Tag: powerlessness

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Dianne’s Missives May 8, 2026

Thought to Consider…

“Admission of powerlessness is the first step in liberation.”
“Many people haven’t even a nodding acquaintance with humility as a way of life.”
The task ahead of us is never as great as the Power behind us.
When a person tries to control their drinking they have already lost control.

AACRONYMS

S T E P S = Solutions To Every Problem in Sobriety
N E W = Nothing Else Worked
F E A R = False Evidence Appearing Real

Powerless

“Who cares to admit complete defeat? Practically no one, of course. Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness. No other kind of bankruptcy is like this one. Alcohol, the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all self-sufficiency and all will to resist its demands. But upon entering A.A. we soon take quite another view of this absolute humiliation. Our admissions of personal powerlessness finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives may be built.”

“At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic, he passes into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail. This tragic situation has already arrived in practically every case long before it is suspected.”

Troubles

“So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn’t think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us! Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore, but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying our own power. We had to have God’s help.”

Willingness Is the Key

“No matter how much one wishes to try, exactly how can he turn his own will and his own life over to the care of whatever God he thinks there is? A beginning, even the smallest, is all that is needed. Once we have placed the key of willingness in the lock and have the door ever so slightly open, we find that we can always open it some more. Though self-will may slam it shut again, as it frequently does, it will always respond the moment we again pick up the key of willingness.”

Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

“To avoid falling into confusion over the names these defects should be called, let’s take a universally recognized list of major human failings the Seven Deadly Sins of pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. It is not by accident that pride heads the procession. For pride, leading to self-justification, and always spurred by conscious or unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most human difficulties, the chief block to true progress. Pride lures us into making demands upon ourselves or upon others which cannot be met without perverting or misusing our God-given instincts. When the satisfaction of our instincts for sex, security, and society becomes the sole object of our lives, then pride steps in to justify our excesses.”

Meetings

“Sobriety and a plan for living that produces a personality change and a spiritual awakening are imperative. Through A.A., many receive the needed change and awakening just by trying to live by A.A. principles and with A.A. people. We do this by going to many A.A. meetings with an open mind and a desire to live the good-feeling life without chemicals – liquid or otherwise.”

JOYFUL DISCOVERIES

We realize we know only a little. God will constantly disclose more to you and to us. Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick. The answers will come, if your own house is in order. But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven’t got. See to it that your relationship with Him is right, and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is the Great Fact for us.

We Are Not Fighting

“We have ceased fighting anything or anyone – even alcohol. For by this time sanity has returned. We can now react sanely and normally, and we find that this has happened almost automatically. We see that this new attitude toward liquor is really a gift of God. That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is how we react – so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.”

Dianne

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Dianne’s Missives May 1, 2026

Thought to Consider…

Faith isn’t belief without proof; it’s trust without reservation.
I am responsible for carrying the message. I am not responsible for anyone receiving the message.
Seven days without an A.A. meeting makes one weak.
Admission of powerlessness is the first step in liberation.

AACRONYMS

A B C = Acceptance, Belief, Change
F A I T H = Finding Answers In The Heart

“Self-Pity”

“When we catch self-pity starting, we also can take action against it with instant bookkeeping. For every entry of misery on the debit side, we find a blessing we can mark on the credit side. What health we have, what illnesses we don’t have, the sunny weather, a good meal a-coming, limbs intact, kindnesses shown and received, a sober 24 hours, a good hour’s work, a good book to read, and many other items can be totaled up to outbalance the debit entries that cause self-pity.”

In A.A. we slowly learned that something had to be done about our vengeful resentments, self-pity, and unwarranted pride. We had to see that every time we played the big shot, we turned people against us. We had to see that when we harbored grudges and planned revenge for such defeats, we were really beating ourselves with the club of anger we had intended to use on others. We learned that if we were seriously disturbed, our first need was to quiet that disturbance, regardless of who or what we thought caused it.”

Sanity

“When I first came to this Fellowship, I had lost my health and sanity, my friends, much of my family, myself-respect, and my God. In the years since, all of these have been restored to me. I no longer have the sense of impending doom. I no longer wish for death or stare at myself in the mirror with loathing. I have come to terms with my Higher Power”

“Being powerless over alcohol is no big deal.” I’m free and I’m a very grateful recovering alcoholic!”

The A.A. program is one of submission, release, and action. When we’re drinking, we’re submitting to a power greater than ourselves, liquor. Our own wills are no use against the power of liquor. One drink and we’re sunk. In A.A. we stop submitting to the power of liquor. Instead, we submit to a Power, also greater than ourselves, which we call God.

“It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.”

Every time we go to an A.A. meeting, every time we say the Lord’s Prayer, every time we have a quiet time before breakfast, we’re paying a premium on our insurance against taking that first drink. And every time we help another alcoholic, we’re making a large payment on our drink insurance. We’re making sure that our policy doesn’t lapse.

Essence of Growth

“Let us never fear needed change. Certainly we have to discriminate between changes for worse and changes for better. But once a need becomes clearly apparent in an individual, in a group, or in A.A. as a whole, it has long since been found out that we cannot stand still and look the other way. The essence of all growth is a willingness to change for the better and then an unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entails.”

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”

Dianne

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