Men who cry for money and shelter as a condition of their sobriety are on the wrong track. Yet we sometimes do provide a new prospect with these very things -- when it becomes clear that he is willing to place his recovery first.
It is not whether we shall give that is the question, but when and how to give. Whenever we put our work on a material plane, the alcoholic commences to rely upon alms rather than upon a Higher Power and the A.A. group. He continues to insist that he cannot master alcohol until his material needs are cared for.
Nonsense! Some of us have taken very hard knocks to learn this truth: that, job or no job, wife or no wife, we simply do not stop drinking so long as we place material dependence upon other people ahead of dependence on God.
Once upon a time, in between meetings at a hall, there was a young man who insisted that he was going to drink if the ladies of AA didn't fulfill his sexual needs. Now.
