By Bill W. January 1958

I think that many oldsters who have put our Alcoholics Anonymous “booze cure” to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA—the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God.

Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security, and perfect romance, urges quite appropriate to age seventeen, prove to be an impossible way of life when we are at age forty-seven and fifty-seven.

Since AA began, I've taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up emotionally and spiritually. My God, how painful it is to keep demanding the impossible, and how very painful to discover, finally, that all along I have had the cart before the horse. Then comes the final agony of seeing how awfully wrong I have been, but still finding myself unable to get off the emotional merry go round.

How to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result, and so into easy, happy and good living? Well, that´s not only the neurotic´s problem, it´s the problem of life itself for all of us who have got to the point of real willingness to hew to right principles in ... Continue reading »