Page 206 - The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

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ALCOHOLIC ANONYMOUS NUMBER THREE 191
well, and it was rather tough, but I soon found folks
whose friendship I had once had, and I found, after I
had been sober for quite some little time, that these
people began to act like they had in previous years,
before I had gotten so bad, so that I didn’t pay too aw­
ful much attention to financial gains. I spent most of
my time trying to get back these friendships and to
make some recompense toward my wife, whom I had
hurt a lot.
It would be hard to estimate how much A.A. has
done for me. I really wanted the program, and I
wanted to go along with it. I noticed that the others
seemed to have such a release, a happiness, a some­
thing that I thought a person ought to have. I was
trying to find the answer. I knew there was even
more, something that I hadn’t got, and I remember one
day, a week or two after I had come out of the hospi­
tal, Bill was at my house talking to my wife and
me. We were eating lunch, and I was listening and
trying to find out why they had this release that they
seemed to have. Bill looked across at my wife and said
to her, “Henrietta, the Lord has been so wonderful to
me, curing me of this terrible disease, that I just want
to keep talking about it and telling people.”
I thought, I think I have the answer. Bill was
very, very grateful that he had been released from this
terrible thing and he had given God the credit for
having done it, and he’s so grateful about it he wants
to tell other people about it. That sentence, “The Lord
has been so wonderful to me, curing me of this terri­
ble disease, that I just want to keep telling people
about it,” has been a sort of a golden text for the A.A.
program and for me.