Grapevine 1944
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Grapevine 1944
This is a letter from a future Alanoner to the Grapevine:
If we quit drinking,they will be ok
from the Grapevine
Points of View
Volume 1-Issue 2
July 1944
Dear Grapevine: Those who think a wife's troubles are over when her husband joins A.A., just don't know! As an alcoholic's wife, I'd like to tell you. My husband, for instance, still stays out until all hours. True, he's holding another alcoholic's head instead of a bottle--but he still neglects his family even though the bills are paid on the first of the month. He still has his ups and downs and fits of depression, even though they don't last as long and he now recognizes them for what they are worth. In short, our life together didn't automatically smooth out into a placid lily pond just because he sobered up. Not all at once. Where once our troubles made the breach between us an ever-widening chasm, now each difficulty draws us closer together. Of course that didn't happen over night. When my husband first joined A.A., it seemed as if he were being taken further away from me than ever. And by perfect strangers, too. Even though both of us had been badly hurt by the disease of alcoholism, he was the only one who was "improving." He was getting something out of his new associations--I was left out in the cold. I couldn't even be a member. The words "sympathetic understanding" were beginning to make me seethe. Why shouldn't I, who had borne the brunt in the past, rate a little of that commodity? Was I always to be left out, first through his drinking, then paradoxically enough, through his drying up?
Suddenly, one day, I had a revelation. Take the alcohol out of the picture and I had pretty much the same problems, of character and of living, that he had. So, if alcoholics could have their twelve steps, why couldn't I? I flew to the book, took pencil and paper, and set about devising a set of tools for the A.A.A.s (Auxiliary A.A.s). Next, instead of my usual morning wallow in self-pity, I began to put my plan into action. I started, like any A.A., honestly looking for my own faults, instead of concentrating on my husband's.
Almost immediately, the miracle began to happen! The sympathetic understanding, which I thought lacking, was there. It had been there all the time, while I turned my back and sought it in another direction. For the first time in years, Harmony entered our front door, not as a polite caller, but as a permanent resident. All this happened, not because my husband had stopped drinking and had gone through a personality change, but because I went through a personality change too. And, although our problems were not always the same, we were now attacking them with the same set of tools. They worked! That's why I'm passing on my personal twelve steps, hoping they may help another through the trying period of readjustment. They are:
1. I admitted that I was powerless to help my husband with his alcoholic problem. (Very bruising to the pride, but humility is easier to live with.)
2. I came to believe that a Power greater than myself could help both of us with our several problems.
3. I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to God, as I understood Him.
4. I made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.
5. I admitted to God, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of the faults I found and the wrongs these caused.
6. I was entirely ready to have God remove all of these defects of character.
7. I humbly asked Him to remove my shortcomings.
8. I made a list of all the harm I had done, however unwittingly, and of all the mean and spiteful things I had deliberately done when I had tried to help and found I couldn't, or when I was feeling sorry for myself.
9. I made amends wherever possible.
10. I continued to take personal inventory and when I was wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. I sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God, as I understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual experience as the result of these steps (and one does), I tried to carry this message to other A.A.A.'s, and to practice these principles in all my affairs.
Thought this might help some of us who are still dealing with an A in early recovery. Doesn't look like much has changed in the 63 years, lol
It's a pretty accurate description in my opinion.
Love and hugs,
If we quit drinking,they will be ok
from the Grapevine
Points of View
Volume 1-Issue 2
July 1944
Dear Grapevine: Those who think a wife's troubles are over when her husband joins A.A., just don't know! As an alcoholic's wife, I'd like to tell you. My husband, for instance, still stays out until all hours. True, he's holding another alcoholic's head instead of a bottle--but he still neglects his family even though the bills are paid on the first of the month. He still has his ups and downs and fits of depression, even though they don't last as long and he now recognizes them for what they are worth. In short, our life together didn't automatically smooth out into a placid lily pond just because he sobered up. Not all at once. Where once our troubles made the breach between us an ever-widening chasm, now each difficulty draws us closer together. Of course that didn't happen over night. When my husband first joined A.A., it seemed as if he were being taken further away from me than ever. And by perfect strangers, too. Even though both of us had been badly hurt by the disease of alcoholism, he was the only one who was "improving." He was getting something out of his new associations--I was left out in the cold. I couldn't even be a member. The words "sympathetic understanding" were beginning to make me seethe. Why shouldn't I, who had borne the brunt in the past, rate a little of that commodity? Was I always to be left out, first through his drinking, then paradoxically enough, through his drying up?
Suddenly, one day, I had a revelation. Take the alcohol out of the picture and I had pretty much the same problems, of character and of living, that he had. So, if alcoholics could have their twelve steps, why couldn't I? I flew to the book, took pencil and paper, and set about devising a set of tools for the A.A.A.s (Auxiliary A.A.s). Next, instead of my usual morning wallow in self-pity, I began to put my plan into action. I started, like any A.A., honestly looking for my own faults, instead of concentrating on my husband's.
Almost immediately, the miracle began to happen! The sympathetic understanding, which I thought lacking, was there. It had been there all the time, while I turned my back and sought it in another direction. For the first time in years, Harmony entered our front door, not as a polite caller, but as a permanent resident. All this happened, not because my husband had stopped drinking and had gone through a personality change, but because I went through a personality change too. And, although our problems were not always the same, we were now attacking them with the same set of tools. They worked! That's why I'm passing on my personal twelve steps, hoping they may help another through the trying period of readjustment. They are:
1. I admitted that I was powerless to help my husband with his alcoholic problem. (Very bruising to the pride, but humility is easier to live with.)
2. I came to believe that a Power greater than myself could help both of us with our several problems.
3. I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to God, as I understood Him.
4. I made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.
5. I admitted to God, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of the faults I found and the wrongs these caused.
6. I was entirely ready to have God remove all of these defects of character.
7. I humbly asked Him to remove my shortcomings.
8. I made a list of all the harm I had done, however unwittingly, and of all the mean and spiteful things I had deliberately done when I had tried to help and found I couldn't, or when I was feeling sorry for myself.
9. I made amends wherever possible.
10. I continued to take personal inventory and when I was wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. I sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God, as I understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual experience as the result of these steps (and one does), I tried to carry this message to other A.A.A.'s, and to practice these principles in all my affairs.
Thought this might help some of us who are still dealing with an A in early recovery. Doesn't look like much has changed in the 63 years, lol
It's a pretty accurate description in my opinion.
Love and hugs,
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