Crisis changes people and turns ordinary people into wiser or more responsible ones.

Wilma Mankiller  Cherokee

 

 

No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretched in all directions. I had met my match. Alcohol was my master.

Trembling, I stepped from the hospital a broken man. Fear sobered me for a bit. Then came the insidious insanity of that first drink, and on Armistice Day 1934, I was off again. Everybody became resigned to the certainty that I would have to be shut up somewhere, or would stumble along to a miserable end. How dark it is before the dawn! In reality that was the beginning of my last debauch. I was soon to be catapulted into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence. I was to know happiness, peace, and usefulness, in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes.

Big Book  pg. 8

 
 

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?

Big Book  pg. 53

 

Great Mystery make me strong that I may face my hardships.