Step One and Beyond Daily Topics 2026 Q1

31 March 2026: Letting Go(d)

“Uncover, discover, discard” (Chuck C)

“let go absolutely” (Page 58, Big Book)

“If we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to help us be willing” (Page 76, Big Book)

When I uncover and discover something, the job is to discard, not to keep it, analyse it, talk about, and thereby amplify it.

Problems must be dropped, not worked on.

What’s your experience?

30 March 2026: Slow or fast

“God comes to most men gradually, but His impact on me was sudden and profound.” (Page 14)

You can surrender all at once, now, or you can surrender gradually, one finger at a time (imagine you’re hanging off a cliff). With each finger released, you are still hanging from the cliff just as much as before. You’ve not risked a thing. You could let go at any point, but the will isn’t there. There is only the will to release one finger, and one more finger. You get to the last finger, but you still can’t release it. Here’s the blessing: you could hang on indefinitely holding on with all ten fingers, with both hands, but, with one finger, you’ll eventually tire and let go against your will. Without ever having decided to surrender completely, you find yourself just as surrendered as the person who jumped off the cliff voluntarily.

This is how unwillingness is broken: have the willingness to take the next action, the next action, the next action. Eventually, you’ll surrender despite yourself because you’re too tired to resist any more.

What’s your experience?

29 March 2026: Clamours

“For a brief moment, I had needed and wanted God. There had been a humble willingness to have Him with me—and He came. But soon the sense of His presence had been blotted out by worldly clamors, mostly those within myself. And so it had been ever since. How blind I had been.” (Page 12, Big Book)

If you’re at the circus and someone calls you, you won’t be able to hear them over the music and the roar of the crowd. You have to exit the circus and stand outside. You can still see the monkeys, the audience, the aerialists inside, you can still hear the roar of the audience, but you can hear now your friend clearly over the phone. To hear God, distance from (although not divorce from) the material is required.

What’s your experience?

28 March 2026: Ill

“We know women who are unafraid, even happy under these conditions.” (Page 111, Big Book)

I was very ill in my first year.

That was no reason to sit around with a long face.

I was told to make the most of it and be cheerful.

And I often succeeded.

What’s your experience?

27 March 2026: Past or present?

“In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. We listed people, institutions or principles with whom we were angry. We asked ourselves why we were angry.” (Page 64, Big Book)

Most people think that the resentment inventory is a historical exercise: a history of resentments.

Let’s look at the tenses.

He is describing what they did in the past:

‘We set them on paper.’

When he was doing this, he would have said, ‘We are setting this on paper.’

The simple past describes what would have been described in the present, in that past time.

Similarly, ‘We listed people, institutions or principles with whom we were angry. We asked ourselves why we were angry,’ is a present description of a past act. That past act, described in the present, becomes: ‘We are listing people, institutions or principles with whom we are angry. We are asking ourselves why we are angry.’

This is therefore to do with the present, not the past.

If it concerned the past, it would read:

‘We listed people, institutions or principles with whom we had been angry. We asked ourselves why we had been angry.’

The resentment inventory is thus an inventory of present resentments, not past resentments.

This is not about dragging up, resuscitating, resurrecting, or rekindling. If you can’t remember it, good.

The past is relevant only in as far as it is CURRENTLY eating one’s lunch, as it were. If one is currently angry about a past event, fine. To this extent, and to this extent only, does the line about going ‘back though one’s life’ apply.

But most people are currently angry about current or very recent things.

This is also not the moral inventory, proper, it is part of the preparation, in which a sample of resentments are statistically taken to understand their futility and fatality, in order, in turn, to get rid of them, in order, in turn, to be able to write good actual inventory on ourselves.

This is not psychotherapeutic delving or the writing of a life story.

What’s your experience?

26 March 2026: Re-feeling?

“In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper.” (Page 64, Big Book)

The ‘re’ of ‘resentment’ means not ‘again’ as in the oft-posited but quite incorrect misinterpretation of ‘resentment’ as ‘re-feeling’ but ‘in response to a stimulus, with intensive force’, so a resentment is really a strong emotional reaction to something.

Thus a resentment inventory is an inventory of situations in which I react strongly.

The ‘re-feeling’ theory suggests we should write only about things that have persisted for a long time, but, because of the distorting effects of memory, the longer ago it worse, the worse a piece of evidence it is to discover the mechanics of self.

Now, when it comes to forgiving people, of course, the old things have to be forgiven, but what must be recognised is that these old things in one’s memory have frankly very little to do with the facts. A bit a reframing is possible, but mostly the job is to issue an amnesty.

With recent, present, and ongoing resentments—things I’m reacting strongly to now—the data is fresher and less corrupted, and one can learn a lot about the demands of self and about one’s own cognitive failings from a review of the findings.

One needs just enough examples to provide a good, general picture.

And then the blanket dropping of demands and general amnesty removes all resentment, whatever the cause, fancied or real, present or past.

What’s your experience?

25 March 2026: Our part

“Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them.” (Page 84, Big Book)

Whenever I’m asking God to do something, I’m simultaneously having delegated back to me my part in the resolution. Step Three entails Step Four. Step entails Steps Eight through Twelve. Yes, God’s doing things, but He asks me to do things, too.

“As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action.” (Page 87, Big Book)

I do not ask God to render me a vegetable, shutting down my brain and relieving me of any responsibility whatsoever.

“But there is One who has all power—that One is God.” (Page 59)

I’ve heard people infer that this means we have no power. We do, or we would not be able to make and share the inference itself. If the person is still breathing, walking around, doing things, they have power. Drunks who are still drinking clearly have power. They do things. God is the origin of all power, but that power is distributed by way of delegation to everything in the universe.

What power do I have to exercise in Step Ten?

Having asked God to remove the problems, I do my part:

With selfishness: practice the opposite attitude or action.

With dishonesty: tell the truth; act straightforwardly.

With resentment: say, ‘Everything is exactly the way it is meant to be, and this is a child of God,’ then get on with my own tasks.

With fear: say, ‘God is looking after me, everything is OK,’ then get on with my own tasks.

What’s your experience?

24 March 2026: Liner

“We are like the passengers of a great liner the moment after rescue from shipwreck when camaraderie, joyousness and democracy pervade the vessel from steerage to Captain’s table.” (Page 17, Big Book)

Materialism is a sinking ship. We all die. The sun will burn out. The universe will end.

The liner’s fun until it sinks.

AA is the lifeboat.

“Some of us had already walked far over the Bridge of Reason toward the desired shore of faith.” (Page 53, Big Book)

The realm of the spirit is the continent. Secure. Eternal.

A bridge not to normal living but to reality.

What’s your experience?

23 March 2026: Broke

“A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke.” (Page 64, Big Book)

“We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn’t there.” (Page 45, Big Book)

I recently asked someone how they were at managing her finances. They said that they had things pretty much under control. I enquired further, and they elaborated that they were good at avoiding frivolous spending and were reasonably frugal. I asked whether they recorded and analysed their spending systematically, and they said that they did not.

Simply trying to be moral at the point of behaviour without ever doing inventory won’t work.

Data are required. Knowledge is required. Without data and knowledge, there is no understanding. Without understanding, there is no real decision-making, only impulse.

It is the same with finances. For years I tried to be careful at the point of spending but was always in debt. I started recording and tracing every single penny, categorising it, and analysing it, and my debt problem disappeared overnight. I thought my spending was ‘under control’ only because I was the one doing the spending. I was really entirely out of control. There were no control mechanisms in place at all.

When turning any area of my life over to God, the first thing I must do is get things under control by ascertaining the facts.

Turning my life over to God is neither mystical nor spooky. It means turning things over to Good Orderly Direction, and the Good Orderly Direction means Sort Your Shit Out.

What’s your experience?

22 March 2026: Train

“Many A.A.’s go in for annual or semi-annual housecleanings.” (Page 89, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

I do this, somewhere between semi-annually and quarterly. It’s a short, sharp shock, not a lengthy self-indulgence. I find that letting more than six months pass without a review is to let myself drift too far, and I’d rather catch things early. It does not take long, at all, and it can save me weeks or months of error.

Sometimes people spend their whole time in a process of the first nine steps. Fair enough, but it’s like spending all of your time on the train and none of the time at your destination. Hogwarts is considerably more interesting than the Hogwarts Express.

The best way to avoid Step Twelve and actually doing God’s will (which is often repetitive, routine, banal, menial, and entry-level and entails the eclipsing of self and all its manifestations) is to take an excessive interest in the preceding steps, particularly Four and Eleven, which are particular favourite refuges:

The endless expanses of self-examination, pain, injury, suffering, fragility, sensitivity, touchiness, offence, woundedness, neurosis, trauma and its sequalae, family of origin dynamics, and the zombie resurrection of the childhood or other past unpleasantness in the voodoo ceremonies of deep dives, new experiences, peeling layers of onions, getting-in-touch-with, repressed memories, and systemic theories.

The equally endless expanses of spirituality, religion, mysticism, psychedelics (whether micro- or macro-dosed), attempts to hack the universe or hack God, pulling back the curtain of reality to reveal some imagined antecedent metareality, the co-option of ‘spiritual principles’ to force change in or heal others or the world through spiritual means, the attempts to discern the future or ‘read’ remote minds or events, spiritualism and magic, the attempts to force God’s hand through two-way prayer, the attempts to get high or transcend everyday life through transcendental meditation.

Good for others? No idea. Good for alcoholics of my type? No, siree.

I’ve fallen into both gutters on either side of the bowling lane and come back to the simplicity of getting on with my daily tasks (keep the show on the road, fulfil my obligations, do some things I enjoy), keeping my spiritual life to ‘what does God want me to do today?’, and keeping the annual or semi-annual housecleaning to this:

• Where is my attitude wrong?
• Where is my behaviour wrong?
• How should I look at things instead?
• What should I do instead?

… and then getting on with it.

What’s your experience?

21 March 2026: Principles

“12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” (Page 59, Big Book)

What’s a principle? A template attitude or a template action.

Sometimes the principles are reduced to one per step. This is cute, but it obscures the fact that there are sometimes dozens of principles in the step, and in Step Twelve there are hundreds of principles.

To practise these principles in all my affairs really means to practise all of the principles, not just twelve of them.

Furthermore, these principles are very concrete and operable by anyone, whatever their internal condition, e.g.:

From Step Ten: “Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help.”

From Step Eleven: “On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day.”

From Step Twelve: “See your man alone, if possible. At first engage in general conversation. After a while, turn the talk to some phase of drinking. Tell him enough about your drinking habits, symptoms, and experiences to encourage him to speak of himself.”

There is nothing elusive, dramatic, heroic, complicated, esoteric, sentimental, mystical, pathetic, or abstract about these, because there’s nothing elusive, dramatic, heroic, complicated, esoteric, sentimental, mystical, pathetic, or abstract about the programme: it’s a simple set of concrete observations, logically structured propositions, attitudes, and practices that result in God rather than self being at the centre of one’s life.

Once I’ve signed up to the programme on page 63, the book loses interest in my inner condition, thoughts, and feelings and switches to the facts, the work to clear up the mess, and the pragmatic business of explaining the contents of the book to others, whilst continuing to act constructively in other areas.

When I just do what the book says and get on with being useful in my everyday life in a perfectly ordinary way, all of the hot air, the drama, and the theatricality goes out of me and I become so dull I start to take an interest in the world. I disappear completely, and then I can see beyond the end of my nose. Because I’m boring, I’m never bored. Because I’m no longer a character, I can be trusted with the keys. Personality has been replaced with principles. Revenge is best served cold, and recovery, at room temperature.

The message of the book Alcoholics Anonymous boils down to this: accept these ideas and do these things, each day, and you’ll be fine. Don’t, and you won’t.

What’s your experience?

20 March 2026: Linkage

“There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer.” (Page 98, Big Book)

Unless I do not know where I am, I cannot plot a course to where I am going.

The self-examination falls into a few categories:

• In the moment
• Daily
• When a major problem arises
• Quarterly or half-yearly, as routine maintenance

What’s your experience?

19 March 2026: Darkness

“My wife and I abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution of their problems.” (Big Book, page 15)

People want to work on their darkness.

They don’t want to abandon it.

You don’t work on darkness.

You don’t sweep darkness with a broom.

You turn on the light.

Then the darkness goes.

On several occasions in recovery, I went for outside help, which meant paying people to be interested in my darkness, in the belief that they would help rearrange it somehow, or provide some insight into it, which would make it go away. The belief was this: I think an awful lot about myself; if I think more about myself, I will stop thinking about myself. In other words, “the answer to the problem of thinking about myself is to think about myself.”

I did this for years, going from outside helper to outside helper, reading outside book after outside book, and I was more full of self than I was at the beginning, but I still believed that the problem was not that I was thinking about myself too much but that I had not yet thought about myself enough, so more thinking about myself and recruiting others into the endeavour was the answer.

Eventually, after yet another panic attack in connection with meeting a family member, in a period where I could barely countenance spending time with any family members at all, I gave up the game I had been playing since the age of 15 (I was then 37), and I heard something that suggested that my darkness was folly, ridiculousness, absurdity, delusion, and nothingness and, crucially, offered a way out.

The way out was to abandon self, and one single, last look at the darkness was required in order not to understand it but to provide the motivation for the abandonment.

That worked.

What’s your experience?

18 March 2026: Horrendous

“if trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate His omnipotence.” (Page 133, Big Book)

Sometimes people say they’re facing a terrible situation.

I have made the decision not to cause my own misery by classifying situations as such.

I had a situation last year that induced me to engage in lots of spiritual activities. I therefore decided to call the situation a blessing.

By immediately describing any challenge as an opportunity to demonstrate God’s omnipotence, I’m naming it a blessing before the ego has a chance to get in there and call it a disaster.

What’s your experience?

17 March 2026: Moral classification

“Sometimes we think fear ought to be classed with stealing. It seems to cause more trouble.” (Page 67, Big Book)

Stealing is a behaviour, and plain wrong. One simply does not permit it. Psychology and emotion have nothing to do with it. Whatever the temptation, whatever the thinking, we just don’t do it.

Fear is also a behaviour. The temptation to fear is psychological. The practice of fear—the belief of the narrative and the toying with fearful ideas—is an activity of the mind, on the same level as any material action. The job is therefore simply to stop it. If we do that and turn to God, God, over time, removes the temptation, which returns less and less. But we must do our bit. Do not let it in. If you let it in, kick it out. Fill the mind with something else.

What’s your experience?

16 March 2026: Hitting bottom

“Why all this insistence that every A.A. must hit bottom first? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom.” (Page 24, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

It is easy to confuse three different questions, firstly the circumstances that precede first attendance at meetings, secondly the emotions that precipitate attendance, and thirdly the acceptance of Step One, which activates the working of the remainder of the Steps.

Clearly, when people come into recovery, the gravity of the circumstances vary. Some people have had only ‘a nip of the wringer’, as the Twelve and Twelve has it, whilst others have been to prison or are homeless because of their addiction.

The first point to note is that the circumstances are absolutely not what bring people into recovery. Virtually everyone that has come into recovery has had months, years, or even decades of experiences that should but do not drive them to seek help. And others seek help without there being any particularly notable experiences.

No, the seeking of recovery comes because of divine intervention (or at least a spontaneously arising impulse that is not a mechanical result of bad experiences or even bad emotional responses to those experiences). Circumstances never brought a single person into recovery; if they did, everyone would seek recovery at the first occurrence of such ‘circumstances’.

Consequently, the first rock-bottom is not really the array of circumstances but the collapse of the ego and the sense of desperation that arises out of the egoic self-deception being temporarily taken offline. The sense of desperation does not correlate with the circumstances.

We can conclude, therefore, that it is really desperation that provokes the impulse to come into recovery, although even desperation alone is insufficient: desperation can drive people to stop fighting and just resign themselves to the addiction or to worse. It needs hope and resolve, and that’s where God comes in.

Neither the circumstances nor the desperation, hope, and resolve that prompt first attendance are the really operative rock-bottom, however.

The really operative rock-bottom is Step One: the realisation that one must take the rest of the Steps not because of past or future consequences but because one is subject to an overpowering compulsion which has temporarily abated and which can be combatted durably only by developing a working relationship with God, combined with the observation that opportunity is not a lengthy visitor, and, if the opportunity is not taken up now, it might never arise again.

This operative rock-bottom therefore has nothing to do with circumstances and nothing to do with emotion but is the 100% intellectual acceptance of Step One, that, if I carry on as I am, I will use again, and, when I use, I may never stop. In other words, I am powerless, and, as a consequence, I am unable to manage my own life (which has nothing to do with neurosis, immaturity, disorganisation, incompetence, or failure) but is a technical recognition that I am the host of the parasite of addiction, and it, not me, is calling the shots.

What’s your experience?

15 March 2026: Grouch and brainstorm

“The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us.” (Page 66, Big Book)

“We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free. We cannot subscribe to the belief that this life is a vale of tears, though it once was just that for many of us. But it is clear that we made our own misery. God didn’t do it. Avoid then, the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate His omnipotence.” (Page 133, Big Book)

If I’m persistently grumpy or fevered, I will drink.

Happiness and joy are not random states I might find myself in.

I am actually commanded to be happy and joyful.

And one follows the chain of command.

Act the part and I’ll bring the part alive.

What’s your experience?

14 March 2026: Accepting unacceptable behaviour

“‘The mouth of the just bringeth forth wisdom; the lips of the righteous know what is acceptable.’ Proverbs” (One Day At A Time In Al-Anon, February 22)

It is sometimes said we should not accept unacceptable behaviour.

This is a notoriously difficult injunction to follow and is often used as a blank cheque to start ordering other people around or neglecting one’s responsibilities.

Part of the problem is linguistic:

If something is unacceptable, then, strictly speaking, accepting is not an option, so the question of accepting or not accepting it does not arise.

This is the problem with wisdom couched in deliberately obfuscatory language. It’s witty but it’s not helpful.

Of course, what this clever little apophthegm is doing is playing on the common linguistic root of two quite different concepts: acceptable = compliant with norms, and accept = endure.

What are the meanings of ‘accept’ in general?

It can mean cognitive acknowledgement. “I accept that Marjorie has left me,” for instance, means I have no denial about the fact that she has left me; I am not pretending.

This form of acceptance should be adopted immediately, whatever the situation.

It can mean becoming emotionally reconciled to something. “I accept that Marjorie has left me,” here, means I am at peace with the matter.

This form of acceptance is also desirable, though may take a minute.

It can mean not attempting to control, regulate, or influence something. “I accept that Marjorie has left me,” here, means I have stopped trying to win her back.

Should one control, regulate, or influence something? It really depends. Mostly no, but there are situations (negotiations, situations with shared or sole authority, situations where I have a share or a part to play) where one’s job really is to control, regulate, or influence something.

However, going back to the original injunction, this idea is really about how to response to jerks.

Can you change them, regulate, or influence them? No, by and large.

But you can leave them to it.

The real difficulty, though, is judging what is ‘unacceptable’ in the sense of licensing my departure, my resignation, my distancing.

I make sure my decisions are based on pragmatic factors only. That means my emotions have to come in line first. Only once I can face the behaviour with equanimity can I know that my decision to withdraw is genuinely pragmatic and not an attempt to avoid facing my own intolerance or an attempt to punish.

What’s your experience?

13 March 2026: Nobody

“You fellows are somebody. I was once, but I’m a nobody now.” (Page 157, Big Book)

He’s got it wrong. They’re nobody, and he’s somebody.

To get sober, the drinker has to go, to stop existing.

The drinker has to disappear and be replaced by a non-drinker.

The Japanese verb meaning ‘disappear’ in the conventional sense, いなくなる, ‘inakunaru’, literally means ‘to become not being’. This is exactly what is required by the programme, all at once, or gradually.

What’s your experience?

12 March 2026: Wrong

“As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action.” (Page 87, Big Book)

To ask for the right thought or action, I need an empty container to put it in.

That means I have to empty the container of what is already in there.

That means I have to admit I’m wrong.

I’m frightened, so I’m wrong.

I’m confused, so I’m wrong.

I’m upset, so I’m wrong.

What’s your experience?

11 March 2026: Step Ten

“Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them.” (Page 84, Big Book)

Step Ten suggests that I block such thoughts and behaviours when the temptation arises.

To give in to such thoughts and behaviours, to allow them to flourish, and then to write an extensive analysis is not the practice of Step Ten. It is self-indulgence masked as spiritual work. It is like accidentally touching a hot dish, burning yourself slightly, and, rather than retracting your hand, holding onto the dish with both hands in order really to feel the pain until the burn is so bad that you have to haul yourself off to accident and emergency. I did this for years, thinking I was ‘working Step Ten’, and wondering why things were not getting any better.

Most of my emotional distress is self-indulgence, and ongoing inventory should not be used to amplify the self-indulgence through wordy elaborations of the emotions and the underlying ‘reasons’, especially not with the dramatising, self-victimising buzzwords of abandonment, low self-worth, not being heard, not being seen, and other dramatic but uninformative warpaint.

Why am I distressed, ever? Because I haven’t got my own way! The nature of the way is neither here nor there. Trash goes in the big black bin bag. All I need to know is what constitutes trash. What constitutes trash? My demands!

Inventory also must not be used as a way of condemning others for being at fault (they’re usually not at fault: I’m the one at fault for insisting that they instantly meet my unreasonable and unrealistic demands), especially when I’m recounting situations to third parties. What I’m really doing in such recounting is gossiping, carrying tales, and garnering sympathy or recruiting allies. Since ‘sick’ means something derogatory these days, I have substituted the word ‘innocent’ into the page 67 prayer. ‘This is an innocent person. …’

What should one do instead?

Ask God to remove it, which means redirecting my attention to something else and getting on with that.

If I fail, and indulge the negative thinking, any examination in the nightly review concerns the fact of my indulging in such thinking, not the apparent ‘content’.

What’s your experience?

10 March 2026: Progress

“The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.” (Page 60, Big Book)

Progress is measured by practice, not progression. How many Steps you’ve got through is progression. Progress is how much you’ve learned. I heard someone say recently that they had gone through Steps Three to Eight over eight hours with a sponsor, ready to go off and make amends. That’s certainly an impressive progression, but it is progress? Would someone who spends eight hours practising the simple ideas of Steps Ten and Eleven make more progress? Perhaps yes. Good work is intensive not extensive. Intensive means really getting into it. The Steps in a day is not intensive: it is by nature superficial. You can’t learn a language in a day, whatever the adverts say, and you can’t learn recovery in a day.

What’s your experience?

9 March 2026: Extreme

“After satisfying yourself that your man wants to recover and that he will go to any extreme to do so, you may suggest a definite course of action.” (Page 142, Big Book)

From the sponsee’s point of view, the sponsor is coming along with a toenail clipper. After the first snip, the sponsee looks down, and discovers a toe missing. He gives him the benefit of the doubt, but, after the second toe is sliced off, the sponsee rightly realises the sponsor is not there to help him; he’s here to destroy him, or, rather, not him, but his ego, which will in fact be a liberation.

Unless one understands the nature of what is being destroyed, i.e. the self, which is the problem, one will resist.

What’s your experience?

8 March 2026: Wrong

“… admitting my wrong” (Page 13, Big Book)

When I am upset, I am wrong.

It does not matter whether I can see how I am wrong.

The point of being wrong is that it is dependent on the truth, not on my understanding.

My understanding does not contribute to the truth.

So the question is: do I want to be right or do I want to be happy?

The question is not a psychological one.

The question is one of wanting and of will.

Do I want to believe what I believe at the cost of my peace?

Or do I want to relinquish what I believe in order to gain peace?

One can turn off the road of wrongness at any point.

What’s your experience?

7 March 2026: Radioactive

“But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others.” (Page 86, Big Book)

The programme encourages me to look at the past only for the purposes of inventory or hauling out a story for sponsees etc. in order to illustrate a point.

Until processed, the past is radioactive. Inventory is dangerous if not contained in sessions of a fixed start and end time and duration. It must not be allowed to occupy my mind generally.

Rather like scientists going into a radioactive setting, who have a limited amount of time to perform their work before the dose of radioactivity received rises above safe levels, I have a short time to do the work.

If, after the prescribed time, I’m not done, I’ll have to come back to it the next day.

If I stare for too long, my ability to look without prejudice is in any case impaired, and what I write will be distorted.

Get in there, do the job, and get out again, pronto.

What’s your experience?

6 March 2026: Discipline

“We alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined.” (Page 88, Big Book)

When one takes a dog for a walk, one is in charge of the walk.

The dog might want to sniff this or that or chase a rabbit.

But the owner—not the dog—decides whether that is to be permitted.

Thus the mind.

Years of lack of discipline results in the mind developing, as it were, a mind of its own.

Step Eleven: the practice of bringing the mind back under conscious direction.

This process, itself, is under the direction of God.

What’s your experience?

5 March 2026: Meaning

“Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.” (Page 86, Big Book)

The passage simply asks me to do these things. It does not stipulate that I be free of negative emotion or resistance. It does not even say I have to mean it.

If I could say these prayers free of negative emotion and resistance, if I could say these prayers and mean it, I would not have to say these prayers.

The saying of it actually overcomes the negative emotion and resistance, it actually induces me to mean it.

Perhaps not entirely and perhaps not straight away.

But progress is in the right direction.

But more than that:

If I submit a tax return, it is submitted, and tax will fall due. The system does not care what I think or feel, only what I do.

When I say the prayer, the prayer is heard and acted upon. God fulfils His side of the bargain.

What’s your experience?

4 March 2026: Uncommon

“I was to test my thinking by the new God-consciousness within. Common sense would thus become uncommon sense.” (Page 13, Big Book)

This is a tricky line. Obviously common sense—the faculty of the intelligent and fair assessment of circumstances—is not lost by working the programme. It does not therefore cease to exist by substitution.

What I think this is referring to:

There are times one prays and the solution appears the opposite of what most people might think or do. ‘Uncommon’ is the opposite of ‘common’. God’s solution is the opposite of the ordinary human solution.

This opposite is sometimes a positive action (going and settling matters or being cordial or even friendly with people one dislikes) and sometimes a negative action (letting go entirely rather than hammering at the problem with obsessive thinking and self-will).

What’s your experience?

3 March 2026: Rut and groove

“Once this healthy practice has become grooved, it will be so interesting and profitable that the time it takes won’t be missed.” (Page 89, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

Rut: A furrow, groove, or track worn in the ground.

Groove: A long, narrow channel or depression.

Depression: An area that is lower in topography than its surroundings.

Whether I am in a rut or a groove or a depression depends on the perception. Things having stayed the same for a long time does mean I’m in a rut. Lots of things stay the same and are perfectly lovely that way. Sometimes I need to get out of a rut. Sometimes I need to recognise I’m not in a rut, I’m not in a depression, I’m in a groove.

The topography, in any case, is not out there, it’s in my own mind.

What’s your experience?

2 March 2026: Proxy

“As animals on a treadmill, we have patiently and wearily climbed, falling back in exhaustion after each futile effort to reach solid ground.” (Page 107, Big Book)

“After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.” (The Doctor’s Opinion)

“Or am I expecting to steal a little vicarious pleasure from the atmosphere of such places?”

When I have an Al-Anon slip, I get tangled in an alcoholic’s drinking spree (or emotional spree). That entanglement is me getting on someone else’s rollercoaster. They’re going up and down, round and round. So I go up and down, round and round. I’m getting all of the ups and downs, all of the runaround, just without the substance, one stage removed. The alcoholic is drinking on my behalf, or he’s having the emotional spree on my behalf. He might not be drinking or having the emotional spree if I weren’t there holding his damp little hand. He might have to face himself, sort himself out, and get well.

Sometimes people in recovery, rather than having a drink, have a drink through someone else: the vicarious pleasure stolen. It’s not mine. An attempt to get all the fun of the fair, just without paying the price. Hence stolen.

Sometime, the person through whom I’m drinking is not even an addict. I just construe them to be. That’s the horror of it: there doesn’t even need to be crisis for me to create a drama. I can work with whatever material is there. The whole thing can be in my head.

What’s your experience?

1 March 2026: Grey

“Resentment is the “number one’’ offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick.” (Page 64, Big Book)

When I get a resentment, a little patch of grey develops. This patch of grey blocks me from the source of vitality. Then everything goes grey.

What’s your experience?

28 February 2026: Tray

“place the problem, along with everything else, in God’s hands” (Page 120, Big Book)

Three types of item land in my in-tray. Here’s what they are:

1. Things to do.
2. Problems.
3. Other people’s business, mistakenly addressed to me.

1 I do.
2 I label ‘God’ and put immediately in the out-tray without opening.
3 I label with the person’s name and put immediately in the out-tray without opening.

What’s your experience?

27 February 2026: Caught in the act

“We are there to sweep off our side of the street, realizing that nothing worth while can be accomplished until we do so” (Page 77, Big Book)

“My friend promised when these things were done I would enter upon a new relationship with my Creator” (Page 13, Big Book)

This comes in the context of Step Nine.

If I do not get my relations with others straightened out, I will feel guilt, and guilt produces fear of retribution—ultimately from God.

Guilt thus causes one to hide from God (think of the Garden of Eden).

One cannot hide from God and seek God’s constant input at the same time.

This is why amends are required for the new relationship with God promised in Bill’s Story.

What’s your experience?

26 February 2026: Founder

“It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe.” (Page 85, Big Book)

All one has to do is what is in the Book.

And then carry on doing it.

No matter what.

What’s the what?

What I think.

What I feel.

Then all trouble will be avoided, skirted, or sailed through, sometimes choppily, but without capsizing.

What’s your experience?

25 February 2026: Off the peg

“After making our review we ask God’s forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken.” (Page 86, Big Book)

Ten corrective measures that suffice for most situations:

Stop thinking about myself
Trust that God will look after me
Cheer up
Relax
Take a charitable view of others
Consider other people’s interests
Keep my mouth shut
Mind my own business
Stick to the plan
Do my job and do it well

What’s your experience?

24 February 2026: Childish

“We had failed to see that though adult in years we were still behaving childishly” (Page 115, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

When I was new, I was self-centred, often wildly upset, and sometimes antisocial.

Outside AA, my behaviour was rightly curtailed or censured.

In recovery, too, when I misbehaved, I was brought sharply back in line.

Not everything was suitable to share in meetings. Not every behaviour was suitable for the time before and after the meeting. Not every topic was fair game over pizza.

I was elaborately ill but not wholly insane and not a child, though my behaviour was childish.

I had to learn fast to control impulses and to observe the etiquette, if I wanted help.

Turns out I could can it when I realised which side of my bread was buttered.

And thus I started to grow up.

The people who boundaried my behaviour were not putting me down: they were encouraging me to live up to my potential rather than treating me as an incorrigible wretch of whom nothing more could be expected than the level at which I was performing.

Carte blanche would only have harmed me.

More important than the freedom to ‘be myself’ was the opportunity to become what I could be.

What’s your experience?

23 February 2026: Decisions

“3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” (Page 59, Big Book)

“On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. … In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision.” (Page 86 Big Book)

One cannot make decisions, except to choose the decision-provider.

When I make decisions without God, I’m not making the decision at all: I’m asking the ego what to do, it tells me, and that’s the decision.

How does structural change take place in accordance with Step Eleven?

Not by making structural changes: rather, by asking God, daily, what to do today. Even changing career, moving house, getting married are not single decisions but chains of small decisions take on a specific days.

And such decisions are not made but asked for.

That means I need not lift my head above the parapet of the day: it is always sufficient to ‘keep it in the day’, and, when a decision must be made today that involves speculation about future events or circumstances, I perform such speculation only as is necessary for the purpose of today’s decision.

I then ask, and what do I get? Inspiration, an intuitive thought, a decision.

Where does wanting come in?

God’s will usually manifests as wanting. For me to be happy doing God’s will consistently, my wanting needs to be brought in line. There’s only so long one can act against one’s emotions without an incident.

So, the normal situation is for God’s will to manifest as wanting, but I cannot infer in the other direction: since the ego’s will also manifests as wanting, I cannot infer from wanting to do something that it is from God. It might equally come from the ego.

Instead, I can test against habit (what is habitually God’s will?), experience, principle, injunction, authority, knowledge, reason, reality, and other testbeds.

The thing I do not do is consult my feeling, because that is uninformative.

What’s your experience?

22 February 2026: Action

“To some extent we have become God-conscious. We have begun to develop this vital sixth sense. But we must go further and that means more action.” (Page 85, Big Book)

The above comes from the section on Step Eleven, namely prayer and meditation. This means that Step Eleven is a set of actions. I am the active taker of Step Eleven. I do not just sit there. The instructions are active, not passive, except in those elements when I wait to receive. The actions are there to enable me to receive.

What’s your experience?

21 February 2026: Synthetic vs sixth sense

“What with our ultra-modern standards, our scientific approach to everything, we are perhaps not well equipped to apply the powers of good that lie outside our synthetic knowledge.” (The Doctor’s Opinion)

A synthetic solution is something I’ve worked out by putting two and two together.

“To some extent we have become God-conscious. We have begun to develop this vital sixth sense.” (Page 85, Big Book)

With the sixth sense, the solution is given to me. I do not arrive at it synthetically. It comes from beyond.

What’s your experience?

20 February 2026: Suggestions, directions, tom-ei-to, tom-ah-to, pot-eit-to, po-ta-to

“Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery:” (Page 59, Big Book)

“This thought brings us to Step Ten, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along.” (Page 84, Big Book)

“Step Eleven suggests prayer and meditation.” (Page 85, Big Book)

… and passim.

The polite offering of the programme is presented repeatedly as a ‘suggestion’. There is another word used, though:

“Further on, clear-cut directions are given showing how we recovered.” (Page 29, Big Book)

“If we have carefully followed directions, we have begun to sense the flow of His Spirit into us.” (Page 85, Big Book)

So, what is it, then? Suggestions or directions?

This can be best illustrated by the following statement:

“I suggest you follow the directions.”

‘Suggestion’ denotes the manner of proposal by the proposer.

‘Direction’ describes the content.

When someone suggests something to me, that is merely the manner in which something is delivered to me.

What is delivered to me? Directions.

What you do is make a suggestion.

What I receive is directions.

This should snuff out any notion that the directions are optional bolt-ons to the programme. No. They are the programme itself, and there is nothing else on offer.

What’s your experience?

19 February 2026: Wrest vs come

“Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well?” (Page 61, Big Book)

“When we look back, we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God’s hands were better than anything we could have planned.” (Page 100)

Wresting the good from the world does not work.

If I surrender to God, the good comes, but not from the world, from God.

What’s your experience?

18 February 2026: Perfect

“The remaining eleven Steps state perfect ideals.” (Page 68, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

I demand perfection of myself. But I don’t expect this to actually be achieved in full, in practice, at all times.

This maximises the chance I will do what is right but prevents me from unnecessary self-beratement when I fail.

What’s your experience?

17 February 2026: Wormtongue

“this double-edged truth was a sledgehammer which could shatter the tough alcoholic’s ego at depth and lay him wide open to the grace of God.” (Language of the Heart)

In ‘The Lord of the Rings’, King Théoden comes under the influence of an evil, whispering advisor called Wormtongue. Under Wormtongue’s magical influence, he becomes decrepit, drugged, and paranoid. His friends he sees as enemies. Once the spell is broken, he realises the real enemy: Wormtongue.

Thus the ego turns me against others so I don’t realise it is the problem and put it out of a job.

Resentment and conflict are merely the ego’s defences against my discovery of its plan.

What’s your experience?

16 February 2026: Balloon

“Thus he confirmed all that Dr. Harry had told us about the necessity of reducing the alcoholic’s ballooning ego, before entering A.A. and afterward.” (Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age)

‘… and afterward’.

Elements to the formula

• I didn’t get myself where I am: God did.
• I’m not the centre and main objective of my life: God is.
• What’s God’s will for me? The three parts of Step Twelve.
• Can I help people? No: but I can help people to find God.

What’s your experience?

15 February 2026: Stem

“From [resentment] stem all forms of spiritual disease” (Page 64, Big Book)

This is a problematic statement, because it not self-evidently true. The book does not attempt to explain this, either, so we have to fall back on some logical thinking.

Let’s see if we can find examples of spiritual disease that do not appear to stem from resentment. Here are two. One can accept with equanimity the facts of the world and yet be thoroughly selfish. One can be indifferent as to the behaviour of others yet shut out God entirely. It is not apparently the case that spiritual disease cannot arise in the absence of resentment or that, if resentment is eliminated, all other manifestations of human rebellion against the Divine (which is the essence of spiritual disease) will automatically dissolve.

After all, the inventory continues after the resentments are mastered, because there is plenty to clear up, and there will be plenty to clear up for the rest of time, such ‘disease’ arising naturally in the course of living with an intact ego, even in the absence of substantial resentment adduceable to explain the fact.

We must therefore sweep from the table the idea that, whenever we find an example of spiritual disease, it necessarily originates in resentment.

The most likely sense intended is this: there is no form of spiritual disease that cannot stem from resentment, but instances of spiritual disease, whilst they might stem from resentment, might stem from all sorts of other causes.

Indeed, resentment, the Book says, is one of the manifestations of self, which means there are others: resentments’ siblings.

It is easy to see how resentment can lead to theft (one steals a bun from Lidl because one resents the capitalist monsters behind the chain), but one might thieve out of desperation or miserliness, without a jot of resentment.

It is easy to see how resentment might lead to meanness (one is mean to Neville’s sister to get back at Neville, whom one resents), but one might be mean because one is sadistic or it might be a way to a selfish personal end, without any upstream resentment.

Note that the phrase is ‘stem all forms of spiritual disease’ not ‘stems all spiritual disease’.

Thus, the causal arrow points comprehensively in one direction—any form of spiritual disease is a possible consequence of resentment—but one cannot automatically infer resentment as a cause when one discovers a case of spiritual disease.

Muscular dystrophy can cause any muscle to ache, but not every muscle ache stems from muscular dystrophy.

There is another intriguing idea, though, which is that all spiritual disease (and in this case we mean not just all categories of spiritual disease but all instances of it) does indeed stem from resentment, but one particular resentment.

That resentment is the resentment that God pulls rank over man, that man is subordinate, that there are things reserved for God (being upstream of everything, being the Creator) that man can have no access to. This is the resentment that led to the fall in the Garden of Eden, to the birth of the self. Without that one dissatisfaction at one’s subordinate condition in relation to God, no mischief could possibly have arisen in the first place.

In a sense, the one, original resentment, which leads to the rebellion against the omnicompetent God, is what sets up self in business, and, once self is set up in business, it produces resentment, and all types of ill flow from that.

Resentment is also the prerequisite for the persistence of all other character defects. Resentment claims innocence and superiority (as do its more covert forms, e.g. victimhood, blame, having ‘hurt feelings’, ‘being offended’), and that denies all other defects. They are now defended from ever being detected and rooted out.

What’s your experience?

14 February 2026: Real and fancied

“In that state, the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill.” (Page 66, Big Book)

Resentment is normally considered to be about the present and the past, and fear, about the future.

That does not quite map onto the facts, however.

First of all, one must expand the array of ‘triggers’ to include not just the wrong-doing of others but also any disagreeable state of affairs, ‘wrong-happenings’ and ‘wrong-beings’ (if you will permit the coinages).

Wrong-doings are not necessary in the past: one can resent someone for what they’re going to do.

Fear is not always about the future: one might fear what Sally said to Simon, yet the conversation happened last Friday. As soon as one learns for sure what was said, fear yields to resentment.

The real difference between resentment and fear is two-fold:

Firstly, resentment seems to focus on known, definite, certain wrong-doings (wrong-happenings, wrong-beings), whereas fear seems to focus on speculated, possible, uncertain wrong-doings (etc.)

Thus, the distinction is between real and fancied.

Secondly, resentment involves fear, and fear involves anger (and thus, if it persists, resentment).

But with resentment, the anger at the other person usually dominates, whilst, with fear, the threat to me dominates.

What’s your experience?

13 February 2026: Needs, purposes, and schemes

“We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems.” (Page 87, Big Book)

“How can I best serve Thee—Thy will (not mine) be done.” These are thoughts which must go with us constantly.” (Page 85, Big Book)

“If a repetition is to be prevented, place the problem, along with everything else, in God’s hands.” (Page 120, Big Book)

If God takes care of my needs, I do not need to worry about those.

If my job is to serve God, I need not worry about my identity, value, or purpose: these are given.

If everything is in God’s hands, I need not scheme.

That really does take care of everything.

What’s your experience?

12 February 2026: Ourselves

“Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” (Page 59, Big Book)

This could mean a power greater than each individual, or a power greater than the category ‘ourselves’.

On the latter reading, the group or even AA as a whole cannot be the Higher Power.

I used both the group and AA as a whole as a stepping stone, but it was not long before it became apparent that the group or the fellowship could not remove my character defects or provide me with the direction and strength I needed.

I turned my will and life over to the fellowship but that did not stop me from drinking again.

I turned my will and life over to God, and that did stop me.

What’s your experience?

11 February 2026: Enthusiasm

“If it is a happy occasion, try to increase the pleasure of those there; if a business occasion, go and attend to your business enthusiastically.” (Page 102, Big Book)

Someone went to his sponsor with a problem.

Sponsor: “Try not thinking about it.”

Sponsee: “But then I’ll forget all about it!”

What’s your experience?

10 February 2026: There is a solution

“There is a solution” (Page 17)

When I was new, I was immensely relieved to find other people in AA who were as neurotic and unhappy as me.

But I let it go at that and really did not recognise that there was a solution to these.

A substantial boon of AA—besides the chief boon of offering sobriety—is not that I need not feel so guilty, embarrassed, and set apart because of being neurotic and unhappy but that these can be resolved, and surprisingly quickly and effectively.

There really is a solution.

What’s your experience?

9 February 2026: Strength and intelligence

“For just so long as we were convinced that we could live exclusively by our own individual strength and intelligence, for just that long was a working faith in a Higher Power impossible.” (Page 72, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

Whenever I look at a situation and assume I’m right, I’m living exclusively by my intelligence.

Whenever I engage in a course of action without asking God for strength, I’m living exclusively by my strength.

It turns out I’m guilty as charged far more often than I might intuitively think.

What’s your experience?

8 February 2026: Why did you turn left?

“Some drinkers have excuses with which they are satisfied part of the time. But in their hearts they really do not know why they do it.” (Page 23, Big Book)

“1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” (Page 59, Big Book)

To be powerless means I am not the one making the decisions. I am acting under compulsion.

Imagine a passenger on a bus.

The bus turns left.

If the passenger says, “I turned left because …” he is delusional. He did not turn left. The bus driver did.

When I said, “I drank because of XYZ”, “I drank on feelings of …”, “I drank because I liked the effect”, “I drank to treat my …”, I was actually denying my powerlessness, but it took me ages to understand this.

Why was I denying powerlessness?

Such statements presuppose (a) effective reasoning and (b) agency. They say: I reasoned, and, on the basis of that reasoning, I acted.

Powerlessness, by contrast, means I do not have agency, because something else is driving my actions, and, if something else is driving my actions, the question of my reasoning becomes moot.

To take the bus analogy, the bus is turning left because of the bus driver’s reasoning, not the passenger’s reasoning, so any reasoning presented by the passenger is quite unconnected with the fact of turning left. Thus, when I said I drank to feel better, I might well have felt better, at least for an hour or so, and I might have believed this motivation was both present and operative, but that was not really why I was drinking.

This became quite clear when I reviewed my experience in a later phase of my alcoholism. Then, drinking no longer made me feel better, and I knew it, and yet I did it anyway. That is when my drinking became eery, uncanny, ‘unheimlich’ as the Germans say, and the truth started to dawn that I had been hypnotised, mesmerised, by my alcoholism into taking actions that seemed constructive but were destructive, systematically for years, without any suspicion that I was acting against my will.

This mesmerisation, this hypnotism, actually continued into my recovery. It took a long time to expunge the idea that drink did me any good at all, even in the short term, even in the moment. In other words, I continued to trot out alcoholism’s own ‘party line’, its rationalisation it would continually feed me to conceal its compulsion of my drinking, hence the ‘explanations’ I gave above. It seemed less frightening to think I had ‘reasons’ for drinking the way I did than to realise I was a puppet, a stooge, a sleeper agent.

The truth was that there was no justification, and the only valid explanatory statement for my alcoholism is this:

I was compelled; I had no defence against the compulsion.

What’s your experience?

7 February 2026: Blame

“Where other people were concerned, we had to drop the word ‘blame’ from our speech and thought. This required great willingness even to begin.” (Page 47, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

How I feel is not their, your, the world’s fault.

Even what I ‘learned’ in childhood I chose from the range of things I might have learned.

So there’s no blame of others.

But there’s no blame of me, either in the sense of chiding, because that does not help.

What does help is recognising my responsibility and actuating change.

What’s your experience?

6 February 2026: Heppy, so very heppy

“Just for today I will be happy. This assumes to be true what Abraham Lincoln said, that ‘Most folks are as happy as they make their minds up to be.’” (Just For Today Card)

When one wakes up in the morning, one might find oneself in quite a grump, either because one is physically tired or net yet fully awake or because one has acquired the habit of adopting a combination of gloom about ‘reality’ and dread about ‘the future’ as the opening sally of the day.

Whatever the reason, this has to be stopped. If one accepts this baseline and then tries to track back from there to some semblance of normality and happiness, the journey is long and arduous, and one’s own initial commitment to unhappiness puts up sturdy resistance.

God does not seem particularly interested in helping those who have decided that they do not like His universe and what goes on in it. ‘Please yourself’ is the courteous extension of liberty to adopt whatever view one wishes.

However, if one makes the decision that the world is marvellous and the future is securely in God’s hands, the full weight of God seems to come in to support it.

One has to want this. One has to want this more than wants one’s historical, hysterical, and habitual position of put-upon cynicism, the brave, bitter little smile, the plaintive insistence on the inevitability of misery.

What’s your experience?

5 February 2026:

“A few are fortunate enough to be so situated that they can give nearly all their time to the work.” (Page 19)

If one’s circumstances are such that there is less work, less money, more time to play with, this is not to be viewed as a curse, since firstly this is precisely the situation set out above, the clearing of the way to be useful in the way that God wishes. It is something that one should be grateful for.

Now, of course, one should not be negligent about financial and material matters and one should perhaps look out for actions that God enjoins one to perform in order to facilitate work in the material world, but this needn’t be a grave concern; everything really is in God’s hands, and one can relax, ask, listen, and get on with it.

But the greatest thing in each day really is the ‘work’ of carrying the message to others, and it is this that makes life worthwhile. The more, the better, up to a point.

“None of us makes a sole vocation of this work, nor do we think its effectiveness would be increased if we did.” (Page 19, Big Book)

The situation (“to be so situated”) also includes being morally and spiritually prepared: too much too soon, and the individual can easily think they have it cracked, that they know everything, that they’re ahead of or above the crowd, and one can get sucked into other people’s problems as there’s not too much else in one’s life to take one’s attention.

God will always rectify this, but one has to do one’s part: remain humble, concentrate on demonstrating rather than analysing, fixing, or directing, don’t reinvent the wheel or, heaven forbid, devise your own programme, keep it simple, and don’t professionalise, of course in terms of money, but in terms of being a ‘full-time AA’ with this the sole vocation. Few indeed are equipped to pull it off.

What’s your experience?

4 February 2026: Stopping and staying stopped: (4) Reopening the decision

“If we are planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol.” (Page 33, Big Book)

It may be tempting to reopen the decision and rework through the various elements.

This may appear to reinforce the decision, but, when the elements are put back on the table, the addiction takes this as an opportunity for renegotiation. This is dangerous.

It’s legitimate to reiterate and rehearse what that decision is, but only in the context of carrying the message: in presenting (in retrospect) the stages of the decision when sharing at a meeting or explaining something to a sponsee, I bolster, and the context invokes the presence of God, which blocks conversion into a negotiation with the devil.

But in between: best to just get on with it.

What’s your experience?

3 February 2026: Stopping and staying stopped: (3) Elation

“Understanding myself now, I fared forth in high hope. For three or four months the goose hung high. I went to town regularly and even made a little money. Surely this was the answer—self-knowledge.” (Page 7, Big Book)

Once it becomes apparent that the God system is working, lots of energy, previously suppressed by the addiction and its energy-sucking vortex, is released, wildly, exuberantly. Time is available, energy is available, and the universe and its joys and treats are rediscovered.

Amidst this elation, slipping is possible. Thinking I’ve got it cracked, paradoxically I think I could slip and come back and stay stopped as easily as this time.

Wrong.

Each stage of stopping and staying stopped brings with it its particular own opportunity for the addiction to entice me back.

What’s your experience?

2 February 2026: Stopping and staying stopped: (2) Day 1

“The next question they asked was, ‘You can quit twenty-four hours, can’t you?’ I said, ‘Sure, yes, anybody can do that, for twenty-four hours.’ They said, ‘That’s what we’re talking about. Just twenty-four hours at a time.’ That sure did take a load off of my mind. Every time I’d start thinking about drinking, I would think of the long, dry years ahead without having a drink; but this idea of twenty-four hours, that it was up to me from then on, was a lot of help.” (Page 188, Big Book)

Day 1 (and maybe a few days or weeks after that) is usually characterised by onslaught. Thoughts return constantly to the addiction (or adjacent activities, locations, situations, mementos, reminders).

My job is to take the day an hour at a time: more than that is too much.

I ask God for something else to do during that hour.

I will require patience, resilience, and willpower, so I ask for them to the extent that they are lacking.

God takes my small patience, resilience, and willpower and uses them as the mortar of the wall He erects to block the addiction-related thoughts from converting into action.

I can stay stopped, but God won’t keep me safe without my full cooperation.

If I’m not committed, I will slip through the stones of the defensive wall.

If I slip, it’s because I’m not committed; there is a problem with the ingredients in the mortar, and I have to go back to the original decision, because that’s where the defect lies.

1 February 2026: Stopping and staying stopped: (1) Making a decision

“‘We’ve got some bad news for you. It was bad news for us, and it will probably be bad news for you. Whether you quit six days, months, or years, if you go out and take a drink or two, you’ll end up in this hospital tied down, just like you have been in these past six months. You are an alcoholic.’” (Page 187, Big Book)

To decide to stop and stay stopped requires the following understanding:

(1) I cannot do X safely

(2) I will never be able to do X safely

(3) If I start I may never stop

(4) It will shorten my life

(5) It will ruin such life as I have

(6) I must never do X

(7) I will do X, without God, however

(8) I commit to never doing X

(9) I ask God to enable this

(10) In return I ask God what to perform instead

I then get on with it.

31 January 2026: RID

“They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity.” (The Doctor’s Opinion)

“We know our friend is like a boy whistling in the dark to keep up his spirits. He fools himself. Inwardly he would give anything to take half a dozen drinks and get away with them.” (Page 152)

“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.” (Page 42)

“In the article on surrender, I said: ‘One fact must be kept in mind, namely the need to distinguish between submission and surrender. In submission, an individual accepts reality consciously but not unconsciously. He accepts as a practical fact that he cannot at that moment conquer reality, but lurking in his unconscious is the feeling, ‘There’ll come a day’—which implies no real acceptance and demonstrates conclusively that the struggle is still going on. With submission, which at best is a superficial yielding, tension continues. When, on the other hand, the ability to accept reality functions on the unconscious level, there is no residual battle, and relaxation ensues with freedom from strain and conflict. In fact, it is perfectly possible to ascertain to what extent the acceptance of reality is on the unconscious level by the degree of relaxation which develops. The greater the relaxation, the greater is the inner acceptance of reality.’” (Harry M. Tiebout, Surrender Versus Compliance in Therapy)

Perhaps the most misunderstood line in the book is the one containing the ‘restless, irritable, discontented’ phrase. It is often understood to suggest that alcoholics—in contrast to ordinary people—are generally unhappy with life itself, ‘maladjusted’ (to quote from another misunderstood line), and that alcohol is somehow the answer to ‘life’s problems’, to emotional difficulties, and so on.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Firstly, we have characters who are not unhappy or maladjusted generally or in the moment, yet all of these are alcoholics:

“Then there are types entirely normal in every respect except in the effect alcohol has upon them. They are often able, intelligent, friendly people.” (The Doctor’ Opinion)

“he finished his treatment with unusual confidence. His physical and mental condition were unusually good.” (Page 26)

“… and retired at the age of fifty-five, after a successful and happy business career. Then he fell victim to a belief which practically every alcoholic has—that his long period of sobriety and self-discipline had qualified him to drink as other men.” (Page 32)

“Our first example is a friend we shall call Jim. This man has a charming wife and family. He inherited a lucrative automobile agency. He had a commendable World War record. He is a good salesman. Everybody likes him. He is an intelligent man, normal so far as we can see, except for a nervous disposition.” (Page 35)

“Fred is partner in a well known accounting firm. His income is good, he has a fine home, is happily married and the father of promising children of college age. He has so attractive a personality that he makes friends with everyone. If ever there was a successful business man, it is Fred. To all appearance he is a stable, well balanced individual. Yet, he is alcoholic. … Physically, I felt fine. Neither did I have any pressing problems or worries. My business came off well, I was pleased and knew my partners would be too. It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon.” (Page 39, Page 41)

The Book even suggests that there is nothing fundamentally different about alcoholics in terms of personality, emotions, spiritual condition, etc.:

“We know that while the alcoholic keeps away from drink, as he may do for months or years, he reacts much like other men.” (Page 22)”

What on earth does this ‘RID’ phrase mean?

If an individual is still in the grips of alcoholism, i.e. they have not accepted their alcoholism, the fact that they will never square the circle and find a way to drink happily without consequences, the fact that the game is up, the feeling experienced is this:

“There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did and a heartbreaking obsession that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it.” (Page 151)

Whilst sober, in such a condition, restlessness, irritability, and discontentment are the steady state, because one wants to drink. If one isn’t drinking, one is restless, irritable, and discontented; one wants to get back into the ring to try to find a way to make it work.

Now, this might be on the surface or it might be below the surface (there is an intimation in Fred’s story that it is below the surface—“to all appearance”; the whistling boy on page 152 is operating on two levels), and the individual may or may not be conscious of this (Jim isn’t, apparently). But it is there, and certainly what Silkworth notices in his patients.

An individual might well be unhappy and maladjusted generally, but this is a separate matter. Note that Bill W. is very troubled emotionally on page 15 and 154 but does not drink.

The restlessness, irritability, and discontentment are produced not by one’s general reaction to life but by the alcoholism directly. They are the signs of untreated alcoholism, but note that, when the individual surrenders, they have the feeling the problem is solved, and, as Tiebout notes, they relax. All of their emotional and practical difficulties will remain, but this restlessness, irritability, and discontentment (RID) have now been gotten rid of, and they can get down to the nuts and bolts.

Being troubled generally and being made uneasy by the untreated alcoholism are quite different parameters. Bill’s in an awful state generally on page 15 yet does not drink. Bill’s in an awful state generally on page 154 yet does not drink. The boy whistling in the dark is living a much better life but is uneasy because of his untreated alcoholism: it’s making a good life intolerable. Jim is in a questionable state generally, and totally subject to active alcoholism. Fred is in an amazing state generally, and totally subject to active alcoholism. We’ve got two things going on here: the general practical, mental, and emotional condition of the individual, and the slow poison of alcoholism trying to get me back into drinking.

If anyone is unconvinced but has ever tried to stop smoking, there’s the distinction right there.

As a smoker, I had a good life and had a good emotional and even spiritual life. But I was physically addicted to nicotine. I tried to stop smoking and was immediately hit by restlessness, irritability, and discontentment to such an intolerable degree I felt capable of violence against others or myself. Then I had a cigarette, and I was alright. The restlessness, irritability, and discontentment were absolutely not a function of an immature or dysfunctional response to life: they were the condition generated by the parasitic monster of addiction doing whatever it could biochemically to force me to have a cigarette. It took six weeks to get back to normal when I stopped smoking. And my general condition was exactly the same as it was before I stopped smoking, except now I was no longer addicted, no longer subject to addiction’s brain-bending wiles, and no longer smoking.

And thus with alcohol. It was then that I understood why I was so powerless over the first drink.

What’s your experience?

30 January 2026: Miracle

“Never mind the musty past; here sat a miracle directly across the kitchen table.” (Page 11, Big Book)

Imagine a play in a theatre. The three dimensions sitting inside a fourth. What is a miracle? The playwright or director walking onto the stage and whispering in the ear of an actor, which changes the course of the play. The rules of the drama have apparently been broken—a twenty-first century person is not ‘supposed’ to appear in the middle of Macbeth, but the playwright and director are quite within their rights to do so. The play can stand a few such interventions without irretrievably losing pace or plausibility. The laws of nature are only some of the laws of the universe and can be trumped by greater laws. They haven’t then been broken in reality; they’re in place only at the discretion of higher laws anyway. When something melts, the laws of freezing have not been broken: they are simply weaker, in the circumstance in the question, than the laws of heating.

What’s your experience?

29 January 2026: Keep It Simple (AA Slogan)

Sometimes I’ve thought I’m having a nervous breakdown, or I need therapy, or I need medication, or AA is not enough, or the God idea doesn’t work, or I need to go through the steps from the beginning, or I need a new experience, or I need a deeper experience, or I need another Step Four, or I need a new sponsor, or I need to go to Al-Anon, or I need to go to ACA, or I need to go to SA, or I need to go to SAA, or I need to go to SLAA, or I need to do inner child work, or I need to do family of origin work, or I have SAD, or I have ADHD, or I have borderline personality disorder, or I have narcissistic personality disorder, or I have depression, or I have anxiety, or I am genetically condemned to being miserable, or I was born under the wrong star sign, in the wrong country, in the wrong age, I need to change job, or I need to change country, or I need to get out of a relationship, or I need to get into a relationship, or I need more money, or I need a holiday, or I need to travel more, or I need to travel less, or I need to get a religion, or I need to drop a religion, or I need to change religion, or I need to change home group, or I need to do a special workbook, or I need to learn Tibetan, or I need to learn transcendental meditation, or I need to take holy orders, or I need to stop doing transcendental meditation, or I need to stop listening to religious radio, or I need to renovate my home, or I need to burn down my home, or I need to stop interacting with other alcoholics and addicts, or I need to set boundaries, or I need to stop seeing my family, or I need to get a pet.

What’s usually going on is I’m not doing the basics.

Am I doing the basics?

I ask myself these questions.

• Am I currently acting out?
• Am I 100% committed to abstinence, come what may?
• Each day, do I seek to serve God, and that’s literally it?
• Do I go to bed early enough to wake up naturally and on time?
• Do I eat healthy food I make myself?
• Do I exercise daily?
• Do I attend regular meetings?
• Do I do service?
• Do I carry the message?
• Am I doing anything I shouldn't?
• Am I not doing anything I should?
• When upset, do I drop it, turn to God, and trust?
• Do I talk to friends in recovery daily?
• Do I keep secrets?
• Do I practice everything on 84 to 88?
• Do I do daily step work / keep up with quarterly reviews?
• Do I hang out with God?

What’s your experience?

28 January 2026: Step Four (again)

“to practice these principles in all our affairs” (Page 59, Big Book)

How do I address a difficulty? Practise these principles in all my affairs! How? I start with inventory.

Resentments

1. Name
2. Cause
3. Affects my (personal relations, sex relations, pride, self-esteem, pocketbooks, security, ambitions, fear)

Then let go and forgive.

Moral inventory

4. Mistakes
5. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and frightened?
6. Where were we to blame?
7. Faults [= defects]
8. Wrongs [= harms]

Fears

9. List them

Then let go and trust God.

Sex (if relevant)

10. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate?
11. Whom had we hurt?
12. Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion or bitterness?
13. Where were we at fault, what should we have done instead?

It’s not as hard as one thinks.

What’s your experience?

27 January 2026: Miracle

“Never mind the musty past; here sat a miracle directly across the kitchen table.” (Page 11, Big Book)

In a game of billiards, the balls are heading where they’re heading until someone picks up a cue and strikes one of them. Now imagine the cue is invisible. Something miraculous appears to have happened. A miracle is an intervention in the system from beyond (from the metaphysical into the physical), which operates using the laws of nature (rather than breaching them). The laws of nature tell us what happens when people act but not whether they will act, because the one thing that lies outside the laws of nature is will, and that includes God’s will.

What’s your experience?

26 January 2026: The authority problem

“Alcohol was my master.” (Page 8, Big Book)

In the first part of my life, the question was this, who is in charge, me or alcohol? When I realised it was alcohol, the game was up. Then I was faced with a new authority problem: who is going to be in charge of my life, me or God? Well, if I choose me, I’m really choosing alcohol, because, without God, alcohol is in charge of me. In this three-way authority problem, God trumps alcohol, so the only way to beat alcohol is to surrender to God. That solves the second authority problem. Except this resolution is 360-degree. For God to beat alcohol, He has to be in charge of everything.

What’s your experience?

25 January 2026: Conception

“Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?” (Page 12, Big Book)

It’s easier to make a chair from some fresh wood than from a table. It’s easier to construct a conception of God from scratch than to whittle and add to an existing, failed conception of God.

The same goes for the whole design for living.

What’s your experience?

24 January 2026: Driven

“Driven” (Page 62, Big Book)

The point of powerlessness is that I am not the one on whose behalf I’m drinking. Reasons for drinking are neither here nor there. I don’t have agency, and, since I don’t have agency, my ‘reasoning’ as to why I’m doing it is irrelevant. If you’re not driving the bus, giving reasons for why you are turning left or right are delusional. You’re not turning left or right. The bus—the bus driver—is. When I’m in active addiction, I’m being driven; I’m not driving. What I think and feel is irrelevant, because these are literally not a driver of anything. I’m not drinking. The alcoholism is drinking through me.

What’s your experience?

23 January 2026: Grounds

“The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink.” (Page 24)

If you go to a great restaurant with great food but get food poisoning, you don’t go back. If you go back every day for years, the reason you’re going back has nothing to do with how good the food and ambience is. Discourse in AA about what alcohol did for me is entirely beside the point. It is not why I drank.

What’s your experience?

22 January 2026: Inventory

“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.” (Page 59, Big Book)

Steps Ten and Eleven both involves elements of prayer, meditation, contemplation, reflection, and inventory. Page 59 notwithstanding, they don’t divide neatly along the lines of inventory (Ten) and the others (Eleven), though inventory is a major element of Ten, and the others, major elements of Eleven. Rather, they divide down the lines of uptime and downtime. Step Ten is for whilst I’m motoring along. Step Eleven is for when I’m stopped, at the head and tail of the day, before and after the motoring, and, when pausing, when I’ve stopped at a motorway service station.

What’s your experience?

21 January 2026: Accountability

“AA, as such, ought never be organised; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.” (Tradition Nine, short form)

When work is delegated to me as a trusted servant, I do have right of decision, but I’m accountable back to the delegating authority. When the delegating authority pushes back, I can correct errors of fact or provide additional information to ensure that the view is fair, but I have no great authority to push back against the pushback. Ultimately, if I cannot live with the censure, reorganisation, or redirection, and I am not replaced, I can resign, but I should do so gracefully. The group conscience is always right, even when it is wrong. It has the privilege of being wrong. Being wrong is sometimes the fertile ground for a lesson to play out, and I can trust that God is in charge of this process.

What’s your experience?

20 January 2026: Concept

“an alcoholic who had known a spiritual experience” (Page 56, Big Book)

I recently heard someone use the phrase, “I’m working through the concept of a power greater than myself.” Now, on one level, I quite understand what is meant. One does indeed, as part of Step Two, consider what one believes God is.

But the danger is that one is missing the point.

Imagine being on a date, and the person opposite you is trying to talk to you, and you say something like, ‘Right now, I’m working through the concept of you’. They might be nonplussed; they’re trying to relate to you, and you’re trying to relate to your own concept of the person. That solipsism leaves the other person out of the equation altogether.

God wants to have a relationship with us. Perhaps we should be concerned to reciprocate in kind rather than get lost in our own concepts in the absence of any experience.

Once one is having the experience, the concept is neither here nor there.

What’s your experience?

19 January 2026: Oshietekun

“The minute we put our work on a service plane, the alcoholic commences to rely upon our assistance rather than upon God.” (Page 98, Big Book)

The sponsor should do for the sponsee what they cannot do for themselves but not what they can. The sponsor should certainly turn down requests to ‘serve’ the sponsee in this inappropriate way.

Japanese has a slang word for this: 教えて君 (oshietekun): someone who asks others for answers without first researching by himself.

What’s your experience?

18 January 2026: Now

“May you find Him now!” (Page 58, Big Book)

During the day, many situations arise that attract my attention, and many of those rightly so, because I must act.

The danger is that such situations spill over into the times preceding and following the situation: thinking about the situation unnecessarily, brooding, preplaying, replaying, fulminating or railing mentally.

The ideal is this:

Pause, consider, do it, forget about it until such time as the ball is batted into my court.

And then return to the now, which is where reality and God are.

What’s your experience?

17 January 2026: Step Three and Pascal’s wager.

“3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

[Wikipedia] “Pascal contends that a rational person should adopt a lifestyle consistent with the existence of God and should strive to believe in God. The reasoning for this stance involves the potential outcomes: if God does not exist, the believer incurs only finite losses, potentially sacrificing certain pleasures and luxuries; if God does exist, the believer stands to gain immeasurably, as represented for example by an eternity in Heaven in Abrahamic tradition, while simultaneously avoiding boundless losses associated with an eternity in Hell.”

Presented thus, the question is one of benefits and losses to the individual, a profit-and-loss account, if you will, seen through the lens of what might today be called ‘game theory’.

The calculation, however, assumes that the individual is essential a computer programme, whose purpose is to maximum gain (the experience of pleasure; the avoidance of pain). This is remote from reality. At the bestial level, this might be valid, but human beings are more than beasts. What people appear more fervently to seek is value and meaning.

Step Three essentially offers a stick-and-twist deal: stick with what you’ve got, or twist (i.e. exchange your existing hand for a new one).

What’s the existing hand?

The existing hand is the hand of materialism. Under materialism, there is no metaphysical realm, except in the illusory imaginings of beings that have developed self-awareness; there is nothing beyond the physical; there is no absolute morality beyond the morality of what is effective, expeditious, or ‘fair’ in the marketplace of human transactions, in other words morality is a conventional system; there is no underlying, originating imperative; there is no ultimate accountability; there is no real good or bad; if one believes in such things, under the materialist viewpoint, one is actually quite wrong, because the only reality is the atoms, and the atoms are blind to morality; any rightness, wrongness, goodness, love is merely a socially convenient construct. Materialist philosophers tell us that there is no such thing as human will; we’re subject only to physical processes; materialist doctors tell us that if we’re depressed or anxious it’s because something has gone spontaneously wrong with our bodies (specifically the brain bit), and we must alter the body to treat the mind and alter our experience. Life is simply about avoiding pain and maximising pleasure, because that’s all we’re programmed to do, and none of it has any meaning. After all, time’s arrow points in one direction; the universe is burning out, and the planet will burn out long before that, if we don’t destroy it or life on it, which we might well be capable of doing and apt to do.

If we twist, what do we get? A relationship with the Creator; access to the metaphysical realm; and a mode of living in this world that has real, ultimate value; we have a morality that derives from a transcendent and all-encompassing metaphysical realm of which this material world is simply a fleeting artefact; we have a purpose given to us by God; we have a mission; there is the possibility of meaning, value, right and wrong, love, achievement in some real sense.

Is there is a risk if we twist? Well, we might not optimally maximise pleasure and avoid pain; we might not ‘make it’ in the conventional sense of the society we happen to have been born into and programmed by; we might not have the adulation of others or—more importantly—ourselves, because we do not pass the tests of the material world. All of that would be fine as sacrifice for an infinitely higher and actually eternal purpose. But worse than that we might be wrong; there might be no metaphysical realm at all. We might be sold a bill of goods and compromise our material experience to that end.

But here’s the precise point: to ‘fail’ in the material realm is not failure, because the material realm is just atoms. The concept of success or failure is a metaphysical concept, because it requires measurement of performance against values, and there are no values in the material realm. Material ‘success’ borrows a concept from a metaphysical world whose existence it denies then bends it to material parameters. In other words, if we twist and back the God horse but are quite wrong, and all there is is the material, we are no further back than the people who have ‘made a go it’ materially, because one arrangements of atoms is not inherently more valuable than another. We have not failed, and they have not succeeded, because neither success or failure can exist in the material realm. Even if we experience more pain or less pleasure, that experience is precisely as meaningless as the more pleasurable and less painful experience of another; after all, in the materialist viewpoint, pain and pleasure are simply a function of the operations of atoms and are just as meaningless. In other words, we really lose nothing through twisting in the place of sticking.

However, if we back the material horse and are quite wrong, we have utterly failed. It is not that we have failed the examination: that can be honourable if we have sincerely tried; but we have denied the existence of the examination hall, the Examiner, and the examination. We have not even been in the running, and the whole shooting match really has been for nought. This is before one even examines the question of eternity: one’s life has been quite without value, and, in beings built for value (which we must surely be under the metaphysical viewpoint), we have actually failed in our own terms even if we have ‘succeeded’ materially. And we will learn of this in due course after death.

We are therefore left with the same result as Pascal’s wager: even if one didn’t have to take Step Three for the purpose of mere material survival, one ought to take it. It’s the only hope for valuable life.

What’s your experience?

16 January 2026: Mistake

“Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake.” (Page 417, Big Book)

If I’m upset, I’m saying God made a mistake. I think things should be different. I’m right, God’s wrong.

What does God want?

“We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free.” (Page 133, Big Book)

Therefore, reality as it is, is perfectly sufficient for me to be happy, joyous, and free.

I am mistaken when I think anything needs to change for me to be OK.

The answer is therefore always joyful acceptance of God’s will for the world to be exactly the way it is.

“As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day ‘Thy will be done.’” (Page 87)

What’s your experience?

15 January 2026: God’s forgiveness

“After making our review we ask God’s forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken.” (Page 86, Big Book)

The word ‘forgiveness’ is interesting here. It means that what I’m looking for in the review is the ‘sins’ (if you will) against God, as it will be God who will be providing the forgiveness. Mere errors might be spotted, too, as part of the process, but since these are excusable no forgiveness is required. Forgiveness is required for the inexcusable. If everything were excusable, forgiveness would not be a necessary practice.

This means that, with resentment and fear in particular, we’re not remotely interested in the content. What matters is the fact of permitting hostile, condemnatory thinking towards others, a refusal to accept God’s reality, and God’s will, and—with fear—the refusal to accept God’s providence or guidance and the insistence on trying to fathom the future as though we’re dependent only on ourselves and our meagre resources rather than God’s infinite strength.

In other words, these are moral not psychological questions.

This simplifies matters.

It also suggests that the answer to both is not psychological or even practical, necessarily, but spiritual: reminding ourselves of the surrender to God that has already taken place and realigning ourselves with that decision.

Note that that decision cannot be easily undone except by months or years of deliberate, wilful neglect and rebellion; the notion of surrendering in the morning and taking back one’s will a hundred times a day is like talking about getting married in the morning and divorcing many times a day; one says to God, ‘Here’s my life, take it!’ And He does. He is not easily opposed. One can burn oneself alive by trying to oppose Him, believing one has sincerely ‘taken back one’s will’, but one’s actually in the palm of God’s hand, hurting oneself with illusions and wasting time. The decision has not been reversed. We don’t have that much power, and God is not so easily thwarted.

In any case, the problem here is moral not psychological: everything always boils down to the single authority question; who is in charge, Him or me?

What’s your experience?

14 January 2026: Pool

“We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part.” (Page 85, Big Book)

If a pool is stagnant, with no inlet and no outlet, cleaning the water would be a near-impossible job.

Once an inlet and outlet are re-established, the water flows, and cleaning is automatic, requiring no direct action.

My psychological and other problems were not solved by trying to fish the dirt out of the water, speck by speck, gunk by gunk.

I cleared out the outlet (Four through Nine) and opened the inlet (One through Three, Ten through Twelve), and the mind was cleared out automatically.

What’s your experience?

13 January 2026: One thing

“a degree of stability” (Page 49, Big Book)

“I suggest one thing.”
“OK. What?”
“Pick something, and do it every day.”
“That’s not very hard!”
“Just wait and see.”

I go to my homegroup (unless I’m out of town or taking someone to accident and emergency).

There are some other things I do under the same conditions.

That doesn’t sound much, does it? Surely anyone can do something as simple as that?!

Sounds easy until you try it. What seems simple and ordinary will start to become a crisis, a drama, an emergency, an intolerable imposition, a mountain that towers ominously over all other events. It becomes the source of all lessons, the wall onto which all emotions are projected, the venue into which I invite all necessary experiences.

And then you learn the lesson, and it passes, you settle back, and you forget there was a problem in the first place.

But the real trick is to stick with it. Duck out, and you have to start again somewhere else. Start again: from square one. One goes all the way back to the beginning. Perform patchily, and there is no benefit at all, because I am not really there. I’m there not because I’ve committed but because I’ve decided it’s in my interests then and there, because there is no better offer on the table. My presence is about me and my decision, and the me-ness of my presence crowds out all other possibilities.

The thing committed to might be a home group, a marriage, a career, a spiritual practice.

The devil lies in the chopping and changing, the mixing-up of things. The ‘right’ to chop and change, to mix things up, is really the right to make constant decisions, and who do you think is making those decisions? Well, me, and that’s why the devil hates commitment, loves choices, loves decisions, loves the exercise of common sense and reason, and loves anything that gives me the opportunity to assert myself in opposition to God. It loves the line, “Today I have choices.” It loves the phase, “happy, joyous, and free”, because it contains the word ‘free’. It hates the phrase, “the dictates of a Higher Power”.

What does doing well look like? Consistency, come rain, come shine.

Is change ever legitimate? Of course, but only sparingly, only when I’m at peace, and often only with reluctance. Sought change is often prompted by the search for the shiny, the preference for the new, the avoidance of a disagreeable emotion, the evasion of a lesson.

Every change is disruptive and destructive. The price is high, so the prize must be higher. Change is best not made lightly or frivolously.

What’s your experience?

12 January 2026: Character-building

“We had lacked the perspective to see that character-building and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfactions were not the purpose of living.” (Page 71, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

Gavrilo Princip, after attending anti-Austrian demonstrations in Sarajevo, was expelled from school and walked to Belgrade, Serbia, to continue his education. He then went on to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand and remains, controversially, revered in Serbian circles.

Lafcadio Hearn was born on the Greek island of Lefkada but moved to Dublin, where he was abandoned first by his mother, then his father, and finally by his father’s aunt (who had been appointed his official guardian). At the age of 19, he emigrated to the United States, where he found work as a newspaper reporter, first in Cincinnati and later in New Orleans. He then went on to settle in Japan, where he wrote numerous books introducing Japan to the outside world.

As you can see, both had a rough time, but that didn’t stop them (regardless of the merit of their subsequent actions): they acted in accordance with their ideals, expulsion and abandonment notwithstanding.

That’s what character is.

I don’t naturally have character. The first step in acquiring character came from desperation: the realisation that, unless I pulled my socks up, I was not going to stay sober.

What’s your experience?

11 January 2026: Appreciation

“Having so considered our day, not omitting to take due note of things well done, and having searched our hearts with neither fear nor favor, we can truly thank God for the blessings we have received and sleep in good conscience.” (Page 96, Big Book)

Gratitude focuses on my receipt of something and on my emotional condition. To feel gratitude is to think about oneself. It’s self-centred. “I’m feeling grateful” works on its own without the adjunct indicating one what is grateful for or to whom one is grateful.

Slightly different is appreciation: the focus is on the thing appreciated and the person behind it. People don’t really say, “I’m feeling appreciative”. They say, “I appreciate you [doing this or that]”.

Gratitude brings me back to me.

Appreciation takes me out to the world and to God.

What’s your experience?

10 January 2026: Practical

“Having had the experience yourself, you can give him much practical advice.” (Page 96, Big Book)

A while ago, I heard the phrase, ‘working the steps with a sponsor’.

Of course, until one has acquired technical competence, one might well need a sponsor as an overarching presence. The instructions in the book are largely self-explanatory, especially if one has access to a few tapes to listen to, but it’s rare for someone to have the wit and wherewithal to work the whole through themselves, so there’s great utility and no shame in having a sponsor ‘take you through’ until you’ve got the system under your belt.

Once one has acquired competence, however, the time has come to take responsibility for effective step work. A sponsor is still required firstly for confession and secondly for talking through knotty situations, but that’s it. There’s no need to remain an infant, and there’s no need to hunt around for ever more techniques and sponsors to unlock some sort of esoteric knowledge. There’s sometimes a fetishization of sponsorship as a magic gateway to a higher realm. That’s not what it’s there for. It’s there to show you how to use a knife and fork to eat your dinner.

What’s your experience?

9 January 2026: Trust and reliance

“the basis of trusting and relying upon God” (Page 68, Big Book)

One has to trust and rely on God.

Trusting God means accepting without resistance the notion that everything needed will be provided, and more.

Relying means seeking what-to-do-and-the-strength-to-do-it from God and stopping thinking things through like a neurotic narner.

It means no more plan B.

It means ask and do.

Problems must be disowned.

As soon as one sees them coming in, one deflects them straight up to God, and the momentum built up ensures that, with the deflection, they are carried up to God without leaving even a residue with me.

This is like Emmet Fox’s dis-claiming of the ill.

Instead, the good is claimed: that everything has always been OK, is always OK, and will always be OK.

Always, all ways.

What’s your experience?

8 January 2026: Guide

“We’ll listen politely to those who would advise us, but all the decisions are to be ours alone.” (Page 37, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

Except any decision I make is not mine alone.

Any assessment I make is not mine alone.

I can’t assess anything without a guide.

Something has to take me from the incoming sense data to the sense I make of what I see and hear.

The guide to ‘what is going on’ is either the ego or God.

It’s like reading a newspaper to find out what’s going on in the world.

I can either read The Daily Ego or The Daily Prophet.

The Daily Ego is largely doom and gloom.

The Daily Prophet is always hopeful.

If I’m unhappy, I’ve been reading the wrong newspaper.

What’s your experience?

7 January 2026: I (don’t) got this

“We are not cured of alcoholism.” (Page 85, Big Book)

It’s alcoholism, not alcohol-was-m.

There’s a danger, when one makes progress, of thinking that the problem has been solved permanently, whether the problem is alcoholism or the problem of the spiritual malady and building a relationship with God.

When I was 20 years sober, a friend said, “A very good start!”

He was right. It was a start.

A sponsor once said that the first ten years are the early years.

When I got beyond that, he started saying that the first twenty years are the early years.

One’s never entirely out of the woods.

Alcoholism resurges; the ego resurges; and everyone one knows technically goes out of the window.

“I saw that will power and self-knowledge would not help in those strange mental blank spots.” (Page 42, Big Book)

There are times at any length of sobriety when:

“all our score cards read ‘zero’” (Page 29, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

And when one’s stock falls dramatically:

“The ticker still clattered. I was staring at an inch of the tape which bore the inscription XYZ-32. It had been 52 that morning.” (Page 4, Big Book)

Beware, therefore, talking about one’s early days when one’s in one’s first few years, as though everything’s done and dusted and one does not have any of those pesky difficulties anymore.

Pride comes before a fall, and the fall, when it comes, is swift and merciless.

Better hold onto those relationships with others, because you’ll need them.

Parading, in AA, one’s enmities, one’s affronts, one’s petty little grievances, one’s sidings for and against, one’s loyalties, one’s so-called wretched boundaries, does no good at all.

Precisely those people who one finds so offensive will be necessary on the journey ahead, so best to make amends now, accept amends offered, get over it, and get on with, with the 3 Ds: discretion, diplomacy, and decorum.

I need everyone in AA, and no one need ever know if—temporarily and wrongly—I have the hump with them.

No one is ever have-the-hump-with-able.

Rather than being lost in the past of others’ past behaviour—even if that past was eight seconds ago—I come back to the ever-present Child of God in each person.

Roll on.

I am best sticking to the present, not the past tense.

The ego will grab hold of the solution and think it can use it without God. Clever, suave, sharp-witted, deadly.

The truth is, every day I’m reminded I need God, and I have nothing to bring to the table except my nothingness.

Then God’s answer to me is the other people in AA—all of them.

What’s your experience?

6 January 2026: Good programme

“The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it.” (Page 83, Big Book)

Who has a good programme?

Whoever applies it in practice, today.

What’s your experience?

5 January 2026: Brain vs mind

“Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.” (Page 86, Big Book)

The brain is like a library of thoughts.

I am the library user.

The librarian, when something happens, presents me with thoughts, as a librarian might, books.

I am not obliged to check out the books.

I might check out the books, or I might not check out the books, or I might ask for different books.

The Steps do restock the library to an extent.

But the process is not completable.

The answer is not, therefore, to strip the library of all unhelpful books, though some of this helps.

The answer is to acquire and retain agency over the checking out of books.

What’s your experience?

4 January 2026: Suggested

“Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery” (Page 59, Big Book)

‘Suggest’, per Merriam-Webster:

“to offer for consideration or as a hypothesis”

In other words, they offer me the Twelve Steps.

When I’m offered a job, I need not take the job.

But if I accept the offer, the components of the job are not ‘offered’.

They are part of what I have agreed to.

The notion of ‘suggestion’ applies only until I say ‘yes’.

If I say ‘yes’, they are converted into undertakings, into commitments.

What’s your experience?

3 January 2026: Potential and performance

“Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.” (Page 59, Big Book)

Defects, shortcomings, are any occupation of the mind or body that is at odds with God’s will.

They exist as potential and performance.

God does not remove the potential, but he does remove the performance.

How?

He shows us how to occupy our mind and body in accordance with His Will.

This is His role.

Our role is then to do God’s will, in mind and body.

All the direction and power come from Him.

All the work comes from us.

In other words, we are the ones that have to do the stopping of every single defect, and the starting of whatever replaces it.

Condemnation with pity, patience, and tolerance.

Fear with faith.

Gloom with cheerfulness.

Indolence with action.

If a defect has not ‘gone’ it is only ever because I am continuing to perform the defect in mind and body.

God’s direction and strength are not wanting.

It is never a matter of God never having yet removed the defect for reasons unbeknownst to us, of God having withheld His will or strength. That would be mockery. He makes the direction and strength available, permanently.

It’s then all down to me. Will I ask or won’t I? Will I persist or won’t I?

And he only removes the performance: he leaves the potential right where it is, within arm’s reach.

What’s your experience?

2 January 2026: Do

One perhaps does not need ‘deep work’, ‘new experiences’, ‘great insights’, or special underlining of the Book.

One needs, perhaps, to simply do what it says.

Four answers for four problems that account for 99% of all one’s distress and trouble.

The answer to gloom:

“cheer up” (Page 44, Big Book)

The answer to fear:

“We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves.” (Page 68, Big Book)

The answer to attack thoughts:

“We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend.” (Page 67)

The answer to indolence:

“There is action and more action. ‘Faith without works is dead.’” (Page 88, Big Book)

What’s your experience?

1 January 2026: Anything

“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “God ought to be able to do anything.” (Page 58, Big Book)

Is there a limit to how many people one can sponsor?

In practice no, in the sense that, even without erecting artificial barriers or pulling up the drawbridge, the numbers seem to sort themselves out. God always shows me a way of saying ‘yes’—presuming I’m the right person for the job—in a way that ensures the sponsee gets sponsored properly plus my other obligations get fulfilled and I get to have a nice time in life generally. To the extent there is a genuine cap, God seems to take care of that in that people stop asking when I’m genuinely at capacity.

Sometimes they’re best off with someone with just one other sponsee, because they require several hours a day, or with a newer person, because the identification is better, and I redirect, but the facilitation and redirection takes place because of reasons specific to the sponsee, not my schedule, availability, wishes, convenience, or other obligations.

It is through the people brought to me that my other problems are solved, so to forego helping others because of my other problems is to actually prevent God from solving my problems.

Thus, I’m always willing to have the conversation.

God can do anything.

What’s your experience?