Sponsors

Every sponsor is necessarily a leader. The stakes are huge. A human life, and usually the happiness of a whole family, hangs in the balance. What the sponsor does and says, how well he estimates the reactions of his prospects, how well he times and makes his presentation, how well he handles criticisms, and how well he leads his prospect on by personal spiritual example . . . well, these attributes of leadership can make all the difference, often the difference between life and death. Thank God that Alcoholics Anonymous is blessed with so much leadership in each and all of its great affairs!

Bill W., April 1959

c. 1988 AA Grapevine, The Language of the Heart,  p. 292 

Thought to Consider . . .

A recovering alcoholic without a sponsor is much like a ship without a rudder.

AACRONYMS

D U E S
Desperately Using Everything but Sobriety

Bill W. on "BALANCE

The following excerpts from a letter of Bill Wilson's was quoted in the memoirs of Tom Pike, and early California AA member.  Tom did not use the name of the person addressed -- perhaps because he was still living.

Tom said:
Here in part is what Bill Wilson wrote in 1958 to a close friend who shared his problem with depression, describing how Bill himself used St. Francis's prayer as a steppingstone toward recovery:

Dear ...
I think that many oldsters who have put our AA "booze cure" to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA ...

HAPPINESS

Happiness is an achievement brought about by inner productiveness.
People succeed at being happy by building a liking for themselves.
Erich Fromm

It has been said that if one of us ever treated another human being the way we treated ourselves, we would be liable for criminal charges. I did not treat myself as a friend, someone I loved; I constantly fed into my unhappiness.

Traditions

"The Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous
are a distillate of our experience of living and working together.
They apply the spirit of the Twelve recovery Steps
to our group life and security.
They deal with the world outside and with each other;
they state our attitudes toward power and prestige,
toward property and money.
They would save us from tempting alliances
and major controversies;
they would elevate principles far above personal ambitions.
And as a token of this last, they request that we
maintain personal anonymity before the open public
as a protection to AA and as proof of the fact that
our society intends to practice true humility."

Bill W., The Language of the Heart, p. 96

The Meeting-by Bill Wilson

Bill Wilson Meets Dr. Bob Smith and Alcoholics Anonymous is born. Narrated by Bill Wilson

Diary of Two Motorcycle Hobos

By Lois Wilson

Introduction

Bill and I were married during World War I, and after he returned from France, he wasn't sure in what field of endeavor he wanted to earn his living.  He had taken an electrical engineering course at Norwich University, a military college in Vermont, but, because of the war, did not graduate.  His grandfather, with whom he lived after the divorce of his mother and father, wanted him to become a lawyer.

So, after a succession of unsatisfactory jobs, either to him or to his boss, and while employed by the United States Fidelity and Guaranty Co., he took a night law course at the Brooklyn Law School.  His job as investigator of theft had shown him much of the seamy side of the law and dissuaded him from becoming a lawyer.  He finished the law course, however, and paid for his diploma, but never bothered to pick it up.

He had been interested for some time in the stock market, and in why people buy into companies that they know nothing about, gambling with stocks as they would with chips in a Casino.  Would it not be much safer and surer if investors knew something about the companies into which they were buying?

When his grandfather wanted to purchase a cow, he went to look at the cow, feel its legs, inquire about how much milk it gave, its age and forebears, etc.  Why shouldn't this same principle be applied to the buying of stocks?

Feeling he was just the man to do the investigating, Bill consulted with several friends on Wall Street, but, finding no one enthusiastic about his ideas, and knowing the proof of the pudding is in the eating, he decided to take a year out to test his theory.

“Bill W.,” Documentary

http://www.page124.com/press/

EMOTIONAL SOBRIETY

 

This is the substance of a revealing letter which Bill Wilson wrote several years ago to a close friend who also had troubles with depression. The letter appeared in the "Grapevine" January, 1953.

EMOTIONAL SOBRIETY

"I think that many oldsters who have put our AA "booze cure" to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA, the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God.

Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security, and perfect romance, urges quite appropriate to age seventeen, prove to be an impossible way of life when we are at age forty-seven and fifty-seven.

Since AA began, I´ve taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up emotionally and spiritually. My God, how painful it is to keep demanding the impossible, and how very painful to discover, finally, that all along we have had the cart before the horse. Then comes the final agony of seeing how awfully wrong we have been, but still finding ourselves unable to get off the emotional merry-go-round.