September 28

September 28 – AM          Page 23, There is a Solution, Chapter 2

These observations would be academic and pointless if our friend never took the first drink, thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion.  Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than in his body.  If you ask him why he started on that last bender, the chances are he will offer you any one of a hundred alibis.  Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really makes sense in the light of the havoc an alcoholic’s drinking bout creates.  They sound like the philosophy of the man who, having a headache, beats himself on the head with a hammer so that he can’t feel the ache.  If you draw this fallacious reasoning to the attention of an alcoholic, he will laugh it off, or become irritated and refuse to talk.

September 28 – PM          Page 64, How It Works, Chapter 5

Therefore, we started upon a personal inventory.  This was Step Four.  A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke.  Taking a commercial inventory is a fact-finding and a fact-facing process.  It is an effort to discover the truth about the stock-in-trade.  One object is to disclose damaged or unsalable goods, to get rid of them promptly and without regret.  If the owner of the business is to be successful, he cannot fool himself about values.
We did exactly the same thing with our lives.  We took stock honestly.  First, we searched out the flaws in our make-up which caused our failure.  Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations.