Turmoil & Conflict is about defective relationships with others and with ourselves... Did fear and inferiority about my fitness for my job destroy my confidence and fill me with conflict? In these ways we are set in conflict not only with ourselves, but with other people who have instincts, too.

In Step Eight, we continued our housecleaning, for we saw that we were not only in conflict with ourselves, but also with people and situations in the world in which we lived.

We think that such a view is self-centered and in direct conflict with the new way of living.

Until we had talked with complete candor of our conflicts, and hadlistened to someone else do the same thing, we still didn't belong.

We knew we would have to quit the deadly business of living alone with our conflicts, and in honesty confide these to God and another human being.

Very deep, sometimes quite forgotten, damaging emotional conflicts persist below the level of consciousness.

Many less desperate alcoholics tried A.A., but did not succeed because they could not make the admission of hopelessness.

He soon proved that his was a desperate case, and that above all he wanted to get well.

In A.A.'s pioneering time, none but the most desperate cases could swallow and digest this unpalatable truth.

He was rescued by a searching party, and, in desperate condition, brought to me.

He had a desperate desire to stop, but saw no way out, for he had earnestly tried many avenues of escape.

My incredible behavior in the face of a desperate desire to stop was explained.

You are sure to find someone desperate enough to accept with eagerness what you offer.

What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time the desperate experiment of the first drink?

Their very first case, a desperate one, recovered immediately and became A.A. number three.

Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women, desperately in need, will see these pages, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that they will be persuaded to say, "Yes, I am one of them too; I must have this thing."

He may have come to the point where he desperately wants to stop but cannot.

Learning to depend upon a higher power and absorb himself in his work with other alcoholics, he remains sober day by day.

And the facts seem to be these: The more we become willing to depend upon a Higher Power, the more independent we actually are.

Either we insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend upon them far too much.

In this area it is startling to discover how dependent we really are, and how unconscious of that dependence.

Even when our fortunes had not ebbed that much and we nevertheless found ourselves alone in the world, we still vainly tried to be secure by some unhealthy kind of domination or dependence.

This very form of faulty dependence has caused many a rebellious alcoholic to conclude that dependence of any sort must be intolerably damaging.

We realize that the word "dependence" is as distasteful to many psychiatrists and psychologists as it is to alcoholics.

This very form of faulty dependence has caused many a rebellious alcoholic to conclude that dependence of any sort must be intolerably damaging.

Some of us have taken very hard knocks to learn this truth: Job or no job -- wife or no wife -- we simply do not stop drinking so long as we place dependence upon other people ahead of dependence on God.

Dependence upon God necessary to recovery of alcoholics.

When a job still looked like a mere means of getting money rather than an opportunity for service, when the acquisition of money for financial independence looked more important than a right dependence upon God, we were still the victims of unreasonable fears.

We found that dependence upon His perfect justice, forgiveness, and love was healthy, and that it would