Honesty with ourselves & others gets us sober, but it is tolerance that keeps us that way.
Bill W.Read
It must never be forgotten that the purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous is to sober up alcoholics. There is no religious or spiritual requirement for membership. No demands are made on anyone. An experience is offered which members may accept or reject. That is up to them.
Interpretation
Alcoholics Anonymous focuses on helping individuals recover from alcoholism without any religious or spiritual obligations.
This quote by Bill W. emphasizes the core purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) as a support system for individuals struggling with alcoholism. It highlights that membership is open to anyone without religious or spiritual demands and that the experience and tools provided are entirely voluntary, allowing individuals to choose their path to recovery.
In practice
In a speech addressing a recovery community, one might say, 'Remember, it must never be forgotten that the purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous is to sober up alcoholics.'
Many people assume the diseases that kill us are pre-programmed into our genes. High blood pressure by 55, heart attacks at 60, maybe cancer at 70, and so on... But for most of the leading causes of death, our genes usually account for only 10-20 per cent of risk.
They don't actually see the real world, where 95% of the people with HIV are not treated and are dying. And even though we have some blue sky now in our country, the sky could become cloudy again very soon.
If we can reach populations in developing countries and help them understand the value of their indigenous diet and lifestyles rather than copying ours, perhaps we can reverse the exponential rise in cardiovascular disease that is plaguing them.
We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.
After 50 years of smoking unfiltered cigarettes, my father died, too young, of a massive heart attack. He was 69. It's almost certain that all those years of nicotine inhalation were a major contributor to his clogged arteries.
The problems of health care can be solved if we stop giving tax cuts to those who have the most, and start making health care affordable for those working harder and harder for too little.
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