Aa Quotes

“To this day, I am amazed at how many of my problems - most of which had nothing to do with drinking, I believed - have become manageable or have simply disappeared since I quit drinking.”
― Alcoholics Anonymous

“First of all, we had to quit playing God. It didn't work.”
― Alcoholics Anonymous

“The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us.”
― Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous

“....the Crocodiles say they can't even begin to say how many new guys they've seen Come In and then get sucked back Out There, Come In to AA for a while and Hang In and put together a little sober time and have things start to get better, head-wise and life-quality-wise, and after a while the new guys get cocky, they decide they've gotten `Well,' and they get really busy at the new job sobriety's allowed them to get, or maybe they buy season Celtics tickets, or they rediscover pussy and start chasing pussy (these withered gnarled toothless totally post-sexual old fuckers actually say pussy), but one way or another these poor cocky clueless new bastards start gradually drifting away from rabid Activity In The Group, and then away from their Group itself, and then little by little gradually drift away from any AA meetings at all, and then, without the protection of meetings or a Group, in time--oh there's always plenty of time, the Disease is fiendishly patient--how in time they forget what it was like, the ones that've cockily drifted, they forget who and what they are, they forget about the Disease, until like one day they're at like maybe a Celtics-Sixers game, and the good old Fleet/First Interstate Center's hot, and they think what could just one cold foamer hurt, after all this sober time, now that they've gotten `Well.' Just one cold one. What could it hurt. And after that one it's like they'd never stopped, if they've got the Disease. And how in a month or six months or a year they have to Come Back In, back to the Boston AA halls and their old Group, tottering, D.T.ing, with their faces hanging down around their knees all over again, or maybe it's five or ten years before they can get it up to get back In, beaten to shit again, or else their system isn't ready for the recurred abuse again after some sober time and they die Out There--the Crocodiles are always talking in hushed, 'Nam-like tones about Out There--or else, worse, maybe they kill somebody in a blackout and spend the rest of their lives in MCI-Walpole drinking raisin jack fermented in the seatless toilet and trying to recall what they did to get in there, Out There; or else, worst of all, these cocky new guys drift back Out There and have nothing sufficiently horrible to Finish them happen at all, just go back to drinking 24/7/365, to not-living, behind bars, undead, back in the Disease's cage all over again. The Crocodiles talk about how they can't count the number of guys that've Come In for a while and drifted away and gone back Out There and died, or not gotten to die.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Like most people who decide to get sober, I was brought to Alcoholics Anonymous. While AA certainly works for others, its core propositions felt irreconcilable with my own experiences. I couldn't, for example, rectify the assertion that "alcoholism is a disease" with the facts of my own life.
The idea that by simply attending an AA meeting, without any consultation, one is expected to take on a blanket diagnosis of "diseased addict" was to me, at best, patronizing. At worst, irresponsible. Irresponsible because it doesn't encourage people to turn toward and heal the actual underlying causes of their abuse of substances.
I drank for thirteen years for REALLY good reasons. Among them were unprocessed grief, parental abandonment, isolation, violent trauma, anxiety and panic, social oppression, a general lack of safety, deep existential discord, and a tremendous diet and lifestyle imbalance. None of which constitute a disease, and all of which manifest as profound internal, mental, emotional and physical discomfort, which I sought to escape by taking external substances.
It is only through one's own efforts to turn toward life on its own terms and to develop a wiser relationship to what's there through mindfulness and compassion that make freedom from addictive patterns possible. My sobriety has been sustained by facing life, processing grief, healing family relationships, accepting radically the fact of social oppression, working with my abandonment conditioning, coming into community, renegotiating trauma, making drastic diet and lifestyle changes, forgiving, and practicing mindfulness, to name just a few. Through these things, I began to relieve the very real pressure that compulsive behaviors are an attempt to resolve.”
― Noah Levine, Refuge Recovery: A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction

“Drunkards have a problem, not with sobriety, but with reality.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The life of the Addict is always the same. There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy, there is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession. An all-encompassing, fully enveloping, completely overwhelming obsession. To make light of it, brag about it, or revel in the mock glory of it is not in any way, shape or form related to its truth, and that is all that matters, the truth.”
― James Frey, A Million Little Pieces

“That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it. That loneliness is not a function of solitude. That it is possible to get so angry you really do see everything red. What a ‘Texas Catheter’ is. That some people really do steal—will steal things that are yours. That a lot of U.S. adults truly cannot read, not even a ROM hypertext phonics thing with HELP functions for every word. That cliquey alliance and exclusion and gossip can be forms of escape. That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth. That evil people never believe they are evil, but rather that everyone else is evil. That it is possible to learn valuable things from a stupid person. That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds. That you can all of a sudden out of nowhere want to get high with your Substance so bad that you think you will surely die if you don’t, and but can just sit there with your hands writhing in your lap and face wet with craving, can want to get high but instead just sit there, wanting to but not, if that makes sense, and if you can gut it out and not hit the Substance during the craving the craving will eventually pass, it will go away — at least for a while. That it is statistically easier for low‐IQ people to kick an addiction than it is for high‐IQ people.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Angel is responsible for all the AA prayers and mottoes. DON’T THINK AND DON’T DRINK. Angel put a cold wet one-sock on Tony’s head and knelt beside him.

“Brother, believe me … I’ve been there … right down there in the gutter where you are. I know just how you feel.”

Tony didn’t open his eyes. Anybody says he knows just how someone else feels is a fool.”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

“The only way to truly help most drug addicts and most alcoholics is to—instead of them—change reality.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“By drinking, a boy acts like a man. After drinking, many a man acts like a boy.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“And it hits me, the reason for all the metaphors in recovery. Because the bald truth would be too terrifying. What she's saying is I may need an all-new career and all-new friends.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Dry

“1. We admitted we were powerless over our emotions, that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to emotionally and mentally ill persons and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”
― Jerry Hirschfield, The Twelve Steps for Everyone: Who Really Wants Them

“You don’t have be lying in a hospital bed to be alcoholic. Many alcoholics function at a high level and appear fine. But, bit by bit, as the dependence gets more control, their life starts to unravel – their body, their relationships, their work, their ability to be productive, their mood, their self-respect, their will to live. They have to give it the flick. There isn’t any other way. Give it the flick or it’s gotcha.”
― Donna Goddard, Purnima

“Alcohol is good at disinfecting things
It can clean a surface or erase memories”
― Richard L. Ratliff

“That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it. That loneliness is not a function of solitude. That it is possible to get so angry you really do see everything red. What a ‘Texas Catheter’ is. That some people really do steal—will steal things that are yours. That a lot of U.S. adults truly cannot read, not even a ROM hypertext phonics thing with HELP functions for every word. That cliquey alliance and exclusion and gossip can be forms of escape. That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth. That evil people never believe they are evil, but rather that everyone else is evil. That it is possible to learn valuable things from a stupid person. That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds. That you can all of a sudden out of nowhere want to get high with your Substance so bad that you think you will surely die if you don’t, and but can just sit there with your hands writhing in your lap and face wet with craving, can want to get high but instead just sit there, wanting to but not, if that makes sense, and if you can gut it out and not hit the Substance during the craving the craving will eventually pass, it will go away—at least for a while. That it is statistically easier for low‐IQ people to kick an addiction than it is for high‐IQ people.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“I’m Eminem’s AA sponsor. Whenever I ring to check in on him, he always greets me the same way: ‘Hello, you cunt’, which I guess is very Eminem.”
― Elton John, Me

“The thought that usually accompanied these words was, *Because I need a drink.* Now it's because I need to go *talk* about needing a drink. It's like alcohol gets in the way even when it's out of the way.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Dry

“My first feeling at the end of AA is utterly amazing. Complete strangers getting together in rooms at all hours and saying things that are so personal, so incredibly intimate. This is the kind of stuff that happens in a relationship after a few months. But people here open up right away, with everyone. It's like some sort of love affair, stripped of the courtship phase. I feel bathed in safety. I feel like I have this secret place I can go and say anything in the world, about anything I feel, and it's okay. And this makes me feel grateful to be an alcoholic. And this is a very odd feeling. This is like what my friend, Suzanne, says about childbirth—that it husks the soul.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Dry

“Although I hate to read publicly, I began to get addicted to speaking publicly. For a grandiose opportunist like myself, AA can become a nifty little public speaking venue. As a professional comedian, I would often go for the laugh rather than honesty and growth. I began to chase the laughs with the same vigor and enthusiasm that I used to chase drugs and alcohol.”
― Jeff Nichols, Trainwreck: My Life as an Idoit

“Not a single alcohol has a human problem.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Never Give Up. Published my first book at age 54. So, never give up!”
― Jacqueline D'Acre, Between Extremities

“It almost never takes a pleasant state of mind to desire to be high or drunk.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“You know what they say at [Alcoholics Anonymous] meetings. Coincidence is your Higher Power acting with anonymity.'
'I didn't know you were in the program.'
'I'm not. I go for the dialogue. It's great material.”
― James Lee Burke, Robicheaux

“How are you feeling?' [Rae, rehab therapist] asks. … I tell her about how reading [my letter] in front of people upset me. That I'm realizing I don't like to feel things, don't want to feel pain or fear. … I tell her my most recent observation of rehab, in terms of how it works. How it sort of sneaks up on you. They way somebody will say some dumb affirmation and then later in group, somebody will say, 'I didn't buy that affirmation you said at all,' and there will be a heated argument and somebody will be reduced to tears. And how all of this will bring something up inside of you, wake something up. And you have some insight you wouldn't have had otherwise. It's very odd and nonlinear and organic. And yet it's real.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Dry

“And it hits me, the reason for all the metaphors in recovery. Because the bald truth would too terrifying. What she's saying is I may need an all-new career and all-new friends. p 85”
― Augusten Burroughs, Dry

“Sometimes, he would say (like all alcoholics) that if someone is a happy drunk then it is okay. There are no happy drunks. They all end up a misery. So do the people around them.”
― Donna Goddard, Purnima

“To stay clean, I had to retrieve my conscience, to reconnect emotionally with my actions. 156”
― Melissa Febos, Whip Smart: A Memoir

“The gaining, or maintaining, of some reputations was, or is, made possible by the loss of sobriety.”
― @Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Do the stepwork and don't give me any of your excuses. We both know they're bullshit.”
― Julia Wertz, Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story