“From that first meeting in April 1983, I started to learn I was not alone;”

My talent for leadership, I imagined, would place me at the head of vast enterprises which I would manage with the utmost assurance.

December 11, 1934, I staggered into the Charles B. Townes Hospital, that famous drying—out emporium on Central Park West, New York City. I'd been there before, so I knew and already loved the doctor in charge —— Dr. Silkworth. It was he who was soon to contribute a very great idea without which AA could never have succeeded. For years he had been proclaiming alcoholism an illness, an obsession of the mind coupled with an allergy of the body. Of course, I'd once hoped to be among the small percentage of victims who now and then escape their vengeance. But this outside hope was now gone. I was about to hit bottom. In my case it was of course Dr. Silkworth who swung the sledge while my friend Ebby carried to me the spiritual principles and the grace which brought on my sudden spiritual awakening at the hospital three days later. I immediately knew that I was a free man. And with this astonishing experience came a feeling of wonderful certainty that great numbers of alcoholics might one day enjoy the priceless gift which had been bestowed upon me.

If you have a drinking problem, we hope that you may pause in reading one of the forty-two personal stories and think: ‘Yes, that happened to me’; or, more important, ‘Yes, I’ve felt like that’; or, most important, ‘Yes, I believe this program can work for me too.’

Meditation for the Day "The eternal God is thy refuge." He is a sanctuary, a refuge from the cares of life. You can get away from the misunderstanding of others by retiring into your own place of meditation. But from yourself, from your sense of failure, your weakness, your shortcomings, whether can you flee? Only to the eternal God, your refuge, until the immensity of His spirit envelopes your spirit and it loses its smallness and weakness and comes into harmony again with His. Prayer for the Day I pray that I may lose my limitations in the immensity of God's love. I pray that my spirit may be in harmony with His spirit.