached us.


Source:
The Annotated AA Handbook
a companion to the Big Book
Frank D.
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