Suppose there was no AA. No AA meetings at all. Or very few and far between. Like it was in the old days. How many of us would stay sober?
Here’s a scenario. You go to a meeting, where someone wants to talk about losing weight, another pipes up they want to talk about heroin, another is there to talk about the mental and emotional difficulties. Sometimes it seems close to that at some meetings.
Is any of this possible? Again, sometimes it seems that way. Yet AA has a set of principles to guide us, if only groups would adhere to them. The problem is that it doesn’t seem anyone wants to read them or study them. If they do come up in a meeting, people offer opinions, but no substance. They’re the Twelve Traditions. And what do they tell us? AA is fellowship where those who have a problem with alcohol can find a solution. That’s the Third and the Fifth Tradition, backed up by the common welfare in the First, the unity we must have, if AA is to survive.
I remember a man, several years back, who was sitting next to me at a meeting. He got more and more agitated as the meeting went on. He turned to me and said that he was getting tired of hearing all this talk about alcohol. He wanted to talk about his drug addiction. I told him he couldn’t do that in an AA meeting. He got angry and said that he could talk about anything he wanted to, because this was an AA meeting. I told him that he was right. This was an AA meeting, but he couldn’t talk about anything he wanted, unless he wanted to talk about alcohol and the common solution we share.
Bill W. said it was important that we do one thing, I think he said sublimely, well, rather than do many things badly. He was commenting on the Fifth Tradition. Interesting reading. I read and refer to it frequently. I do this to stay sober, and just as important importantly to hope to support the groups I attend, so that they will be here, when another generation, who needs AA will find the solution. Maybe my grandchildren.
Anyway, after the meeting today, an AA friend of mine and I were talking about this very thing. I came home and thought about this.