The first thing you need to know about the All Addicts Anonymous Program is that it works. And the only way you can know that is to listen to people for whom it actually has worked — people who used to be hooked on alcohol, or drugs, or whatever, and who are now clear and staying clear and living sane and joyful lives.

You have to hear and you have to believe what these people say. Of course you are utterly free not to believe, but if you do not believe the truth when you hear it, that is simply your very hard luck. If you are careless about what you believe and don’t believe, you can really put yourself out in the cold. If you have ten thousand dollars in the bank, but if for some reason you don’t believe it, the money is no good to you.

Belief plays a critical part in recovery from addiction. Not blind belief, but belief in the evidence of your own eyes and ears, belief in the undeniable experience of the people who have already found the answer you are looking for.

Then comes faith. Go slowly here. Something big is meant, and your life and sanity hang on it. Faith goes beyond belief. And the Program will work for you only if you have faith in it. Faith is a technical term in the life of the spirit. It means (1) that you trust the Program, (2) that you rely on the Program, and (3) that you hang on to the Program.

Now you can’t have faith unless you are convinced. And nobody has the job of convincing you. It is your job to convince yourself. And there is no way on earth to accomplish that except to listen to the people who have already done what you are hoping to do.

The Program always and everywhere has been communicated by witness — by recovered addicts telling their stories. When you connect with the recovered addict society that fits your situation, you can begin to listen to all the recovery stories you need to hear, and you can begin telling your own story, for that is an essential part of it. But for something to start with right now, here are the stories of the recoveries of several members of All Addicts Anonymous. There are only nine, so they do not begin to cover the waterfront of addictive experience, but they are true stories of real addiction and real recovery, and no addict whose ears are even slightly open to the truth can hear the story of a recovered addict without being touched by the reality and the power of the Program.

Unrecognized or unadmitted dishonesty obstructs the pursuit of deeper knowledge of God. ...Every time you turn away from the truth, you turn away from God. Truth is not only that which is known, truth is the power to know; it is the ability to see and understand. Are you willing to look squarely into your own honesty and dishonesty, even when this involves painful discoveries and hard effort? Are you willing to raise the issue of honesty with yourself...and learn from other people who are also sweating out this elementary discipline? Are you willing, steadily and patiently to look squarely into your own honesty and dishonesty, even when this involves painful discoveries an hard effort?

All that is required is that you take a good hard look at your own honesty problem and go to work on it. You just try to be honest and keep on trying. Progress comes from patiently trying even in the face of little or no results. ...Every time you turn away from truth for whatever reason, you turn away from God. ...truth is not only that which is known, it is also the power to know; it is the ability to see and understand. Therefore every time you tell a lie, you throw sand in your own eyes.

The attempt to be honest is an exhilarating challenge which, the moment it is accepted, releases powerful energies. There are apt to be explosions of laughter along the way. It is a relief and refreshment to the soul to drop the pose of being "an honest man," to admit kinship with the rest of the human race in this matter of lying and deceiving. ...Regular work automatically deflates the pride and arrogance and thus produces a marginal increment of real humility.

Many or us aren't. Some of us say we want to learn about God. ...Maybe what we really want is merely to converse, to issue judgements, state preformed opinions, and to entertain and be entertained.We must become young in mind and heart at the very beginning of this inquiry.

Willingness to learn is no joke. If after some real experimental work on yourself you are able to say, "Yes, I AM willing to learn," you have added another indispensable qualification. ...there are great joys and great satisfactions. But if you are in a hurry to get to the joys that you skip over the difficulties and ignore the disciplines, you may arrive at false joys and satisfactions ending in discouragement and possibly in spiritual atrophy.

Everyone understands and accepts the necessity of hard work in acquiring ordinary knowledge. ...and yet when it comes to spiritual knowledge, learning about reality, learning about God, a strange conceit and an even stranger sentimentality appear. More often than not, the candidate imagines that THIS kind of knowledge can be poured into him like oil into a cruet, with no pain, no strain, no work, and certainly no HARD work. This attitude is a considerable obstacle. It is based on the common assumption that since God is a loving Father, he must also be a silly old fool who would just as soon raise a brood of spoiled brats as a company of transcendentally competent, strong, gentle, brave, compassionate, free, and triumphant sons and daughters. ...Knowledge about and OF God is harder to come by than ordinary knowledge.

You must find others who are doing this; you must associate with them and work with them; giving help and accepting help. It is impossible to do it alone.