“As I continue to struggle, I think of the words of an old-timer in my area. No matter what the topic, he always finishes sharing with the words, ‘and I haven’t had a drink today.’ Remembering his words never fails to bring to my mind the words ‘experience, strength, and hope.’”

“A new spiritual awakening can come at every meeting.”

“One day leads to the next, no matter how unhappy I choose to be.”

“A leader in AA service is ... a man (or a woman) who can personally put principles, plans and policies into such dedicated and effective action that the rest of us want to back him up and help him with his job.”

“First Things First. That’s a real gem.”

“Only by accepting my powerlessness over alcohol did I begin to discover the powers that alcohol had obliterated: God, health, truth, love, nature, fellowship, humor, creativity, and even simple daily kindness.”

“My anger served as an iron shield, and I refused to remove it for fear God would send me still more pain.”

“To be teachable, I had to be reachable.”

“This process of identification and transmission has gone on and on. The skid rower said he was different. Even more loudly the socialite (or Park Avenue stumble bum) said the same -- so did the arts and the professions, the rich, the poor, the religious, the agnostics, the Indians and the Eskimos, the veterans and the prisoners. “But nowadays all of these, and legions more, soberly talk about how very much alike all of us alcoholics are when we all admit that the chips are finally down; when we see that it is really a question of do or die in our world wide Fellowship of ‘the comon suffering and the common deliverance.’”

“I made the decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, and then I got out of the way.”

“The Traditions are neither rules, regulations, nor laws. No sanctions or punishments can be invoked for their infractions. Perhaps in no other area of society would these principles succeed. Yet in this Fellowship of alcoholics, the unenforceable Traditions carry a power greater than that of law.”

“It’s funny how life is lived forward -- and understood backward.”

“In this life we shall attain nothing like perfect humility and love. So we shall have to settle, respecting most of our problems, for a very gradual progress, punctuated sometimes by heavy setbacks. Our old-time attitudes of ‘all or nothing’ will have to be abandoned.”

The actual experience of turning myself inside out for the first time in the presence of an AA member left me drained and numb; but when feeling started to come back, I found that I had changed. For the first time in my AA experience, I could feel the sunshine of God’s love on my wounds, and true peace of mind.

I cannot adequately describe how light I feel since I took the Fifth Step, and how soundly I sleep.