January 22

January 22 – AM          Page 152, A Vision For You, Chapter 11

      We have shown how we got out from under.  You say, “Yes, I’m willing.  But am I to be consigned to a life where I shall be stupid, boring and glum, like some righteous people I see?  I know I must get along without liquor, but how can I?  Have you a sufficient substitute?”
Yes, there is a substitute and it is vastly more than that.  It is a fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous.  There you will find release from care, boredom and worry.  Your imagination will be fired.  Life will mean something at last.  The most satisfactory years of your existence lie ahead.  Thus we find the fellowship, and so will you.

January 22 – PM          Page xi, Preface

      THIS IS the third edition of the book “Alcoholics Anonymous.”  The first edition appeared in April 1939, and in the following sixteen years, more than 300,000 copies went into circulation.  The second edition, published in 1955, reached a total of more than 1,150,000 copies.
Because this book has become the basic text for our Society and has helped such large numbers of alcoholic men and women to recovery, there exists a sentiment against any radical changes being made in it.  Therefore, the first portion of this volume, describing the A.A. recovery program, has been left untouched in the course of revisions made for both the second and the third editions.  The section called “The Doctor’s Opinion” has been kept intact, just as it was originally written in 1939 by the late Dr. William D. Silkworth, our Society’s great medical benefactor.