July 25

July 25 – AM

Page 60, How It Works, Chapter 5

Many of us exclaimed, “What an order!  I can’t go through with it.”  Do not be discouraged.  No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles.  We are not saints.  The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.  The principles we have set down are guides to progress.  We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.
Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:

(a)          That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.

(b)          That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.

(c)          That God could and would if He were sought.

July 25 – PM

age xviii, Foreword to Second Edition (1955)

In the spring of 1940, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. gave a dinner for many of his friends to which he invited A.A. members to tell their stories.  News of this got on the world wires; inquiries poured in again and many people went to the bookstores to get the book “Alcoholics Anonymous.”  By March 1941 the membership had shot up to 2,000.  Then Jack Alexander wrote a feature article in the Saturday Evening Post and placed such a compelling picture of A.A. before the general public that alcoholics in need of help really deluged us. By the close of 1941, A.A. numbered 8,000 members.  The mushrooming process was in full swing.  A.A. had become a national institution.