A Whole Different Preamble

LCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS is a fellowship designed and administered by a bunch of ex-drunks whose only qualification for membership is that we finally realized that we can't hold our liquor and we want to stop trying to impossibly learn how to hold it successfully. It has no rules, dues or fees, nor anything else that any sensible organization seems to require.

At meetings the speaker starts on one subject and winds up talking about something entirely different and concludes by saying he doesn't know anything about the program, except that it works. The groups are often broke, yet always seem to have money to carry on. We are always losing members but seem to grow. We claim AA is a selfish program but always seem to be doing something for others.

Every group passes laws, rules, edicts and pronouncements, which everyone blithely ignores. Members who disagree with anything are free to walk out in a huff, quitting forever, only to return as though nothing happened and are greeted accordingly.

Nothing we discuss in AA is ever planned in advance yet great results are born from the things we share with each other and our lives get better.

How can we survive like this? Perhaps it's because we have learned to live and laugh at ourselves and with each other. God made us. He made laughter too. Perhaps He is pleased with our disorganized efforts and makes things right no matter who pushes the wrong buttons.

Maybe He is pleased with our simple yet sincere efforts to do what's right for ourselves and others. Maybe He is pleased with our trying to be nobody but ourselves. We don't know how it works, but it does and members keep receiving their dividend checks from their AA investments. It is wise to be sober, and it is much easier, my friends, to stay sober than to get sober.

~ anonymous ~