Tradition One and Concept One – AA Service Workshop – 2025 – Part 27 of 27 – Billy N.

welcome everyone i'm billy i'm an alcoholic good to see everyone um first uh quick announcement anyone can rename yourself um this is not a meeting a group it's simply a gathering in my backyard or kitchen or wherever it is um if you want to rename yourself please do um uh second i think i should say if there's anyone in here who is on the committee that put together narasa this weekend i just want to thank you i know that we all love narasa in person these days and for whatever reason it had to be virtual but i do want to thank the committee obviously took a lot of time out of their life uh to put on narasa last weekend um and i attended as much of it as i could um if you did not hear us go over the conference charter last week that recording is in the monday night service workshop group on facebook if you are not in it i am going to put my whatsapp or if you use whatsapp or text whatever um not now later send me a message we'll get you into that facebook group if you want the recordings um last week we covered the conference charter a couple of things to get out of the way um so while there is no seventh tradition tonight this is not free meaning uh that there is something that you are expected to pay meaning that you should be holding some kind of traditions gathering of your friends your home group members your sponsees whoever um that's the cost of this that's the only cost um the next time someone asks you to go through the big book say yes but i have to take you through the traditions when i'm done taking you through the big look um not being out of the way a couple of other disclaimers we always have to mention i realize that it's a general service conference season and we allow questions via chat at the end of this no questions regarding conference agenda items will be answered or even asked i will just skip over them um i have to be totally respectful of the flow of information in the upside down triangle and for all of you and from me that means that we all have a delegate and that we are all live in a district in an area and i have one vote at my home group i can exercise it there i could go to the assembly um but that is the place to do it um not here i do not want to be seen like we're doing anything to go around the conference process that being said if you are new to aa service please i hope you know who your dcm or your district chair is i hope you know who your delegate or your alternate delegate is if you do not know how your area deals with agenda items i'm just letting you know that all the background has come out the last week or so from what i've seen i'm not sure if there's any committees missing yet but most of the background is out now please find out how your area gets feedback from your groups um there's 93 areas in the united states and canada and they don't all do it the same so if any of us shared our experience we would not be helping somebody unless they lived in the exact same area as us it would only be confusing um and best that you'd be tied into your local service structure anyway um let's see after that is there anything else um that's pretty much it um so we're going to talk about traditional one and concept one tonight i just want to start off a little bit about the history of the traditions not a lot but just a little bit as to just remember that our first 10 or 11 years we didn't have any traditions and that is the reason we have them actually we can thank all the early members who made lots of almost catastrophic errors and mistakes um and without those mistakes we wouldn't have learned from them and bill wouldn't have known that we need the traditions i always share with people um you might know that gso has a large archives and inside that archives is a lot of letters letters that were both written to bill or other people at gso or letters that bill or people at gs0 sent back maybe you're familiar with bobby b at that time during the early 40s she was doing a lot of the correspondence those letters are not shared with the fellowship because actually because they're copyrighted if you write a letter you own the copyright we do not share those letters but if you ever want to do some research at gso all you have to do is send a note into archives and request a particular era couple years that you're interested in our topic and you can make an appointment to go in there and sit down and they will bring out the files and you can't take pictures or copy but you can take notes and you can study them and i say that because one of my favorite letters is from the 40s a letter that bill wrote to another member um that really significant you know we all read what we read in the books but this letter really cemented in my mind why bill was so hell-bent on having the traditions and that was because he wrote to a member that alcoholics have a unique ability in destroying anything good in their life and boy did that really hit me over the head um drunk or sober alcoholics can't help themselves um to destroy something that's supposed to be good in their life and bill had realized that aa was barely eight or nine years old and already we were on a path that was not too good for AA. And most of it had to do with what you can read about in the big book, which is the alcoholic ego. Now all human beings have egos, but apparently it seems that alcoholics struggle with ego maybe a little bit more than the average other person. So things like money and notoriety and celebrityism and prestige and affiliation all these things were cropping up and causing all kinds of issues for early aa and you have to remember if you go to the aa grapevine digital archives and you type in traditions the original 12 essays will come up and you can also find them in the book the grapevine book language of the heart You have to remember that in 1945-46, it wasn't 2025. It was 1946-45. The world was very different, both in AA and outside AA. In AA, let's talk about that first. if you had seven years in 1946 that would be like going to the international convention in vancouver this july and telling people you have 80 years okay if you had seven year old-timers old timer okay now even though it wasn't good for us but it was good if you were one of those people with six or seven or 10 years. You got to make all the rules in whatever little town you came from in America, because there were no traditions. So the person who is sober the longest made all the rules, which is awesome for people like us. You got To decide whose house we had meetings in, you got to decide who got to come to meetings, you got to decide how long those meetings would be you were the king or the queen of a perfect for alcoholics uh so that's how aa was now if we talk about outside a and again i'm going to give a 10th tradition disclaimer that what i'm about to say has nothing to do with politics i assure you for the hundred and whatever people that are here I would say I don't care what your politics are. I would rather say that I respect what they are. And what they Are is none of my business, and you have a right to be an individual in the world, and we'll talk about that in Tradition 1. But I don' t have a Right to bring Tradition or Politics into any AA gathering, meeting, group, convention, whatever. District, assembly, they should be outside. But there are certain things I need to talk about that sound political in today's age, but are just historic facts that we need to set the table with in 1945. Number one, based on who I see in this meeting tonight, just on visual appearance, in about eight states in 1945 it would have been illegal for us to gather publicly and publicly assemble in the same public room. That's not a political statement. That's just what things were like in the United States of America. the law in certain places same with um i would say gay marriage but i would say with being gay or being in a homosexual relationship that was actually illegal in many states forget marriage that's later on i don't really care what you are i don t care who you're married to um and i don' t even care if you're pro or con gay marriage that s not my point my point is in 1945 you couldn't be gay and be married in 1945 in certain states you were not even supposed to be gay i just say that because we live with the traditions today but think about bill writing these in 1945 publishing them in 46 all of a sudden you're the king of aa or queen wherever you happen to live and somebody some guy from new york tells everybody in your town that you're no longer the king that everybody is equal even if you have one day or ten years and that we should do things by group conscience and everybody gets one vote and god speaks through group conscience That was not really very popular And then we go to the third tradition Which I'll spend a lot more time on in a couple of weeks But let's take a high level The third tradition was not about drugs I hate to break it to anybody The third traditional Was about being an alcoholic That we didn't care what you are Or I always quote Metallica Nothing else matters We don't care If you're an alcoholic, you're entitled to a horrible cup of coffee in an uncomfortable chair. And there were some people that did not like that. That anyone was welcome in Alcoholics Anonymous. So I only bring those up because, you know, it's surely a pet peeve of mine to make sure that everybody is welcome in AA. but it's also a pet peeve of mine when people talk about AA, the organization, the spiritual organization, like we were behind the times. I hate to break it to anyone. We were about 80 years ahead of the times now. That doesn't mean our members were that's a whole different subject. Okay. Our members up until today struggle with all kinds of issues that affect Alcoholics Anonymous. We deal with that. I'm sure you deal with that in your home group and at your district in your area. That's just a fact. But the organization itself, the 12 traditions, the third tradition is our original diversity and inclusion statement that no one has a right to keep any alcoholic outside of AA and prevent them from getting the message and actually puts an extra requirement that we have a responsibility to make sure that any alcoholic who comes in is welcomed and sometimes that doesn't happen in certain places and we'll talk about that when we talk about the third tradition the other thing i want to talk about before we specifically talk about tradition one is um a lot of times maybe you can watch out the next time you see this happened in your own life a lot of times the reaction to a so-called traditions violation the behavior is a hundred times worse than what they are correcting that does not set a good example for the person or the newcomer or god forbid somebody who just didn't know that does not set a good example neither does rolling of the eyes whispering next to your buddy sitting in the back of the district meeting texting your fellow you know someone in your sponsee lineage across the room texting like what the hell is wrong with this person and why are they saying it for the fifth time we would probably be better off not sending text messages during district meetings and assemblies and and things like that um but the behavior is sometimes a problem and that's where we come to the enforcement versus embracement enforcement does not work in alcoholics anonymous you can try you could try to prove me wrong let me know in 20 years how it's going um but i will tell you that enforcing any kind of so-called what's perceived to be a rule does not work in alcoholics anonymous i would again go back to comparing the traditions to the message in the big book about when you work with a newcomer you can beat a newcommer over the head with a big book all you want you can try to open their mouth wide enough to see if they can swallow it it. You can do all you want, but it's probably going to be the way they see you carry your message that's going to get them to ask you for help. It's not going to beat you being the smartest person in the world or telling them what they need to do. It is going to be that they have reached the bottom and they are finally willing to ask for help, same with the traditions. They're going to learn them from watching by example, not by being told that everything they're doing is wrong. That just simply doesn't work. So I'm going to, so the tradition, I am going to be talking about AA comes of age, the 12 and 12, and the traditions illustrated that's pretty much what i'm going to be referring to tonight um i will read the long form of tradition one just to start each member of alcoholics anonymous is but a small part of a great whole they must continue to live or most of us will surely die hence our common welfare comes first but individual welfare closes afterwards so it's bad news for the alcoholic ego right out of this right from the gate each member is but a small part small part aa is much bigger and better than all of us um the other thing um is when it says a must continue or will die i myself talk about it all the time that i run into people who are I wouldn't say anti-tradition, but they just say as long as you have the message in the big book, we'll be fine. As long as I have my big book I can travel around the world and I can 12-step people and everything else. I'm not denying that or arguing with people. But what I do believe is ask yourself the same question that I ask myself. if AA didn't exist on my sobriety date, would I still be here? Would I still have the life that I have? Maybe someone is in a different space than they would. I'm pretty convinced that if the people who came to AA before me did not take care of it and make sure it was still here when I got here, a person like me would be in big trouble. And that's why probably the biggest myth, although commonly repeated probably thousands of times a day all around the world in God knows how many languages, is the newcomer is the most important person in the room. No statement could go against our traditions more than that statement. We don't care old. We don' t care new. We don''t care middle. How could you say the newcomer is the most important person in the room? What about the person who's barely six months sober, who took the commitment to have the keys and make the coffee? What about if there was no door open for that newcomer to come into a meeting? So everybody is important according to the first tradition. now i'm going to start off with a couple of things in uh that are i have highlighted because i love what they say in the traditions illustrated it says each of the other 11 traditions explains one specific way to protect the unity of the fellowship and the aa group so you could take from that statement that we only have one tradition unity the other 11 are a way to get there and stay there but it says each of the other eleven traditions explains one specific way to protect the unity of the fellowship and if you go to aa comes of age and if you're interested um in my aa comes of age the traditions start to be talked about on page 96. if you don't know that let me just share that with you that in a comes of age there is a section where they go through all the traditions now if you are some kind of traditions geek to the hundredth power you probably have already realized that the essays inside the grapevine that were originally published in Language of the Heart, they look a lot like what's in A.A. Comes of Age. They're very similar. But before it even talks about tradition one, it says this. Implicit throughout A.E.'s tradition is the confession that our fellowship has its sins. We confess that we have character defects as a society and that these defects threaten us continually. Our traditions are a guide to better ways of working and living, and they are also an antidote for our various maladies. The 12 traditions are to the group survival and harmony what AA's 12 steps are to each member's sobriety and peace of mind." So the traditions are just as equal for survival and harmony of the group as peace of mind and sobriety is for individual sobriete it goes on under tradition one to say probably no society sets a higher value on the personally well personal welfare of the individual member than does aa but long ago we found out that common welfare has to come first without it there would be mighty little personal welfare um and in the 12 and 12 it has some really strong language the unity of alcoholics anonymous is the most cherished quality our society has the most cherished. Our lives, the lives of all to come depend upon it. We stay whole or AA dies. Without unity, the heartbeat of AA would cease to beat. Our world arteries would no longer carry the life-giving grace of God. And then it goes into this, which I know, I get it. There's a lot of people here. There could be some people who totally disagree with what I'm going to say and what the literature says, but I'm just going to read what the legislature says. Does this mean, some will anxiously ask, that in AA the individual doesn't count for much? Is he to be dominated by his group and swallowed up in it? And then the answer is right there. we may certainly answer this question with a loud no we believe there isn't a fellowship on earth which lavishes more devoted care upon its individual members sorely there is none which more jealously guards the individual right to think talk and act as he wishes no aa can compel another to do anything nobody can be punished or expelled are 12 steps to recovery our suggestions the 12 traditions which guarantee aa's unity contain not single don't they repeatedly say we ought but never you must now i'm aware that there are some groups that tell people how to dress when they speak there are some lines of sponsorship that tell men they can't have facial hair or an earring there are places that tell women they have to wear a dress when they speak none of that is any in my business but that is not aaa's position that is a group's individual autonomy those things i always tell people who call me and complain that they were asked to speak somewhere but they tell them how to dress it's a very simple solution don't speak there just say no it seems the human ego though interferes with that they want to speak but they don't want to dress the way the group tells them to dress i don't know what to tell you um but we cherish people's right to be an individual now this comes up to play especially later on in tradition 10 especially in the world we live in today that is so political that people say well i'm an individual like tradition one tells me yes but we'll talk about that later there's some sacrifice to be an aa member and certain things that could be left outside the aa door and don't have to be in a door it goes on to say those who look closely soon to have the key to this strange paradox, because Bill says, how can such a crowd of anarchists function at all? And he says the AA member has to conform to the principles of recovery. His life actually depends upon obedience to spiritual principles. And it goes on to say that most individuals cannot recover unless there is a group. And then he says this, that no personal sacrifice is too great for the preservation of the fellowship. So how do I read that? I read it as like, I get to vote. I get drive. I get do a lot of things that maybe I used to not be able to do. but I just who I vote for is not more important than helping another alcoholic to me to be perfectly honest who I vot for and what I think might be important to me but I'm not sure it's important to anyone else it's definitely not important to any one whose hand I shake walking into a meeting or outside in the parking lot um I need them to know that whoever they are whatever they are whatever they believe in i have a duty to reach out period i had two friends on my mind you know john and rich a little while ago and um while they were on my you know one of my most treasured gifts while i served as a trustee is some dumb book called like the hundred years it's about the boston red sox the last thing i need is a book about the boston Red Sox to be perfectly honest but i always say because it's the perfect example rich and i was so close like you know in aa it doesn't matter pro-life pro-choice democrat republican black white gay straight even red sox fan like our job is to be welcoming and to reach out and to let the newcomer know that this is a safe place and all we care about is they're an alcoholic who needs help that's it um i do want to say that um a little story going back to before bill wrote the traditions the diversity of groups and alcoholics anonymous is one of the greatest things we have what you like is your home group doesn't need to be what i like as my home group or what somebody else likes as their home group everyone gets to pick where they feel comfortable and welcome and that aa works for them we like to judge all the time bill got two letters in mid-40s i share this all the Time one was from a guy who wrote i won't say the name of the city And he basically said, dear Bill, AA is on fire in our city here in the middle of the country. We are helping so many drunks. So many newcomers are coming to our meeting. We are going to the courts and the detoxes and the hospitals. The police are dropping drunks off at our meeting? The only problem we have is this group across the street. we don't know what the hell they're doing over there but it definitely is not a we have no idea how anyone is staying sober there and the funny thing about this story is bill got a letter from another guy from the same city a couple of weeks later and that letter said aa's on fire in our city and our group's on fire and we're going to the police and we go into the courts and we are going to the hospital, and the police are dropping people off at our door. The only problem we have is this group across the street. So this is not a new phenomenon in Alcoholics Anonymous. It seems that we can't help but be focused on other people or other groups instead of ourselves and our own group. And it's a lot easier to be focused on yourself and your own group, That doesn't mean you can't stand up for the traditions. That doesn'T mean you CAN'T share your experience. But you have to do it in a way that's effective and is received well. Otherwise, you're not going to be effective at all. You know, we can't kick anybody out. That's probably the most unique thing of Alcoholics Anonymous. There's a lot of things that make us unique. we don't take money from outsiders. There's a whole bunch of things. We don't care what God you believe in. We do not even care if you do not believe in God. We have a lot of things that make us unique, but if you start searching rules for other organizations on the internet, I know I can't, you know, you ever go down one of those Google really dark searches? Every time you find one piece of information you have your sherlock holmes hat on to do another search and dive down deeper into it we all do it um for about 99.9 of the organizations in the world you can be thrown out there are things you can do that they can throw you out not in alcoholics anonymous now some people confuse that with being thrown out of a meeting or a group see groups and meetings can throw you out although as you know if you've been a chairperson or a secretary at a meeting you'll try to do your job and the group always sticks up for the underdog or the person not behaving that's just uh entry level into aa trusted servantship that's just what happens um but what an organization you can get thrown out of a group and you can be outside in the parking lot you're still a member of aa and that's because of what bill writes in the first tradition and there is something that i want to um let me just see if i can find it quickly there is a great line and sometimes i forget to mention it um about tradition one oh i know what it is because a lot of times we say about tradition one that we can throw you out of a group or a meeting because we need to have a place that other people can get sober but bill writes in a comes of age we honor the tradition so that we can keep aa going until you come back like not even that it's about all of us but that we have a duty to keep a going because maybe you're going to behave yourself one day or maybe you'll stop drinking whatever um and you'll come back but it does make us so unique in the world so with that i'm going to go to concept one if you have the new service manual that is i guess people are calling teal blue these days or if you Have a red one um it's still the same concept the wording is the same concept one reads the final responsibility and ultimate authority for aa world service should always reside in the collective conscience of our fellowship now last week when we talked about the conference charter remember the charter approved in 1955 in st louis and the keel auditorium at the second international convention the first international convention was 1950 in Cleveland and that's where the traditions were approved. The second one was 1955 in St. Louis. That is where the name of the book, A.A. Comes of Age, gets his name. A.I. came of age in St Louis when Bill and Bob, Bob was passed away, but Bill on behalf of Bob turned AA over to the groups, that the groups would now be the advisors to the board of trustees. They would take Bill and Bob's place. The concepts were not written at that time. One concept was written, but we didn't even know there were going to be concepts, and that would be Article 12 of the Conference Charter, which later became Concept 12, the general warranties of the general service conference but bill published the concepts in like 1961 and they were basically a framework of how our world service structure worked now a couple of questions we always get can you apply the concepts to other levels of aa service of course you can districts areas inner groups your home group your personal life your work life absolutely but bill wrote the book the narratives about applying them to the general service structure the other thing is i have been to many a nice workshop where they'll go horizontally instead of vertically instead of going through the 12 traditions and the 12 concepts and the 12 steps they'll go step one tradition one concept one and in some of these workshops they'll try to weave like a a message between all three that there is nothing wrong with that as long as you say that's your version like this is my version of weaving together step one traditional one and concept one bill did not write them weaving them together they were 12 standalone vertical set of principles so concept one it says the aa groups today hold the ultimate responsibility and final authority for our world services those special elements of overall service activity which make it possible for our society to function as a whole the groups assumed responsibility in st louis in 1955 And it goes on in the fourth paragraph to say, this trusteeship, meaning the trustees, was designed to inaugurate and maintain all of the special services for AA as a whole that could not be well-performed by single groups or areas. So it tells you right away what really is the job of the General Service Board. To do things that groups can't do, not what they can do. the groups are plenty good at doing what they're good at the trustees job is to do things the groups can't do um it goes on down one two three four five one two three four or five six the paragraph that says and so we ask ourselves what further precautions could we take that would definitely guard us against an impairment or a collapse. Remember, in 1950-55, AA is 20 years old. People are still worried. I mean, we treat AA today like it could never collapse. That was not how they treated it back then. They were worried it could collapse. Nevertheless, the period 1945 to 1950 was one of such exuberant success that many AAs thought that our future was completely guaranteed. Nothing they believed could possibly happen to our society as a whole because god was protecting aa this attitude was in strange contrast to the extreme vigilance which our members and groups have been taking looking after themselves i think the best thing i've heard this i'll give a little credit to george d former pacific regional trustee former general manager at the general service office and he always liked to say god doesn't take care of aa god takes care of us it's our job to take care of aa it goes on to say um let me go to where i want to go um the groups and i don't want to get into a debate i know i received so many text messages about certain things that was said this weekend at narasa but i'm just going to stick to the literature members are not at the top of the upside down triangle members have a vote at their home group but they do not have a vote in the general service structure we don't pull members there's a as we talked about in the charter last week there's one time when we check with groups registered groups and that's if we wanted to change the concepts the steps of the traditions but other than that the general service conference is our group conscience but groups not members not even meetings but groups groups are on top of that triangle um And that's why it's so important to have a home group. And that is why it is so important, you know, Bill took a lot of time, obviously, out of his life to put this together. And a lot members who came before us, hundreds of thousands, kept this thing going for a long time so that all of us are sober. And we all know, I'm going to guess with all the people here, there's a few of us that have served on at least one AA committee. And so if you've served on one AA Committee, you know getting something done in AA is a miraculous miracle, okay? We all know that. It's a fact of life. but one of the things about the traditions is you could call them guardrails or you could call them a speed bump intentionally we don't want to do things fast or quick we want to be reminded to slow up but sometimes getting things done in aa can be a little painful but the most disappointing part and there's so many people here tonight how I feel about any particular issue does not matter at all to any of you but in the last couple years we've had some real issues that have happened if you're involved in general service we could go to the preamble going from men and women the people I really don't care whether you like it or don't like it not my business the plain language big book whether you like it I think the saddest thing and I hope as we have more people who are interested in the traditions and the concepts and I'm sure some of you have gotten the same phone calls if you're an active three legacy member i just want to warn you and i'm not judging other people because i don't believe general service is the only service i don' t i can't be that arrogant there's lots of service in alcoholics anonymous besides general service and not everybody has to do general service. That might be heresy to say, but people should do the service that works for them. But if you are one of those people who likes to bang their head against the wall and you are very involved in active, passionate people who love the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and are at all the AA events and you're involved in general service, you like me either run into people or get phone calls from people who say can you believe they did this when did they decide they were going to do that and it's almost like i want to record on my iphone the thing i say to the same person hundreds of times over which is we've been talking about this for years it's been on the agenda at the conference for years but this is what happens when we become a fellowship of too many meetings and not enough home groups is if you're not connected to your local inner group or your general service structure you don't hear about things until they happen and then you tend to get really pissed off because how dare they do this without checking with the groups and the rest of us are like what are you talking about or have you been drinking the last three years like where have you've been you say you're five years sober we've been talking about this for three years but it's so important and i only end on this because i live in an area where there are a lot of treatment centers and when cps when treatment committees are you know who's really good at this corrections committees corrections committees are really good at kind of sharing experience with how groups behind the wall can be a group and be an active group and a group no different than one outside but sometimes when we go into treatment facilities, we tend to get stuck on war stories or really wanting to like... But some of the things we forget to talk about are sponsorship and home groups. And we both know how key that is to the newcomer's survival. And I would even throw it out there so that we're not all just focusing on being the best delegate in the world or the best future delegate in the world, or the best future trustee in the world. That when you run into someone new in AA, I just want to let you know, there is a good chance that they do not know what a home group is. If they attend a meeting at a clubhouse, I'm not anti clubhouse. My home group meets in a club house, but I know the difference between my home group and where my group pays rent to me. But newcomers don't know that. And while we could all be experts in studying this service manual and concept one, none of it is of any value unless we're also sharing experience with new people to AA about why it's important to have a home group and and and what is a home group and what's the difference between the meeting at the sober living house you go to and the home group that you have or what's different between the clubhouse and the Home Group and why do we do service at our home groups and those are all tied into concept one but sometimes because as we go down the upside-down triangle you know everybody wants be the best concepts of traditions lawyer and expert on aa history that we forget about making it in digestible pieces that the newcomer can really comprehend and understand even my home group where i meet i'll give you a perfect example um a newcomer asked a question because my clubhouse inside the big meeting area had one of those thermometers that they use for fundraisers, where you like can fill it in and show how much progress you've made. And somebody at one of the groups realized like, because one of their members said, wow, your group has a lot of money. And they were like, well, no. And then a couple of people went to the board about taking that outside of the meeting room and putting it by the coffee and the fellowship area like that's the home group that's the clubhouse raising money when we pass a basket that's for our home group and and the other thing i want to talk about here before we go to questions is starting a new group there's nothing wrong with starting a New Group but we also don't need to be screaming from the rooftops all you need is a resentment in a coffee pot because you could compare the success of new groups to the success of new restaurants okay just if you're not familiar with the successof new restaurants just Google it the success of new group is the same and when you talk to someone who's starting new group all they talk about is rent and buying a couple of big books and maybe you have to pay for insurance but do we mention how much money do you need for a gsr like are there four quarterly weekend assemblies a quarter i mean a year is there four or five hours driving distance is there a thing in your region like narasa or prasa or sasa every other year every region has regional forum and does your home group have enough to like support having an active gsr that's all part of concept one so i'm going to stop there we'll leave like 12 minutes for questions we will be on so i want to make sure um next week let me just bring up the schedule quickly hold on one second so i can make sure i am giving accurate information of course i can't find a flyer for this event which is great but hold on i know somewhere it is okay so next week on march 3rd we will not be doing concept 2 now i'm just going to give a little warning this is a pretty big room that holds a lot of people But next week, because of how many weeks we had in months, we had an open week. So the chair of the General Service Board, Scott, is coming to speak and talk about his service journey in Alcoholics Anonymous next week on this workshop. Because of that, you might have some people come here that would not normally come. so i would just tell anyone i will make sure the room is open at 10 after eight but this room only holds 500 people i don't think we'll get 500 but here's what i know about when you're the chair of the general service board or the general manager or the chair of a world services or the share of the a grapevine like every service lunatic in the world comes out so um there is a possibility that could happen next week so just letting you all know the room will be open 20 minutes early if you get in just shut your computer your screen off and just sit there until 8 30 but just get a space because once it goes to 500 nobody else will be allowed in um let's see please send any questions about concept one or tradition one okay here's a question not really on subject tonight but because it deals with newcomers and how we treat newcomers i'm just going to give it a shot we have a guy who only says he's an addict at closed meetings is this a traditions violation so let's just talk about that number one back when aa started you didn't even say you're an alcoholic number two he might not even know what he is i could quote an old delegate from chicago john g he used to say to people why do you get so mad about what newcomers call themselves i don't even believe anything a newcomer says for a year why do they let it upset you so much um what i would tell you this your group can do what it wants to do. Is it an open or a closed meeting? Does your group know the difference between an open and a closed meaning? Do you explain that at the beginning of the meeting? I will also say this, no public humiliation. We don't humiliate people. We make people feel unwelcome. If you think you want to talk to the person after the meeting, I'll just give you this one rule. if you don't have an hour of time a week to spend with that person mind your own business if you Don't Have An Hour To Take Them Through The Literature Then What Business Is It Of Yours To Open Your Mouth Like I Hold Myself To That Same Rule It's Just Not My Business We Should Be Welcoming But Most Times It's Because No One Has Taken The Time to share with people and share what Alcoholics Anonymous is and what it isn't, and the difference between being an alcoholic and an addict, and even if you're both, like this is a one-purpose program. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has other problems, okay? But in AA, we identify ourselves as an alcoholic. If that person needs any help, please email me. I'll be glad to talk about it. northeast alcoholics anonymous service assembly narasa any comments on the plethora of acronyms oh yeah if you look up acronym in the dictionary it says that alcoholics anonymous is the champion of creating more acronymes every year for like 90 years okay some areas have a little form they call alphabet soup to help people know even myself i'm sorry i said narasa and prasa we should say district chair district committee member we should say cooperating with the professional community we should say treatment facilities we should say northeast regional a service assembly we should say northeast regional trustee not nert we should say all those things because they're confusing to the newcomer and we have our own language inside service but it's fine if we're talking to each other who know it but not if we are trying to make it attractive to the new comer. Could you describe the difference between groups of meetings? I think it's better I don't because this became a real contention at Narasa, I'll tell you, at the Northeast Regional AA Service Assembly, I'll tells you to go to the AA group pamphlet and it tells you clearly the difference between meeting a group. And when we get to traditions three and five, I will talk about open and closed meetings and the difference in the meeting of the group. You can find the recordings in the monday night facebook secret group the mondays night service workshop that posted usually within a day if you need to know how to get that again please send a whatsapp message or an email and we will help you let's see there are certain areas in my area which seem to have trouble getting gsrs and remain one legacy groups are the traditions and concepts being taught less, wondering if there is a trend. No, I think it's the same. I don't think it's taught less. I think it's not popular sometimes. But any decent home group that survives the test of time knows and is practicing the traditions because you will disintegrate if you don't. Let's see. Regarding your statement in the beginning of the meeting about how gay Black people were perceived in AA. Can you expand on how things were in the 1940s in AA for these groups? I will when we talk about Tradition 3, but there were some challenges. And again, because of individuals, the same challenges we have with individuals today. We have people who judge based on a lot of things. We have People Who Judge on appearance, People Who Judge on skin color, PeopleWhoJudge on how people talk people who judge on who people are attracted to people who judge on what religion they believe in um when we get to tradition three i will go deep did have we had some challenges yeah we've had some challenges and unfortunately those challenges probably didn't make it easy for certain groups of people to come into aa i can't answer that question because that is definitely a conference topic um will there be any cheat sheet study sheets like the unity in action studies no there will be not no cheat sheets no billy n taking you through the traditions official pages none of that i'm not saying any of those are bad i know they're very helpful to people my emphasis is to encourage people to do their own work and their own reading and their on studying of aa history and reading the literature because you know i didn't say it tonight but i will say it before we end i'm sure that a lot of people here have had the following the following thing has happened to you have you ever been in a meeting where someone shares that they're back with like three days five days whatever and they say that for five years they've been in and out of aa and they just can't get it and they've done everything and it just doesn't work for them. I'm going to repeat again, no more questions about the Facebook group. The information to contact to get that after the meeting is in the chat. So you ever talk to one of those people after a meeting that said that AA doesn't look good for you? Doesn't work with them? And you talk to them for like 45 minutes and the one thing you know for certain they have not done the last five years is Alcoholics Anonymous. They have done everything else, but not AA. And usually you want to introduce them to the literature. Saying that you can understand the traditions without reading AA comes of age is kind of like saying you understand the program of recovery without going through the big book and reading the big books. a comes of age explains the big problems we had in our first couple of years 10 years and the mistakes we made and then you can see how all those mistakes dropped into the traditions so that's the last public service announcement um let's see and that is it we will see everybody next week remember i'm going to say it again you're not going to believe me even the people in service who don't like me will be here to hear scott next week okay so i'm just warning you um please be here by 8 10 so that you don't get locked up and i think it'll be really interesting to hear him talk about his journey in service and Alcoholics Anonymous. He's been a trustee at Lodge, he's been a delegate at GSR.