The 12 Traditions and the Joint Life Raft – Sandy B.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we'll get all calmed down. Everybody's got a cup of coffee and we'll take about 35-40 minutes and share a little bit about the traditions. I think as I was just talking about the history that in 1946 Bill put together the traditions and he felt they were very important that this organization have some guidelines for running itself after he and Dr. Bob were no longer around, and that there really ought to be some set of guidelines, just like we have the 12 steps, which are guiding principles of how to live sober as individual members of AA. He felt it was important that we have a set of guidelines as to how AA ought to function in one group with another, how to function as an organization, how it should be organized, and how it should interact with the outside world. And so when you think about it, that's what the traditions are. It's the guiding principles for how each group should operate and how AA should operate as a whole in terms of the outside word. And so I'm just going to go through them out of the 12 and 12. I have not memorized them like we have the steps and all that. so I have to flip to each page to read it. And so we'll just start out and see what they're all about. First one is our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon AA unity. Obviously, if the AA group folds, then none of us has any place to go and we are in deep trouble if we're out there trying to stay sober on our own again. And it's been my observation over the years that this tradition is almost intuitively known by us when we come into AA. We realize deep down inside that our lives depend on this group, and whereas we may have a tendency to mess around and screw up everything else that we're involved in, we sort of restrain ourselves when it comes to the AA meetings you know what I'm talking about and we just just by nature you don't see people mixing business and trying to hustle or politically influence or anything like that it's just without anybody saying a word we just stick to our business at the AA meeting which is sobriety and this little it's almost like we recognize that we all have a common fatal illness and that this group that we belong to is our joint life raft and when we see one another starting to mess with that we just go around and talk to each other say wait a minute hey guys this they're gals this thing is life or death and and so this unity we have great attention is paid to each individual. It's not that the individual is left with hardly any attention and the group is the most important thing. I mean, nowhere else I've ever been has there been so much attention paid to me. But there's an understanding under that that you better set personal differences aside when you're in those AA meetings and keep harmony in there and keep those things going, or we all sink. It's almost like we just kind of know that, but here it is written down. Our common welfare should come first, our common welfare, because personal recovery depends upon AA unity. This fatal illness causes, and the realization that it is, causes us to behave almost automatically in a very organized and cooperative fashion. It reminded me of a story that I read about in, you know, we're all crazy when we come to AA, talk about returning to sanity, and yet we still are able to pick up on this when we comes to AA. And there was a story in World War II about an insane asylum, and I forget which country it was in, that Hitler was invading the countries and the panzer troops were just about to overrun this town with this insane asylum where all these crazy people who nobody could talk to, they couldn't do, you know, they were just off in there and doing their own thing and nobody had been able to communicate with them or anything. And they said, what are we going to do with all these crazy people? And they say, why don't we go in and tell them the truth? So they went in there, explained who Hitler was and what was going on and they needed everybody to get their act together so they could all get out of there and save their lives and everybody got sane real quick. Everybody suddenly got on the bus and away they went and I think there's similar things here. We suddenly realized this is serious business in my personal life and it shows in our behavior and in the meetings and the recognition of how important AA is. Tradition two, 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. So here we have AA's leaders are trusted servants. Nobody governs, there's no government in AA. There's no one in charge And yet everything gets done. And so the 12 and 12 suggests that we look at a typical situation that occurred back as AA was evolving, and what would happen is one person would get sober in a town, maybe sending off for the big book and reading it and going, wow, I'm sober for a few days, I've got to go find another drunk. So off he goes to the hospital and finds another drunk and agrees to have a meeting in his house. So he sets aside his living room every Wednesday night at eight o'clock and the two of them meet there and talk about the big book and do what the big books suggest they do and say some prayers. And pretty soon they got three, pretty soon They got four. And that town AA meets Wednesday nights at eight O'clock in Joe's living room. I mean, there wasn't a rule that it met at eight O'Clock. It wasn't preordained. There was no group conscience. We're just meeting in Joe'S living room because he's in charge. He got this thing started, but as time goes on and more and more people come, pretty soon there isn't enough seats in Joe's living room, and a lot of people are standing like out in the hall, and they're starting to complain that why don't we meet somewhere else? And Joe said, meet somewhere else. You ungrateful people. I started this meeting in my house, and this is the way it's always been done, and we're just going to meet here. And they're all grumbling out in the hallway. What do you mean? You know, well, he did start it. We owe him a lot, but I'm tired of standing, you know. So pretty soon, the next thing, they got a little committee in there announcing to Joe that they're moving down to a room over a bowling alley where they all got seats. And the group conscience has taken over. It is speaking. And Joe can either become one of two things, an elder statesman or a bleeding deacon. He can either recognize and share in the wonderful joy that irresponsible drunks have now taken on the responsibility of sobriety and are taking actions to find a place for this group, are taking on responsibility on their own shoulders. They go out and organize it, be responsible for the coffee and getting them to, and just sort of celebrate the fact that AA's working, or he can cop a big resentment. Nobody likes me, and I got everybody sober, and this is a terrible way to treat the co-founder of Wiggins Mississippi AA. I mean, what is this? And go out, and get drunk, and that's the two things that can happen as this collective loving God, as he may express himself in our group conscience happens. And so where are the leaders? If the group conscience and the newer people that are coming in or going off and they're getting the making the decisions collectively and they go on over and they start in a club and they go on and start in the meeting. Well, I'll tell you where the elder statesmen are. They're sitting around in this side of the room or over in this side of the room, or they're out there talking to somebody at the coffee pot, and they're just standing there with 30 years of AA experience. And all of a sudden, a situation develops in the group. The secretary and the treasurer elope and take the treasury money with them and get drunk, and a group is in a turmoil. What are we going to do? Does this mean we're all going to go out of that? And they can go to this person with all that experience and go, what happened? What do you think we should do? And he or she can share. So that happens. Relax, everybody. I was in a group once back about 25 years ago. All we do is pass the basket twice for a couple of months and we'll get the money back and we can pay the money the church owes. We owe the church. Everything's going to be fine. Oh, thank you. So we have all this years of experience floating around in the groups. Not running anything, not running anything. Just there so that somebody wants to ask to get a perspective. It can be shared. No one in charge, but available. Tradition three, the only requirement for AA membership is the desire to stop drinking. What a wonderful tradition. You know, when people study AA from the outside, they must go crazy. you know what i mean there's nobody in charge there's no organization they refuse to accept money they have no opinion on anything there'sno membership requirements no organization is permitted there's noway any organization like that is going to succeed and here it is all over the world holding probably the largest convention that's ever held is the international i don't know what it'll be next time you know they had what they have 85,000 people in San Diego in one meeting. So here's these traditions. They do work. The only requirement for AA membership is to stop drinking. Now, when AA started, there was a great deal of fear. There was fear that people who weren't really alcoholics might get in here and screw everything up. And a real alcoholic was somebody who went all the way down to the bottom. So if you showed up with a car, they weren't sure that you were eligible for membership in Alcoholics Anonymous. You know what I mean? And a car and a job and a wife. I don't think you're a real alcoholic because so there was a lot of concern and fear that if you let someone in who wasn't the same as all the rest of us, it might ruin the organization. Then we all get drunk. so there was a lot of rules and this and that and of course they all fell by the wayside and we ended up with the only requirement for a membership is the desire to stop drinking and the 12 and 12 talks about two examples after a had been around a while and a guy came in he said yes i'm an alcoholic but i'm not sure you're going to want me because i'm also a drug addict and they just no way we're not letting that guy in here you know that's we can't handle that problem that be too much for us to handle but they got back and said and they had a group conscience and somebody in the group said what do you think God would have us do and then they all looked at one another and I said I guess we'll have him in here and he stayed sober and did fine and another example was the guy came in he said well I'm an alcoholic and I'm going to join your organization but i do not believe in god and i will speak out against god every chance i get jeez you're going to screw up all the meetings we can't we can have you in here doing that then that's going too far you mean you're gonna yes i'm gonna speak my piece and when it's my turn to talk i'm going to convince everybody there is no god you don't need god to stay sober oh we can'T have him in the meetings and all that what do you think god would do all right let him in let him this is this is going to kill us and in this particular instance um as the years went on this gentleman had some adversity hit his life and he surrendered at a deeper level and came back and talked more about god than anybody else in the group and so it required patience and open-mindedness and so on down but it is the only organization i'm familiar with where you are a member if you say you are. That is it. That is the end of it. If you decide if you're not an alcoholic, you want a fake being one. Go ahead. But there aren't too many people sneaking in here. Have you noticed that? Just trying to get it on their resume. So that's a wonderful thing that's open, open, open. Tradition 4, each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or AA as a whole. So here we have each AA group charts its own course. It tries to follow principles, these traditions and the steps and so on down but there's no mechanism in place for some hierarchy to come over to a group and go, we understand you're holding four-hour meetings with 30 speakers. And we just think that that's just, no, you can't do that. There's no place that this can be done. Each group, what the principle is that if we get together as a group of alcoholics and we are spiritually minded and we pray to God and we look for guidance that each group will almost intuitively function in the most advantageous manner to sober up the drunks in that particular community or in that particular ethnic group or whatever the AA group is reaching out to serve and that the general guidelines are fine but each group is totally autonomous. And the two examples that I remember from history were there was a group in Richmond that decided to serve beer at AA meetings and this uh caused a wee bit of consternation in some of the other groups uh there were actually other aa members with opinions on that you know what i'm saying beer at a meeting you know well they're all whiskey drinkers and beer was just a chaser and they just didn't think that that was really alcohol so we didn't need it there and the point was that um somebody from general service or inner group could go by and tell the group we don't really think that's going to be a good idea but there's no A.A. Gestapo force that comes in, confiscates the beer and then allows the meeting to go on and so what happened was the idea fell of its own weight people forgot what night the meeting was and it just didn't succeed and it obviously didn't catch on you know what I'm saying and so it just fell by the wayside But it didn't create an international incident which tore AA apart. You know what I'm saying? Sure, it violated this tradition, but there's no police force to come in. You just violate it and you're going to suffer the consequences because it's just not going to work because these things were formed through the collective wisdom of a lot of years of experience and a lotof failures by AA groups and clubs and doing everything the wrong way, and they learned what really would work and would be very efficient. And the other one was a... I think it was Hot Springs, Arkansas. If there's anybody from Arkansas, you can correct me on this, but this was the story I heard, that the first people who got sober there, they got the book and they went through it sort of together, just two of them. And it took them five days to do the steps. They just stayed at it day after day after today and just working, you know, going to the inventory, go around and make amends. So they just suddenly realized that as they studied the book, it took five days to do the steps. So the next time they got a phone call from somebody who knew alcoholic, they went on a 12-step call and they said to him, call your employer and tell them you won't be in for five days. And that became the standard way of entering Alcoholics Anonymous. You just called and you spent five days doing the steps, He just stayed with these people almost 24 hours a day and went through the whole program. And it worked just as well as it was working anywhere else in the country. You know what I mean? AA was just working, same percentage of people staying sober. But as the story went, some years later they were having a little convention or roundup and they invited somebody from up in New York to come down and there happened to be a 12-step call. He was present when they said, Well, tell your boss you won't be in for... of five what is this five days you know well you're the only place in the country that's doing them that way and so the practice slowly fades out but there's still a five-day retreat that people go on and work the steps and it sort of carried on but again there was no buddy coming around saying you can't tell new people when they come in that you don't go to work for five days and this is how you join the group that's what the group says that is how it is working fifth tradition, each group has but one primary purpose to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. And this is a tradition that I think needs to be emphasized over and over and over again. We have one primary purpose to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. And the first paragraph it said, Shoemakers stick to thy last. Better do one thing supremely well than many badly. That is the central theme of this tradition. Around it, our society gathers its unity. The very life of our fellowship requires the preservation of this principle. So what are we saying on this? Why is this so important? Why does it say the very life of our membership requires? What it's saying is, yes, there are many other problems that human beings can have. I could stand up here and say, my name is Sandy, I'm an alcoholic and a white male heterosexual. Boy, do I have problems. Let me tell you what it's like to be around in society when you're a white man. You're a black male heterosexual and a Republican and broke and a consultant and this. And I can list the litany of things that are unique to me. And that's fine. I can talk about those things all I want but not in AA because this principle is suggesting that we in Alcoholics Anonymous have one goal, and that's to sober up alcoholics. And if I'm standing up here rapping away about what it's like to come from New England and be a whatever it is, which has nothing to do with alcohol, and there's a brand-new guy just walks in. He said, I think I'll give AA a try. And he just came through that door and sat down, listened to me talk about this other stuff for 15 minutes, got up and walked out, said I must be in the wrong place. I do not have the right to be messing with somebody else's life by not sticking to this tradition. We can have all the problems in the world, and we talk to each other about them, we do all that, and it's absolutely wonderful. But in Alcoholics Anonymous, this principle is essential that we maintain our unique specialty, which is reaching alcoholics, one alcoholic to another. When we're privately together, we can talk about anything that we want. That is what is suggested by this principle. Tradition six, AA group ought never endorse finance or lend the AA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose. And of course, when Bill was starting out, you heard the history, he's going to build a chain of drunk tanks called AA Drunk Tanks. I mean, it was going to be all this whole business enterprise, and they realize that all these diversions can take us away from our primary purpose, which is to pass the message to the next alcoholic. And so when we start a club, the club is not officially Alcoholics Anonymous. It is started by some AA members, but they charter it as the XYZ Club, and then they rent space to AA groups and so on now, but it is not officially AA. So there's no related facility, a treatment center cannot get an AA to endorse the XYZ Treatment Center. There was a whiskey company who spotted AA probably in the 50s or 40s, somewhere in there, and approached them saying we would like to get a spokesman from AA to help us with alcohol education of the public. And then you buy our whiskey and AA has said that we really are involved in alcohol education, so our whiskey would be safer than other whiskey or whatever. And this was turned down. There was just no connection and no money. We're not going to endorse finance or lend the AA name because there's nothing out there but controversy. There's just nothing but controversy when you get involved with this or that or this. So we're still involved in outside enterprises, lest we get diverted from the primary purpose of passing the message on to the next alcoholic. Every AA group, Tradition 7, ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions. Now you heard the history we were talking about. What was the AA condition throughout all of early AA? Broke. It was so broke. I mean, they needed money desperately. That's all they were focusing on. And here we have a tradition, we decline all outside contributions. They came up with a principle of corporate poverty. The idea, you know, too much money collected anywhere creates temptation, creates conflict. You've probably seen it in your group. When you suddenly start collecting more money than you really need and it builds up and all of a sudden you have $2,000 in your treasury and you're going, what do you think we ought to do with that? So you have big fights over what to do. with the, well, I think we ought to get that. Oh, you're just going on and on. Get rid of it. Send it to general service. You won't have any problem with all that money collecting in there. It's just, it is a, you know, for all of us, that is a problem. And so people were, you know, passing away after they'd been sober in AA and they left money. One lady left $10,000 in her will to AA. And here comes the lawyers telling AA, here comes this money. And they desperately needed it, but they turned it down. They just said, we are not. And at that time, I think they had a couple million dollars that they knew of were in wills of people in AA that when they died, they were going to leave the money to AA and they desperately needed it. But they just said no, we're going to be fully self-supporting, no outside contributions. Anytime a church wants to give us free space or somebody wants to do us a favor, yes, come on. We're glad to have you in here. It's always advisable to say, no, we prefer to pay $50 a month. We just like to pay our own way because there's something about getting a free load, a free ride somewhere that reduces our dignity and gives the other party the sense that they ought to be able to control us a little bit. After all, you are getting the space free. Why couldn't you announce our church services during your meeting? Our membership's fallen off a little here. It's a little quid pro quo, you know. So we say, no thanks. We would like to pay our own way wherever we go, and we're going to decline all types of outside contributions. Tradition eight, Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers. And of course there was a bit of a controversy that came up as the treatment centers started proliferate and they naturally sought out sober aa members to work there because they had that natural affinity for understanding alcoholics and there was a lot of criticism in our groups that they were getting paid for doing 12-step work and this step clearly pointed that out if someone is working in a professional setting and they are giving lectures and doing out, they're not doing 12-step work. 12- step work doesn't work if it was being paid. If someone was paid to come to you as a professional to talk to you about sobriety, remember we had people doing that, doctors and lawyers and psychologists. It was the one drunk talking to another from the heart. He's not being paid to come there. And that's what this is saying. We can work in the field. We can have workers to clean up, make coffee, run the intergroup, all kinds of service centers that we can have in AA. But the 12-step work, the drunk to drunk will always be from the heart with no strings attached monetarily. Tradition nine, AA as such ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve. On the second page, there's a little paragraph. They're talking about other corporations and then it says, or other organizations said, yet Alcoholics Anonymous is an exception. It does not conform to this pattern. Neither its general service conference, its foundation board, nor the humblest group committee can issue a single directive to an AA member and make it stick, let alone mete out any punishment. There is no organization in the traditional sense of vertical organization, where, okay, I'm in charge, so you do this and you do that, and then you're over that person, and that's how we get all of this done. We don't do that. We just are of service. There are certain functions that need to be done, and we need volunteers or we need service boards to get this done, And it is a wonderful way of accomplishing AA's spiritual mission, is through this idea of being of service. And I think this tradition helps us to understand our steps, where my purpose in life is to be of service You know, when we go from, and we'll talk about that in the steps, but when we grow from being self-centered to God-centered, the difference is we are taking our god-given talents and using them to be of service in the job environment in the community whatever and when we do that people are attracted to us twice as much as they were and we succeed beyond where we would have been if we were just out there trying to make a buck we make 10 bucks instead it really is an amazing principle and so that's what the tradition nine is home stretch only two to go and then it's lunch there's no opinion on outside issues hence the AA name ought never be drawn at the public controversy now here we go have you ever seen a more opinionated group of people than are assembled in this room you ask them what do you think about the uncontrolled boy we get some opinions in here we got opinions but opinions on on outside issues, and Bill had studied the Washingtonian Society, which some of you may have heard it was in Baltimore, and it was back around the time of the Civil War. And it had 100,000 sober members. It was spiritually organized like Alcoholics Anonymous. It was working. It Was definitely getting people sober. And as it grew to that size, there were people, politicians and outside people who said, you know, that would be a good organization to get on your side. And they had some very heady things that they wanted that organization to help with. And one was the abolition of slavery. Now that's a pretty noble cause to go out and take a stand on as an organization. But the problem was they learned that once you as a spiritual entity with a primary purpose of staying sober try to go out and get involved in outside issues, as noble as they may be, it creates dissension in your ranks because there isn't 100% that agrees with that. And it wasn't 100 percent who agreed with prohibition. So this wonderful organization got political, got involved in those outside issues and pretty soon nobody was sober. Pretty soon there weren't any more meetings. Pretty soon it was a political thing and it was being run that way and it just simply disappeared. And so AA picked up on that and said, we have no opinion on outside issues. And I saw a good example of this in the 70s. I was a lobbyist at Washington every about 20 years and one of the Senate committees, somebody on the committee had decided that it would be a wonderful idea to put a warning label on alcohol similar to what you had on cigarettes. And so they held hearings on it. Should we or should we not in the United States of America put warning labels on alcohol? And one of the places they thought would be a wonderful place to get information on this was Alcoholics Anonymous. So they called AA and they said, we're having this thing. We need to get somebody down to talk to us about it. Some of them general service came down and the senator was asking him, well, we have this label. What do you think? And he said, sir, Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion. And that was the end of that. No opinion. They couldn't believe. AlcoholicsAnonymous has no opinion on warning labels on alcohol? And they didn't. And it was a great lesson for the Congress and I think for us in AA. Now that doesn't mean that you and I can't have a personal opinion on warning labels on alcohol and I have an opinion and I don't have an opinion on whether there should be a warning label or not but I do have an opinion on what the warning label should say if there were a warning label okay and this is what the label should say warning this bottle may run out you should consider buying two but I don't think the senate would understand that particular amendment it would probably never get through we're down to the two traditions on anonymity, and then we'll go eat. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need to always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films. And this anonymity tradition was born out of fear. The great fear was that if the word got out who the members of AA were in each little community, there would be so many drunks trying to find them to get sober that they couldn't handle it all. Isn't that a strange thing to be worried about? And so they said we have to control this flow and so we're going to stay anonymous and people won't be able to find it. That was the initial thing. Then they started seeing that if we had alcoholics breaking their anonymity at the level of press, radio, film, television now and got out there and saying oh ladies and gentlemen I used to be a terrible alcoholic and now I, the mayor of Chicago, am sober in AA. It's the most wonderful organization in the world. And then next month he got drunk. That would do so much damage to AA because all the potential drunks who were going to come into AA would go, I saw that guy from Chicago. He got drunk there. Don't talk me into going to AA. I know it doesn't work. You see what I'm saying? It's not the reputation with the outside world. It's the reputation with the potential members who are going to say, oh, no, I heard about that guy from Chicago. Why would I want to join an organization that doesn't work? And so this was and there was a lot of anonymity breaks. Marty Mann was breaking around and drove Bill crazy. But she did do a lot good in terms of alcohol education, et cetera, et center. But it was a real problem for a few years there. And I think he finally talked her out of it. and um but there's been anonymity breaks and it comes close in a lot they have these celebrity things in washington i don't know what to say about all that but i do know what this principle is that it really is has stood us in good stead and because of this principle we came up with the the last tradition, which is an anonymity is the spiritual foundation of our traditions ever reminding us to place principles before personalities. Now we're talking about how anonymity could be the spiritual foundation. It started out based in fear, that we were worried that something could happen to us and we were afraid of what the outside world. But now it's talking about anonymity is the spiritual Foundation. Whenever I think of anonymity, I think of a resume, which is sort of the opposite of anonymacy. You know what I'm talking about? Like somebody says to you, who are you? But when we're in AA, we go, who am I? Oh, I'm Joe, an alcoholic. That's our total identity. You know what I'm saying? That's who I am. I'm Jo, an alcoholic. But if we're outside somewhere and they go, well, who are you? And we say, hey, man, here's who I am, president of PTA, graduate of this or that, awarded this degree, and so on, the mother. and then you go, oh man, that's who I am. That's all that stuff. That's who i am. And all of that identity, you know that stuff everybody has that you got to impress somebody else. You got this big identity. Well, I think of that identify as a great big list of things that stand in between me and God. You know what I mean? Because this is my, who I'm with my ego. I am, I am I am all these things. And come into AA, and you know there's a funny thing about before we come to AA and we're out in the world out there, we want to be big shots. I love that word, big shots, we just want to be big. And when you're big, it's like designing a ship. You know, you have to move through life. And if you designed a ship 100 feet wide and one foot deep, that'd be hard to push through the ocean. You know what I mean? It just creates so much resistance. And as we enter in relations with other people and with the outside world, with an ego six miles wide, we're resisted everywhere we go. You know What I mean. It's just so hard to get everybody to understand who we are and to fully appreciate the depth of this person and the brilliance. And so we have to push this whole identity through life. That's us, that's me. And we come into AA and we go, you don't want to be a big shot. You want to Be Real Small. You want To Be Like This Is All You Are Is Like This. And everything else is God. You know what I'm saying? I'm just a child of God. That's all I am. There's no other identity to me. This is all I Am. And anonymity helps us take that resume, put it over here and say, yeah, that serves its purpose out there in getting a job or something. But that isn't who I am. I'm Joe, an alcoholic. I'm nothing. God is everything. I'm God-centered, not self-centered. And the freedom of stripping all of that away and simply flowing along as part of a spiritual program, one other drunk trying to be useful at an AA meeting, trying to see where the next person is, not being consumed with what's in it for me, brings to us the greatest joy that we ever had. Isn't it ironic that, and we'll talk about this in the steps, that character building is done by getting rid of things. We just get rid, get rid. No, that's wrong, wrong idea. Gone, gone, gone. So we just come down and can just very comfortably be nothing more than one other drunk, one other child of God, nobody better, nobody worse, everybody wonderful, Everybody just perfect. Everybody just created beautifully inside. That's what anonymity is to me in this great freedom, in this tradition, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities. But even principled people get hungry. And it's time. We're going to have a raffle, am I correct? is there somebody going to do the raffle or am I yes oh okay thank you all and we'll have the ruffle and see you this afternoon