December 22

December 22 – AM          Page 29, There Is A Solution, Chapter 2

Further on, clear-cut directions are given showing how we recovered.  These are followed by forty-three personal experiences.
Each individual, in the personal stories, describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way he established his relationship with God.  These give a fair cross section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has actually happened in their lives.
We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste.  Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women, desperately in need, will see these pages, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that they will be persuaded to say, “Yes, I am one of them too; I must have this thing.”

December 22 – PM          Page xx-xxi, Foreword to Second Edition (1955)

At present, our membership is pyramiding at the rate of about twenty per cent a year.  So far, upon the total problem of several million actual and potential alcoholics in the world, we have made only a scratch.  In all probability, we shall never be able to touch more than a fair fraction of the alcohol problem in all its ramifications.  Upon therapy for the alcoholic himself, we surely have no monopoly.  Yet it is our great hope that all those who have as yet found no answer may begin to find one in the pages of this book and will presently join us on the high road to a new freedom.