“Today’s sobriety cannot be chugalugged ... It has to be sipped, one taste at a time, so that each drop of serenity can be fully savored.”
“The first 100 members of this Fellowship, who hammered out the Twelve Steps, knew what they were doing. They could have made it two steps or ten steps or twenty-five steps, but they didn't. I don't think they put anything in they didn't think they needed. They were working the whole program, not because they were saints, but because they were drunks who wanted to get well. I have no reason to suppose I'm any less sick than they were; I have no reason to suppose I need any less of the program than they did.”
“My miracle occurred when I became willing to go to any lengths to take action. Like the trapeze artist, it wasn’t the knowledge of it being there -- it was the action of letting go.”
“We are beginning to see new values in AA. We perceive in our midst a spiritual realm, which can be little disturbed by the distractions of wealth or self-serving egocentricity.”
“I never thought that a day like today would be a high point of my life. All that excitement that I used to crave and strive for was not there. I don’t have to live on the edge anymore. And tonight as I lay my head on my pillow I can’t think of one single thing that I did today that I have to go back and redo and make amends for.”
“As long as I am acting in a loving and caring manner, I am not responsible for how others react. This frees me from pleasing people at my own emotional expense.”
“It’s only when I stop thinking about it, stop trying to run the show, that my life may become as God intends.”
“The roads to recovery are many .... AA has no monopoly on reviving alcoholics.”
“The first thing my sponsor told me was, ‘I don’t have time to help you stay sick ... but if you want to get better I’d be glad to help.”
“As I see it, the ever-growing, multiplying, and compounding miracle of AA is that because one man was lonely, afraid, and sick in a strange city, I need never be alone again in a strange city.”
“This issue of the Grapevine marks the anniversary of its founding exactly fifteen [now seventy three] years ago.
“The memory of some of those first editorial meetings will linger with me always. Seated around a table in a tiny cheerless room some place downtown, the founders pored over their freshly written copy for the first issues. In those days the enthusiastic founders did everything. Not only did they do the art work, write the bulk of the stories, they kept the books, they paid the printing bill, they typed the address on each copy and finally licked all the stamps. So went the happy monthly paroxysm of creating what was to become the principal monthly journal of our whole society.
“Today 35,000 readers [now over 100,000 across multiple media platforms] see mirrored in each issue of the AA Grapevine a monthly vision of the worldwide thought, feeling and activity of our whole fellowship. It is our great means of inter-communication; a magic carpet on which each of you can ride to the more distant reaches and watch new brothers and sisters emerge from darkness into light.
“On this happy occasion I send my warmest affection to Grapevine readers and staff alike. May God prosper the Grapevine always.”
“I don’t know when it happened, but one day I felt like I belonged in my group of sober guys ... I didn’t have to leave.”
“I don’t know when it happened, but one day I felt like I belonged in my group of sober guys ... I didn’t have to leave.”
“I am not rich, I am not in good health, and I do not have a job, but AA only promised me sobriety. After thirty-three years in this Fellowship, I am at peace and I am grateful.”
“A little voice deep inside me said, ‘Hello, I am here.’ It was a small voice, and sounded as if it were buried underneath the cushions of my couch. It was my soul ... I had forgotten it.”
