Step 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.

All the steps are listed on pages 59 & 60, but this is where the instructions for this step can be found in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

AA, p. 24, paragraph 1

The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.


Page 30, paragraph 2, lines 1-4 paragraph 3, lines 1-3

We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed. We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control.


AA, p. 44, paragraph 1, lines 4-9

If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.


AA, p. 45, paragraph 1, lines 1-4 paragraph 2, lines 1-3

Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously. But where and how were we to find this Power? Well, thats exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem.


AA, p. 59, lines 2-3

But there is One who has all power, that One is God. May you find him now!


AA, p. 55, paragraph 2, lines 1-3

for deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there.


AA, p. 55, paragraph 3, lines 3-7

Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but He was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found.


AA, p. 53, paragraph 2, lines 1-5

When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn't. What was our choice to be?



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