Talk to Recovery EinsteinYou're not alone — day or night
Home › A.A. questions, from the books › Big Book passages often quoted alone

What does "half measures availed us nothing" mean in context?

In short:

  • The line is on page 59 of Chapter 5, "How It Works," a few sentences before the Twelve Steps are listed: "Half measures availed us nothing." (p. 59)
  • It's in the past tense and about the writers themselves. The next sentences say what the whole measure was: "We stood at the turning point." (p. 59) "We asked His protection and care with complete abandon." (p. 59)
  • The paragraphs just before it name what had held them back: looking for "an easier, softer way" and holding on to "old ideas" (p. 58). "The result was nil until we let go absolutely." (p. 58)
  • Context confirms the usual reading: the book asks for thoroughness. But it doesn't ask for perfection. The next page says no one has managed "anything like perfect adherence to these principles" (p. 60).

Where it sits

The line comes in the run of short paragraphs between the opening of Chapter 5 and the list of Steps. In order (pp. 58–59):

  1. The opening paragraph on who recovers and who doesn't, which turns on honesty (p. 58). See What does "Rarely have we seen a person fail" really say, and who does it say may not recover?
  2. If you want what the members have and are willing to go to any length to get it, "then you are ready to take certain steps" (p. 58).
  3. "At some of these we balked." (p. 58) "We thought we could find an easier, softer way." (p. 58) "But we could not." (p. 58) The book begs the reader "to be fearless and thorough from the very start" (p. 58). Some had tried to hold on to their old ideas, "and the result was nil until we let go absolutely" (p. 58).
  4. Alcohol is "cunning, baf-" (p. 58) / "fling, powerful!" (p. 59). "Without help it is too much for us." (p. 59) "But there is One who has all power—that One is God." (p. 59) "May you find Him now!" (p. 59)
  5. "Half measures availed us nothing." (p. 59) "We stood at the turning point." (p. 59) "We asked His protection and care with complete abandon." (p. 59)
  6. "Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery" (p. 59).

What the "half measures" were

The book doesn't list them. What it gives is the sentences around the line. Before it: balking at some of the steps, hunting for an easier, softer way, and holding on to old ideas, which got the same result, "nil" (p. 58). Just before it: alcohol is too much for us without help, but there is One who has all power (p. 59). After it, the whole measure: at the turning point, asking God's protection and care "with complete abandon" (p. 59).

So in its own place, the line sets holding back against letting go completely. "The result was nil" (p. 58) and "availed us nothing" (p. 59) are the same thought, said twice within a few lines.

Experience, offered urgently

The sentence says "us": it reports what happened to the people who wrote the book. The paragraph around it is urgent. "With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start." (p. 58) But it is offered as experience, and the Steps that follow are introduced as "suggested" (p. 59). See Are the Steps rules or suggestions?

Thorough, not perfect

The book separates thoroughness from perfection a page later. After the Steps, the book says many members exclaimed "What an order!" (p. 60), and it answers: "Do not be discouraged." (p. 60) "No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles." (p. 60) "We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection." (p. 60) In its place, the line is about holding back at the turning point. It isn't about falling short of perfection afterwards.

Does context change the common reading?

Not much. It confirms it, and makes it clearer. The book does ask for complete commitment from the start, and says so more than once on these two pages. What context adds is what was being held back (old ideas, the search for an easier way, and trying without help), and that the line is about the turning point, not a demand to be perfect afterwards.

Read it yourself

Sources

Source Pages First published
Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 5, "How It Works" 58–60 1939

Big Book page numbers are from the fourth edition (2001). The Preface says the program text "has been left largely untouched" since 1939 (p. xi); our sources have no first edition to compare page numbers against.

Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book is © A.A. World Services, Inc.

These pages answer questions about A.A. from A.A.'s own published literature, read in full, with every quote checked word for word against the page it cites. Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. What we read, and when each source was written.