April 14

April 14 – AM          Page 97, Working With Others, Chapter 7

Never avoid these responsibilities, but be sure you are doing the right thing if you assume them.  Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery.  A kindly act once in a while isn’t enough.  You have to act the Good Samaritan every day, if need be.  It may mean the loss of many nights’ sleep, great interference with your pleasures, interruptions to your business.  It may mean sharing your money and your home, counseling frantic wives and relatives, innumerable trips  to police courts, sanitariums, hospitals, jails and asylums. Your telephone may jangle at any time of the day or night.  Your wife may sometimes say she is neglected.  A drunk may smash the furniture in your home, or burn a mattress.  You may have to fight with him if he is violent.  Sometimes you will have to call a doctor and administer sedatives under his direction.  Another time you may have to send for the police or an ambulance.  Occasionally you will have to meet such conditions.

April 14 – PM          Page 24, There Is A Solution, Chapter 2

The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink.  Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent.  We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago.  We are without defense against the first drink.