Easy Does It

First Things First

One Day at a Time

Live and Let Live

Keep it Simple

Let go, Let God

Whatever you put before recovery is the first thing you will lose when you go back out

My God will get you fucked up, your God will get me fucked up

Keep Coming Back – Ah Hell, Why don’t you just stay

Meeting-makers make it

Stay out of your own head

13^th Stepping (using sexual intimacy as a solution to your addiction)

1-2-3 Stepping (Avoiding the fearless moral inventory that initiates the guts of the program)

1000 lb Phone – (The difficult practice of lifting that phone to stay in contact with others in recovery)

Don’t leave 5 minutes before the magic happens

HALT (Don’t remain Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired)

Pause, Think Think Think

The first step is the only one you have to do 100%

Take Suggestions

Take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth

If you are facing suicide or relapse, choose the latter.  We can always sober you up.

When all else fails, find a way to help someone else and get out of your head.

Progress, not Perfection (I have heard this one modified to “Progress prior to Perfection”)

Yet (I’ve never gotten a DUI-yet, I’ve never been homeless-yet, I’ve never had DT’s-yet…)

This program isn’t for those who need it, it is for those who want it.

If you’re thirsty, you’ll find the water in the valleys, not the mountaintop.

If you expect God to move a mountain, you better bring a shovel.

One drink is too many, and a one hundred is never enough.

Don’t analyze, utilize

Involved in mental masturbation

You’ve got to give it away to keep it

Going over the drunk-a-log (when the focus of sharing becomes war stories rather than the solution)

Pushing Rope (wasting energy trying to make things happen from the sheer force of personal will power)

It is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than to think yourself into a new way of acting.

Working the 12 steps backwards (The natural unraveling of the process in a state of complacency)

When your ass is on fire, you need emotional toilet paper (referring to the 10th step’s ability to stabilize emotional heat that comes from letting your shortcomings have free reign)

God is old and He is slow.

The worst thing that ever happened to me, never happened.

Its God’s turn to say what we’re going to watch on TV tonight.

If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.

Pain is the touchstone of recovery. (touchstone = test for its quality)

Spiritual constipation is reaping the blessings of the program and not finding a way to share them.

I get drunk.  We stay sober.

It’s a fact that you are feeling, but what you are feeling is not necessarily fact.

It gets easier if you remember that the “it” is you.

Me hating myself and being good to you cannot live in the same house.

Writing it down makes it vulnerable.

Every problem is a first step problem, every answer is a twelfth step solution.

The good thing about the program is that it works.  The bad thing about the program is that it works.

When I came into this program, I thought I was a victim.  I discovered that I had often been a volunteer.

If you share more than three minutes, nobody is listening except you.

An alcoholic is an ego maniac with an inferiority complex.

If you believe that isolation is a cure for loneliness, you may be an alcoholic.

Religion is God on the outside trying to get in, and Spirituality is God on the inside trying to get out.

You are never too dumb for this program, but sometimes you can be too smart.

When you are reading the Big Book, don’t read the white parts, read the black.

Alcoholism is a disease that demands to be treated, either with alcohol or with meetings.

[Al-Anon] My gifts end at my fingertips.

[Heard in Al-Anon] “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” ~ Soren Kierkegaard

God brought me to AA and AA brought me to God.