Tuesday, July 15, 2014
" ...(T)he actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience." - Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition, 1976, Ch 3 ("More About Alcoholism"), p 39.
Today, the experience as expressed in the words of the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous - "unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge" - serves as an omen that I should not continue to drink even though I may still have some power to abstain for even long periods of time. In time, in the experience of the Program's co-founders and other men and women whose personal travails come later in the Big Book, that ability to abstain will be gone. Noting that the text of the Program speaks not only to the alcoholic but also to the potential one, I must give up any egotistical thoughts that I am spared the disease of alcoholism even if I am on the threshold of it. "Self-knowledge" did little to spare me the ravages of full alcoholism; today, pray that I listen to the knowledge of others. And our common journey continues. Step by step. - Chris M., 2014
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