Good Morning, everyone!

Paragraph 2 on page 60 - original text in (parenthesis) and my
editorial notes in [brackets]:

"Our description of the alcoholic, [found in the Doctor's Opinion
and Chapter 3 - More About Alcoholism] the chapter to the agnostic,
[Chapter 4 - We Agnostics] and our personal adventures before and
after" [Chapter 1 - Bill's Story] make clear (are designed to sell
you) three pertinent ideas:

(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. [This
is Step 1.]

(b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
[This is the first half of Step 2.]

(c) That God could and would (can and will) if He were sought. [Step
2, second half.]"

(If you are not convinced on these vital issues, you ought to re-read
the book to this point or else throw it away!)

At this point we have completed Steps 1 and 2. Notice how we go
directly into Step 3 here in paragraph 3: "Being convinced, we were
at Step Three, which is that we decided [remember that our decisions
must be followed up with action in order to make them meaningful -
Step 4 is the action] to turn our will [our thoughts] and our lives
[our actions] over to God as we understood Him."

Paragraph 4 - "The first requirement is that we be convinced that
any life run on self-will can hardly be a success." In the
preceeding chapters we see that self-will has little effect
regarding our drinking. Now we examine how that is true regarding
our lives as a whole.

Read through to page 62 paragraph 1:

"Selfishness - Self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our
troubles." This is an important point. Our troubles weren't the
product of a poor upbringing, horrible parents, being the member of
____ (fill in the blank with any subset of society). We had a
difficult time of it due to "Selfishness - Self-
centeredness." "...we have made decisions based on self which later
placed us in a position to be hurt." We have discovered that WE are
usually the reason for the suffering we have had to experience. We
were not the unwitting "victims" of life that we frequently
portrayed ourselves to be. I was astonished when this was pointed
out to me.

Next paragraph - "So our troubles, we think, are basically of our
own making. "...we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We
must, or it kills us!" So, it isn't always booze that kills us -
selfishness will kill us indirectly. Throughout the book we will
discover that bottles are only a symbol, that our problem runs
deeper than the drinking itself.

With our next post we will pick up with the end of page 62 and touch
upon that spiritual structure that we have been building.

Jim

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