Quotessence
Home / Topics / Alcoholics Anonymous Quotes

Alcoholics Anonymous Quotes

Browse 140 quotes about Alcoholics Anonymous.

Related topics

Aa MeetingAa RecoverySlogans12 Step RecoveryRecovery

Alcoholics Anonymous Quotes

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

MenHumorActionQuotesGirlActorsWomenPartyActingBoysHumourDrinkQuoteDrinkingAddictionAlcoholBarsDrunkManBeerWomanMaturitySatireGirlsThought ProvokingMatureAphorismQuotationsAddictAlcoholicsActAphorismsMake You ThinkCocktailsImmatureHangoverSatiricalDrinkersImmaturityAlcoholics AnonymousActorBoyQuotationProvoke ThoughtMade Me ThinkAaBarAlcoholicPartiesCocktailActsDrunkenOrgyUnderage DrinkingUnderageDrinkerBeersOrgies
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Create image

“The joy of being a REAL alcoholic, is that you just want booze, and nothing else. You've lost faith in God, and people (except Mom maybe), and government, and you know deep in your heart that all you really want to do is drink on the beach somewhere, all day long, forever. even after all the stupid steps. All 12 of them, thoroughly, you know you just want a goddamn beer. Maybe they'll put THAT in the next edition big book.”

HonestyBeerAlcoholismAlcoholics Anonymous
Author:Dmitry Dyatlov
Create image

“Like alcohol and poverty, a heartbreak has the power to make a man do something he wouldn’t normally do and to make a woman do someone she wouldn’t normally do.”

HumorFunnyPainHappinessMotivationSufferingSexWealthPoorMoneyPovertyRichSadnessHumourRegretSorrowSadDepressionWineSorryQuote Of The DayAlcoholHappyUnhappyBeerSatireUnhappinessWealthyAphorismAgonyRepentRemorseAlcoholismLiquorAphorismsDepressedBoozeAlcoholics AnonymousSpiritsQuoteofthedayAlcoholicSexual IntercourseWine TastingDepressIntoxicantIntoxicants
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Create image

“AA purports to be open to anyone, as it is stated in Tradition Tree, "The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking," but it isn't open to everyone. It's open only to those who are willing to publicly declare themselves to be alcoholics or addicts and who are willing to give up their inherent right of independence by declaring themselves powerless over addictive drugs and alcohol, as stated in Step One, "We admitted we are powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable.”

EmpowermentAlcoholAlcoholismDrug AddictionAlcoholics AnonymousDrug AbuseAaAlcoholicAlcohol AbusePassages Malibu12 StepPassages VenturaAddiction CureAlcoholism Addiction RecoveryNon 12 StepPassages Rehab12 Step ProgramsNon 12 Step Programs
Book:The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery
Create image

“Millions of deaths would not have happened if it weren’t for the consumption of alcohol. The same can be said about millions of births.”

ChildrenKidsDeathMotherFatherSexParentMistakeFamilyWineDrinkingAccidentsAlcoholDrivingMistakesDrunkParentsBeerAbortionParenthoodChildDeadInfantAlcoholismReproductionDrinking AlcoholCondomToddlerAlcoholics AnonymousAccidentProcreationCar AccidentKidContraceptivesAlcohol AddictionAbortion RightsAlcoholicAlcohol AbuseWine QuotesCondomsToddlersDrinking And DrivingInfantsAbortion QuotesWine HumorBeer QuotesAbortContraceptiveCar AccidentsBeersAbortionists
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Create image

“Stopping drinking and drugging didn't suddenly solve my problems - not even close - but it did clear a little spot on the filthy windscreen of my life to peer through, just enough to begin to assess the damage and ponder the kind of person I might one day become.”

HopeHonestyTransformationMental HealthSobrietyAlcoholics AnonymousSelf HealingAddiction RecoveryNarcotics AnonymousRecovery Journey
Book:Better than Happiness: The True Antidote to Discontent
Create image

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

HelpingRealityReligionChangeDrugDepressionMurderSuicideAddictionAlcoholWeedHelpKillersDrugsAddictSuicidalEscapeAlcoholismKillEscapismDepressedDrug AddictRehabCannabisRehabilitationAlcoholics AnonymousHelpersAaKilledAlcoholicAddictsHelperDepressHelpedEscapesDrug AddictsSelf MurderMind AlteringMurderingRehabilitation CentersAlcohol FreeRehabilitation CenterRehabilitation CentreRehabilitation CentresRehabilitationsRehabsTake One S Own LifeTook One S Own Life
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Create image

“...there is a saying used in twelve-step programs and in most treatment centers that "Relapse is part of recovery." It's another dangerous slogan that is based on a myth, and it only gives people permission to relapse because that think that when they do, they are on the road to recovery.”

ReadingBooksRecoveryAlcoholismAddiction And RecoveryAlcoholics AnonymousDrug AbuseRelapseAlcohol AbuseChris PrentissPassages MalibuAddiction TreatmentAddiction CureAddiction Treatment Center
Book:The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery
Create image

“In the one-treatment-fits-all approach, clients sit in group meetings all day and all evening and listen to each other stories. At the end of the first week, everyone in the room knows everyone's story. That goes on for three more weeks, and then most people go home with the same problems they brought with them when they arrived.”

Alcoholics AnonymousAaSubstance AbuseChris PrentissAddiction Treatment
Book:The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery
Create image

“Times change and discoveries are made that render earlier techniques and approaches less effective. Change is inevitable. To remain rigid when the whole world is changing and advancing is to invite misfortune. The AA program in particular is challenged with an opportunity of unprecedented magnitude.”

WritingReadingOpportunityChangeAddictionChallengeAlcoholics AnonymousAaChris PrentissAddiction TreatmentAddiction Cure
Book:The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery
Create image

“AA was created in 1935; GA was started in 1957. I think I'm safe in asserting that we know orders of magnitude more about addiction now than we did back in the thirties and fifties. The AA methods, the dogmatic culture, and the written materials (especially true of GA) are stuck in a time before most of today's addicts were even born.”

AddictionGamblingGamblerGambling AddictGambling AddictionProblem GamblingGamblers AnonymousAlcoholics AnonymousSlot MachinesCasino
Book:Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
Create image

“Alcohol is one of the quickest vehicles with which we escape shyness, our problems, and self-consciousness, for a few hours.”

ProblemPainSufferingAlcoholNervousShyProblemsRetiringVehicleEmbarrassedInsecureEscapeAlcoholismReservedShynessSelf ConsciousnessRepressedOpiumAlcoholics AnonymousIntrovertedAlcohol AddictionAlcoholicAlcohol AbuseBashfulTimidVehiclesWithdrawnDiffidentEvadeReticentSheepishSelf EffacingMousyInhibitedFaroucheOpium Of The PeopleTimorousUnconfident
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Create image

“One bedrock tenet of the Oxford Group, however, would influence AA for years to come: an absolute opposition to medical or psychological explanations for human failings and thus a complete prohibition on professional treatment of any kind.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“When Bill Wilson sat down to write Alcoholics Anonymous, he first prayed for guidance. The Twelve Steps themselves reportedly came to him in a single inspiration. (He identified the number twelve with the Twelve Apostles, and felt that this was a fitting number.)”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“So devoted were AA’s early members to burnishing the reputation of their fledgling organization, in fact, that when when one member, Morgan R., secured an interview on a widely popular radio show, members kept him locked in a hotel room “for several days under 24 hour watch” out of fear that he would drink before the show. When the interview went off successfully, another early backer, Hank P., mailed twenty thousand postcards to doctors, urging them to purchase Alcoholics Anonymous.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“Silkworth, a supporter of AA from its inception, was quoted [as saying], "We all know that the alcoholic has an urge to share his troubles. . . . But the psychoanalyst, being of human clay, is not often a big enough man for that job. The patient simply cannot generate enough confidence in him. But the patient can have enough confidence in God—once he has gone through the mystical experience of recognizing God. And upon that principle the Alcoholic Foundation rests. The medical profession, in general, accepts the principle as sound.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“[Jack Alexander] underscor[ed] what remains a widely held belief among many AA members: that only an alcoholic can help another alcoholic: “A bridge of confidence is thereby erected, spanning a gap, which has baffled the physician, the minister, the priest, or the hapless relatives. . . . Only an alcoholic can squat on another alcoholic’s chest for hours with the proper combination of discipline and sympathy.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“When the Big Book was first published in 1939, the American Medical Association, bewildered by its tone and inflated claims, called the work “a curious combination of organizing propaganda and religious exhortation. . . . [T]he one valid thing in the book is the recognition of the seriousness of addiction to alcohol. Other than this, the book has no scientific merit or interest.” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases went even further in 1940, calling AA a “regressive mass psychological method” and a “religious fervor,” writing: “The big, big book, i.e. big in words, is a rambling sort of camp-meeting confession of experiences, told in the form of biographies of various alcoholics who had been to a certain institution and have provisionally recovered, chiefly under the influence of the ‘big brothers of the spirit.’ Of the inner meaning of alcoholism there is hardly a word. It is all surface material.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“Throughout AA’s history, its members have often embraced any literature that references disease, whether degenerative, genetic, or biochemical. AA favors the term disease because it fits with the description of alcoholism as a disease in its own literature. It also supports the foundational notion that an addict’s behavior is uncontrollable (“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol”). Ultimately the mechanism of the disease (and whether it is strictly logical to embrace it, given AA’s own views) has been less important than the word itself.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“Harry Tiebout, [Bill] Wilson’s personal therapist [assured] the collected members that AA was “not just a miracle but a way of life which is filled with eternal value.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“It wasn’t long before the court systems began to mandate AA attendance for drug and alcohol offenders. AA won a landmark decision in 1966 when two decisions from a federal appeals court upheld the disease concept of alcoholism and the court’s use of it, despite the fact that there was scant precedent for a US court of law to assign itself the power of medical diagnosis. Although later decisions would rule court-mandated 12-step attendance unconstitutional, judges still refer people to AA as part of sentencing or as a condition of probation. Dr. Arthur Horvath, a past president of the Division on Addictions of the American Psychological Association, summarizes the current legal status of this practice: "If you have been convicted of an offense related to addiction, it is common to be ordered to attend support groups, treatment, or both. It has also been common that you would be ordered, not just to a support group, but to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) specifically, or to another 12-step based group. Based on recent court decisions, if you have been ordered to attend a 12-step group or 12-step based treatment by the government (the order could be coming from a court, prison officer, probation or parole officer, licensing board or licensing board diversion program, or anyone authorized to act on behalf of the government), you have the right not to attend them. However, you can still be required to attend some form of support group, and some type of treatment. These court decisions are based on the finding that AA is religious enough that being required to attend it would be similar to requiring someone to attend church. Five US Circuit Courts of Appeal (the 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 8th, and 9th) have made similar rulings. . . . The 2nd Circuit Court decision states that AA “placed a heavy emphasis on spirituality and prayer, in both conception and in practice,” that participants were told to “pray to God,” and that meetings began and adjourned with “group prayer.” The court therefore had “no doubt” that AA meetings were “intensely religious events.” Although some have suggested that AA is spiritual but not religious, the court found AA to be religious.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“A recent paper looking at state-sponsored physician health groups (for doctors who have problems with addiction) found that “[r]egardless of setting or duration, essentially all treatment provided to these physicians (95%) was 12-step oriented.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“Examining this history, it is clear that AA has been extraordinarily effective at influencing public opinion and policy toward a favorable view of its ideas. What is missing from this account is notable as well: these strides were achieved without any triggering event, such as a well-designed study, that might support the organization’s claims of efficacy. Most of AA’s claims were simply grandfathered in, collecting legitimacy in a sort of echo chamber of reciprocal mentions that often featured the same handful of names.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“Human research tends to cleave into two major “kingdoms”: observational studies and controlled studies. Observational studies observe and compare groups of people. This research is conducted passively; in other words, without interventions or controls. Any significant differences that emerge between the populations studied—say, finding that people who drink more diet soda tend to have a higher incidence of depression than people who don’t—can’t prove anything but may be used to generate hypotheses about what is causing this difference. Yet people still assume the obvious when confronted with a correlation of this sort. In the diet soda study, which was actually run by the National Institute of Health and widely reported, many people jumped to the conclusion that depression must be caused by something in the soda. But a moment of creative consideration turns up several other plausible possibilities. What if the people who drink diet soda are simply more judgmental about their body appearance and generally more prone to self-criticism? What if, since drinking more diet soda correlates with a history of being overweight, the depression arises physiologically from the effects of obesity, or as a result of the cluster of health problems that go along with it, such as obstructive sleep apnea and diabetes? What if people who are depressed simply crave sweet things, as evidence suggests? And what of the fact that diet soda drinkers tend to cluster more in urban areas: is there something about this environment that promotes depression? Strong correlation is tantalizing, a just-so homily that satisfies our need for simple explanations. It feels definitive and self-apparent, especially given the huge number of subjects typically involved in such studies. The NIH study that produced the diet soda finding, for instance, had 260,000 subjects. Headlines are driven and public health advice administered whenever a major observational study unearths a provocative new correlation. But it turns out that the record of observational studies like these for generating accurate medical advice is, in a word, abysmal.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“Why do purely observational studies fail so often despite finding such clear associations? The diet soda example tells the tale. All of those alternative theories I mentioned can be boiled down to a single, devastating possibility: what if diet soda drinkers are just fundamentally different from regular soda drinkers, in any of the ways I mentioned, and this difference colors everything about the way they live and behave? Scientists call this the selection effect, or selection bias. When human beings are free to behave as they always have—free to willfully choose their behavior—there is no meaningful way to find a control group of comparable subjects.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that people who do things faithfully and regularly for their own well-being, such as taking a multivitamin, exercising daily, or eating a certain diet, are, in fact, fundamentally different from people who don’t. People who adhere to, or comply with, medical advice are more likely to take care of themselves in numerous other ways as well: "Quite simply, people who comply with their doctors’ orders when given a prescription are different and healthier than people who don’t. This difference may be ultimately unquantifiable.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“The compliance effect can lead researchers and reporters who study interventions to falsely credit a pill or diet with improving our health—“Look, people who take fish oil pills live longer than the rest of us!”—when the truth may be far more subtle: the kind of people who take supplements in a disciplined way are already healthier to begin with, with a better prognosis for every disease.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“The compliance effect has led to some famously strange epidemiological results. One long-term study showed that people who took a placebo were half as likely to die as those who did not. Was the placebo protecting them in some way the researchers had failed to anticipate? Hardly. It turned out that simply taking the placebo regularly was a signpost for a wholly different lifestyle. The pill takers were simply more actively engaged in their health across the board.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“A poor understanding of these issues—the need for randomization, the difference between correlation and causation, and the power of the compliance effect—has colored much of the research that has been conducted to date about the effectiveness of 12-step membership and attendance.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“Deborah Dawson of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Division of Biometry and Epidemiology, once lamented the lack of credible data in the study of addiction treatment: “Few, if any, studies have assessed the impact of different types of treatment on both the probability and rapidity of recovery, i.e. on person-years of dependence averted.”5 Her principal complaint: the lack of controls in most AA studies.”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image

“Analyzing the available data about AA requires that we begin with a clear definition of success. Success, after all, can mean any number of things. Should one measure it in days of sobriety? Weeks without a binge episode? What if people who are making substantive progress slip and have one drink during an otherwise successful period of time: Should they “go back to zero,” as is the practice in many AA chapters? What if they stop drinking but acquire a gambling problem instead?”

AddictionRecoverySobrietyRehabGamblers AnonymousGam AnonAlcoholics Anonymous12 Step ProgramAaAl Anon
Book:The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
Create image