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By Fulton Oursler

July 1944

Down at the bottom of the social scale of AA society are the pariahs, the untouchables, and the outcasts, all under­privileged and all known by one excoriating epithet—relatives.

I am a relative. I know my place. I am not complaining. But I hope no one will mind if I venture the plaintive confession that there are times, oh, many times when I wish I had been an alcoholic. By that I mean that I wish I were an AA. The reason is that I consider the AA people the most charming in the world.

Such is my considered opinion. As a journalist, I have found it my fortune to meet many of the people who are considered charming. I number among my friends stars and lesser lights of stage and cinema; writers are my daily diet; I know the ladies and gentlemen of both political parties; I have been entertained in the White House; I have broken bread with kings and ministers and ambassadors; and I say, after that catalog, that I would prefer an evening with my AA friends to an evening with any person or group of persons I have indicated.

I asked myself why I consider so charming these alcoholic caterpillars who have found their butterfly wings in Alcoholics Anonymous. There are more reasons than one, but I can name a few.

The AA people are what they are, and they were what they were, because they are sensitive, imaginative, possessed of a sense of humor and an awareness of universal truth.

They are sensitive, which means that they are hurt easily, and that helped them become alcoholics. But when they have found their restoration, they are still as sensitive as ever—responsive to beauty and to truth and eager about the intangible glories of life. That makes them charming companions.

They are imaginative, and that helped to make them alcoholics. Some of them drank to flog their imagination on to greater efforts. Others guzzled only to black out unendurable visions that rose in their imaginations. But when they have found their restoration, their imagination is responsive to new incantations, and their talk abounds with color and light, and that makes them charming companions, too.

They are possessed of a sense of humor. Even in their cups, they have been known to say damnably funny things. Often, it was being forced to take seriously the little and mean things of life that made them seek escape in a bottle. But when they have found their restoration, their sense of humor finds a blessed freedom and they are able to reach a godlike state where they can laugh at themselves—the very height of self-conquest. Go to the meetings and listen to the laughter. At what are they laughing? At ghoulish memories over which weaker souls would cringe in useless remorse. And that makes them wonderful people to be with by candlelight.

And they are possessed of a sense of universal truth. That is often a new thing in their hearts. The fact that this at-oneness with God’s universe had never been awakened in them is sometimes the reason they drank. The fact that it was at last awakened is almost always the reason that they were restored to the good and simple ways of life. Stand with them when the meeting is over and listen as they say the Lord’s Prayer!

They have found a Power greater than themselves which they diligently serve. And that gives a charm that never was elsewhere on land and sea; it makes you know that God himself is really charming, because the AA people reflect his mercy and his forgiveness.