"women" in the Big Book

W e, of ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, know thousands of men and women who were once just as hopeless as Bill.

Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women, desperately in need, will see these pages, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that they will be persuaded to say, “Yes, I am one of them too; I must have this thing.”

We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking.

This is particularly true of women.

On one proposition, however, these men and women are strikingly agreed.

As a celebrated American statesman put it, “Let’s look at the record.’’ Here are thousands of men and women, worldly indeed.

Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.

Perhaps we are mixed up with women in a fashion we

But what we have said applies quite as much to women.

Our activities in behalf of women who drink are on the increase.

There is every evidence that women regain their health as readily as men if they try our suggestions.

We have been * Written in 1939, when there were few women in A.A., this chapter assumes that the alcoholic in the home is likely to be the husband.

Sometimes there were other women.

We know women who are unafraid, even happy under these conditions.

We know women who have done it.

If such women adopt a spiritual way of life their road will be smoother.

We thought, on the whole, we were pretty good women, capable of being nicer if our husbands stopped drinking.

We women carry with us a picture of the ideal man, the sort of chap we would like our husbands to be.

O ur women folk have suggested certain attitudes a wife may take with the husband who is recovering.

Seeing much of each other, scarce an evening passed that someone’s home did not shelter a little gathering of men and women, happy in their release, and constantly thinking how they might present their discovery to some newcomer.

Many a distracted wife has visited this house to find loving and understanding companionship among women who knew her problem, to hear from the lips of their husbands what had happened to them, to be advised how her own wayward mate might be hospitalized and approached when next he stumbled.

The expression on the faces of the women, that indefinable something in the eyes of the men, the stimulating and electric atmosphere of the place, conspired to let him know that here was haven at last.