The Twelve Traditions and AA Unity – Traditions Workshop – Part 2 of 2 – Howard P.

Hi, I'm John Epstein, the alcoholic church person. Hi, would you all join me in a serenity prayer? God, grant me the serenities, accept the things that I cannot change, encourage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Amen. I'd like to welcome everyone to a 12-tradition workshop hosted by Back to Basics AA Group. We are an air home group and have five regular weekly meetings we invite you to attend. Bathrooms are located outside to the left over here. Butt cans are outside if you need to smoke. We ask that you please refrain from any talking inside as it can be distracting. And if you do need to communicate something to your loved one next to you, please feel free to use the far side of the courtyard outside the sliding glass doors. If you have any other special needs that need to be addressed, please see one of our hosts or hostesses. Will they please stand? There they are. Thank you. I would like to now introduce your workshop chairperson, Nancy R. Hi, I'm Nancy. I'm an alcoholic. And like John said, I'd like to welcome you all here and I'd like to thank all of you who helped in putting on this workshop. I think just about every member of Back to Basics has gotten involved in some way or another and that's what our group is all about being a service. And that's with this workshop is all about is trying to be of service to the AA community so that we can share with you some information about the Twelve Traditions, which we have all heard many times that if the traditions aren't kept, the group will fail. And if the group fails, AA will fail, and that's why we're here today, to learn what we can do to keep the tradition so AA will not fail. After our main speaker is finished today, just before the break, he will receive a signal from our taking person. At that signal, he will tell you it's time for the questions. So don't start writing. Don't start thinking about your questions while he's talking. You'll have a good five minutes or so to write your questions before they are collected. If you need a pen at that time, just raise your hand and one of our hosts or hostesses will give you a pen to write them out. These will be collected, correlated by which tradition, and duplicates kind of put together. This is in the effort to save time and so that as many questions can be addressed as possible. And again, just have a good workshop, and thank you for all coming. And now Doug will read the 12 Traditions. Hi everyone, my name is Doug and I'm an alcoholic. It's good to be here. The Twelve Traditions 1. Our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon AA unity. 2. 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. 3. The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking. 4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or AA as a whole. 5. Each group has but one primary purpose, to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. 6. An AA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the AA name to any related facility or outside enterprises. Less problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose. 7. Every AAD ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions 8. Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional but our service centers may employ special workers 9. AASFs ought never be organized but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve Ten, Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues. Hence, the AA name ought never be drawn into public controversy. Eleven, 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. Twelve, anonymity is the spiritual foundation of our traditions. ever remind us to place principles before personalities. Thank you. Thanks, Doug. Our first speaker this afternoon is Bruce R., who will give you a little bit of history. hello my name is Bruce Richards and I am an alcoholic 150 years ago I might have said I was a Washingtonian and a scant 60 years ago I could have said i was a member of the Oxford group we've come here today to try to learn from our past so that our group and AA as a whole does not go the way of these earlier movements. During April of 1840, in a pub in Baltimore, six drunken tradesmen founded the Washingtonian Society to promote the concept of temperance. Unlike a myriad of other groups in existence at that time, they sought out reformed junkers to share their experience from the podium. At each public meeting, the audience was regaled with horrors of intemperance and the glories of sobriety. This sharing became known as the experienced speech and constituted in part a public atonement for past wrongs. After succession of such witnessing for sobriery, the altar call brought the instantly converted to the front to sign pledges of total abstinence. Sealed in part by the serious depression of the times, the Washingtonian movement swept the countryside like a moral tornado. By the end of 1841, over 8,000 pledges had been made just in Cincinnati, the western edge of the temperance movement. By 1843, this group claimed 400,000 members when our population was barely 17 million people. Commonly accepted records show that barely 10% of these members were drunkards. Many were, in fact, lifelong teetotalers. By 1845, this group had been taken over by respectable middle-class drives who purged the coarse experience speeches and the vulgar music used to entice the lower classes into the meetings. By 1845, the older working-class members whose manner of death and whose actions did not meet with management approval were banned from the league. Make no mistake, the Washingtonians were never a recovery group. It was purely a temperance revival meeting where the ultimate goal was to find clarity. There were no regular meetings, no disciplines, no systematic way of restricting contributions to sustain reformed junks until they could become self-supporting. By the middle of 1845, there would be set by a general apathy from within and a constant shooting with older temperances and organized religious leaders who proclaimed that any non-religious based temperance was the work of Satan. In the words of one former member, they ran out of new blood to tell stories and many tired of the dull monotony of the meeting. By late 1847, the group had all but ceased to function, though many of its members drifted soberly into the other groups such as the newly formed Sons of Temperance. Unlike AA, the Washingtonians lacked first, exclusive alcoholic membership, secondly, singleness of purpose, thirdly, a clear-cut program of recovery, fourthly, anonymity, and last but perhaps most important, hazard-avoiding tradition. For the next 70 years, the temperance movement lumbered on without any program for recovery until 1919 when the legendary Frank Buckman, acclaimed worldwide as a leader in the mutual assistance movement, formed the First Century Christian Fellowship, which became the group, which became the Oxford Group, in which for the past 50 years has been known as Moral Rearmament. These people sought to improve the quality of their lives by practicing a program of prayer, confession, restitution, guidance-seeking, and healing outreach to others. While membership was open to all, many desperate drunks sought the spiritual experience in this group without ever recognizing it as the key to personal recovery. Even in the early 30s, the Oxford group practiced a program based on the four absolutes, absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love, and practiced as well the humbling regimens of sharing for confession, sharing for witness, surrender, restitution, and divine guidance. In 1934, the stage was set. Dr. Young directed Rowland to seek a spiritual experience as the only solution to his alcoholism. He found such an experience in the Neonium chapters of the Oxford Group. Rowland conveyed this message of hope to Ebbing who brought it to Bill W. Bill's approach to Henrietta Sutherland in Akron in 1935 during a moment of desperate personal need was as a member of the Oxford group from New York and a reformed gunter. Until the Cleveland group of recovering alcoholics started their own meetings in 1937, all of our first recovered drunks met under the auspices of the Oxford group. However, as well-meaning as they were, the Oxfords had bigger fish to fry. In the words of Frank Buckman, I am all for alcoholics getting changed, but we have drunken nations on our hands as well. Bill W. and others felt that the assertive evangelism of the Oxford group would not work with many alcoholics, and by 1939 the group was under fire from many denominational spokesmen, and Bill Wilson severed all connections with them in order to escape the controversy which diverted attention from AA's singleness of purpose. so while A.A. has strong roots in both the Washingtonians and the Oxford group neither of these bodies exist in any significant way today and Bill W. in his inspired wisdom saw that the divisive struggle from within could only be avoided by a strong set of Greek traditions which would protect our budding fellowship not from the assault of Huns at the gate but by sabotage from within brought about by the basic nature of the egocentric neurotics the group is trying to save. To this day, the greatest danger facing AA is not the influence of outside forces, but an encroaching apathy for the traditions that bind us together and sustain our efforts as a group. Thank you very much, Bruce. And now our main speaker this afternoon, Howard Cate. Thank you. My name is Howard Polins and I'm an alcoholic. Bruce, thanks a lot. Bruce gave a very thoughtful talk and I appreciate it. I appreciate being asked to be here and share. And I assure you that I have tried to work out a thoughtful talk. When I was asked to do this, I read the literature on the traditions and I went back over my experience with the traditions, I think in a thoughtful way, so that I could get me connected with the ideas and stuff that my experience had made important to me. My wife and I took a trip to Bullhead City and I practiced on the way out there when we left Los Angeles and I just about had the talk finished when we got to Bullheads City. Now, coming back, I cut probably 30 minutes off of it. So I have a real long talk. I think we can cut some more off of this. This group puts an effort into this program today. And we had several meetings so that we were sure that everything was being covered, that we would have time to cover. And in one of those meetings, one of the committee people said something to the effect that they really hoped that he hoped that they would have found an expert on the tradition, Somebody who had, through their experience, really become an expert. And I'm here to tell you that didn't happen. You know, I am like you. I'm an expert on the traditions as I see them. And you're an expert on the conditions the way you see them And then if we look at the traditions together, then we can make the consensus through the group conscience on exactly what the tradition really means. And I believe that one of the points that I want to make is that when there is an issue that may be dividing us, let's don't look at the issue just from the point of view of one single tradition but let's look at the issue from the point of vue of all Paul's traditions if we look at it from the total picture and then decide and then whatever decision is made let's love the decision and because Because, as Ben said, because in the early A.A., they didn't know that. They really struggled. Now, my second exposure to the traditions was in the later part of July in 1972 when I came to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting to get help for my drinking. And I was fortunate enough to come to the Cobalt City Studio Group, which was founded in the early 1940s and which is steeped in the tradition. They knew that they needed to have separate business meetings from the regular meeting. The studio group has two meetings a week, a beginners in discussion meeting early, it used to be on Monday and then they changed it to Tuesday, and then a speaker's meeting on Friday. Every other month they have a business meeting. It's Saturday evening and it is a potluck dinner for every member of the group and everyone that attends the meeting is invited to come. And we have a good turnout. And from the period since the last meeting, any issue that comes up and is brought up to the secretary, he brings that up and gets a discussion on it. There may not be action taken, but anyway, they really use the group and the group conscience there. And so that was my second exposure to the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it was a good one. And over a period of time, I think it has gotten better for me because of that. My first exposure to the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous was in July of 1946 when I was 13 years old and just learning how good alcohol was in my life. My dad, who was an alcoholic, joined Alcoholics Anonymous in a group in what you call Kansas. And then he and a guy named Bill Bringer formed the Argonia Group, which was this little town in Kansas, and it became the mother group for all of the groups in the surrounding towns. And from between 13 and 17, I was kind of an observer of stuff that went on. I never privy to it except that Bill Brunier would come up to my dad's barbershop and when nobody was there but me, they would talk about some of the problems that they were having in this other town or this town or their own group. And in meeting delivered to them to be exactly the same problems that they were talking about here, you know. One member just barely made it out the bedroom window of another member's house and came home unexpectedly, okay? Now, that happened, and that group didn't meet for a little while. That group woke up pretty fast for a Little While, and they had to get that work started it again. And also, back then, a Methodist minister had a guy in his choir who was drunk over Sunday, who suddenly showed up sober. And the guy joined AA. And a Methodism minister was very excited about this and in a little bit he had the most of this church AA group where he was going to use the AA name at least to encourage people because here he had some guys he came to the AA group he came for an open meeting and saw what was happening he had some married girls who were talking about God's help Well, he knew he could help them with God's help. And so he was going to start the Methodist AA group. And I know there was a kind of a jingle uproar about that until they could get him to understand that wasn't going to work. And so when he finally learned it wasn't gonna work, it just didn't work. But, uh, so I remember those things happening. My dad didn't stay sober. Now, he was a co-founder of that meeting and Bill Brunner was sober and had 12-step dad. But dad would get a little over a year and he'd get drunk. And when dad got drunk, that was very, very disrupting to the rest of the group because here was one of the cold old timers who had a year-and-a-half who got drunk and they all got very frightened with that. And then dad got another year-in-a half and something happened in the group where he got mad at everybody. And he got drunk again, and damn near killed himself. And then, actually, you know, Dad, I joined the Navy when I was 17 in the summer of 1950, and in the spring of 1951, my dad died of a heart attack while he was attending the Arvonia AA meeting. And he had been sober for a little over a year again. and I think he would instead. But I, you know, I came home from the funeral and after that I didn't think of AA maybe one or two times between then and when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous in 1972. A couple times in college I thought about it but always in terms of my dad and my dad's problem. So So, I have a deep appreciation for the absolute essentialness of the traditions because we are each in our own way pile drivers. You know, we each see things the way we see things. and we believe things the way we believe things. And a belief defined in the dictionary is an emotional conviction that something is true. Now, if I believe something, then it's got to be true for me. And if you believe something else, you've got to be young. you know now within their traditions you see that isn't true but in my life that was true I believe if it wasn't right I wouldn't have believed it for Christ's sake and if you believe something different you have to be wrong And so here we are, you know, we're trying to get together to help each other and we have this kind of defective character. And it was very disruptive in early AA and people would write letters to the home office that tell on each other and Bill Wilson and some of these ingenious old timers took all this information about the failures and the successes of Alcoholics Anonymous and derived from that 12 traditions which when you look at them are just remarkably perfect for what we need to sustain ourselves And the thing that it seemed to me stood out most to them was the danger of disunity, the danger of divisiveness. And therefore when they did, when they formulated the traditions, the first ones had to do with disunity. I'm going to read the long form of each tradition as we go along the twelve traditions the long from our AA experience has taught us that one, each member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but a small part of a great whole AA must continue to live or most of us will surely die. Hence, our common welfare comes first. But individual welfare follows close afterwards. In discussing the AA traditions in the big book and discussing them as a whole, Bill has written on page 563, to those now in its fold, Alcoholics Anonymous has made the difference between misery and sobriety, and often the difference between life and death. AA can, of course, mean just as much to uncounted alcoholics not yet reached. Therefore, no society of men and women ever had a more urgent need for continuous effectiveness and permanent unity. We alcoholics see that we must work together and hang together, else most of us will finally die alone. He's talking about the foundation, I think, for all twelve traditions, that of unity. now unity then should be in some way a part of each of the next eleven traditions and whatever extent we can we'll talk about that as we go along I have observed recently at several meetings a tendency which if I just consider the first tradition, violates that tradition. In one meeting place in Hollywood, they have terrific morning meetings. Good formats, they bring in a good speaker. It's fundamentally a good meeting. and there is one still-processing alcoholic who I think might still live in the streets and might be a little mentally deficient. I've talked to him, but he comes to that meeting every morning carrying his bag and he sits in the most prominent seat that he can find in the front of the room facing the group where he starts changing his clothes, taking his shirt off, putting on a new shirt, standing up and posing while the speaker's trying to carry the message. He then wanders around the room picking up coffee cups and can just generally be in a distraction. Now, I know that if you have a little time and you're sitting there, then you can feel compassion for this guy and you can see your patience and you see your love and you could do the best you can to get the message that the seeker's trying to get. And at the same time, you know, convince yourself that there's no end to your personal goodness. but the newcomer the newcomers who come seriously to get sober might not be able to do that and I firmly believe that any individual who is disrupted like that in an AA meeting will never ever get sober if AA adjusts itself to tolerate the behavior that he has to practice to stay drunk. When we accommodate that kind of stuff, we're validating it. And it is not, from my individual point of view, valid AA behavior. It is disruptive and it has no credibility. I think that, and it takes some courage to say no to the guy, you know. You have to sometimes though love the newcomer enough to run the risk of his disapproval if you're going to help him. And I think the traditions, the traditions if we practice them give us that strength. There's a lot of other instances where we take a hard point of view and, you know, and frequently we hear from different meetings that I'm not going to that meeting anymore because so-and-so talks all the time and nobody else can get a word in edgewise. I have heard that, you have heard of that. Somehow that isn't conducive to unity within the group. And these are the things that the first tradition in and of itself looks at. Unity is so important to AA that when AA reached the age of 35, the aim was restated in the theme of the 1970 International Convention. This we owe to AA's future. To place our common welfare first. To keep our fellowship united, for on AA unity depend our lives and the lives of those to come. So, our common welfare comes first. Personal recovery depends upon AA unity. Now, they saw that and they established that as the first edition. then a reasonable question comes up but who's going to be the authority to impose those necessary restrictions on the individual members of the group? Who's going do that? Well, it doesn't come as any major shock to our system that as spiritual outset whose primary goal is for us to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him, a program that says we need to seek knowledge of God's will and the power to carry that out would establish as its authority a loving God, and the long form of the second tradition, which, as you know, is shorter than the short form of this tradition. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority, a loving God as he may express himself in our group conscience. And it's clear to me that they intend that to be an informed group conscience, I believe that can best be, an informed group conscience can best be established in a meeting away from the recovery meeting. But it is where the issues involved in any area are discussed from each point of view and each one of us are right. We're right, damn it, we're going to believe it. If I take this dollar bill and I have John describe to me exactly what he sees, and then I describe to him exactly what I see, my description is going to be different because I'm looking at it from a different point of view. We're looking at exactly the same dollar bill. a group conscience an informed group conscience I think is one that will hear both sides know that both sides are valid try to see the other person's point of view listen to it and then vote your conscience don't vote to please anybody but your own conscience and then you account for them. And however the vote goes, then that becomes an expression within the tradition of God's will. And then if within the traditions we love that, we do the best we can to make it work for others and for ourselves. So for a good purpose, I couldn't find out specifically why they added that, but I suspect that originally the second tradition was established to put the home office, the AA headquarters in New York in its properly subordinated place for the group so that each group could have its freedom. Doing that, I suspect that the leadership within the group then took over their rightsful places as the ones that would be signed so that when they derived the short form, they added our leaders are the trusted servants. They do not govern. Tradition three. Having decided that the unity of the group comes a little ahead of the freedom of the individual and deciding that the group conscience would be an expression of God's will. Three, our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Who are we going to let in? Our membership oughtto include allwho sufferfromalcoholism. Hence, we may refuse none who wish to recover. More 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. in the book A Comes of Age on page 103 not page 103 I didn't get to the right page. On page 105, it says in essence that we came up with a bunch of rules that had been established for membership from all the groups, and that in applying all of these rules at one time, hardly anybody met the membership requirements. Even the oldest and strongest members did not meet those requirements. Now, in the long form, they certainly said our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. And then it says further, 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. It says in this A.A. Comes of Age, This means that these two or three alcoholics could try for sobriety in any way they liked. they could disagree with any or all of AA's principles and still call themselves an AA group. The only requirement for membership, for AA membership, is a desire to stop drinking. 4. With respect to its own affairs, each AA group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience. But when its plans concern the welfare of neighboring groups also, those groups ought to be consulted. And no group, regional committee, or individual should ever take any action that might greatly affect AA as a whole without conferring with the trustees of the General Service Board. On such issues, our common welfare is paramount. In short form, each group should be autonomous, accepting matters affecting other groups or AA as a whole. I will tell you that in those morning meetings that I was talking about the individual being disruptive, the last group conscience that was taken about his behavior said that his behavior was acceptable to the group. The group conscience has spoken. The fourth tradition. the fifth the fifth tradition each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose that of carrying its message is to the alcoholic who still suffers. This is a tradition which gets much discussion over the issue of whether or not we can have members with problems other than alcohol in our membership. the emphasis here is that of carrying its message carrying the group's message to the alcoholic who still suffers and there has been other literature put out which I think discusses this as singleness of purpose But the purpose is to carry our message to the alcoholic who still suffers. And within a group, traditionally, and within my own group, traditionally, we as a group conscience have decided how we're going to call on whom to participate. There are open meetings and everyone is welcome. But being open meetings, everyone can't participate. So our group conscience decided how we were going to recognize our participants and that is how people are recognized. And basically, we only ask alcoholics to participate. A person can be an alcoholic and have experience with drugs other than alcohol. But basically, they require that they be alcoholic, and then we call on them and they can share whatever the hell they want to share once they're called on. There's no editing what people share. The editing has to come first, and then if a person doesn't get called on again, they talk to them afterwards, but they don't make an issue out of it at the meeting, and we survive that. also works the same way at the speaker meeting when we select speakers the secretary don't ask people that they haven't heard speak and that don't fit our group conscience for to give it a talk but we our efforts to ensure that we carry our message is within our group, and we make no effort to control what any other group does. We just try to apply the traditions as we see them within our group. In five, each group has but one primary purpose to carry its message to the alcoholic who is still suffering. Six, problems of money, property, and authority may easily divert us from our primary spiritual and 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 age 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 group. Hence, such facilities ought not to use the AA name. Their management should be the sole responsibility of those people who financially support them. For clubs, AA managers are usually preferred, but hospitals as well as other places of recuperation ought to be well outside AA and medically supervised. While an AA group may cooperate with anyone, such cooperation ought never go so far as affiliation or endorsement, actual or applied. An AA group can bind itself to no one. I mentioned my experience in the little town where the Methodist minister tried to start the Methodists AA group. And AA resisted any affiliation between itself and any outside agency. since I have been sober and in a ape when I was on the central service committee frequently people would bring in pieces of literature which had been prepared by a hospital or by a recovery program residence for indigent alcoholics, et cetera, where these people had AA meetings available. They would publish a directory to their AA meetings on the hospital logo with an identification of AA meetings. and there were people in the Central Service Committee who contacted the hospitals and in 100% of the cases, the hospital understood and disengaged putting AA on the same piece of paper as their letterhead, thereby eliminating an implied affiliation. Now, I think those things are important. I think that it's important that we be very watchful. I think that it is important that we not look for loopholes. Sometimes we look for loopholes in order to let things go by and if we do that then that gets to be easier and easier and the next thing you know if we don't we will in fact have affiliation with groups that AA doesn't want to be affiliated with. Tradition 7, the AA groups themselves ought to be fully supported by the voluntary contributions of their own members. We think that each group should soon achieve this ideal, that any public solicitation of funds using the name of Alcoholics Anonymous is highly dangerous, whether by groups, clubs, hospitals or other outside agencies. That acceptance of large gifts from any source or of contributions carrying any obligation whatever is unwise. Then to review with much concern those AA treasuries which continue beyond proven reserves to accumulate funds for no stated purpose. Experience has often warned us that nothing can so surely destroy our spiritual heritage as further disputes over property, money, and authority. So, clearly the tradition intends that we accept no contribution from any outside agencies or individuals whatsoever. However, I was the treasurer one year at the Central Service Committee when we inherited $87,000 from someone who passed away. Now, let me tell you that my experience at those Central Service committee meetings had not always been a happy experience. It certainly seemed to me like I would see things rightly and somebody else would see thing wrongly, and then they would take this wrong view and make a terrible issue out of it. And I didn't know what the hell I was there for. And I asked the guy who had browbeaten me into being there. I said, you know, I don't need this. Why am I here? And he said, well, you don't have to do it, but somebody does. Now, you tell me why it shouldn't be you. Well, I went and I resented it, and I was not a happy camper. When this representative of the court came in and announced our good fortune, I knew that we hadn't inherited anything and I was immediately afraid that I would be the only one that knew it every member of the central service committee knew exactly why we had not inherited anything and the person that I was sure would see it the worst sought to clear us and articulated the AA tradition very clearly and formally that we do not accept any contributions from any outside agencies and that we don't accept any contribution from our own membership in amounts greater than it was then, $500 a year. the courts are confused by this they don't know what the hell is going on they don' t have any procedures really to go on with this once they found the beneficiary and they refused the money and we did that there was one guy who had less than a year of sobriety who was a bright man, he was a business man. And he came to the Central Service Committee just out of interest. And he heard the proceedings up to them and then he asked if he could participate even though he wasn't a member of the committee. Of course he was encouraged to. And he explained what to him had become immediately obvious. we have a thousand meetings throughout Los Angeles. We can take that $87,000 and divide it up in equal amounts among the group, all of which would be less than $500. Then each group could contribute its portion back to Fulcrum Office and we would have adhered to the tradition yet we would has benefited from the money. Brilliant thinking. You know, good business. But the person who I had expected to not get it, not only got it, but kindly said to the guy, we appreciate that and we're glad you said that. But as the Central Service Committee, we have to look at this on how we can absolutely live within our traditions, not how we circumvent them. We have lived our lives circumventing the rules all our lives and have gotten nothing but trouble. And here we are trusted servants to ensure that the traditions are adhered to. I will tell you, I got high sitting there. I get high when I'm telling you about it. You know, I get the thrills from having been there and participated in that and knowing that that's basically the way AA always works. If it's something major that's going to make a difference, somehow we all get together and we know what to do. And we have to get together, and we have the knowledge of what to say. We don't know what we're going to do, or we're willing to go down the gunk sump individually. I'm going to wind up here, So if you have questions, now, you know, whatever questions you have, write them down on the little paper provided. And if you Have Questions About Stuff, you know, just write down any questions you have on any of the traditions or on anything else. And we'll sort out the stuff that applies to the traditions during the break and we'll plan how to capture your interest and make this thing ultimately a success. Let me just recap for a second. Our founders found that divisiveness and disunity was our biggest obstacle to our success. It threatened our existence more than anything else. So they decided that the common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon a unity. Then they decided that the one ultimate authority to ensure this had to be an expression of God's will through the group conscience. So for our group purpose, there is but one ultimate authority, a loving God as he may express himself in the group conscious, our leaders are the trusted servants, they do not govern. Now, having decided that, they needed to say who are we going to let in. Okay? The common welfare comes first. We're going to govern ourselves with the group conscience. Who's going to be let in? And the decision was made that we are going to do this. We are going be all-inclusive, never exclusive. We're not going to have any membership rules whatsoever, except the only requirement for AA membership is the desire to stop drinking. who then is going to govern, you know, the groups are going to govern themselves, but who's going to govern the group? Each group is going to govern itself except in matters affecting other groups or AA as a whole. And the purpose of every group, each group, has but one primary purpose. To carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. Its message might well be, and is in some cases, don't smoke pot and don't take Benny's if you're not going to drink. Our AA message probably shouldn't be just don't drink whiskey and it's all right to take all the other drugs that you want to take because that's not a good AA message and because most of us probably wouldn't stay sober. But be that as it may, each group will decide what its message is and then its purpose is to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. Anyway, we found that we had to disassociate ourselves from any other thing that we might do. The early people tried to have alcoholic education. They tried to set up hospitals. They tried all kinds of stuff. And one day they discovered two things. we just weren't any good at any of that stuff and it caused us divisiveness and trouble and we also discovered we're the world's best at carrying our message we are absolutely head and shoulders above anybody else carrying a message of recovery to alcoholics so let's just let that In fact, we won't get involved in any other affiliations, any other facilities, or any other enterprises. An AA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the AA name to any related facility or outside enterprise that problems of money, property, and prestige diverge from our primary purpose. And seven, we decided that we wouldn't take outside contributions. But let me also say that just as much as we decided we wouldnít take outside contributions, we made a commitment to supporting ourselves. AA has done generally a kind of rotten job at supporting itself. many of us have been given a buck at every meeting for 20 years and a buck if a buck wasn't enough 20 years ago five bucks is more like it today and we're not doing that we need to I think take a look at our group consciousness and our own individual conscience and say are we living up to the seventh tradition, that we will support ourselves. Okay. We will now have our coffee break and we'll come back and do the next five traditions. Thank you.