June 22, 2026 In General Information, Legacy of Recovery, Legacy of Service, Legacy of Unity By Rick W.
Sobriety Didn’t Just Change What I Said, It Changed How I Communicate. How Recovery Rewired the Way I Speak, Listen, and Think One of the most overlooked miracles of recovery has very little to do with alcohol. Most of us came to Alcoholics Anonymous because drinking had become unmanageable. We stayed because we discovered something …
June 20, 2026 In Legacy of Recovery By Rick W.
One of the more interesting writing assignments I’ve ever suggested to a sponsee had nothing to do with Step Four, amends lists, or character defects. It was simply this: Write about your expectations. At first glance, that may not seem like a particularly “A.A.” topic. Expectations don’t appear in the Twelve Steps. The Big Book doesn’t …
June 20, 2026 In General Information, Legacy of Unity By Rick W.
Few topics in Alcoholics Anonymous seem capable of creating as much discussion, and sometimes as much tension, as the question of how members identify themselves in meetings. Most of us have heard the phrase “and a…” at some point. A member introduces themselves as an alcoholic and something else. For some, this feels natural, honest …
June 18, 2026 In General Information, Legacy of Recovery By Rick W.
Three Years Later Exactly three years TODAY, I created a blog post called Inside the Mind of an Overthinker. To this day, it remains the most-read article on this website by a wide margin. Apparently, there are a lot of us living inside our own heads. LOL! As I revisited that post, I found myself smiling. …
June 16, 2026 In Legacy of Recovery By Rick W.
The Message Never Changes, But The Methods Do One of the gifts of studying the Big Book with other alcoholics is discovering that sometimes the most interesting conversations happen in the tension between what the book says and how we experience recovery today. Tonight, I was in a Big Book study discussing pages 90-91 of …
June 12, 2026 In Legacy of Unity By Rick W.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” It’s a haunting statement because most of us know exactly what he meant. Many of us can recall moments when we were hurting, struggling, or lost and the people we expected …
June 12, 2026 In Legacy of Recovery By Rick W.
Why Bill W. Chose the Language of Humility One of the most fascinating things about the Big Book is not just what it says, but how it says it. In Chapter Five, How It Works, in what members have come to call the Sick Man’s Prayer, we find this familiar passage: “We realized that the people …
June 9, 2026 In General Information By Rick W.
A Letter That Revealed the Man The inspiration for this reflection came during my monthly sponsorship family meeting tonight with my sponsor and sponsor brothers. We are usually in the Big Book when we come together for our monthly meeting, but tonight, my sponsor chose to read the famous correspondence between Bill W. and Carl …
June 6, 2026 In Legacy of Service By Rick W.
I still remember walking into AA meetings and seeing that framed set of the Twelve Concepts for World Service hanging on the wall, and honestly, they looked like legal documents to me. I didn’t understand them or what they had to do with getting sober. The Steps made sense. They were about me and my …
June 6, 2026 In Legacy of Unity By Rick W.
There Is Always a Seat for One More “The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.” I’ve always thought Tradition Three might be one of the most beautiful (and radical) things about Alcoholics Anonymous. Think about it for a moment. Most of us arrived at our first meeting carrying far more …
