Do not let any prejudice you might have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 47
The idea of faith is a very large chunk to swallow when fear, doubt and anger abound in and around me. Sometimes just the idea of doing something different, something I am not accustomed to doing, can eventually become an act of faith if I do it regularly, and do it without debating whether it’s the right thing to do. When a bad day comes along and everything is going wrong, a meeting or a talk with another drunk often distracts me just enough to persuade me that everything is not quite as impossible, as overwhelming as I had thought. In the same way, going to a meeting or talking to a fellow alcoholic are acts of faith; I believe I’m arresting my disease. These are ways I slowly move toward faith in a Higher Power.
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Only when confronted by the unchangeable facts of the incurable, progressive 3 fold disease we call alcoholism, by the people in AA, did I see, understand the absolute hopelessness of wanting to control or enjoy my drinking. The next fact they helped me to face, to”swallow”, was that trying to control myself and my life by self will of my mind had always failed, and was just as impossible as trying to control my drinking. The next truth to be faced was that many of these AA people, faced with the same dilemmas as I, were not only not drinking, but learning to live happier, more productive lives after joining and sharing,in the company of each other, in a single common purpose. Thus it was that being faithful to the truth, and not just swallowing some intellectual idea of faith, was the beginning, and still is, more than 35 years later without a drink, the basis of living and being in sobriety for me.