The first drink is too many, but one hundred is never enough. They’ve tried their own ways, but they’ve always failed. It may have kept them from drinking for a while, but soon they were drinking again. Being an alcoholic doesn’t mean that they’re “f*** ups”, they have a disease. It’s not only a drinking disease, but it’s also a thinking disease. As alcoholics have said, “We aren’t bad people trying to get good, we’re sick people trying to get well.”

Getting sober is harder than people think. It takes a lot of willingness, courage, and honesty to work a program. Without these three things, an alcoholic will never succeed. The only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking. The first thing an alcoholic has to admit is that they’re powerless over alcohol/drugs, and that their lives have become unmanageable. They have to remind themselves of that every single day. In order to stay sober, the alcoholic has to do it for themselves. Trying to stay sober for their family, the law, or their job will never work. Why? Because no one will ever be able to stop an alcoholic from drinking again.

In the beginning of sobriety, they have to face reality. They’re no longer in their own world; they can’t escape from the truth. The newcomer is commonly angry, resentful, and miserable…can you blame them? But eventually those feelings go away. The fellowship of Alcoholic’s Anonymous encourages you to admit your faults, where you’ve gone wrong, and to surrender to the program in order to free yourself.

What some people don’t realize is that sobriety gives you everything that alcohol promised to give you. Most alcoholics don’t like to think that they’re different from their “fellows”, the people who can occasionally drink and, at times, some feel that they were regaining control. The idea alone that someday they’ll be able to control their drinking is astonishing. Alcoholism is a progressive illness. If an alcoholic drinks again they get worse, never better. As the alcoholic’s disease progresses, they get closer to the chance of going to jail, an institute or even death. Alcoholic’s Anonymous has said, "The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink."

When they thought that there was no possible way of overcoming their seemingly hopeless state of mind and body, they proved themselves wrong. The longer an alcoholic stays sober, the more they gain. AA is not a program to get sober...it's a program to live your life successfully and to be happy once you get sober.