The Best of Bill
AA Grapevine, Inc.
Copyright ©1955; 1958, 1961, 1962, 1986, 1989, 1990, 2003, 2008
AA Grapevine, Inc., 475 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10115; all rights reserved. May not be reprinted in full or in part, except short passages for purposes of review or comment, without written permission of the publishers. Alcoholics Anonymous is a registered trademark of A.A.W.S, Inc.
ISBN 978-0-933685-41-3 Mobi ISBN - 978-0-933685-95-6, ePub ISBN - 978-0-933685-96-3
Printed in the United States of America
AA Preamble
Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship
of men and women who share their
experience, strength and hope with
each other that they may solve their
common problem and help others to
recover from alcoholism.
The only requirement for membership
is a desire to stop drinking.
There are no dues or fees for AA
membership; we are self-supporting through
our own contributions.
AA is not allied with any sect,
denomination, politics, organization or
institution; does not wish to engage in
any controversy, neither endorses nor
opposes any causes.
Our primary purpose is to stay sober
and help other alcoholics to achieve
sobriety.
Serenity Prayer
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things
I cannot change,
courage to change
the things I can,
and wisdom to know
the difference.
Table of Contents
Honesty
Love
Why Alcoholics Anonymous is Anonymous
About Bill W.
The Twelve Steps
The Twelve Traditions
Prayer of St. Francis
Foreword
In 1935, a nondrinking alcoholic stockbroker from New York convinced a hungover alcoholic surgeon in Akron, Ohio, that he didn’t have to drink anymore. From that historic meeting, a program of recovery for more than two million once hopeless alcoholics in more than 150 countries was to grow and flourish.
To encourage, inspire, and stay in touch with this growing and far-flung fellowship, which called itself Alcoholics Anonymous, co-founder Bill W. turned to the Grapevine, a magazine created in New York in 1944 by “six ink-stained wretches” as Bill once good-humoredly referred to the sober women who started it. Born to immediate and widespread acceptance, the new publication became “The International Monthly Journal of Alcoholics Anonymous.”
An energetic and prolific writer, Bill W. authored nearly 150 articles in the Grapevine. In its pages, he chronicled the events of AA’s pioneer years, and out of that early, arduous process of trial and error, he derived the principles that would unite and sustain this extraordinary fellowship. Ranging over a wide variety of topics, from the basic principles of AA’s Steps and Traditions to the personal search for “emotional sobriety,” Bill’s words hold meaning not only for AA members but for anyone on a spiritual quest.
In 1988, as a result of the many requests over the years for reprints of five of these articles — “Faith,” “Fear,” “Honesty,” “Humility,” and “Love” — a collection entitled The Best of Bill was compiled. The enduring popularity of this little booklet has prompted the current editors of the Grapevine to issue this handsome new gift edition. As a fitting complement to these inspiring reflections on the spiritual life, we have included Bill’s classic essay Why Alcoholics Anonymous Is Anonymous.
Faith
God as We Understand Him
April 1961
The phrase “God as we understand him” is perhaps the most important expression to be found in our whole AA vocabulary. Within the compass of these five significant words there can be included every kind and degree of faith, together with the positive assurance that each of us may choose his own. Scarcely less valuable to us are those supplemental expressions — “a higher power” and “a power greater than ourselves.” For all who deny, or seriously doubt a deity, these frame an open door over whose threshold the unbeliever can take his first easy step into a reality hitherto unknown to him — the realm of faith.
In AA such breakthroughs are everyday events. They are all the more remarkable when we reflect that a working faith had once seemed an impossibility of the first magnitude to perhaps half of our present membership of over 300,000. To all these doubters has come the great discovery that as soon as they could cast their main dependence upon a “higher power” — even upon their own AA groups — they had turned that blind corner which had always kept the open highway from their view. From this time on — assuming they tried hard to practice the rest of the AA program with a relaxed and open mind — an ever deepening and broadening faith, a veritable gift, had invariably put in its sometimes unexpected and often mysterious appearance.
We much regret that these facts of AA life are not understood by the legion of alcoholics in the world around us. Any number of them are bedeviled by the dire conviction that if ever they go near AA they will be pressured to conform to some particular brand of faith or theology. They just don’t realize that faith is never a necessity for AA membership; that sobriety can be achieved with an easily acceptable minimum of it; and that our concepts of a higher power and God as we understand him afford everyone a nearly unlimited choice of spiritual belief and action.
How to transmit this good news is one of our most challenging problems in communication, for which there may be no fast or sweeping answer. Perhaps our public information services could begin to emphasize this all-important aspect of AA more heavily. And within our own ranks we might well develop a more sympathetic awareness of the acute plight of these really isolated and desperate sufferers. In their aid we can settle for no less than the best possible attitude and the most ingenious action that we can muster.
We can also take a fresh look at the problem of “no faith” as it exists right on our own doorstep. Though 300,000 have recovered in the last twenty-five years, maybe half a million more have walked into our midst, and then out again. No doubt some were too sick to make even a start. Others couldn’t or wouldn’t admit their alcoholism. Still others couldn’t face up to their underlying personality defects. Numbers departed for still other reasons.
Yet we can’t well content ourselves