Back to Basics

selves, and have discovered the joy of helping others
to face life again, there will be no stopping until every-
one in that town has had his opportunity to recover—
if he can and will.

Still you may say: "But I will not have the benefit
of contact with you who write this book." We cannot
be sure. God will determine that, so you must remem-
ber that your real reliance is always upon Him. He
will show you how to create the fellowship you
crave.*

Our book is meant to be suggestive only. We realize
we know only a little. God will constantly disclose
more to you and to us. Ask Him in your morning medi-
tation 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 some-
thing 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.

Abandon yourself to God as you understand God.
Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear
away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what
you find and join us. We shall be with you in the
Fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet
some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny.

May God bless you and keep you—until then.

* Alcoholics Anonymous will be glad to hear from you. Address
P.O. Box 459, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163

holics throughout history. But for the grace of God,
there would have been thousands more convincing
demonstrations. So many want to stop but cannot.

There is a solution. Almost none of us liked the self-
searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of
shortcomings which the process requires for its suc-
cessful consummation. But we saw that it really
worked in others, and we had come to believe in the
hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living
it. When, therefore, we were approached by those in
whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing
left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual
tools laid at our feet. We have found much of heaven
and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of
existence of which we had not even dreamed.

The great fact is just this, and nothing less: That we
have had deep and effective spiritual experiences*
which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward
life, toward our fellows and toward God’s universe.
The central fact of our lives today is the absolute cer-
tainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and
lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has
commenced to accomplish those things for us which
we could never do by ourselves.

If you are as seriously alcoholic as we were, we
believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution. We were
in a position where life was becoming impossible, and
if we had passed into the region from which there is
no return through human aid, we had but two alterna-
tives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out
the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best
we could; and the other, to accept spiritual help. This

*Fully explained—Appendix II.