"No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I had met my match. Alcohol was my master."
Bill Wilson Source: c. 1939, AAWS, Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill's Story, p.8.
"...the frightful day came when I drank once more. The curve of my declining moral and bodily health fell off like a ski-jump. After a time I returned to the hospital. This was the finish, the curtain, it seemed to me. My weary and despairing wife was informed that it would all end with heart failure during delirium tremens, or I would develop a wet brain, perhaps within a year. She would soon have to give me over to the undertaker or the asylum."
Bill Wilson Source: c. 1939, AAWS, Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill's Story, p.7
"It relieved me somewhat to learn that in alcoholics the will is amazingly weakened when it comes to combating liquor, though it often remains strong in other respects. My incredible behavior in the face of a desperate desire to stop was explained. 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."
Bill Wilson Source: c. 1939, AAWS, Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill's Story, p. 7
"My writhing nerves were stilled at last. A morning paper told me the market had gone to hell again. Well, so had I. The market would recover, but I wouldn't. That was a hard thought. Should I kill myself? No--not now. Then a mental fog settled down. Gin would fix that. So two bottles, and--oblivion."
Bill Wilson Source: c. AAWS, Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill's Story, p.6
"My drinking assumed serious proportions, continuing all day and almost every night. The remonstrances of my friends terminated in a row and I became a lone wolf. There were many unhappy scenes in our sumptuous apartment. There had been no real infidelity, for loyalty to my wife, helped at times by extreme drunkenness. Kept me our of those scrapes.
Bill Wilson Source: c.1939, AAWS, Alcoholics Anonymous, "Bill's Story", p. 3
"God is either everything, or He is nothing." -Bill Wilson
every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us" No matter how unreasonable others may seem, I am responsible for not reacting negatively. Regardless of what is happening around me I will always have the prerogative, and the responsibility, of choosing what happens within me. I am the creator of my own reality. When I [review my day], I know that I must stop judging others. If I judge others, I am probably judging myself. Whoever is upsetting me most is my best teacher. I have much to learn from him or her, and in my hearts, I should thank that person."
-Bill Wilson Source: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 88 *also found in "Daily Reflections" for the day October 7
"Since open-mindedness and experimentation are supposed to be the indispensable attributes of our 'scientific' civilization, it seems strange that so many scientists are reluctant to try out personally the hypothesis that God came first and man afterward. They prefer to believe that man is the chance product of evolution; that God, the Creator, does not exist. I can only report that I have experimented with both concepts and that, in my case, the God concept has proved to be a better basis for living than the man-centered one. Nevertheless, I would be the first to defend your right to think as you will. I simply ask this question: in your own life, have you ever really tried to think and act as though there might be a God? Have you experimented?"
-Bill Wilson, Letter, 1950
"The temporary good is enemy to the permanent best."
-Bill Wilson
"Through failure, we learn a lesson in humility which is probably needed, painful though it is."
Bill Wilson Source: "As Bill Sees It"
"In God's economy, nothing is wasted. Through failure, we learn a lesson in humility which is probably needed, painful though it is."
-Bill Wilson
"Years ago I used to commiserate with all people who suffered. Now I commiserate only with those who suffer in ignorance, who do not understand the purpose and ultimate utility of pain."
-Bill Wilson
"AA is no success story in the ordinary sense of the word. It is a story of suffering transmuted, under grace, into spiritual progress."
-Bill Wilson
"In the wake of my spiritual experience there came a vision of a society of alcoholics, each identifying with and transmitting his experience to the next -- chain style. If each sufferer were to carry the news of the scientific hopelessness of alcoholism to each new prospect, he might be able to lay every newcomer wide open to a transforming spiritual experience. This concept proved to be the foundation of such success as Alcoholics Anonymous has since achieved."
-Bill Wilson
"But for every man who drinks others are involved - the wife who trembles in fear of the next debauch; the mother and father who see their son wasting away."
-Bill Wilson
"Because of our kinship in suffering, our channels of contact have always been charged with the language of the heart." -Bill Wilson
"I have become a pupil of the AA movement rather than the teacher."
-Bill Wilson
William Griffith Wilson 11-26-1895 to 1-24-1971 Bill W., co-founder of A. A.
