The 12 Traditions and Fellowship Survival – 12 Traditions – Part 2 of 2 – Sandy B.

My name is Chuck, and I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is July 25th of 1984. My home group is the College Park Triangle Group in Orlando, Florida. And they have asked me to do a workshop or a presentation on traditions. And I am amazed that there are this many people in the room. So, traditions meetings have, I think, usually been the stepchild of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I say that from long experience. I used to chair a traditions meeting at the group I got sober in, and there were two rooms in that particular meeting place, a smoking and a non-smoking room and the traditions meeting was in the non-snoking room and usually two or three people were there and if somebody new came in, in way of introduction I would say to them this is a traditions meeting and invariably the person would get up and go into the smoking room which for a non smoker is really a statement so we had the same two or three people week after week go through the traditions. And it was good, but sparse. My first involvement with the traditions was about eight years ago, and I went through a traditions workshop with Joe H. over in Orlando. And I wasn't as interested in the traditions as I was, I had a lot of respect for Joe because he had long-term sobriety in Central Florida, and I found out that he did this. And every week for 12 weeks, we went through and took a tradition a week. And after we finished that, the following year, he asked me if I would conduct one in my house with the spillover that he had from his group. And for the last six or seven years, every year in January, we have a traditions workshop where people come for an hour and a half and we take a tradition a week and go through the history and the tradition in that way. So we do it in pretty good depth and we do it in such a way that we try to get people to think about the spirit underneath the tradition, not just the literal word, especially of the short form, But a little more thought, what does it mean? And that's what I would like to talk about this morning. Of course, the traditions came out of the experience of AA and the experience of another group prior to the beginning of AA. And looking around, I see a lot of people who obviously know a lot about tradition, so this is probably old hat. But the beginning of the long-form tradition says up in italics right before the traditions start. And italics means, hey, pay attention, this is important. It says our AA experience shows that colon and then it goes into the traditions. um in the 1840s there was a group that became known as the Washingtonian movement and it started with six drunks in Baltimore who formed a mutual aid society where they got together and through talking and sharing kept themselves sober and with that beginning in the early 1840s, within five years it had grown to something like 100,000 members, just a phenomenal growth. In contrast, the first five years of Alcoholics Anonymous, it grew to maybe 1,000, a much smaller number. But what happened to the Washingtonians was the second five years, they continued to grow. The numbers are a little fuzzy, both in terms of the time and exactly how they categorized people. But their highest membership was well over 200,000 at their peak. But 10 years after they started, they were gone. Gone totally. To the point that in the mid-1940s, when AA started to experience some growing pains, someone wrote to Bill and said what we're going through is something very similar to what the Washingtonians went through. And Bill Wilson at that time had been involved in AA full-time for a decade and he had never heard of the Washingtonian's. He had to go do some research to find out about it. So that 100 years between the end of the Washingtonians and the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous was a very dark night without much light for alcoholics. And as Bill reviewed the growth and the decline of the Washingtonian movement, he drew lessons from that and he drew lesson from what was going on in AA at the time and he came up with the traditions which he published in The Grapevine over a period of years beginning about 1946. Let me just say that it's to me ironic that the traditions came about as a result of the growth of Alcoholics Anonymous. For the first five years there were basically three groups, three populations of sober alcoholics. There was Akron, there was New York, and there was Cleveland. And a handful of people. And probably had AA stayed at that level, the need for traditions would not be as great as it became. But of course what happened was in about 1940, there started to be some very favorable publicity, primarily in the Cleveland area, and Cleveland started to grow rapidly. and then of course in 1941 the Jack Alexander article appeared in the Saturday Evening Post and I remember the Saturday evening post now I was very young but I read the Saturday evening post but there are people younger than me who probably don't know what the Saturday evening host was like and I usually say it was akin to having a spot on the last show of Seinfeld. It was the medium that everybody watched and read, and so the story that Jack Alexander wrote was just phenomenal in terms of its impact, and the population of AA just exploded. And with the explosion of population came problems, and that's what the traditions are about. If you were to ask Bill Wilson what our first duty, what the first duty of Alcoholics Anonymous is as a society, I think most people would probably say, well, it's love or it's spirituality or something like that. It sounds very, very good. But what Bill Wilson said was that our first duty as a society is to ensure our own survival. Because if Alcoholics Anonymous was not here when I came in looking for a solution, I wouldn't have found it and I wouldn�t be here today and probably neither would anybody else. So I think in terms of the need for society And that's what the first, to me, to understand the traditions, it helps me to understand that the traditions relate to me personally. I believed for a long time that the tradition were out there, that it had something exclusively to do with the politics of AA. And I didn't understand what this had to do with my individual sobriety or me as a person. And for me, it's been very helpful to look at the first and the twelfth tradition as the bookends. And if I really understand the first and the 12th tradition, the 10 in between fall into place and become a whole lot more understandable to me. So, I also think of the traditions as an extension of the 12 steps, because the 12th step says, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we carry this message to alcoholics and practice these principles in all our affairs. The purpose of the twelfth step is not for me to get recovery and put it in my pocket and run away and keep it. The purposeof the twelfth step is to give it to others, and as soon as I start giving to others, I have a group. The third tradition says any two or three alcoholics gathered together for the purpose of society is a group that's a very small number. Uh, it's even smaller than the number of people in this room right now. Okay. I was, I was eight or nine years sober and a young man came to me and asked me to sponsor him. And so we went over to the little park across from the group that I went to, and we started with a first step because I think that's a good place to start if you're going to work the steps. And I said, tell me about your powerlessness over alcohol. And he had just come out of a treatment center and he told me what they had told him in the treatment center. And i really have no quarrel with it, except I didn't understand it. And we talked and we weren't getting anywhere. So finally I said to him, let's try this. Tell me a specific incident where you intended to stay sober, where all the circumstances around you said stay sober and you started to drink and you got drunk anyway. And he thought about it and then he said, ah, I remember. I was over in Cocoa Beach. I had a date with a young lady who I really liked. I knew she did not like drunks, and so I wanted to experience a full relationship with this person. So I was on my best behavior, and I decided to have one glass of wine with dinner. And as a result of that, I ended up, I blacked out, I vomited on her, and not surprisingly, I have never seen her again. And I said, hold on to that because I think that's your alcoholism. And having done this great job at this 12th step, I turned the mirror on myself and I said, where in my life did I have that same experience? And I got sober when I was 38 years old. And thinking about it that way, I went back to a time that I was 22 years old, 16 years before I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. And I had had an accident in my car. I had no headlights. I was coming up on final exams my first year in law school. I Was totally unprepared and you only get one shot. And so I knew I had to pull it together. So I made a solemn oath to swear off alcohol for two weeks until these exams were over. And within two days of making that oath, I found a reason to break it. I mean, it was a good reason. It was a real good reason we were going out to dinner. And I said, well, why don't we just have one drink with dinner? And I was my last conscious thought I was sitting on a bar stool because, of course, you can't have dinner at a restaurant. You got to have dinner in a bar. I was setting up on the bar stool and I was watching the sun go down. And my last conscience thought was I've got no headlights and I need to get home a couple miles away before it gets dark. And the next thing I knew, it was 3 o'clock in the morning, I woke up in bed. I have no idea how I got from there to there. To this day, Mary and I went back a couple years ago and I found that bar and it's gone. And I realized if I'd known what to look for, I could have found this wonderful fellowship 16 years before I did. But I didn't. The point is, I was eight or nine years sober and for the first time this idea of being powerless over alcohol really hit. I had used the words before but it really hit and had I not been going to that group and had that young man not come up and asked me to sponsor him, my sobriety today would be less than it is and that's why I need a group to maintain and continue my sobrietty and that is what the traditions are about. It is a way to keep us together so that we can continue to give it away because that's what the 12th step says we do. So, what will tear us apart? In the beginning, this sobriety thing was pretty tenuous. People were rolling out as fast as they were rolling in. And there were three or four people staying sober here and then they'd get a few more and then they'd lose those. And they were very much afraid that people going out and drinking would somehow wreck what they had. And then they got past that point and they started to get some solid sobriety and they knew that it would stick even though people might come and go. So the next assault was the boys club let a girl in. And you know what happens when boys and girls get together. And so they were afraid that somehow the mixing of the sexes and the jealousies and the emotions that go with that would tear us apart. And we got beyond that. And they said, yes, some of these things may happen, but still the core seems to be holding so it's solid. So what Bill did was he looked at what would tear up and tear us part? What do we really have to fear? And what he found was the natural forces for power, for domination, for glory, and for money. These are the things that will tear a society apart. And what He said, let me tell you, most of what I have learned, I have three sources and my own experience. The first is, of course, the 12 and 12. In addition, AA comes of age. and also Language of the Heart, which is a collection of all of Bill's grapevine writings where he wrote these articles. I think with those three things, the understanding of the tradition really comes alive and gets fleshed out. But what Bill wrote in A Comes of Age, he said these natural forces for power, domination, glory, and money are all the more dangerous because they are powered by self-righteousness, self-justification, and the destructive anger of anger usually masquerading as righteous indignation. So I have this problem that these natural instincts could tear the society apart. So, I look at step 12, excuse me, tradition 12. And the tradition lays out the actions that I must maintain to keep the unity. And Bill talks about this as humility or right perspective. Bill summed it up in one word, sacrifice. What do I have to sacrifice in order to maintain the unity of the group? He talks about the 12 traditions ask us to give something up. I had a problem with the wording of the 12th tradition in the short form. in the short form of course it says anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions ever reminding us to place principles before personalities that sounds good but I didn't understand what my personality would have to do with the tradition I am an introvert by nature my wife is an extrovert If we go to a party, she'll be at the buffet line chatting people up. And I'll be over in the corner with a lampshade over my head waiting for someone to come to me. Now what in the world does that have to do with these questions of power and glory? And then I read in The Language of the Heart the writing that Bill wrote about the 12th tradition back in 1945. and what he said was AA's 12 traditions repeatedly ask us to give up personal desires personal interests for the common good and the addition of that word that personal desires or that personal interest all of a sudden the light went on oh, that's what they're talking about this is a shorthand form what are my personal desires well the fourth step The fourth step tells me what they are, that I have a God-given instinct for economic and emotional survival, for an important place in society, and for the satisfaction of the sexual urge. These are the three biggies that power my life and power just about any human's life. So the traditions asked me to work against my natural nature. And again, the window for me on that is the fourth step. Again, the connection between the steps and the traditions. And then it occurred to me that really these steps speak to individuals. We talk in terms of a group conscience. But in reality, there is no group conscience. There is a series of individual consciences. And to the extent that the individual consciencies are informed and held in check by the observance of these traditions, then we have an informed group conscience, we have the power that can come in past our individual desires and effectively lead us. And so how do I do that? To me, what my sponsor tells me, some of these things are simply an act of will. So I have the first tradition that tells me this is about keeping us together, cohesiveness and unity. We have the twelfth tradition that says the way we keep together, the way ?? have cohesiveness, the way ? ??? ???? ??????, unity is sacrifice. And then traditions two through eleven give me some specific sacrifices that flesh out what I have to make. The last talk of Dr. Bob was a very wonderful and very short talk, and he said AA in its final analysis comes down to love and service. We all know what love is. We all knows what service is. But we have 12 steps that flesh that out. And just like that, we have twelve traditions that flesh out this idea of sacrifice. So, with that in mind, what do I give up? What do I sacrifice in the second tradition? Second tradition says, of course, for our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority, a loving God as he may express himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants. They do not govern. In the second condition, I sacrifice the right to be boss to be the leader, to push my weight around. Now the truth is, I like to be the boss. I like to be the leader and I think most people do. I do not believe from my experience and from what I've seen that we come into AA and we work this program and we all of a sudden lose these desires. I think we would all like to be the big frog or the big fish in the pond that we happen to be swimming in. And my pond right now seems to be AA. When I'm in my profession, I like to Be a Big Fish in that pond. And when I'm with my family, I Like to Be A Big Fish In That Pond. So I have this desire to be The Boss because it makes me feel good. And that's destructive because if I want to Be the Big Fish, there's a good chance that you want to be the big fish too. And so we've got two big fishes competing with each other. And so that's what we give up, coercive personal authority because coercive person authority is destructive and that's called being a big fish in my parlance. And throughout the traditions, Bill talks about coercive personal authority as being monumentally destructive to our unity. I teamed the second tradition with the fourth tradition together for a reason. I take them a little out of order because there's a line in the second tradition that Bill wrote in The Grapevine at the beginning that I think makes a lot of sense to me. He says, he's talking about this informed group conscience. And he says, how do we get an informed group conscious? the same way we get uninformed individual conscience. We take actions. Some of those actions are wrong. We do an inventory and we correct it. So each group is going through the same process of each individual. They are growing. And the fourth tradition says, I sacrifice the right to go to your group and tell you how to run it. Fourth tradition says Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or as a whole. Each group has the right to be at its own stage of development, to make its own mistakes and learn from them. I got sober in a group that was 45 years old when I came to it and met 21 times a week unless you counted smoking and non-smoking as separate, in which case it met 40 times a week. The group that I belong to now is three years old. It meets once a week in a church, and there are six regular members and 15 others who come in. The problems that the big group, the old group has, are significantly different than the issues that we have to deal with in my current group. So to transform one to the other, transpose one on the other may not be the highest good for that particular spiritual entity. So we allow each other to make mistakes. The other thing that the autonomy allows is Bill wrote about AA is not a frozen set of dogmatic principles. We can grow, we can change. Sometimes the changes are for the better. And if the changes aren't for the better then they will be adopted. For example, the first meetings in this in the universe of Alcoholics Anonymous were Akron, New York and Cleveland. and then you got some major growth west and in the early 40s groups started meeting in Los Angeles. Now nobody in Los Angelos had been to New York, Cleveland or Akron so they didn't know how meetings ran in those other three cities the eastern cities so a fellow by the name of Mort said well I think what we'll do is we've got this book and it's got a chapter that says how it works So we'll read how it works as a way to open the meeting. And I would say from my experience, 90% of the meetings in this entire country open with a reading of the fifth chapter. Bill Wilson didn't lay that out as the way meetings have to go. Somebody did it. They tried it. It worked. And now that is the traditional way. Could there be some other things out there that we don't know about? Maybe. Maybe. And we allow groups to try it and that way we grow. We do not become a frozen set of dogmatic principles. The third tradition. Short form. The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking. The primary thing that I sacrifice with the third tradition is the right to choose who I'm going to sit next to. Again, I'm not sure that it's a totally human response, but I know it's mine. I prefer to be with people who are like me. And I especially like to be with people who like me and agree with me. And so by this third tradition, by giving up the right to choose by being an exclusive club, I sit in meetings with whoever a power greater than myself chooses to put in that meeting. And occasionally, I hear things that I disagree with. Occasionally, I Hear Things That I Think Are Just Downright Wrong. And I hate to admit it, but some of the things that i believed were downright wrong five and 10 years ago, I believe wholeheartedly are absolutely correct today. So I need to be in those meetings and I need listen to those things for me. And by giving up the right to select who I sit next to, I get a form of humility. In the 12 and 12, in the third tradition, Bill writes about somebody who came in who had a very severe problem. And he doesn't say what that problem is. I mean, if alcoholics think it's a bad problem, it was a bad problem. And the thought was, what will people think of us if we allow this person to be with us? Will we be smeared by the hatred of what this person is? And he doesn't even say man or woman, just, you know. and what he wrote was maybe our public relations will be damaged by a few strange characters set among us of course our public relationships are important but is not the real character of this society still more important who of us dares to say no you can't come in thereby setting himself up as judge jury and perhaps executioner of the brother alcoholic which goes back to that first tradition and the twelfth step. We need each other to stay sober and to grow in sobriety. Who are we to say who gets that gift? So, we have no rules, right? None whatsoever. Anything goes. And I put the third and the fifth tradition together because there seems to be a tension and a controversy that has been ongoing now for quite a few years and it seems to center around alcohol and drugs. You know, can people who are addicted to drugs come in and be a member of alcoholics? And the short form of the tradition, this is one of the ones that I've done 180 degree on. When I first came in, I would hear people say, old timers, if somebody mentioned drugs or qualified as a drug addict, out. This is Alcoholics Anonymous and we have nothing to do with drugs. And I thought that was pretty harsh because I thought we were about love and openness and I was so impressed I thought my psychotherapy group would be enhanced by the sharing that we had and this exclusive attitude just got me. but and I thought that you know all you have to do is come into a meeting and say you have a desire not to drink today well you know I shoot dope and I've never drunk but no I don't want to drink today so I can come in right well the long form of the tradition says our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism hence We may refuse none who wish to recover, nor ought AA membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an AA group, provided that as a group they have no other affiliation. The long form of the tradition comes down very strong on the fact that Alcoholics Anonymous is for alcoholics. What a shock. and then you get into the fifth tradition that says each alcoholic's anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers so you put those two traditions together and they come down pretty hard on alcoholism as being a requirement for membership And then I started reading more and understanding that these traditions are not, the purpose of the traditions is not exclusivity. The purpose of these traditions is something called identification. And that's why the third and the fifth tradition hit so strongly on alcoholism. bill writes about the fifth tradition it has now become plain that only a recovered alcoholic can do much for the sick alcoholic a tremendous responsibility has descended upon us all an obligation so great that it amounts to a sacred trust bill talks i i love some of his language he talks about the alcoholic being in a dark cave and our job is that we can go into that dark cave with him, not to shout from the front of the cave, hey, you ought to do this. But we can go in the cave and say, I've done that. Here's what I did. Let's come out together. The first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous I ever went to was in August. My sobriety date is July 25th. The first meet-up was in April. The first week in August, there were three weeks there that I didn't go to any meetings because I didn't need to. Yes, I had a DUI. That's what brought my drinking career to a screeching halt. You know, but it wasn't a bad DUI I only rolled the car and practically decapitated myself but it could have happened to anybody. It almost happened to me quite a few times before that but that was the first time that hit. I had quit drinking for four years before that happened. My wife at the time had convinced me that the reason I didn�t make any money and I couldn�t get a good job was I drank too much. And so I quit. And then I started again, but I did quit. So when I had this unfortunate run-in with the Polk County Police, I said, well, that's it for me. The fit has finally hit the shan and I quit." Now, I happened to be in therapy at the time. You know, I am educated beyond my wisdom. So I was in therapy, and the first week I didn't say anything. And the second week it came out that I had been arrested for DUI. And the therapist, we laugh at counselors and psychologists and psychiatrists. This man looked at me and he said, Before you come back here next week, go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Don't come back hier next week unless you've been. Well, I said, yeah, I'll do that. I thought it was silly because I had quit for four years before. I didn't need this. And he said to me, go and learn how to ask for help. So that's the mindset I walked into my first meeting having. I could quit before. I could do it myself. And I'm going to be here one time just to satisfy this fool who thinks I need it. And I walked into that meeting and a woman by the name of Terry L. was the chairman. Terry now has about 35 years. She was a real hard charger. She was the red hot mama over at Rosie O'Grady's and Brooklyn accent. And she started the meeting and said, I never went to a restaurant that didn't serve alcohol. and it hit me right between the eyes because I had never gone to a restaurant that did not serve alcohol. The only time I would go to McDonald's was in the morning. If I was going to lunch or dinner, it was someplace that served beer or wine or whatever. And so I was sitting there not needing to be there, not wanting to be here and that simple statement hit me and I've been here ever since. now it was a first step meeting I did not know it was the first step meeting I did not know when she said that she was qualifying hell I first meeting I didn't know anything everybody in that meeting talked about their experiences with alcohol none of them hit me but that one statement did what I had forgotten was that about six months before that I was dating a woman I divorced that first wife and become a hip slick and cool single man that I always wanted to be didn't have wives or children to hold me down and I was dating this woman much my junior what do you do when you're 38 years old you find someone in their teens or twenties whatever call it a midlife crisis I don't know but she said she made the statement to me one time that I can't get through the morning without my joint. I get nervous until I get my morning joint. And my thought was, I didn't say this because it could screw up what might happen. I didn' t say this but my thought wa s man, you've got a problem. I didn''t remember that I couldn' t get past 5 o'clock without going into happy hour. I didn ''t make the identification. I didn nd make the identi fication. And I like to talk about conference-approved literature, but there is a book written by a man by the name of Jess Lair. His most famous book was I Ain't Much But I'm All I've Got. That's not the book. But in one of his other books, he drew the word picture that this common human experience and this spirituality is like the sun. and the sun in Florida in July is hot but it won't burn it's there but what you can do is you can take a magnifying glass and you can take that light from the sun and you focus it down and you start a fire with that same light that ordinarily would not burn and his point was and I think it's very good that the focus of this power of God and this focus of general human experience from one alcoholic talking to another who have had the same experience can penetrate our defenses. And that's the identification. Dr. Bob was a member of the Oxford group for two years before Bill Wilson showed up in Akron. He knew he had a problem and he went to Oxford group meetings and he shared and he didn't get sober. And the actions of the Oxford group have been incorporated 100% into the 12 steps of AA. They had four or maybe six, if you read the story, he sold himself short about the man who started AA in Chicago. He laid out the program that Dr. Bob gave him one afternoon in his office. there are six. If you look at AA comes of age, Bill Wilson writes about six. And what Bill said he did is I just took those six and just broke them down into more bite-sized pieces. They're the same actions, but I made them a little more specific. So the program of Alcoholics Anonymous as it existed in the Oxford groups was not enough to keep Dr. Bob sober. But when Bill came in and used his experience, it caught. And then they took that and they went to Bill D and it caught and we're here this weekend and we are going to do a sobriety countdown tomorrow night and there is going to be 1,500 sober alcoholics stand up with 5,000 years of sobrietry. And it all started when one alcoholic trying to stay sober went to another alcoholic into that dark cave and says, I've been there. Found a way out. Come with me. And here we are. So, I was wrong. I believe that alcoholism needs to be... Alcoholics Anonymous needs to keep its singleness of purpose. I believe in Narcotics Anonymous. I believe it works for narcotics users. I believe an Overeaters Anonymous I believe the same principle. I watched a television show about a baseball player, and I don't remember his name. I'm not a big baseball fan. But what was remarkable was he got into gambling. And I watched how his life went down the tubes. And I wanted to grab the TV and say, geez, stop it. Can't you see what you're doing with your life? Because I don' t have that problem. But another gambler would say, yeah, been there, done that. My first wife went to a psychiatrist very early in our marriage. And the psychiatrist said, he's the problem. And the psychologist was right. I was the problem I was not a good husband. And she stayed in the marriage. I cannot imagine remaining married to me. You know? But another Al-Anon could. Another person who stayed in that relationship would have that connection. So I've come down on the side of singleness of purpose and alcoholism in Alcoholics Anonymous. The 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th traditions are traditions about giving up money, authority because of their divisive nature. The short form of the 6th tradition says each group ought never endorse finance or lend the AA name to outside enterprises. That's the affiliation tradition. Interestingly enough, listen to what the long form says. Problems of money, property, and authority may easily divert us from our primary spiritual aim. We think, therefore, that any considerable property of genuine use to AA should be separately incorporated and managed, thus dividing the material from the spiritual. An AA group as such should never go into business. Secondary aids to AA, such as clubs or hospitals, which require much property or administration, ought to be incorporated and so set apart that, if necessary, they can be freely discarded by the groups. Hence, clubs, AA managers are usually preferred, but hospitals as well as other places of recuperation ought to do well outside of AA and medically supervised. While an AA group may cooperate with anyone, Such cooperation should never go so far as affiliation or endorsement. Actual or implied, an AA group can bind itself to no one. In the long form, the affiliation comes way down at the end after a long discussion of money and property. Bill wrote that we don't need money, that AA, in essence, is one alcoholic talking to another. I don't even need a group room to do that. I can sit on the curbstone and talk one alcoholic to another. The first meeting of AA took place in Henrietta Seiberling's gatehouse. We don't need a gatehouse, we just need two alcoholics talking to another." The seventh says that we are fully supporting through our own contribution. I sacrifice the right to get other people to support my project. Self-supporting and affiliation are tied in together. There's really not much use to have an affiliation if you don't have some financial benefit for it. So they're very much tied together. I remember I was asked to bring a meeting into a treatment center, and I called my sponsor and said, you know, they'd asked me to do this, what do you think? He says, fine, but pay rent. I said, huh? Of course. If we don't pay rent, it looks like we're part of the treatment center. So we started passing the basket and they got a good kick out of it because these are mostly young people in treatment. They didn't have any money, but we passed the basket. And then we started using the money that we collected to buy literature for people in the group. And surprisingly, the basket started to get money from these people who didn'thave it. They saw that the money was going through AA and was coming back to them and we were paying rent, and they started contributing so that people in their situation could have the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was touched by that and surprised. We don't have money. If we can't pay for it, we don't. Have it. That's the philosophy. We remain poor. If we're not self-supporting, we won't have it. It's just that simple. One of the tradition workshops that I did, one of the members brought in a newsletter from an organization and there was an editorial in the newsletter that was criticizing the leadership of that particular organization because they had so much money. The leadership did what they wanted to do no matter what the grassroots said. One of the things that Bill writes about in The Seventh Tradition is it keeps our leaders responsible and responsive to the group membership. If we don't like something, we stop supporting it, and it stops. It's just that simple. It's the way it should be. It's a hard way to go, and I don't have time to talk about it, but I got involved in that group I got sober in, And the animosity over money, I left. And I should have left, but it was hard. And two years later when I came back, I found out that the problem had been corrected. But it was a high price. It was a High Price. And whenever you get involved in these arguments over money it's incendiary. And so that's the purpose of the tradition. Keep it down. We need some money, of course, but not much. Eight, non-professional. I give up the right to be paid for what I got for free. It fits into me with the seventh tradition. Seventh tradition says we've been takers all our life. Now let's be givers. The eighth tradition says freely have ye received, freely give. Ninth tradition. I like the ninth tradition. It says we sacrifice organization, right? AA as such ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve. No, not really. This convention would not come off without a substantial amount of organization. When I read the material, what Bill was talking about was something called authoritative organization, Something where through my position I can force you to do something or banish you. Coercion. That's a whole lot different than administrative organization. On Tuesday night we need someone to buy a cake and bring it to the meeting. That's organization. The writing of the big book was organization, and believe it or not, that was disputed. There were people who thought that the big book should not be written. And there's been a lot of animosity toward Bill Wilson about the money that he made off writing the big book. It has gone on for years, which goes back to the divisiveness of money. Bill said we shall never be organized until we create a government. And that's different than administrative organization. The spirit of vested authority versus the spirit of service. they are poles apart. Ten, I sacrifice the right to use the collective power of AA to support my particular cause. Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues, hence the AA name ought never be drawn into public controversy. This is where the Washingtonians really got into trouble. The Washingtonians were smaller than we are now, but in the 1840s was a substantial group of people that would meet on a regular basis. Politicians started seeing these groups of people and they said, you know, if I can speak to them I can get a ready audience for my particular cause. Abraham Lincoln spoke to the Washingtonians on the abolitionist platform doing away with slavery. temperance leaders spoke to the Washingtonians let's ban the production and sale of alcohol totally and they would line up people in the Washingtonians for these causes and of course when you do that you've got another group within the Washingtonian's that opposed it and that was one of the things that brought them down I can have any opinion I want to as an individual and Bill Wilson encouraged that. He encouraged me to become a citizen of the world, to vote, to take my place in government, in my church, whatever, but I do not bring Alcoholics Anonymous with me to bolster whatever it is I've got. In the 11th tradition, we're coming back to anonymity where we started. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and film. I sacrifice my right to be a spokesman for AA because that's pretty heady altitude for me to be a spokesman for AA. At first we were helped. In the beginning, we were help. There was a catcher. There was an agent who was a pitcher who had achieved national notoriety. A fellow by the name of Bob Feller. He came out of Wisconsin and he went with the Cleveland Indians and he was young and people were wondering why is this young pitcher able to do this phenomenal performance and they went to the catcher, this old guy, veteran catcher by the name of Roley. And Roley was a drunk and he was known to be a drunk and all of a sudden his career had risen. He and Bob Feller rose at the same time as a battery and they sent him a letter and they said, what happened? And he said, I got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. And that was the first major piece of national publicity that Alcoholics Anonymous got that was favorable. And people started coming in. And so Bill Wilson saw this, and so people in AA started becoming spokesmen for AA. Marty Mann, National Council of Alcoholism, well known. And then the controversy started. Why him? Why her? I'd be better. Blop, blop, blop. Jealousy, infighting, personal power, glory. And they said, whoa, the lid is off Pandora's box. We need to put it back on as quick as we can. But anonymity is not just about not using my last name. Bill Wilson. Bill Wilson was asked to accept an honor. I believe it was from Yale University. An honorary doctorate because of the work that Alcoholics Anonymous had done. And if you ever read it, it's beautiful. It talks about AlcoholicsAnonymous just beautifully. And he wrote back and said, I can't do this. And they said, Oh, we understand. We'll rewrite it. And so they rewrote it and they said it is to Bill W. There. Will that do it? And what Bill wrote back I think is so illustrative of the spirit underneath that particular tradition. He said, The tradition of personal anonymity and no honors at the public level is our protective shield. We dare not meet the power temptation naked. And so while I might accept this degree within the letter of AA's tradition as of today, I would surely be setting the stage for a violation of its spirit tomorrow. So just deleting the last name in some circumstances is a violation to the tradition, the spirit of the tradition at the public level. But Dr. Bob, interestingly enough, said that this tradition could be breached below the level of public. And he was very critical of people in AA who were so anonymous that you couldn't find them. I use my last name when I speak. My name is Chet Parker. I'm an alcoholic. I would like that if you come to Orlando, you'd be able to find me in the phone book. This is not the level of press radio and film. But I may not use other people's names. And I have come to believe that that is not a violation of the tradition of anonymity. I found that that is a violation of my humility as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. When I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. I slipped in the back door. I parked my car around the block. I did not want anyone to see me coming in. I was ashamed of being an alcoholic. So who am I today, since that has passed, to take it on to myself to say that you shouldn't feel that way? That's not my job. It's not my power. I would like to close with one story. About two months ago, I had an opportunity to meet two people from Laguna Beach at the airport, John and Karen A., and they had both been in Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon a long time, and they were virtually next-door neighbors to Chuck Chamberlain. Knew him very well. And after I picked them up from the airport, we went out to dinner and had a hamburger and spent two hours talking. Just wonderful. And he told me a story about Chuck. And I think it fits into this very well, 1950 was the first international convention in Cincinnati. The first Saturday night speaker was Chuck Chamberlain. He got a standing ovation. It was the first standing ovaluation that had been given in Alcoholics Anonymous. And he and Jim Burwell, Jim Burwall was one of the first AAs in New York and the man who is responsible for the word, the term God as we understood it, God as We Understand Him because he was an atheist. But he'd been an AA since the beginning. They were in the car together and Jim was very silent. And Chuck said, well, what's wrong? Jim said, nothing. He said, no, I can see that something's wrong. What's wrong ? Nothing. What's Wrong ? He said it's terrible. It's terrible ! Chuck said what ? He says you've got a standing ovation. If we start getting standing ovations that will be the death of this. They'll build pedestals. They'll put you on a pedestal. And Chuck looked at him and said, they may build a pedestal, but we don't have to crawl up on it. And I thought that was beautiful. I'd like to close. One thing, it sums up the whole thing I've said. Probably this is gilding the lily. But in the article that Bill wrote in 1955 called Why Alcoholics Anonymous is Anonymous, Bill is talking about Dr. Bob being buried. And at one point, the people in Akron who loved him and revered him wanted to build a mausoleum to his memory. And Bob said, tell them we ought to be buried just like other folks. And he says, last summer I visited the Akron Cemetery where Bob and Ann lie. Their simple stone says never a word about Alcoholics Anonymous. This made me so glad I cried. Did this wonderful couple carry personal anonymity too far when they so firmly refused to use the words Alcoholics Anonymous even on their own burial stone? For one, I don't think so. I think that this great and final example of self-effacement will prove of more permanent worth to AA than could any spectacular public notoriety or fine mausoleum. We don't have to go to Akron, Ohio to see Dr. Bob's memorial. Dr. Bob's real monument is visible throughout the length and breadth of AA. Let's look again at its true inscription. One word only, which we AAs have written. That word is sacrifice. Thank you all. Thank you for listening.