As Bill Sees It

August 6, 2014
Happy–When We’re Free, p. 218

For most normal folks, drinking means release from care, boredom, and worry. It means joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good.

But not so with us in those last days of heavy drinking. The old pleasures were gone. There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did and a heartbreaking delusion that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it. There was always one more attempt–and one more failure.

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We are sure God would like to see us happy, joyous, and free. Hence, we cannot subscribe to the belief that this life necessarily has to be a vale of tears, though it once was just that for many of us. But it became clear that most of the time we had made our own misery.

Alcoholics Anonymous
1. p. 151
2. p. 133