# Where is "cunning, baffling, powerful," and what comes right after it?

**In short:**
- It's in Chapter 5, "How It Works," a few lines before the Twelve Steps are listed. The sentence runs across a page break: "Remember that we deal with alcohol—cunning, baf-" (p. 58) / "fling, powerful!" (p. 59).
- The very next sentence is "Without help it is too much for us." (p. 59) The one after that answers it: "But there is One who has all power—that One is God." (p. 59) Then: "May you find Him now!" (p. 59)
- Quoted alone, the three words describe alcohol as a crafty enemy. In place, they're the first half of a turn: alcohol is powerful and too much for us alone, and God has "all power." Context doesn't reverse the line. It completes it.

## The sentence and its neighbours

Read in order, the passage goes (pp. 58–59):

- **Before:** some members held on to old ideas, "and the result was nil until we let go absolutely" (p. 58).
- **The line:** "Remember that we deal with alcohol—cunning, baf-" (p. 58) / "fling, powerful!" (p. 59).
- **Right after:** "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)
- **Then:** "Half measures availed us nothing." (p. 59) "We stood at the turning point." (p. 59) The members asked God's protection and care "with complete abandon" (p. 59).
- **Then the Steps,** "suggested as a program of recovery" (p. 59), beginning with "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol" (p. 59).

The words answer each other: alcohol is "powerful," we are "powerless" over it, and God is the One "who has all power."

## The same picture elsewhere in the main text

"Cunning" appears only here in the first 164 pages. It comes up again in some fourth-edition personal stories (pp. 328, 350 and 352), which are members' accounts and change from edition to edition, not the 1939 text. The other two ideas run all through the book:

- **Baffling.** Chapter 2 says that once the illness has a real hold, drinkers "are a baffled lot" (p. 23). Chapter 3 calls the "baffling feature of alcoholism" the "utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish" (p. 34). Chapter 7 tells the helper to tell the newcomer "how baffled you were" (p. 92).
- **Powerful, and too much for us.** Chapter 4 names the problem as "Lack of power, that was our dilemma." (p. 45) The answer is a Power greater than ourselves (p. 45). Chapter 3 ends the same way: the alcoholic "at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink" (p. 43), and "His defense must come from a Higher Power." (p. 43)
- **Subtle.** In Chapter 6, even after the problem has been removed, the book warns against resting on our laurels, "for alcohol is a subtle foe" (p. 85).

## Does context change the common reading?

No, it confirms the description. The book does treat alcohol as something that outwits the alcoholic. What quoting the line alone leaves out is what the line is for. It sets up the next two sentences: without help this is too much for us, and there is One who has all power. In the book, the warning and the hope come in the same breath.

## Read it yourself
- Chapter 5, "How It Works" (pp. 58–71), free from A.A.: https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt5.pdf
- Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism" (pp. 30–43): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt3.pdf
- Related: *What does "half measures availed us nothing" mean in context?* · *What does Step 1 say? Powerless over what?* · *What does the Big Book mean by alcoholism as an illness?*
- The full book, *Alcoholics Anonymous*, is sold by A.A. World Services at https://onlineliterature.aa.org.

## Sources
| Source | Pages | First published |
|---|---|---|
| *Alcoholics Anonymous*, Chapter 5, "How It Works" | 58–59 | 1939 |
| *Alcoholics Anonymous*, Chapters 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 | 23, 34, 43, 45, 85, 92 | 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.*