“PERSONALITY CHANGE”

“It has often been said of A.A. that we are interested only in alcoholism. That is not true. We have to get over drinking in order to stay alive. But anyone who knows that alcoholic personality by firsthand contact knows that no true alky ever stops drinking permanently without undergoing a profound personality change”

Letter, 1940

We thought “conditions drove us to drink, and when we tried to correct these conditions and found that we couldn’t do so to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of hand and we became alcoholics. It never occurred to us that we needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever they were.

12 and 12 p. 47