Grace of God or Psychological Tricks

HONESTY WITH NEWCOMERS

Tell him exactly what happened to you. Stress the spiritual feature freely.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 93

The marvel of A.A. is that I tell only what happened to me. I don’t waste time offering advice to the potential newcomers, for, if advice worked, nobody would get to A.A. All I have to do is show what has brought me to sobriety and what has changed my life. If I fail to stress the spiritual feature of A.A.’s program. I am being dishonest. The newcomer should not be given a false impression of sobriety. I am sober only through the grace of my Higher Power, and that makes it possible for me to share with others.

DAILY REFLECTIONS, p. 361

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This “grace of God” business is the absolute top priority for obtaining any sort of reliable sobriety for most of us. Granted, there are those who put down the bottle, the pills, the pipe and the kit for the rest of their lives on their own power. However, I have seen that programs omitting the necessity of a spiritual awakening depend mostly on self-awareness and teachings of doctrines with some kind of moral component or psychological tricks in order to avoid the obvious temptation to pick up and use. Any one of these things might have worked for me if they were seen as supplements to continually improved contact with a power greater than myself, but would have failed in frustration and despair, otherwise. It becomes a business of “Thou shalt nots…” instead of the new freedom and joy of discovery I'd found, once I surrendered all the devices of ego.

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