We A.A. We are men and women who have come to understand and admit that we cannot control alcohol. We have realized that we have to live without drinking if we are to avoid disaster for ourselves and for the people closest to us.

We are part of an informal international brotherhood with local groups in thousands of communities, and which currently has members in 150 countries. We have one primary goal: to stay sober and to help others who turn to us to achieve sobriety.

We are not reformists, and we are not affiliated with any religious group, cause, or denomination. We have no desire to turn everyone into a teetotaler. We do not recruit new members, although we always welcome them. We do not impose our drinking experience on others, but we share it when asked.

Among our members you can find men and women of all ages and from diverse social, economic and cultural backgrounds. Some of us drank for many years before realizing that we couldn't control alcohol. Others were fortunate enough to recognize already in our youth or in the early stages of our drinking career that drinking had become somewhat unmanageable.

The consequences of our alcoholic way of drinking have also been very varied, with a few of us having become lost tramps before going to A.A. looking for help. Some of us had lost our families, our assets and our dignity. We have lived on the streets of the slums of many cities.

Some of us were hospitalized and imprisoned countless times. We had committed serious offenses against society, our families, our employers, and against ourselves.