New: Random Slogan Generator!
These slogans were compiled from many sources and edited by a member of Sexual Compulsives Anonymous (SCA) with the needs and concerns of that particular program in mind. They are not conference-approved literature in any 12-step program. Please note also that the categories are merely one addict's fairly arbitrary way of getting things organized, and that many of the slogans could fit just as well into some other category than where they ended up.
Take what you can use, leave the rest, and pass it on.
Acceptance
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Action
Anonymity
Big Book
Bottom
Change
Choice
Coming In
Disease
Fear and Anxiety
Forgiveness
Gratitude
Honesty
Humility, Ego and Self-Pity
Just for Today
Love and Relationships
Meetings
Open Mind
Paradoxes
Patience
Prayer and Meditation
Program, Recovery and Fellowship
Resentment and Negativity
Service
Sharing
Slogans
Sober Living, Sober Thinking
Spirituality
Sponsorship
Staying Sober
Steps and Traditions
Suffering
Alcohol- and Drug-Specific
Acceptance
1. Acceptance is knowing the past will never get better.
2. Anything an addict lets go of has claw marks all over it.
3. Attitude in life is everything!
4. Do not regret growing old: it is a privilege denied many.
5. Don't try to teach a pig to sing: first, pigs can't sing, and second, it annoys the pig.
6. Everything is as it should be.
7. Everything is okay in the end. If it's not okay, then it's not the end.
8. Failure isn't fatal, success isn't permanent.
9. Happiness is an inside job.
10. Happiness isn't getting everything you want, it's wanting what you've already got.
11. I have everything I need to get everything I want.
12. I used to complain that rose bushes had thorns. Now I rejoice that thorn bushes have roses.
13. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
14. If you are not happy with what you have, what makes you think you would be happy with more?
15. It came to pass, it didn't come to stay.
16. It isn't the load that weighs us down, it's the way we carry it.
17. It's okay to look back, just don't stare.
18. Just accept, don't expect.
19. Just because you have issues, don't expect the world to walk around on eggshells.
20. Knowing why is the booby prize of life.
21. Life is 10% what you make it and 90% how you take it.
22. Life's not fair.
23. Live and let live.
24. My expectations are inversely proportional to my serenity.
25. Our very first problem is to accept our present circumstances as they are, ourselves as we are, and the people about us as they are.
26. Plan plans, not results.
27. Plan, but don't plan the outcome.
28. Progress not perfection.
29. Regrets: Here's to our used-to-be's and might-have-beens; may they rest in peace.
30. Sanity is what we get when we quit hoping for a better past.
31. Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amid the storm.
32. Serenity is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it.
33. Success is not getting what you want, it's knowing what you don't need.
34. The only thing I can do to help my loved one is to let him help himself.
35. The road to disappointment is paved with expectations.
36. This isn't happening to you, it's happening for you.
37. Those who matter don't mind, those who mind don't matter.
38. When I struggle, I sink. When I let go, I float.
39. When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.
40. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
41. You can either let go or be dragged.
42. You can wake up and say "Good morning, God" or "Good God, it's morning!"
43. You can't un-ring a bell.
44. You will be rich when you know you have enough.
45. Your attitude almost always determines your altitude in life.
46. It's never too late to be what you might have been.
Acronyms and Abbreviations
47. ABC: Acceptance, Belief, Change.
48. ACTION: Any Change To Improve Our Natures.
49. ASAP: Always Say A Prayer.
50. ASK: Ass-Saving Kit.
51. BIG BOOK: Believing In God Beats Our Old Knowledge.
52. DENIAL: Don't Even kNow I Am Lying.
53. DETACH: Don't Even Try And Change Him/Her.
54. GOD: Good Orderly Direction.
55. HALT: Don't get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired.
56. HOPE: Hang On, Peace Exists.
57. HOW: Honesty, Open-mindedness and Willingness.
58. KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid!
59. MGM: Meet God Mornings.
60. NOW: No Other Way.
61. RELAPSE: Reliving Every Low And Pitiful Scene Exactly.
62. Seven T's: Take Time To Think The Thing Through.
63. Three A's: Affection, Attention, Appreciation.
64. Three A's: Awareness, Acceptance, Action.
65. Three C's: I didn't Cause the acting out, I can't Control it, and I can't Cure it.
66. Three P's: Perfectionism leads to Procrastination leads to Paralysis.
67. YET: You're Eligible Too.
Action
68. A ship that stays in the dock is safe, but that's not what ships are for.
69. Action alleviates anxiety.
70. Before you say "I can't," say "I'll try."
71. Do it sober.
72. Do the next right thing.
73. Easy does it—but do it.
74. Estimable acts build self-esteem.
75. Faith without works is dead.
76. Go for it!
77. If faith without works is dead; then willingness without action is fantasy.
78. If it's to be, it's up to me.
79. If you want what you never had, you have to do what you've never done.
80. It's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.
81. Make it happen.
82. Move a muscle, change a thought.
83. Pray as if everything depends on God, work as if everything depends on ourselves.
84. Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
85. Take an action, then let go of the results.
86. There is a time to make things happen and a time to let things happen.
87. To feel good, do good.
88. Trying is what got me drunk (acting out); doing is what keeps me sober.
89. We are not failing as long as we are trying.
90. We're responsible for the effort, not the outcome.
91. When you don't know what to do, don't do anything.
92. You have to be willing to do the work.
Anonymity
93. Anonymity is so important, it's half of our name.
94. Gossip hurts—and sometimes kills.
95. Respect the anonymity of others.
96. What you hear here and see here, stays here.
Big Book
97. Chapter Five is called "How It Works," not "Why Me?"
98. If you want to hide something from an addict, put it in the Big Book.
99. It's in the Book.
100. Prevent truth decay: read your Big Book.
101. Read your Big Book every day, but try reading only the black parts.
102. Show me an addict whose Big Book is falling apart, and I'll show you an addict who isn't.
103. The Big Book is one of those rare books that gets smarter every time I read it.
104. Think Big!
105. When all else fails, the directions are in the Big Book.
106. You may be the only copy of the Big Book some people ever see.
107. Your Big Book is your sponsor too.
Bottom
108. Bottom: When things get worse faster than you can lower your standards.
109. Hitting bottom: The disease gets bigger and bigger and my life gets smaller and smaller.
110. I lost everything I had, but I found myself.
111. I woke up one morning and realized that I had a great future behind me.
112. My bottom is where I put my shovel down.
113. Sick and tired of being sick and tired.
114. The longer I'm in the program, the lower my bottom seems to get.
115. We came to these rooms not because we acted out a lot, but because we acted out too much.
116. You'll never stop acting out as long as you're acting out.
117. Your bottom just may be six feet under.
Change
118. All you have to do to change your life is change your mind.
119. Change is a process, not an event.
120. Change is inevitable, growth is optional.
121. Change the things I can.
122. Courage to change.
123. How many addicts does it take to change a light bulb? Change? What do you mean, change?
124. I come to meetings to get change for a dollar (or two).
125. If I don't change, my sobriety date will.
126. If nothing changes, nothing changes.
127. If you don't change, you'll be begging for it.
128. If you fail to change the person you were when you came in, that person will take you out.
129. If you want to keep feeling how you're feeling, then keep doing what you're doing.
130. Learn to change, change to learn.
131. Make no major changes in the first year.
132. Real change starts from within and works its way outward.
133. There are only two things an addict doesn't like: the way things are, and change.
134. We don't pray to change things, we pray to change ourselves.
135. We must become the change we want to see.
Choice
136. Be part of the solution, not the problem.
137. Decisions aren't forever.
138. Do I have peace of mind? Higher Power, the plan is up to You; the decision is up to me.
139. Have a good day—unless, of course, you've made other plans.
140. I am powerless but not helpless.
141. If you come into a meeting looking for recovery, you will find exactly that. If you come looking for a reason to continue acting out, you'll eventually find that, too.
142. Today, we have a choice.
143. What's important is not why you're an addict, but what you're going to do about it.
144. Why settle for relief when what you really want is freedom?
145. Willingness is the key.
146. Would you rather be right, or happy?
Coming In
147. Before I came in, I was dead, but I didn't know enough to lie down.
148. Bring your body, and your mind will follow.
149. Directions to the program: just go straight to hell and make a U-turn.
150. I may only have one recovery in me.
151. No one comes in on a good day.
152. We didn't fly into recovery on the wings of victory.
153. When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
154. You can only be a newcomer one time.
Disease
155. Addiction is a family disease.
156. Addiction is a pathological relationship to a mood-altering event, experience or thing that has life-damaging consequences.
157. Addiction is a physical compulsion coupled with a mental obsession.
158. Addiction is an equal opportunity destroyer.
159. Addiction is the only disease that tells you you're all right.
160. Addicts are in a class by themselves. Everyone else has graduated.
161. Addicts are life-long loners who cannot stand to be alone.
162. Addicts aren't afraid to live, they're afraid to die.
163. Addicts burn their bridges in front of them.
164. Addicts only have trouble with three things: success, failure and the obvious.
165. An addict alone is slumming.
166. An addict is a person with two feet firmly planted in mid-air.
167. An addict is someone who wants to be held while isolating.
168. God, please protect me from what I want.
169. Guilt of yesterday, fear of tomorrow, shame of today.
170. I acted out too much, too often, too long.
171. I didn't know how sick I was until I started getting better.
172. If you do what you always did, you'll get what you always got.
173. If you have to control your acting out, it must be out of control.
174. Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
175. It's not how or how much you acted out, it's what it did to you.
176. Man's extremity is God's opportunity.
177. Normal people change their behavior to meet their goals. Addicts change their goals to meet their behavior.
178. One is too many, and a thousand not enough.
179. Only an addict would believe that the solution to loneliness is isolation.
180. Ours is a self-diagnosed disease.
181. People who are not addicts don't lie awake at 4 a.m. wondering if they're addicts.
182. Remember that addiction is incurable, progressive and fatal.
183. The definition of codependency is: you're drowning and somebody else's life flashes in front of your eyes.
184. The road to sobriety is a simple journey for confused people with a complicated disease.
185. The three stages of acting out: impulsive, compulsive, repulsive.
186. The victims of our disease are those around us.
187. There is no chemical solution to a spiritual problem.
188. Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves trying to get it.
189. We addicts don't all have unhappy childhoods, but we all have very long ones.
190. We can be positive that our acting out was negative.
191. What we thought was the solution became the problem.
192. When you are in a meeting, your disease is outside doing push-ups.
193. When you dance with a gorilla, it's the gorilla who decides when to stop.
194. Your disease progresses even when you are not acting out.
Fear and Anxiety
195. Faith conquers fear.
196. FEAR doesn't mean "forget everything and run," it means "face everything and recover."
197. Fear has no power unless I give it power.
198. Fear is not a shortcoming, it's an emotion. Our reaction to it can be the shortcoming.
199. Fear is the absence of faith.
200. Fear is the darkroom where negatives are developed.
201. Fear is the mother of all character defects.
202. FEAR: Forgetting Everything's All Right.
203. FEAR: Frustration, Ego, Anxiety, Resentment.
204. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.
205. Live each day with a little less fear and a little more faith.
206. My arrogance is the measure of my fear.
207. Procrastination is fear in five syllables.
208. Sorrow is looking back, worry is looking around.
209. The worst things I ever lived through never happened.
210. Worry is interest paid on trouble before it's due.
211. Worry is like a rocking horse: it keeps you moving but never gets you anywhere.
212. Fear stands for frustration.
Forgiveness
213. Forgiveness of others is a gift to yourself.
214. Going to any lengths means forgiving the person who has injured you the most.
215. The flipside of forgiveness is resentment.
216. The number one way to relieve pain is to forgive.
217. Time wasted in getting even can never be used in getting ahead.
218. To be forgiven, we must forgive.
Gratitude
219. But for the grace of God...
220. Can't sleep? Try counting your blessings.
221. Count your blessings.
222. Grateful addicts don't act out, and active addicts aren't grateful.
223. I am grateful for this minute. My eternity may be in it.
224. I complained I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet.
225. If your heart is full of gratitude, there is no room for resentment.
226. Practice an attitude of gratitude.
227. Remember to thank yourself.
228. Try to replace guilt with gratitude.
229. You can't change the wind, but you can adjust the sails.
230. Three T's of gratitude to repay the program for our sobriety: our time, talent and treasure
Honesty
231. Harmful truth is better than a useful lie.
232. I cannot mend if I bend the truth.
233. If you pray for honesty, the chances of your lying go way up.
234. If you want to be able to trust others, try becoming more trustworthy yourself.
235. The liar's punishment is not that he is not believed, but that he can believe no one else.
236. The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.
237. We are only as sick as our secrets.
Humility, Ego and Self-Pity
238. An addict can be in the gutter, yet still look down on people.
239. An addict's self-definition: A piece of crap the universe revolves around.
240. At the end of the game, the queen and the pawn go into the same box.
241. Before you become too proud to be a member of this fellowship, make sure this fellowship is proud to have you as a member.
242. Being a part of something is more important than being the center of attention.
243. Being humble means being teachable.
244. Compare and despair.
245. Confidence is unattainable without some humility.
246. Don't compare your insides to other people's outsides.
247. Don't judge yourself by the way you feel.
248. Don't speak unless you can improve on silence.
249. Don't take yourself too damn seriously! (Rule #62)
250. Ego is our separation from God and others.
251. EGO: Edge God out.
252. Get humble, or be made humble.
253. Get off the cross, we need the wood.
254. Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving.
255. Halos can turn into nooses.
256. Humility denied usually becomes humiliation.
257. Humility is humanity.
258. Humility is not humiliation.
259. Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.
260. Humility is our acceptance of ourselves.
261. Humility is that virtue which reduces a man to the proper size without degrading him, thereby increasing him in stature without inflating him.
262. Humility is the behavior of knowing that I have what I don't deserve. Everything I have is a gift from God.
263. Humility is the soil in which all other virtues grow.
264. Humility is when I stop fighting reality.
265. I cannot fix anyone but me, and that's a full-time job.
266. I don't want my ego to be the first thing people see when I walk onto a room.
267. I may not be much, but I'm all I think about.
268. I want what I want when I want it.
269. I'm not what I should be, I'm not what I want to be, I'm not what I will be, but thank God I'm not what I used to be!
270. If I'm okay with me, I don't have to make you wrong.
271. If it weren't for a small deficit in my humility, I'd be perfect.
272. If you're spinning your wheels, try getting out of the driver's seat.
273. In sobriety, you are given permission to be ordinary.
274. It doesn't matter so much who is right, but what is right.
275. It's a pity we can't forget our troubles the same way we forget our blessings.
276. It's not how well you think of yourself or how badly you think of yourself; it's how often you think of yourself.
277. Just be on the side of the angels; it doesn't matter what rank you are.
278. Just when you think you have humility, you've lost it.
279. My net worth is not my self-worth.
280. One difference between me and God is that God doesn't wake up in the morning thinking He's me.
281. Poor Me and The Great I-Am are identical twins: they're both looking for all the attention they can get.
282. Pride is when I keep fighting reality.
283. Principles before personalities.
284. Respect is reserved for the respectable.
285. Self-will run riot.
286. Serenity is peace of mind, humility is peace of heart.
287. Some people are so successful in the program that they turn out to be almost as good as they used to think they were when they were acting out.
288. Take care of your character and your reputation will take care of itself.
289. Terminal uniqueness!
290. The bigger my head, the easier the target.
291. The difference between self-esteem and ego is that self-esteem doesn't need an audience.
292. The first step in overcoming mistakes is to admit them.
293. The happiest moments in my life are those when I'm not thinking about myself.
294. The highest I can go in this program is sober.
295. The lesson I must learn is simply that my control is limited to my own behavior and my own attitudes.
296. The program works for people who believe in God. The program works for people who don't believe in God. The program never works for people who believe they are God.
297. The smartest thing a recovering addict can say is, "Help me."
298. There is nothing noble about being superior to others.
299. To belittle is to be little.
300. Too much Vitamin "I" was my problem.
301. Try not to make yourself appear taller by standing on other people's heads.
302. Unless one attains some degree of humility, one is condemned to act out again.
303. We are all important, but not for the reasons we think.
304. We are not God's gift to the program; the program is God's gift to us.
305. We are not saints.
306. We can disagree without being disagreeable, we can argue without being difficult.
307. We had to quit playing God.
308. When you feel it's your job to humble others, you may in for a stumble, fumble, or crumble.
309. When you're taking someone else's inventory, who's taking yours?
310. When your head begins to swell, your mind stops growing.
311. Willingness over willpower.
312. Winners don't whine and whiners don't win.
313. You can't get indigestion from swallowing your pride.
314. You can't save your face and your ass at the same time.
315. Your conscience is the still small voice that can make you feel still smaller.
316. Measure yourself by your best moments, not your worst.
Just for Today
317. Be here now.
318. Don't forget to be where you are.
319. Don't postpone living!
320. Don't worry about tomorrow—God is already there.
321. Every day is a gift—that's why we call it "the present."
322. Every recovery began with one sober hour.
323. First things first.
324. If you aren't happy today, what are you waiting for?
325. If you only quit one day at a time, every day that you don't act out will be an accomplishment. If you quit forever, you won't have accomplished anything until you're dead.
326. It is not the experience of today that drives people mad, but the bitterness of what happened yesterday and the dread of what tomorrow may bring.
327. It's a cinch by the inch; it's hard by the yard.
328. Just for today.
329. Life is only temporary, relax and enjoy it!
330. Live each day the best that you can.
331. Live in the moment.
332. Live in the now.
333. Never look back unless you intend to go that way.
334. New day, new way.
335. No matter what your past, you have a spotless future.
336. No single second is past enduring.
337. One day at time.
338. Remember yesterday, dream of tomorrow, but live for today.
339. Some worry about the wreckage of the past, some dwell in the wreckage of the future.
340. Start the day over.
341. Take care of the days and the years will come by themselves.
342. The scenery will change.
343. There are two days in every week over which we have no control: yesterday and tomorrow. Today is the only day we can change.
344. There is no such thing as past or future, only memory and hope.
345. This too shall pass.
346. Today begins again.
347. Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
348. Today, my one day.
349. Tomorrow is a promissory note, yesterday is a canceled check.
350. Use the 24-hour plan.
351. We do this one day at a time in a row.
352. Worry about tomorrow saps today of its strength.
353. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery.
354. You cannot get ahead until you learn to be here.
Love and Relationships
355. Active addicts don't have relationships, they take hostages.
356. For true intimacy to take place, I must be a whole person forming a partnership, not a broken person seeking another to be whole.
357. Having a relationship in recovery is like putting Miracle Gro on your character defects.
358. If love has conditions attached, it's not love, it's barter.
359. If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be fulfilled.
360. If you meet anger with love, you render yourself invulnerable to attack.
361. If you want to find out what your character defects are, fall in love.
362. Intimacy: Into-me-I-see.
363. It's not a question of finding the right person, but becoming the right person.
364. Let us love you until you learn to love yourself.
365. Love is an action.
366. Love is less a feeling than a thousand tiny acts of kindness.
367. Love is showing others that you respect them just as much as you respect yourself.
368. Love isn't love until you give it away.
369. Romantic relationships in the first year: Two dead batteries can't start a car.
370. To attract the right person, become the right person.
371. To open oneself up to love is to open oneself up to loss.
372. We are hardest to love when we need love most.
Meetings
373. A job is something that happens to you on the way to a meeting.
374. A meeting is where losers get together to talk about their winnings.
375. A meeting lasts from preamble to prayer.
376. After each meeting, clean up the wreckage of the present.
377. All you need to start your own meeting is a resentment and a coffee pot.
378. Bring the body and the mind will follow.
379. Fellowship is the meeting after the meeting.
380. Get smart feet: go to meetings.
381. Go to enough meetings and you still may not stop acting out; your acting out, however, will be ruined.
382. I go to meetings to hear voices other than my own.
383. I keep coming back so I can keep coming back.
384. I've got nothing better to do, so maybe I'll go to a meeting.
385. If all you do is go to meetings and sit on your ass, all you're going to get is a sore ass.
386. If I don't go to meetings, everything is important.
387. If you only need one meeting a week, you may have to go to five of them in that time to find out which one it is.
388. If you think you don't need a meeting, chances are, you do.
389. If you're feeling down, you need a meeting. If you're feeling up, the meeting needs you!
390. If you're not getting mad at meetings, you're not going to enough of them.
391. If you're thinking about going to a meeting, go to the meeting and then think about it.
392. If you're too busy for meetings, you're too busy.
393. If your ass falls off, pick it up, put it in a paper bag and carry it to a meeting.
394. It takes the good and the bad meetings to make this fellowship work.
395. It's the second meeting that's the most important one.
396. Join the 20/20 club: Come 20 minutes before the meeting, stay 20 minutes after.
397. Keep coming back!
398. Meeting makers make it.
399. Meetings are not enough.
400. Meetings take the bastard out of me.
401. Meetings, meetings, meetings.
402. Ninety meetings in ninety days (90/90).
403. People who don't go to meetings don't find out what happens to people who don't go to meetings.
404. Recovery is like a raffle: you must be present to win.
405. Seven days without a meeting makes one weak.
406. Show up to grow up.
407. Suit up, show up, shut up, grow up!
408. The opposite of listening is waiting to talk.
409. The program is the only place where you can walk into a room full of strangers and reminisce.
410. The reason I keep going to meetings is because the Big Book has no pictures in it.
411. The time to attend a meeting is when you least feel like going.
412. Those who get around, stay around.
413. We go to the meetings for all sorts of reasons, but we don't know what they are, so we keep going to meetings.
414. You may not need a meeting, but the meeting may need you.
415. You only have to go to meetings until you want to go to meetings.
416. You start to skip, you start to slip.
Open Mind
417. A suggestion is a subtle command.
418. All our suggestions are free. The ones you don't take are the ones you end up paying for.
419. Any fool can criticize, and many of them do.
420. Any problem blesses us when we learn the lesson it teaches.
421. Before engaging your mouth, put your mind in gear.
422. Denial is not a river in Egypt!
423. Don't compare, identify.
424. Don't intellectualize, utilize.
425. Each and every addict, sober or not, teaches us valuable lessons about ourselves and recovery.
426. Feelings aren't facts.
427. Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
428. If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a very merry Christmas.
429. If only ... Yeah, but ... What if ...
430. If you know so darn much, what are you doing here?
431. It is far easier for me to judge than to hear.
432. Keep an open mind.
433. Keep coming until you hear your story.
434. Learn from the mistakes of others. You don't live long enough to make them all yourself.
435. Learn to listen, listen to learn.
436. Let go of old ideas.
437. Listen and learn.
438. Listen well or your tongue will make you deaf.
439. Minds are like parachutes: they won't work unless they're open.
440. My Higher Power gave me one mouth that closes and two ears that don't.
441. Take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth.
442. There are none too dumb for the program, but many are too smart.
443. We push denial out the door and it sneaks back in the window.
444. When one door shuts, another opens.
445. When you do all the talking, you only learn what you already know.
446. You won't learn much from people who agree with you.
Paradoxes
447. From darkness comes light.
448. From dependence we found independence.
449. From weakness comes strength.
450. Sometimes the worst things in life happen after you get what you think you want.
451. We die to live.
452. We find strength in powerlessness.
453. We forgive to be forgiven.
454. We give it away to keep it.
455. We suffer to get well.
456. We surrender to win.
Patience
457. Don't give up: Moses was once a basket case.
458. Everything in God's time.
459. Give time time.
460. God doesn't wear a watch.
461. God give me patience—now!
462. God is never late.
463. Have patience with all things, but first with yourself.
464. It takes time.
465. May you be blessed with a slow recovery.
466. More will be revealed.
467. Patience is giving God space.
468. Patience often gets the credit that belongs to fatigue.
469. Pause and be gentle.
470. Slow but sure.
471. Sobriety is a journey, not a destination.
472. Sometimes it's a process of slowbriety.
473. The mighty oak was once a little nut that held its ground.
474. The Ninth Step Promises have no expiration date.
475. There are no endings, only new beginnings.
476. When God builds character, He takes time.
477. When God closes one door, He always opens another—but sometimes He makes us wait out in the hallway for a while.
478. When God made time, He made plenty of it.
479. When I ask for patience, God gives me a traffic jam.
Prayer and Meditation
480. A day hemmed in prayer is less likely to unravel.
481. A day without prayer is a day unfulfilled.
482. Backsliding begins when knee-bending stops.
483. Be careful what you pray for; you're liable to get it.
484. Courage is faith that has said its prayers.
485. God has three answers: "Yes," "No," and "Not yet."
486. Hit him (her, it) with a prayer, not a chair.
487. I can't handle it, God; you take over.
488. If you are having trouble getting down on your knees to pray in the morning, put your shoes under the middle of the bed the night before.
489. If you only pray when you need something fixed, you're turning God into a repairman.
490. If you pray for a Porsche and God sends you a jackass, ride it.
491. If you pray for potatoes, better plant a garden.
492. If you're too busy to pray, you're too busy.
493. It's hard to stumble when you are down on your knees.
494. Life is fragile; handle with prayer.
495. Prayer is not a device for getting my own way, but rather a means to become what I should be.
496. PUSH: Pray until something happens.
497. Tears are liquid prayers.
498. The answers to all my problems are as far away as my knees are from the floor.
499. The healing is in the kneeling.
500. Trying to pray is praying.
501. You can't sit in a closet and pray to God to bring you a hot dog.
Program, Recovery and Fellowship
502. A recovery group will be judged by the worst behavior of its members.
503. Around recovery or in recovery?
504. Be as enthusiastic about recovery as you were about your acting out.
505. Be nice to the newcomer: one day he may be your sponsor.
506. Don't quit five minutes before the miracle happens.
507. Don't worry if you don't get the program right away; it will get you.
508. Fake it 'til you make it.
509. Get it. Give it. Grow in it.
510. Help is only a phone call away.
511. How does one become an old-timer? Don't act out and don't die!
512. Humor is a tool of the program.
513. If the cure works, chances are you have the disease.
514. If you don't think this will help you, try it. If you don't think God will help you, ask Him.
515. If you want to act out, that's your business. If you want to quit, that's the program's business.
516. If you're in the center of the program, you won't fall off the edge.
517. In the program, first we remove the anesthesia, then we operate.
518. In the program, it doesn't matter who's right—only who's left.
519. It works if you work it.
520. It works—it really does!
521. It's a "we" program.
522. It's Anonym"us," not Anonym"me."
523. Look for a way in, not for a way out.
524. Make use of telephone therapy.
525. Move closer to the program and move closer to yourself.
526. Ninety days: You don't run to the finish line, you run through it.
527. No person is a failure who has friends.
528. One addict talking to another: one equals one.
529. Pass it on.
530. Recovery is a school in which we are all students and all teachers.
531. Recovery is an education without graduation.
532. Recovery is an inside job.
533. Recovery is going up a down escalator.
534. Recovery will work if you want it to work.
535. Take the program seriously, not yourself.
536. Take what you can use and leave the rest.
537. Taking half-measures is like saying it's safer to have a gun with three bullets pointed at you than a gun with six bullets.
538. The fellowship may not solve all your problems, but it is willing to share them.
539. The longer we are in the program, the worse our stories get.
540. The person with the most sobriety at a meeting is the one who got up earliest that morning.
541. The process is perfect; let it work.
542. The program doesn't work in theory, only in practice.
543. The program has a wrench to fit every nut that walks through a meeting room door.
544. The program has no fixed address—you can take it with you.
545. The program is a checkup from the neck up.
546. The program is a lifestyle, not a turnstile.
547. The program is for those who want it.
548. The program is like a submarine: it's much better to be in it than around it.
549. The program is not a sentence, it's a reprieve.
550. The program is not something we join, it's a way of life.
551. The program never opened the gates of heaven to let me in, but it did open the gates of hell to let me out.
552. The program way of life is meant to be bread for daily use, not cake for special occasions.
553. The program won't keep you from going to hell, nor is it a ticket to heaven, but it will keep you sober long enough to make up your mind which way you want to go.
554. There are many paths up the mountain; the view from the top is the same.
555. This is a "One Day at a Time" program. If you are sober today, you are tied for first place.
556. This is a self-help program, but you can't do it by yourself.
557. This is a selfish program.
558. Thoroughly have we seen a person fail who has rarely followed our path.
559. We are called to unity, not uniformity.
560. We are not bad people becoming good, but sick people becoming well.
561. We are not here to see through one another. We are here to see one another through.
562. We celebrate anniversaries with poker chips to remind ourselves that when we act out, we are gambling with our lives.
563. We don't get partial results from half-measures.
564. We in recovery don't carry the addict, we carry the message.
565. We must give away what we cannot keep so we might receive what we cannot lose.
566. We're here for a reason, not for the season.
567. What comes after ninety days? Ninety-one!
568. When all else fails, follow directions.
569. Work the program easy, and life is hard. Work the program hard, and life is easy.
570. Work the program from the waist up.
571. Work the program, not the problem.
572. You are not alone.
573. You don't have to like it, you just have to do it.
574. You need newcomers to tell you where you came from, old-timers to tell you where you could go, and a sponsor to tell you where you're at.
575. You will never have to act out again, and will you will never be alone again.
Resentment and Negativity
576. Anger is but one letter away from danger.
577. Anger is fear in a party dress.
578. Avoid stinkin' thinkin'!
579. By releasing resentment, we set ourselves free.
580. Danger sign: when your eyes have wandered from the addict who still suffers and needs help to the faults of those whom the program has already helped.
581. Depression is anger turned inward.
582. Don't let the littleness in others bring out the littleness in you.
583. Don't take it personally.
584. Every morning, I get up and pray to God to reset my negative to positive.
585. Expectations are preconceived resentments.
586. I don't say things to make you angry, I say things that make you angry.
587. If I don't pause when agitated, I might use my paws when agitated.
588. If you meet more than three assholes in one day, you need a meeting.
589. If you want to bury someone with revenge, it is best to dig two graves.
590. Isolation is the darkroom where negatives are developed.
591. It's hard to be grateful when you're hateful.
592. Justifiable anger is best left to those able to handle it.
593. Negativity is my disease asking me to come out and play.
594. Resentment is a cup of poison we pour for our enemy and drink ourselves.
595. Resentment is from the Latin, meaning "to feel again."
596. Resentment is letting someone else live in your head rent-free.
597. Resentment is like burning down your house to get rid of a rat.
598. Resentments are like peeing your pants: they don't affect anyone quite as much as you.
599. The clenched fist never receives.
600. The stem of resentment is the judging of others.
601. They're just doing it, they're not doing it to you.
602. Those who anger you, conquer you.
603. We are only as big as the smallest thing that makes us angry.
604. When I tighten the noose of resentment around someone's neck, I choke myself.
605. When it comes to character defects: you spot it, you got it!
606. When judging ceases, so does resentment.
607. When you are living inside someone's head, you are out of your mind.
Service
608. God has no hands but yours.
609. If I serve, I will be served.
610. If you want to feel better right away, ask God to help you be of service.
611. No person can spend more on good works than he earns in meditation.
612. Our leaders are but twisted servants.
613. Service is a way of helping ourselves by helping others.
614. Service is gratitude in action.
615. Shut up, show up and say "Yes."
616. The price for serenity and sanity is self-sacrifice.
617. To keep it, you have to give it away.
618. True happiness is found in service.
619. When you do good, you never know how much good you do.
620. You can't give away what you don't have.
621. You received without cost. Now give without charge.
Sharing
622. Don't give me advice, tell me about your experience and strength: it gives me hope.
623. If you pass, it's your ass.
624. It's important to speak your mind—even when your voice is shaky.
625. Say what you mean, but don't say it mean.
626. Share your happiness.
627. Share your pain.
628. Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.
629. Talk or die.
630. Suggestions for speaking: be interesting, be brief, be seated.
Slogans
631. Slogans are Band-Aids, the steps are the cure, your Higher Power is the doctor.
632. Slogans are like railings for the steps.
633. Slogans are wisdom written in shorthand.
Sober Living, Sober Thinking
634. A clear conscience makes a soft pillow.
635. A sober addict is like a turtle on a fencepost: you know it had help.
636. Addiction: name it, claim it, tame it!
637. Addicts heal from the outside in, but feel from the inside out.
638. Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
639. Back to basics.
640. Be better than you were!
641. Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, does not open his mouth to give evidence of it.
642. Character is how we act when we think no one is watching.
643. Discover yourself. Everything else has been done.
644. Do you expect a reward for accepting the greatest gift of your life?
645. Don't believe everything you think.
646. Don't talk to people who aren't there.
647. Don't write scripts unless you're going to publish them.
648. Early sobriety is growing up in public.
649. Easy does it.
650. Even my worst day in sobriety is better than my best day acting out.
651. Everything after "but" is BS.
652. Feel, deal, then heal.
653. First we stay sober because we have to, then we stay sober because we're willing to, and finally we stay sober because we want to.
654. Formula for failure: try to please everyone.
655. Happiness is not a long-range objective.
656. Honesty, vulnerability, and intimacy are the keys to my recovery.
657. How I'm feeling is rarely an indication of how I'm doing.
658. How important is it?
659. I'm getting better: I try to save my best argument for when someone else is in the room.
660. If I don't forget the basics, I won't ever have to go back to them.
661. If the sun comes up and goes down, and I didn't act out in the middle, it has been a good day. (And if the sun goes down and comes up, and I didn't act out in the middle, it has been a good night.)
662. If you sober up a drunken horse thief, you have a sober horse thief.
663. In recovery, first it gets better, then it gets worse, then it gets different, then it gets real.
664. It's easier to get older than it is to get wiser.
665. It's funny how life is lived forward and understood backward.
666. It's not what you do between the preamble and the Serenity Prayer that counts, it's what you do between the Serenity Prayer and the preamble that matters.
667. Juggling is not balancing.
668. Keep the focus on yourself.
669. Let it begin with me.
670. Life on life's terms.
671. Live in the solution.
672. Look for similarities rather than differences.
673. Make the solution so big, the problem does not exist.
674. Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
675. My worst day as a resistor far surpasses my best day as a captive.
676. Our focus determines our reality.
677. People, places, and things. (Or: Playmates, playgrounds and playthings.)
678. Put down the weapons, pick up the tools.
679. Rationalization is simply mental masturbation.
680. Remember when.
681. Rest. When you burn the candle at both ends, you're likely to end up with singed fingers.
682. Sobriety delivers everything acting out promised.
683. Sobriety is a constant process of uncovering, discovering, and discarding.
684. Sobriety is a gift.
685. Sobriety is its own reward.
686. Sobriety: the more you have, the more you want.
687. Some of the greatest gifts in sobriety come wrapped in shit.
688. Stick with the winners.
689. Surrender, don't quit.
690. Take care of your body. Where else are you going to live?
691. The beginning of wisdom is a firm grasp of the obvious.
692. The first thing you put before your sobriety is the first thing you'll lose.
693. The journey is the destination.
694. The opposite of joy is not sorrow, it's cynicism.
695. The program has taught me to think faster than my mouth.
696. The trouble with staying home and isolating is you get a lot of bad advice.
697. There are only two sins: to stand in the way of someone else's growth, and to stand in the way of your own.
698. There is no right way to do the wrong thing.
699. Think ... think ... think!
700. To thine own self be true.
701. Trust God, clean house, help others.
702. We are not reformed addicts, but informed addicts.
703. What goes around, comes around.
704. When I demand justice, I'd better think of the consequences.
705. When we dwell on the problem, the problem gets bigger. When we dwell on the solution, the solution gets bigger.
706. Wherever you go, there you are.
707. Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right.
708. Winners do what they have to do, losers do what they want to do.
709. You will be amazed.
710. You will intuitively know.
Spirituality
711. A coincidence is a miracle in which God chooses to remain anonymous.
712. Act as if.
713. Any God minor-league enough for me to understand isn't major-league enough to deal with my addiction.
714. At first we thought the "God thing" was a crutch. Turns out to be stilts.
715. Belief is watching a man push a wheelbarrow across the Grand Canyon on a high wire and saying, "I believe he can do that." Trust is getting in the wheelbarrow.
716. Everything that is happening is God's plan for you today.
717. Everything we have is on loan from God.
718. Expect miracles.
719. Faith can't be taught, it can only be caught.
720. Faith is a lighted doorway, but trust is a dark hall.
721. Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation.
722. Faith is our greatest gift, sharing it with others our greatest responsibility.
723. Faith is seeing light with your heart when all your eyes see is the darkness ahead.
724. Faith is spelled A-C-T-I-O-N.
725. FAITH: Finding Answers In The Higher Power.
726. FAITH: For All Is Through Him.
727. Faith: if you don't believe, then make believe.
728. Get off the throne and give it back to God.
729. GIFT: God Is Forever There.
730. God didn't save you from drowning to beat you up on the beach.
731. God doesn't need much; whatever you have left is enough.
732. God gave us a kit of spiritual tools; it is up to us to use them to build a durable shelter.
733. God is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
734. God led me to recovery and recovery led me to God.
735. God taught us to laugh again, but God, please don't let us forget that!
736. God will never give you more than you can handle.
737. God's first language is silence.
738. God's will, not mine, be done.
739. Higher Power, Thy will, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.
740. How we treat others is a consequence of the depth of our own spirituality.
741. If God seems far away, who moved?
742. If God takes you to, He'll take you through.
743. If I have faith in God, it doesn't make much difference whether I have faith in myself.
744. If it is meant to be, I can't stop it, and if it isn't God's will, I can't make it happen.
745. If you turn it over and don't let go of it, you will be upside-down.
746. If you want serenity, put your Higher Power between you and your problem.
747. If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans for the day.
748. If you're having trouble believing in a power greater than yourself, try just believing in a power other than yourself.
749. Is it odd, or is it God?
750. It is when you act on faith that you actually have it.
751. Let go and let God.
752. Looking for God is like a fish looking for water.
753. Maintenance of your spiritual condition is key.
754. My Higher Power is not against me because of my addiction, but for me and against my addiction.
755. Possibilities and miracles are one and the same.
756. Recovery leads us to God, and God leads us to ourselves.
757. Religion is for those who fear God, spirituality is for those who've been to hell and back.
758. Remember, nothing is going to happen today that you and God can't handle.
759. Serenity is God's garden. The entrance is through our hearts.
760. Sobriety is God's gift to me; what I do with it is my gift to God.
761. Some of us get so spiritual, we are of no earthly value to anyone.
762. Some things have to be believed to be seen.
763. Spirituality is the ability to get our minds off ourselves.
764. Talking about the spiritual part of the program is like talking about the wet part of the ocean.
765. The greatest gift that can come to anybody is a spiritual awakening.
766. The more you have on the inside, the less you need on the outside.
767. The results are in God's hands.
768. The task ahead of us is never as great as the Power behind us.
769. The will of God will never take you where the grace of God will not protect you.
770. There are no atheists in foxholes.
771. There are no coincidences in recovery.
772. There is a God and I am not it.
773. There is no magic in recovery, only miracles.
774. There is nothing we can do to make God love us more than God already does. There nothing we can do wrong that will make God love us any less.
775. Turn it over.
776. We are not human beings having spiritual experiences, we are spiritual beings having human experiences.
777. We were as afraid of success as we were of failure.
778. When man listens, God speaks; when man obeys, God works.
779. When we surrender to our Higher Power, the journey begins.
780. When you are down to nothing, God is up to something.
781. When you think you are overdue for a miracle in your life, just remember: you are right in the middle of one.
782. Whose will are you trying to do?
783. Willpower: our "will"ingness to use a Higher Power.
784. You are exactly where God wants you to be.
785. You can't do God's will your way.
786. You don't need to find God; He isn't lost.
Sponsorship
787. A sponsor is one who walks in as others walk out.
788. A sponsor is someone who holds the light while you dig.
789. Help someone up the hill and you'll get to the top yourself.
790. Our minds are bad neighborhoods; we shouldn't go into them alone.
791. People who sponsor themselves have fools for sponsors.
792. SPONSOR: Sober Person Offering Newcomers Suggestions On Recovery.
793. Sponsors are like clothes: if they don't suit you, change them.
794. Sponsors: have one, use one, be one.
795. When you are a sponsor, you get out of yourself.
796. You are supposed to want what your Sponsor has; he has already had what you have.
Staying Sober
797. Being sober doesn't keep you sober.
798. Call before you act out and I will help you stay sober. Call after you act out and you will help me stay sober.
799. Call your sponsor before, not after, you act out.
800. Complacency kills.
801. Complacency: A feeling of well-being when surrounded by extreme danger.
802. Don't tease your disease.
803. Each time I relapsed, I went to powerlessness graduate school.
804. Each time you come back, the tuition goes up.
805. Forbidden fruit creates many jams.
806. Give your addiction an inch, and it will become your ruler.
807. High bottoms have trap doors.
808. I thought I wanted to commit suicide, but all I needed was a hamburger.
809. If we do not grow, we gotta go.
810. If you go out, your bottom will get lower.
811. If you hang around a barbershop long enough, eventually you'll get a haircut.
812. If you manage to escape from behind enemy lines, don't go back for your hat.
813. If you're coasting, you're going downhill.
814. If you're not sober, you can't relapse.
815. It is easier to stay sober than it is to get sober.
816. It's not the caboose that kills you, it's the engine.
817. It's only two steps from the sidewalk to the gutter.
818. Keep the memory green.
819. Keep your sobriety first to make it last.
820. Lead me not into temptation; I can find it myself.
821. No one who has ever had a slip said he went to too many meetings.
822. Nothing is so bad that acting out won't make it worse.
823. On a good day, things are okay and you don't act out; on a great day, things are lousy and you don't act out.
824. Rejection is God's protection.
825. Relapse begins long before you act out.
826. Relapse is not a requirement.
827. Relapse is not an event, it's a process.
828. Remember your last drunk (acting out).
829. SAFE Formula: It's dangerous when we are Secretive, involved in anything Abusive, out of touch with our Feelings, or feeling Empty. These signs warn us we are headed towards acting out.
830. SLIP: Sobriety loses its priority.
831. Sobriety is a gift, the price of which is eternal vigilance.
832. Some days sobriety sucks, but the alternative is always worse.
833. Stay sober for yourself.
834. The longer you stay away, the harder it is to come back.
835. The longer you stay sober, the narrower the path.
836. The monkey is off your back, but the circus is still in town.
837. The three most dangerous words for an addict: "I've been thinking…"
838. There are a million excuses to slip, but no good reason.
839. Three keys to sobriety: get a sobriety date and don't change it, get a sponsor, get a home group.
840. To slip, work the Steps in reverse: Quit doing service (Step 12), let go of your spiritual life (Step 11), stop taking a daily inventory (Step 10), making amends (Steps 8 and 9), asking for help on character flaws (Steps 6 and 7), using a sponsor (Step 5), turning your life over to the care of a Higher Power (Step 3), and believing in a Higher Power (Step 2), and you will forget you are powerless over addiction (Step 1).
841. Try not place conditions on your sobriety.
842. Unless you are a lion tamer, you have no business in the lion's den.
843. When in doubt, DON'T.
844. When you hang out with sick people, you catch the cold.
Steps and Traditions
845. Don't get stuck in the Recovery Waltz: 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3 …
846. Don't push a newcomer to do the steps too fast. A heavy downpour runs off, whereas a gentle rain soaks in.
847. Don't wait to get better to do the Steps. Do the steps now to get better.
848. I am 12 steps away from acting out.
849. Life is a dance when you learn the steps.
850. No matter how far off the path we've stumbled, we're no more than 12 steps away from the solution.
851. No steps, no change; no change, no chance.
852. NUTS: Not Using The Steps.
853. Step 1: You messed it up. Step 2: It can be fixed. Step 3: But not by you alone.
854. Steps 1, 2 and 3: I came. I came to. I came to believe.
855. Steps 1, 2 and 3: I can't. He can. I think I'll let Him.
856. Take one day and one step at a time. Don't ever look too far ahead.
857. The 12 steps are just suggestions—like pulling the rip cord on a parachute.
858. The 12 steps tell us how it works; the 12 traditions tell us why it works.
859. The answer is in the steps.
860. The elevator is broken. Use the steps.
861. The only thing addicts do in moderation is the 12 steps.
862. The steps are there to protect me from myself; the traditions are there to protect the program from me.
863. The steps keep us from suicide; the traditions keep us from homicide.
864. The steps: Give up (1, 2, 3), clean up (4, 5, 6), make up (7, 8, 9), keep up (10, 11, 12).
865. There are 12 steps in the ladder of complete sobriety.
866. Thirteenth-stepping: My life is unmanageable, and I want to share it with you (1 + 12).
867. We take the steps, but it's funny where the steps take us.
868. What step are you on?
869. Working the steps gets self out of the way enough for God to work the miracle.
Step One
870. 97% surrender is a lot harder than 100% surrender.
871. A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.
872. Accept your admission.
873. If a candidate for recovery is ready, you can't say anything wrong; if he's not ready, you can't say anything right.
874. It isn't "me" and "you" anymore; it's "we" and "us."
875. Lighten up—the war is over.
876. Short form: God help me!
877. Step one only works when you do the other 11.
878. Step one: I came in not because I saw the light, but because I was feeling the heat.
879. Surrendering means you don't have to fight any more.
880. The first step is the only step a person can work perfectly.
881. We don't seem to give up a life of failure without a fight.
882. When all hell breaks loose, heaven is closer.
Step Two
883. Knowing you're cuckoo gets you half out of the clock.
884. Sober 'n' crazy.
885. We can do what I can't.
886. We're all here because we're not all there.
Step Three
887. Do what you can, let go of what you can't, and leave the results to a Higher Power.
888. If I act out, I take my life back.
889. Let it go, it was never yours to begin with.
890. Three frogs were on a tree limb and one decided to jump off. How many are left? All three of them—the frog only made a decision to jump off.
Step Four
891. Do it now or do it when you come back.
892. Don't just take an inventory, let it take you.
893. If there is a name for it, someone has done it.
894. It's okay to visit the past, just don't bring a suitcase.
895. Nothing pushed down inside of us stays down for very long.
896. Put down the magnifying glass you use to look at others and look in the mirror.
897. There is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
898. Uncover to recover.
Step Five
899. Worst things first.
Steps Six and Seven
900. A shortcoming is like a flat tire. A character defect is like driving on it.
901. Six: Don't do what you want to do. Seven: Do what you don't want to do.
Step Twelve
902. A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.
903. Carry the message, not the mess.
904. I can only help another to the degree that I've been helped myself.
905. Sometimes I wake up and think, It can't get any better than this, and then I reach out, and it does.
906. The hand that gives the rose retains some of its fragrance.
907. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of recovery always to be there, and for that I am responsible.
908. When I'm working with an addict, sometimes the addict I'm working on is me.
909. When putting cheese in a mousetrap, always leave room for the mouse.
Tradition Seven
910. Remember the cost of your last drink, drug or binge when observing the 7th tradition.
Suffering
911. A pain shared is a pain cut in half.
912. Beauty and truth are admired, pain is obeyed.
913. Drop the rock.
914. Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.
915. Getting better doesn't always feel better.
916. If I want relief, I go to meetings.
917. If you act out at the bad news you got today, you'll never know you could get through it without acting out.
918. If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.
919. If you're going through hell, keep going!
920. Just because you have pain, doesn't mean you have to be one.
921. Life begins right outside your comfort zone.
922. No pain, no gain.
923. Not facing pain can prolong it.
924. Pain is necessary, suffering is optional.
925. Pain is the touchstone of spiritual growth.
926. Problems and calamity will begin to mean instruction instead of destruction.
927. Spiritual and emotional growth does not depend so much upon success as it does upon failures and setbacks.
928. The darkest hour is just before the dawn.
929. The good news is that we get our emotions back. The bad news is that we get our emotions back.
930. The only avoidable pain is the pain we endure in the process of trying to avoid pain.
931. The willingness to be uncomfortable leads to being comfortable.
932. When the pain of where I am is worse than the discomfort of where I'm going, then I'll move.
933. When the pain outweighs the pleasure, you'll try something different.
934. When you feel your worst, try your hardest.
Alcohol- and Drug-Specific
935. A belly full of booze and a head full of AA don't mix.
936. A drink is only an arm's-length away.
937. A free drink is often the most expensive.
938. A meeting a day keeps the detox away.
939. A periodic is an alcoholic, period.
940. AA romance: The odds are good, but the goods are odd.
941. AA: Attitude adjustment.
942. Alcohol gave me the wings of an eagle, then it took away my sky.
943. Alcohol went from being my best friend to my worst enemy.
944. Alcoholism doesn't come in bottles, it comes in people.
945. An alcoholic is not a guy who thinks he's had one too many. He's usually the guy who thinks he's had one too few.
946. An alcoholic will steal your wallet. A drug addict will steal your wallet and help you look for it.
947. Anything you did drunk, you can do better sober.
948. As you cannot will yourself drunk, you can cannot will yourself sober.
949. Being a little bit alcoholic is like being a little bit pregnant.
950. Bottom: When the last thing you lose or the next thing you are about to lose is more important to you than booze.
951. Do without a drink today and enjoy life twice as much tomorrow.
952. Don't drink and go to meetings.
953. Drinking didn't drown my problems, it irrigated them.
954. Drinking meant waking up in strange places with strange faces.
955. Drive hammered, get nailed.
956. Drugs vs. alcohol: It doesn't matter which side of the Titanic you're on.
957. Drugs vs. alcohol: The only difference is the kind of bullet.
958. Every alcoholic's favorite brand: More!
959. For some alcoholics, a little whine is more than we need and a lot more than we can handle.
960. GOD: Group Of Drunks.
961. Going to meetings keeps your elbow down.
962. I came for my drinking and stayed for my thinking.
963. I didn't get in trouble every time I drank, but every time I got in trouble, I was drunk.
964. I drank to stimulate thought and blacked out; I drank to make conversation and tied my tongue; I drank for warmth and lost my cool; I drank to forget and became haunted; I drank for freedom and became a slave; I drank for power and became powerless; I drank to erase problems and saw them multiply; I drank to cope with life and invited death; I drank because I had the right and everything turned out wrong.
965. I would rather go through life sober thinking I'm an alcoholic than go through life drunk thinking I'm not.
966. I'd rather be awkward than drunk.
967. I'd rather hear you share about the same thing a thousand times in meetings than learn you were sharing it in a bar.
968. I'm allergic to alcohol—I break out in handcuffs.
969. If alcohol kills millions of brain cells, how come it never killed the ones that made me want to drink?
970. If drinking were our only problem, rehabs would turn out winners.
971. If I could drink like a normal drinker, I'd drink all the time!
972. If the drugs don't kill you, the lifestyle will.
973. If you drank enough to get to AA, you drank enough.
974. If you want to see who the drunk is, look for who's shouting for the manager.
975. If you would not pour alcohol down the throat of another alcoholic, why would you do it to yourself?
976. It's better to suit up and show up than to shoot up and throw up.
977. It's easier to sit in a meeting and pretend you're an alcoholic than it is to sit in a bar and pretend your not.
978. It's not alcoholwasm, it's alcoholism.
979. It's the first drink that gets you drunk. It's the last one that gets you sober.
980. Looking for a relationship in AA is like shopping for a car in a junkyard.
981. Maybe blackouts are not such a bad thing—the stuff we remember is bad enough!
982. My best thinking got me drunk.
983. Newcomers are like rum fruitcakes: you can take out the rum, but you still have a fruitcake.
984. Nonalcoholic beer is for nonalcoholics.
985. Once you are a pickle, you can't be a cucumber, but you can be a newcomer.
986. One reason I don't drink anymore is that I want to know when I'm having a good time.
987. Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink.
988. Sitting in a bar and asking yourself not to drink is like trying to sneak sunup past a rooster.
989. Some blackouts are better left forgotten.
990. Some say if you can't remember your last drunk, you may not have had it.
991. The destiny of every alcoholic is to be locked up, covered up or sobered up.
992. The first drink gets you drunk.
993. The further you are from your last drink, the closer you are to the next one.
994. The most dangerous tool in your kitchen is the corkscrew.
995. The person takes a drink, the drink takes the person.
996. The second A in AA is precious; it is the word in our name that sets us apart from all other alcoholics.
997. The steps: Take the fourth or drink a fifth.
998. The surest way to lose your health is to keep drinking to other people's.
999. The time away from a drink is not equal to the distance away from it.
1000. The ultimate defense against the first drink is a spiritual one.
1001. The urge to commit suicide is just a fancy drink signal.
1002. There are no losers in AA.
1003. They didn't make a glass big enough for me to have one drink.
1004. Thinking of drinking?
1005. Walking around drunk is like walking around with your fly open: everyone sees it but you.
1006. We don't want to drink like gentlemen, we want to drink like pigs and be treated like gentlemen.
1007. We drank to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
1008. We have everyone in AA, from Yale to jail.
1009. We lived to use and used to live.
1010. When God is holding your right hand and AA is holding your left, you have no hands with which to pick up a drink.
1011. When I was young, they called me "half-pint," but I grew up to be a full quart.
1012. You're probably an alcoholic if you think spilling beer is alcohol abuse.
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