# Does the Big Book say "once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic"?

**In short:**
- Yes. It's in the 1939 program text, in Chapter 3, in quotation marks: "We have seen the truth demonstrated again and again: 'Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic'" (p. 33).
- In context it is about one thing: a real alcoholic never gets his control back, however long he stays sober. The proof given is a man who stayed bone dry for twenty-five years, started drinking again at fifty-five, and was dead within four years (pp. 32–33).
- The same book says its members "have recovered" (p. 17). In the book, staying an alcoholic means you can never safely drink again, "We are not cured of alcoholism" (p. 85); it doesn't mean you can't recover.

## Where it is

All our sources were searched for "once an alcoholic" and "always an alcoholic." The phrase is in the program text once (p. 33), and in two stories dropped from earlier editions, now in *Experience, Strength and Hope* (2003). It isn't in the fourth edition's personal stories.

## The passage, read in full

Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism" (pp. 30–43), opens with the alcoholic's great illusion: "The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker" (p. 30). Then, in order:
- "We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control" (p. 30). Alcoholics of their type are "in the grip of a progressive illness" (p. 30).
- "We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones" (p. 30). No treatment makes alcoholics of their kind like other men (pp. 30–31).
- A man of thirty, a heavy spree drinker, decided not to touch a drop until he had made his fortune and retired. He stayed "bone dry for twenty-five years" (p. 32), then retired at fifty-five, sure that his long sobriety had qualified him to drink like other men. Within two months he was in hospital. He couldn't control his drinking or stop it, and he was dead within four years (pp. 32–33).
- The lesson: "Most of us have believed that if we remained sober for a long stretch, we could thereafter drink normally" (p. 33). But this man "found he was just where he had left off at thirty" (p. 33).
- Then the saying: "We have seen the truth demonstrated again and again: 'Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic'" (p. 33).
- And what it means for the reader: "Commencing to drink after a period of sobriety, we are in a short time as bad as ever" (p. 33). So if we're planning to stop, "there must be no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol" (p. 33).

The quotation marks show the book is quoting a saying it agrees with. The "truth" it says it has seen proven is about drinking after a long dry spell. The passage isn't about how a member should describe himself or how he should feel about the word.

## How it fits with "recovered"

The same 1939 text says plainly that its members have recovered. Chapter 2 opens: "Nearly all have recovered. They have solved the drink problem" (p. 17). The 1939 Foreword introduces the writers as men and women "who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body" (p. xiii), and today's title page reads "Have Recovered from Alcoholism" (p. iii). Fred, in Chapter 3, says his alcoholic condition was relieved and life became "infinitely more satisfying" (pp. 42–43).

The book holds both at once. The drink problem can be solved, and the obsession removed: "We will seldom be interested in liquor" (p. 84). But that freedom doesn't make a man a normal drinker. "We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition" (p. 85). Read that way, "once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic" and "recovered" are not in conflict: one is about whether you can ever drink safely again, the other about whether the drink problem has been solved.

## In older personal stories

Two stories now in *Experience, Strength and Hope* (2003) use the saying the same way. "Annie the Cop Fighter," from the second edition (1955–1976), after five years sober: "There's another thing I must remember, that once an alcoholic always an alcoholic" (*Experience, Strength and Hope*, 2003, story from the 1955 edition). "Lifesaving Words," an Indian Army officer's story dropped in 2001, contrasts going on the wagon with knowing that if he stayed away from the first drink, he needn't worry about the hundredth, and ends: "Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic" (*Experience, Strength and Hope*, 2003, story from an earlier edition).

See also: *Is "it's the first drink that gets you drunk" in the Big Book?*

## Read it yourself
- Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism" (pp. 30–43): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt3.pdf
- Chapter 2, "There Is a Solution" (p. 17): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt2.pdf
- Chapter 6, "Into Action" (pp. 84–85): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_chapt6.pdf
- *Experience, Strength and Hope* and the full Big Book are sold by A.A. World Services: https://onlineliterature.aa.org

## Sources
| Source | Pages | Date |
|---|---|---|
| *Alcoholics Anonymous*, Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism" | 30–43 | 1939 |
| Foreword to First Edition; Chapters 2 and 6 | xiii, 17, 84–85 | 1939 |
| *Alcoholics Anonymous*, whole fourth-edition text (searched) | — | fourth edition 2001 |
| "Annie the Cop Fighter" and "Lifesaving Words," in *Experience, Strength and Hope* | — | stories from earlier editions; collection 2003 |

Big Book page numbers are from the fourth edition. The Preface says the program chapters have been "left largely untouched" since 1939 (p. xi).

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