"friends" in the Big Book

I failed to persuade my broker friends to send me out looking over factories and managements, but my wife and I decided to go anyway.

Our friends thought a lunacy commission should be appointed.

I made a host of fair-weather friends.

The remonstrances of my friends terminated in a row and I became a lone wolf.

I was finished and so were many friends.

My friends had dropped several million since ten o’clock—so what?

We commenced to make many fast friends and a fellowship has grown up among us of which it is a wonderful thing to feel a part.

It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children, sad wives and parents—anyone can increase the list.

Strangely enough, wives, parents and intimate friends usually find us even more unapproachable than do the psychiatrist and the doctor.

In a vague way their families and friends sense that these drinkers are abnormal, but everybody hopefully awaits the day when the sufferer will rouse himself from his lethargy and assert his power of will.

Friends who have reasoned with him after a spree which has brought him to the point of divorce or bankruptcy are mystified when he walks directly into a saloon.

He has so attractive a personality that he makes friends with everyone.

I now remembered what my alcoholic friends had told me, how they prophesied that if I had an alcoholic mind, the time and place would come—I would drink

As we look over the list of business acquaintances and friends we have hurt, we may feel diffident about going to some of them on a spiritual basis.

This brings to mind a story about one of our friends.

If circumstances warrant, we ask our wives or friends to join us in morning meditation.

To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends—this is an experience you must not miss.

He should not be pushed or prodded by you, his wife, or his friends.

must not have it in our homes; we must shun friends who drink; we must avoid moving pictures which show drinking scenes; we must not go into bars; our friends must hide their bottles if we go to their houses; we mustn’t think or be reminded about alcohol at all.

Let your friends know they are not to change their habits on your account.

At a proper time and place explain to all your friends why alcohol disagrees with you.

Don’t start to withdraw again just because your friends drink liquor.

Some of us still serve it to our friends provided they are not alcoholic.

Among us are wives, relatives and friends whose problem has been solved, as well as some who have not yet found a happy solution.

Our friends have counseled chucking the men and we have done so with finality, only to be back in a little while hoping, always hoping.

We seldom had friends at our homes, never knowing how or when the men of the house would appear.

Sometimes he is a source of embarrassment to you and his friends.

Maybe he is beginning to lose his friends.

His friends have slipped away, his home is a near-wreck and he cannot hold a position.

His friends feel closer over a highball.

Be determined that your husband’s drinking is not going to spoil your relations with your children or your friends.

If your husband is a drinker, you probably worry over what other people are thinking and you hate to meet your friends.

While you need not discuss your husband at length, you can quietly let your friends know the nature of his illness.

Barriers which have sprung up between you and your friends will disappear with the growth of sympathetic understanding.

Frequently, you have felt obliged to tell your husband’s employer and his friends that he was sick, when as a matter of fact he was tight.

We suggest that you direct some of your thought to the wives of his new alcoholic friends.

In a weak moment he may take your dislike of his high-stepping friends as one of those insanely trivial excuses to drink.

Though it is entirely separate from Alcoholics Anonymous, it uses the general principles of the A.A. program as a guide for husbands, wives, relatives, friends, and others close to alcoholics.

If he does not argue about religion, he will make new friends and is sure to find new avenues of usefulness and pleasure.

Here is a case in point: One of our friends is a heavy smoker and coffee drinker.

Men under them are frequently their friends.

It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good.

You are going to meet these new friends in your own community.

Among them you will make lifelong friends.

But life was not easy for the two friends.

But one of the friends said, “Put him in a private room.

For an hour, the two friends told him about their drinking experiences.

The two friends spoke of their spiritual experience and told him about the course of action they carried out.

They knew they had a host of new friends; it seemed they had known these strangers always.

There are the same fast friendships, there is the same helpfulness to one another as you find among our western friends.

So our fellow worker will soon have friends galore.