February 22

February 22 – AM          Page xvii, Foreword to Second Edition (1955)

Hence the two men set to work almost frantically upon alcoholics arriving in the ward of the Akron City Hospital.  Their very first case, a desperate one, recovered immediately and became A.A. number three.  He never had another drink.  This work at Akron continued through the summer of 1935.  There were many failures, but there was an occasional heartening success.  When the broker returned to New York in the fall of 1935, the first A.A. group had actually been formed, though no one realized it at the time.
A second small group promptly took shape at New York, to be followed in 1937 with the start of a third at Cleveland.  Besides these, there were scattered alcoholics who had picked up the basic ideas in Akron or New York who were trying to form groups in other cities.  By late 1937, the number of members having substantial sobriety time behind them was sufficient to convince the membership that a new light had entered the dark world of the alcoholic.

February 22 – PM          Page 62, How It Works, Chapter 5

So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making.  They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn’t think so.  Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness.  We must, or it kills us!  God makes that possible.  And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid.  Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore, but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to.  Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power.  We had to have God’s help.