"When you seriously set yourself to seek for the truth, the truth brings into your life men and women who have different degrees of authentic knowledge and who are able to pass it on to you, if you are alert to the opportunity and willing to receive what is offered. You have to be on the lookout for these people... they do not lightly disclose themselves... this is just the way it has to work... the awakened have a keen respect for the ignorance, perversity, and violence latent in unregenerqate human nature, aned they are unwilling to provoke it except at the Lord's command."

-Thomas E. Powers, "Invitation to a Great Experiment"

Some 'Good Book' Influences on the
12 STEPS

Matthew 6:25, 31-33
“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ...Do not worry then, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or “What shall we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

Matthew 7:7-8, 11
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.... If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!”

James 5:16
“Therefore, confess yours sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.”

James 4:10
“Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.”

Matthew 7:3-5
“Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your eye. You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

James 1:5-6
“But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord.”

"Life is full of opportunities for learning Love. Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them. The world is not a play-ground; it is a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. And the one eternal lesson for us all is how better we can love What makes a man a good cricketer? Practice. What makes a man a good artist, a good sculptor, a good musician? Practice. What makes a man a good linguist, a good stenographer? Practice. What makes a man a good man? Practice. Nothing else. ...the constituents of a great character are only to be built up by ceaseless practice.

– Henry Drummond

Some HUMOR | Reefer Madness | A.A. Information to Consider |
sponsor vs. therapist | 12 steps to insanity | Founders' Day | 3 Ways to Work the Program
The items on this page have been gathered from various other sources. Tongue-in-cheek or serious; just a few more ideas to ponder as you practice your 24-hour Program.
A Bit of HUMOR
Your Sponsor vs. Your Therapist
12 Ways to Tell the Difference Between Your Sponsor and Your Therapist:
  1. Your sponsor isn't all that interested in the "reasons" you drank.
  2. Your therapist thinks your root problem is your lack of self-esteem and your negative self-image. Your sponsor thinks your problem is yourself.
  3. Your therapist wants to pamper your inner child. Your sponsor thinks it should be spanked.
  4. Your sponsor thinks your inventory should be about you, not your parents.
  5. Speaking of your parents, your sponsor tells you not to confront them, but to make amends to them.
  6. The only time your sponsor uses the word "closure" is before the word "mouth."
  7. Your sponsor thinks "boundaries" are things you need to take down, not build up.
  8. Your therapist wants you to love yourself first; your sponsor wants you to love others first.
  9. Your therapist prescribes care-taking medication. Your sponsor prescribes prayer-making and meditation.
  10. Your sponsor thinks "anger management skills" are numbered 1 through 12.
  11. Now that you haven't had a drink in six months, your therapist thinks you should make a list of all your goals and objectives for the next five years, starting with finishing up that college degree. Your sponsor thinks you should start today by cleaning coffee pots and help him/her carry a heavy box of literature to the jail.
  12. Your sponsor will not lose his/her license if he/she talks about God.
        -Author Unknown
12 Steps to Total Insanity
  1. We admitted we were powerless over nothing. We could manage our lives perfectly and we could manage those of anyone else that would allow it.
  2. Came to believe that there was no power greater than ourselves, and the rest of the world was insane.
  3. Made a decision to have our loved ones and friends turn their wills and their lives over to our care.
  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of everyone we knew.
  5. Admitted to the whole world at large the exact nature of their wrongs.
  6. Were entirely ready to make others straighten up and do right.
  7. Demanded others to either "shape up or ship out".
  8. Made a list of anyone who had ever harmed us and became willing to go to any lengths to get even with them all.
  9. Got direct revenge on such people whenever possible except when to do so would cost us our own lives, or at the very least, a jail sentence.
  10. Continued to take inventory of others, and when they were wrong promptly and repeatedly told them about it.
  11. Sought through nagging to improve our relations with others as we couldn't understand them at all, asking only that they knuckle under and do things our way.
  12. Having had a complete physical, emotional, and spiritual breakdown as a result of these steps, we tried to blame it on others and to get sympathy and pity in all our affairs.
From The ACA Communicator - March 1990 - Omaha, Council Bluffs Area Intergroup
Reefer Madness (movie posters)

"A 1936 film that relates the story, as told by high school principal Dr. Carroll to parents at a PTA meeting, of the scourge of marijuana. The tale revolves around Mae and Jack, accomplices in the distribution of marijuana, who manage to entice the local high school kids to stop by Mae's apartment to smoke reefer. The lives of all who are involved with this menace are inevitably shattered. One youngster becomes so addicted to the killer weed that a judge orders him to be committed for life to a mental hospital! Dr. Carroll advises us to not incur the same tragedy."
1936 poster
1938 poster
Some A.A. Information to Consider
When Was A.A. Founded? (from Dick B., historian)
The date was June 10, 1935 – the date that Dr. Bob had his last drink.

But that didn't satisfy today's historians. They tinkered with dates and concluded that Dr. Bob didn't have his last drink on June 10th, that the medical convention to which he went in Atlantic City never occurred when AAs said it did, and that A.A. was founded on some other date thereabouts.

Long after A.A. was founded, Lois Wilson wrote that it had been founded in 1934 when drunks were coming to the Wilson home in Brooklyn. Others wanted to date it when Ebby Thacher first carried the message to Bill Wilson. T. Henry Williams often said that A.A. started right on the carpet of his Palisades home in Akron when Dr. Bob, Henrietta Seiberling, and the others in the Oxford Group knelt and prayed for Dr. Bob's recovery. Still others like to date it as of the publishing of the Big Book in the Spring of 1939. Clarence Snyder claimed he was the founder, and that the first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous was held in Cleveland on May 11, 1939.

One would-be expert has now asserted that the "original" program occurred some time after that in the 1940s. And, Bill Wilson made the statement that the first A.A. group began when A.A. Number Three was cured of alcoholism, was visited by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob in the hospital, and walked from there a "free man" – never to drink again. That happened very shortly after Dr. Bob himself got sober.

Personally, I'm convinced that A.A. began. I am convinced it began at Dr. Bob?s Home in Akron. I am convinced that Bob and Bill agreed that it began when Dr. Bob took his last drink. I'm convinced that fairly soon after AA began, Bill and Bob agreed that the founding date was June 10, 1935. And thereafter, Bill Wilson attended and actually spoke at "Founders Day" each year in Akron where the "founding of A.A." on June 10, 1935 is celebrated.
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Three Ways to Work the AA Program (excerpts)
by Tom P., Jr — please read the full article at the All Addicts Anonymous Web page

Gresham’s Law — that bad currency drives out good — has been operative in the life of the Twelve-Step Programs. Weak practice of the Program is tending to drive out strong practice of the Program.
In All Addicts Anonymous, we use strong Program practice, with some room for medium Program practice, and no room for weak Program practice.

There are three ways to practice the Twelve-Step Program. (1) The strong, original way — proved powerfully and reliably effective over seventy-two years. (2) A medium way — not so strong, not so safe, not so sure, not so good, but still effective. And (3) a weak way, which turns out to be really no way at all but literally a heresy, a false teaching, a twisting and corruption of what the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous clearly stated the Program to be.

AA existed for four full years before the Steps were put in their final written form. During that time there was a Program, and it was sobering up alcoholics. It consisted of two parts: a six-step word-of-mouth Program, and the Four Absolutes — absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love — taken over from the Oxford Group, the evangelical Christian movement out of which AA was born. The six steps of the word-of-mouth Program from the early pioneering years of Alcoholics Anonymous as given in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age are: 1. We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol. 2. We made a moral inventory of our defects or sins. 3. We confessed or shared our shortcomings with another person in confidence. 4. We made restitution to all those we had harmed by our drinking. 5. We tried to help other alcoholics with no thought of reward in money or prestige. 6. We prayed to whatever God we thought there was for power to practice these precepts.

In those early days of AA (1935-1939) there was no talk of suggestions. The basic points of the Program, especially the word-of-mouth Program, were regarded by all the older members as directives, as indispensable essentials, and were passed on to newcomers as such.

By 1941 (which was the year my father, Tom P., Sr., came into the Fellowship) it was possible to distinguish three variant practices of the AA Program, which we have labeled the strong-cup-of-tea, medium-cup-of-tea, and weak-cup-of-tea approaches. Strong AA was the original, undiluted dosage of the spiritual principles. Strong AAs took all twelve of the Steps — and kept on taking them. They did not stop with the admission of powerlessness over alcohol, but went on right away to turn their wills and lives over to God’s care. They began to practice rigorous honesty in all their affairs. In short order they proceeded to take a moral inventory; admit all their wrongs to at least one other person; take positive and forceful action in making such restitution as was possible for those wrongs; continue taking inventory, admitting their faults, and making restitution on a regular basis; pray and meditate every day; go to two or more AA meetings weekly; and actively work the Twelfth Step, carrying the AA message to others in trouble.

The medium AAs started off with a bang, pretty much like the strong AAs, except they hedged or procrastinated a bit on parts of the Program that they feared or did not like — maybe the God Steps, maybe the inventory Steps, depending on their particular nervousness or dislikes. But after they had stayed sober for a while, the medium AAs eased up and settled into a practice of the Program that went something like this: an AA meeting a week; occasional Twelfth Step work (leaving more and more of that to the “newer fellows” as time went on); some work with the Steps (but not like before); less and less inventory (as they became more and more “respectable”); some prayer and meditation still, but not on a daily basis any more (“not enough time,” due to the encroachment of business engagements, social activities, and other baggage that went along with the return to normal life in the workaday world).

The weak AAs were a varied lot. Common to the weak approach everywhere was that it left out big chunks of the Program totally and permanently. Sometimes it was the God Steps, sometimes the inventory Steps, often both. Weak AAs tended to talk like this: “All you need to do to stay sober is go to meetings and stay away from the first drink.” Most of the weak AAs who were successful in staying sober were pretty faithful meeting-goers. Since they were doing so little with the principles, their sobriety and their survival depended more exclusively than did those of the strong and medium AAs on constant exposure to the people of AA.
The Four Absolutes, by Clarence S., Cleveland AA, 1941
FOREWORD
Spelled out as such, the Four Absolutes are not a formal part of our AA philosophy of life. Since this is true, some may claim the Absolutes should be ignored. This premise is approximately as sound as it would be to suggest that the Bible should be scuttled.
The Absolutes were borrowed from the Oxford Group Movement back in the days when our society was in its humble beginning. In those days our founders and their early colleagues were earnestly seeking for any and all sources of help to define and formulate suggestions that might guide us in the pursuit of a useful, happy, and significant sober life.
Because the Absolutes are not specifically repeated in our Steps or Traditions, some of us are inclined to forget them. Yet in many old time groups where the solid spirit of our fellowship is so strongly exemplified, the Absolutes receive frequent mention. Indeed, you often find a set of old placards, carefully preserved, which are trotted out for
prominent display each meeting night. There could be unanimity on the proposition that living our way of life must include not only an awareness but a constant striving toward greater achievement in the qualities which the Absolutes represent. Many who have lost the precious gift of sobriety would ascribe it to carelessness in seeking these objectives. If you will revisit the Twelve Steps with care, you will find the Four Absolutes form a thread which is discernible in a sober life of quality, every step of the glorious journey.
The Four Absolutes: Honesty . . . Unselfishness . . . Love . . . Purity
We walked into this large group of which we had heard so much, but had never attended. From the vestibule we saw a placard on the corner of the far wall which said "Easy Does IT". We turned left to park our coat. We turned back and there on the other corner of the same wall was a twin placard which said, "First Things First". Then facing to the front of the room, high above the platform we saw in the largest letters of all, "But for the Grace of God". Then as our eyes descended, there directly on the front of the podium was another with four words, "Honesty, Unselfishness, Purity, and Love". In the next ten minutes as we sat unnoticed in the last row waiting for the meeting to start, many thoughts tumbled through a mind that was really startled by this first face to face meeting with the four Absolutes for a very long time.

Read the FULL article at Hindsfoot.org
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