“To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends — this is an experience you must not miss.” — Alcoholics Anonymous (1939) · Chapter 7 · Working With Others
From Chapter 7 of the 1939 first edition.
The book’s softest sales pitch, and its most accurate. Watching someone come back to life — color returning, jokes landing, eyes focusing — is a spectacle available nowhere else, and the seats are free. “A fellowship grow up about you”: not joined — grown, the way things grow around whatever stays planted. Stay planted. The host of friends is not a metaphor. Ask anyone with a phone full of area codes.
Fellowship