Where does responsibility end? What belongs to them, and what belongs to me? The phone rings. Or a text arrives. Or the silence finally makes sense. Someone you sponsor has been drinking. Before you can even respond, your internal questions begin. Did I miss something? Was I too demanding? Too available? Not available enough? Should …
“Healing may give you a new life, but it’s gonna cost you your old one. Are you ready?” There’s a catch to recovery that nobody really wants to talk about. We want the new life. We’re just not always sure we want to give up the old one. We want peace without surrendering control. We want freedom …
I was in a Big Book study tonight when someone asked a question I had never thought to ask. We were reading “The Family Afterward,” and we came to this sentence: “Those of us who have spent much time in the world of spiritual make-believe have eventually seen the childishness of it.” One of the members …
Last night I was listening to Corey D. from Owensboro, KY, speak at a meeting at our Area Convention when he used a word that caught my attention: Sponsorable. Then, a little later, he pulled out an old A.A. saying I hadn’t heard in a long time: “If you wanna drink, that’s your business. If …
Last night, my sponsor and sponsor brothers gathered to read Bill Wilson’s “AA Tomorrow,” written for AA’s twenty-fifth anniversary in 1960. What struck me was how little distance there seemed to be between Bill’s questions then and our conversation now. We were talking about our lives: our families, fears, relationships, responsibilities, and the temptation to …
AA teaches us how to live without drinking. It doesn’t prevent our hearts from breaking. This has been a hard year. In December 2016, I left NYC after living there for 14 years and moved back home to Texas to be here for my aging parents. They didn’t physically need me at that point and …
There. I said it. Meetings are NOT the solution. I realize that may sound like a strange thing to say in Alcoholics Anonymous. After all, I go to meetings. I love meetings. I have a home group. Some of the most important moments of my recovery have happened in AA meetings. I have heard things …
I’ve heard some version of this countless times in Alcoholics Anonymous: “I just need to accept it.” And sometimes that is exactly right. I need to accept that I cannot control another person. I need to accept that the past has already happened. I need to accept that people may not behave the way I think they …
I’ve heard some version of this from newcomer sponsees more times than I can count: “I put down the bottle. I’m praying every day. I’m going to meetings. I’m calling you. Why don’t I feel better? Why isn’t my life getting better? And why am I not farther along than some of these other people?” It’s a fair …
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“A.A.’s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole.”
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“A.A.’s Twelve Traditions apply to the life of the Fellowship itself. They outline the means by which A.A. maintains its unity and relates itself to the world about it, the way it lives and grows.” - from the Foreword of the 12&12
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The Twelve Concepts for World Service were written by A.A.’s co-founder Bill W., and are an interpretation of A.A.’s world service structure as it emerged through A.A.’s early history and experience.
Get StartedThe primary purpose of this site is to share with those who have a desire to stop drinking, one individual A.A. member’s journey & experience (sober since November 17, 1987) of taking the 12 Steps, studying the 12 Traditions and 12 Concepts for World Service.
(DISCLAIMER: This site is not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous, nor does it speak for A.A. as a whole - just one member's experience.)
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