Daily Reprieve

Years ago I started collecting sayings, and when I remembered, I preserved them in a Page called Quips and Quotes on this site. I have updated them recently. Click the hyperlink if you want to go directly to that page. And please comment if you have something you heard in recovery and would like to submit it for safe-keeping here, at the Daily Reprieve.

I talked to AI about the quick draw value of this tool in recovery and showed it my page. The following is a work that AI and I produced together:

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is rich with slogans and sayings—short, memorable phrases used to convey key spiritual and recovery principles. These sayings offer encouragement, perspective, and guidance, often repeated in meetings or found on AA literature and medallions.

Here’s a list of commonly used AA sayings:

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🔁 Core AA Slogans

• One Day at a Time – Focus on staying sober just for today.
• Easy Does It – Slow down; don’t force outcomes.
• Let Go and Let God – Release control and trust your Higher Power.
• Live and Let Live – Focus on your own life and allow others to live theirs.
• First Things First – Prioritize sobriety and essentials before anything else.
• Keep It Simple – Avoid overcomplicating your recovery.
• Progress, Not Perfection – Strive for improvement, not flawlessness.
• This Too Shall Pass – All emotions and situations are temporary.
• Think… Think… Think – Pause and reflect before acting, especially in emotional moments.

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🧭 Spiritual & Reflective Sayings

• Nothing Changes if Nothing Changes – Change requires action.
• God Doesn’t Make Junk – Each person is inherently valuable.
• I Am Responsible – For my own recovery and how I treat others.
• We Are Only as Sick as Our Secrets – Honesty brings healing.
• Act As If – Behave as the person you want to become.
• Let It Begin with Me – Start the change you want to see.
• Fear is the Absence of Faith – Encouragement to trust over panic.

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🛠️ Tools for Daily Life

• HALT – Don’t get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired.
• Keep Coming Back – Recovery is built on continued participation.
• Fake It Till You Make It – Do the right things even if you don’t feel them yet.
• Take What You Like and Leave the Rest – Accept what helps you in meetings.
• Don’t Take That First Drink – Sobriety starts with the first decision.

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🧱 Recovery Milestone Sayings

• It Works If You Work It – Recovery requires action and effort.
• One is Too Many, and a Thousand is Never Enough – Warning about the slippery slope of addiction.
• Stinkin’ Thinkin’ – Negative or addictive thinking patterns.
• A Drink is Too Many and a Thousand Not Enough – Similar to above; the obsession grows once it starts.
• You’re Only as Sober as Your Last Drunk – A reminder of humility and the need for continued vigilance.

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The Cracked Mirror That Speaks Truth

There’s a peculiar power in these rooms—where truth doesn’t arrive dressed in doctrine, but in punchlines and paradoxes. The sayings we pass around aren’t just slogans. They’re soul shorthands—condensed wisdom forged in the crucible of ruin and grace.

“Don’t analyze—utilize.” That’s the invitation. My mind used to be a maze where nothing escaped without being dissected to death. I called it insight. But in truth, it was paralysis—mental masturbation, looping endlessly in thought with no climax of action. The Steps don’t ask me to figure them out. They ask me to take them.

Because recovery isn’t a theory. “It is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than to think yourself into a new way of acting.” That line cracked something open in me. It taught me to lace my shoes even when I didn’t want to walk. It taught me to call a sponsor even when I had nothing to say but silence. It taught me that willingness is not the absence of resistance but the choice to move anyway.

Still, the disease whispers: tell them your drunk-a-log one more time—stretch it out like a greatest hits album. But pain without solution becomes performance. I have learned to pivot: less biography, more blueprint.

And when I try to do this thing by force, to muscle my way through grief or control another’s journey, I remember the phrase that humbles me every time: “Pushing rope.” You can’t force serenity. You can’t yank God on a leash. You surrender.

I’ve also learned that I can work the Twelve Steps backwards—that sobriety without spiritual practice can become its own high horse. First I stop writing. Then I stop praying. Then I stop listening. Then my ego makes a comeback tour—and I confuse insight with immunity. When that happens, and my ass is on fire, no amount of spiritual bravado will do. I need emotional toilet paper—the daily cleansing of Step Ten. The rinse and repeat of accountability.

I’ve cried out to a God who I felt was too quiet, too slow—only to later realize, as someone said: “God is old, and He is slow.” He is not rushed. But neither is He absent. His grace has rarely arrived early, but never has it come too late.

Sometimes the most devastating thing is realizing that “the worst thing that ever happened to me… never happened.” I built whole stories around shadows. I defended against disasters that never came. I’ve spent decades fearing phantoms.

But now, when I surrender control of the remote, I whisper: “It’s God’s turn to say what we’re watching tonight.” I practice living by faith, not just in Him, but in the unfolding script He’s already written.

“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” For me, that “something” is my spiritual center. My recovery. My daily choice to show up, not just for myself, but for the ones who haven’t arrived yet. Because “you’ve got to give it away to keep it.”

And the more I receive, the more I must share. Otherwise, I risk spiritual constipation—hoarding blessings, clutching insights, until my soul gets sluggish. The truth is: “I get drunk. We stay sober.” Community is the crucible.

I’ve learned to challenge my thoughts. Because “it’s a fact that you’re feeling, but what you’re feeling is not necessarily fact.” Feelings are visitors, not deities. They pass through, but they don’t dictate my truth.

“It gets easier when you remember the ‘it’ is you.” Recovery isn’t something I do—it’s who I become. I stop treating myself like a project to fix and start loving myself as a person worth keeping.

Because me hating myself and being good to you cannot live in the same house. Eventually, the foundation crumbles. Integrity begins within.

And when I write—truly write—I tremble. Because writing it down makes it vulnerable. And vulnerability, I’ve learned, is not weakness. It’s Step Four in ink.

I’ve come to see that every problem is a First Step problem, rooted in unmanageability, and every solution is a Twelfth Step solution, rooted in service, in the transcendence of self.

“The good thing about the program is that it works. The bad thing about the program is that it works.” It doesn’t let me hide. It brings light to the places I thought were cleverly locked away. It makes me face the fact that I wasn’t always a victim. Sometimes, I volunteered for the pain.

And now? Now, I’ve got a three-minute filter on my mouth, because after three minutes, nobody’s listening but me. And in those three minutes, I’ve got to make it count.

Yes, I’m an egomaniac with an inferiority complex, and I used to think that isolation cured loneliness. But now I know—my disease thrives in silence, but it dies in the light of shared stories.

Religion is God on the outside trying to get in. Spirituality is God on the inside trying to get out. I no longer search for God in stained glass and ritual alone. I find Him in steps, in coffee cups, in the shaking voice of the newcomer.

You’re never too dumb for this program. But you can be too smart. I’ve been that guy—the one who reads the “white parts” of the Big Book. But now I listen for the black ink—the hard-won truth.

Alcoholism is a disease that demands to be treated—either with alcohol or with meetings. And so, I choose meetings. I choose life. I choose to remember: “My gifts end at my fingertips.” I cannot save anyone. I can only offer what’s been freely given.

Kierkegaard had it right: “Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.” So I look back—but I don’t stare. I gather the wisdom, and then I move. One day further from my last drink. One day closer to the man I am still becoming.

Alcohol was killing me, but just refused to bury me. Grace had other plans.

So now, I carry a pencil in my pocket. Because a short pencil is better than a long memory—and I never know when the truth will show up in a meeting, in a miracle, or in a mess.

This program hasn’t just made me sober. It has made me comfortable with who I am—so that I no longer apologize for who I am not.

And for today, that is enough.