June 12

June 12 – AM

Page 16, Bill’s Story, Chapter 1

An alcoholic in his cups is an unlovely creature.  Our struggles with them are variously strenuous, comic, and tragic.  One poor chap committed suicide in my home.  He could not, or would not, see our way of life.
There is, however, a vast amount of fun about it all.  I suppose some would be shocked at our seeming worldliness and levity.  But just underneath there is deadly earnestness.  Faith has to work twenty-four hours a day in and through us, or we perish.
Most of us feel we need look no further for Utopia.  We have it with us right here and now.  Each day my friend’s simple talk in our kitchen multiplies itself in a widening circle of peace on earth and good will to men.

Bill W., co-founder of A.A.,
died January 24, 1971.

June 12 – PM

Page 42-43, More About Alcoholism, Chapter 3

“Then they outlined the spiritual answer and program of action which a hundred of them had followed successfully.  Though I had been only a nominal churchman, their proposals were not, intellectually, hard to swallow.  But the program of action, though entirely sensible, was pretty drastic.  It meant I would have to throw several lifelong conceptions out of the window.  That was not easy.  But the moment I made up my mind to go through with the process, I had the curious feeling that my alcoholic condition was relieved, as in fact it proved to be.
“Quite as important was the discovery that spiritual principles would solve all my problems.  I have since been brought into a way of living infinitely more satisfying and, I hope, more useful than the life I lived before.  My old manner of life was by no means a bad one, but I would not exchange its best moments for the worst I have now.  I would not go back to it even if I could.”