AA Speaker – Billy N. – Ontario, Canada – 2014
AA speaker Billy N. explores the 12 Traditions, focusing on unity, group conscience, and why rigidity threatens AA’s mission to carry the message and save lives.
Billy N. is sober since 1990 and serves as a Class B trustee and director on the AA Services Board. In this AA speaker tape, he walks through the foundations of AA’s 12 Traditions—particularly unity and group conscience—and warns against the rigidity and dogmatism that can turn spiritual principles into rules that exclude rather than welcome newcomers seeking recovery.
Billy N. discusses the first three traditions of AA, emphasizing that unity and group conscience must take priority over individual opinions or interpretations. He argues that the real danger to AA is not rule-breaking but excessive rigidity, judgment, and the drift away from AA’s primary purpose of carrying the message. He shares stories from AA history showing how openness to people with complications (whether dual addiction or other issues) has allowed AA to grow, and warns against creating disqualifiers for membership when tradition three only requires a sincere desire to stop drinking.
Episode Summary
Billy N. brings 34 years of sobriety and significant AA service experience to a detailed exploration of why the 12 Traditions matter—not as rules to enforce, but as spiritual principles designed to keep AA alive and focused on its one primary purpose: saving lives.
He opens by acknowledging his position as a trustee and his concern about AA’s growing tendency toward rigidity and control. He shares a critical insight: the further someone moves up the service structure, the more tempting it becomes to enforce rules and edit guidelines rather than focus on carrying the message to people who need it. He challenges the room to ask themselves whether AA is in the business of saving lives or rewriting punctuation.
A significant portion of the talk focuses on Bill W.’s actual philosophy—which Billy N. argues is routinely misrepresented. He quotes Bob Pearson, a past trustee and former GSO general manager, who warned that AA’s greatest danger isn’t treatment centers or single-mindedness, but the growing rigidity and demand for absolute answers. Billy N. emphasizes Bill W. was the “most permissive person” he ever encountered, and that Bill famously said every group has the right to be wrong.
Billy N. then introduces two foundational stories that shaped his understanding of service. First, a Marine in Beirut in 1983 who wrote GSO asking for literature because he felt like drinking. He started a group that still meets three times a week today—decades later—in a country where most would assume AA couldn’t survive. Second, a prisoner in 1988 who wrote the office, received a Big Book, and reconnected with the GSO staff member years later to thank them. These stories illustrate why traditions matter: not because they’re rules, but because they create the conditions for AA to reach people we’ll never meet and never know about.
On Tradition One (unity), Billy N. uses vivid comparisons: Bellevue Hospital vs. elective surgery hospitals. Some groups, like the Midnight Madness Group in New York (which meets at 2 a.m. on weekends), function as “MASH units” for the most broken people. They look chaotic, but they work miracles. He questions whether we have the right to judge other groups from the podium when we don’t know their impact. He shares that many people who got sober in “crazy” groups—the ones old-timers dismiss—later found their footing through those same spaces of acceptance and non-judgment.
On Tradition Two (group conscience), Billy N. reads extensively from AA Comes of Age, where Bill W. warns against old-timers assuming their length of sobriety gives them the right to run AA indefinitely or handpick successors. He stresses that one vote equals one vote: a person with one day has equal say to someone with 50 years. He reflects on his own sponsor, George, who rescued him from rigid dogmatism by asking simple questions: “Were they there?” and encouraging him to read the actual history rather than accept secondhand interpretations.
The final major section tackles Tradition Three (membership), which Billy N. calls the “hand grenade” of the traditions because it generates the most debate. He reads Bill W.’s own words: AA originally worried about the “mythical pure alcoholic”—Bill always knew alcoholics came with complications (alcohol mixed with other things). Billy N. emphasizes Bill was clear: AA members are not judges, juries, or executioners. We don’t diagnose. We only say: the door is wide, and you decide if you’re an alcoholic.
He shares the story of a doctor from North Carolina who was both a longtime alcoholic and addicted to morphine. When he wanted to start an AA group after treatment, the GSO office panicked. But Bill said: he’s an alcoholic, the complications go to the side, and the meeting he started became, by proportion of city size, one of the largest AA groups Bill ever saw. Billy N. then reads from the first AA pamphlet on drugs (“AA Member in Drug Abuse”), which encouraged groups to have frank discussions and allow members with drug experience to share—the opposite of today’s approach.
He emphasizes he’s not “pro-drug” and explains his own drinking style. His point is simple: if someone is an alcoholic and decides for themselves they’re an alcoholic, tradition three says the door is wide. Other complications are none of AA’s business. He warns that AA has drifted from protecting alcoholics (don’t think you can use other things and just not drink) to disqualifying people based on their other problems—the exact opposite of tradition three’s intent.
Throughout, Billy N. stresses that enforcement has never worked in AA. What works is example, not policing. He challenges service-minded members to ask themselves: Do I use my position to shut people down at the microphone, or do I invite questions and direct people to the literature to find their own answers?
The talk reflects a man deeply concerned about AA’s future—not because of threats from outside, but because of what AA does to itself when it prioritizes rules over relationships, doctrine over discovery, and judgment over compassion.
Notable Quotes
There’s really only one thing you should be talking about 99.9% of the time in AA service, and that’s how do you facilitate carrying out 12-step work? And is what you’re talking about have to do with saving lives? Because if it doesn’t, then we’re in the rewriting sentences and punctuation business.
Every group has the right to be wrong.
The clear sign of a spiritual awakening is rigidity and dogmatism. However, somebody who remains rigid and dogmatic in Alcoholics Anonymous—it’s an even clearer sign that they need to have another spiritual awakening.
Don’t lie. I pass.
The traditions clearly state that you get to come in and you get to decide for yourself if you’re an alcoholic. A desire to stop drinking is a ticket in the door.
In those days, we were always talking about the mythical character called the pure alcoholic. No complications, you understand? Just a guzzler. Now, that’s what Bill wrote. But we used to have two buckets: alcohol and other complications. Somewhere in our history, we decided to create a third bucket and put a hell of a lot of focus on that one complication instead of all the others.
If I use an AA podium to put down other AA groups, how can I really be working traditions one and two?
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
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Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> Thank you.
>> Good afternoon. My name is Billy Non. I'm an alcoholic.
>> My sobriety dates January the 5th of 1990. My home group, most important, is the Design for Living Big Book Study, Neptune, New Jersey, on the Jersey Shore. And uh it's good to be here.
A couple of things I do want to get out of the way. I I do currently have the great privilege of being a class B alcoholic trustee for those that don't know or um because sometimes I think we're so guilty in service of we have enough acronyms in AA to you know lead the world in instructional videos on acronyms and our service structure some would say is not the most streamlined for sure. Uh we have if we made an org chart, we have branches going in all directions.
But so since I have a personal pet peeve when people talk and even if it's not intended, it sounds like if you're not in the in crowd, you don't know what the person's talking about. I prefer not to talk to the in crowd. So, um, when I say I'm a class B trustee, that means that there's 21 trustees.
14 are alcoholic, seven are non-alcoholic. I'm one of the 14 alcoholic for sure. Um, the type of trustee I am, I am a general service trustee.
So, there's three types of alcoholic trustees. There are those that are regional trustees. Uh, yours currently is Rashard.
There are trustees at large. There's two of them. The Canadian uh trustee at large is Barb Kelly currently.
And then there's general service trustees. There's four of us. The four of us have to have service experience, but we also have to be some type of business professional that brings some skill to the board that the board is looking for at that time.
Um, so I fall into that category. I'm a past delegate of panel 49, which seems to I feel like I'm so old these days. Um, so that means I was a delegate in 1999 and 2000.
So when you hear people throw around panel numbers, um, you know, sometimes I hear panel numbers but not people explaining what they do. So the first general service conference technically was in 1951. That's panel one, but that one really didn't count because it was a trial experiment for four or five years.
I'm a panel 49, meaning the 49th year of the general service conference. I was a delegate from Chicago actually where I live for work and um your panel number is always your first year number of the year you started. So I know that I'm going to say things today that people absolutely do not agree with.
So I want to get that out of the way. I think that makes it a lot easier. I also want to get out of the way that I don't speak for the general service office of Alcoholics Anonymous, the General Service Board, a World Services.
I can just share some of my experiences. I definitely have some things I've experienced and some of them go counter I guess some supposedly to the party line I'm supposed to say. One is the further I see people go down the triangle and if you look at the upside down triangle it's in our service manual.
Um, and let me just make a quick note on the service manual. I'm at the very bottom. I mean, the absolute bottom where it says groups, districts, area, general service conference, general service board, then AWS.
I happen to be a trustee, but I also serve as a director on the aal services board. I currently am the chairperson of that board of directors. That means that usually at least three days a week I wake up feeling like the point of that triangle is embedded in my head, right?
Like at the you know things go down and uh it's the greatest honor in the world but it's also an absolute challenge some days. Um, but I say that because I've been involved in AA service for a long time and I have some experiences that I do pass on. One of them is that I noticed an inherent danger that the further you go down the triangle, the more you want to control change from happening.
The further you go down the triangle, the more it's tempting for me to want to embrace rigid rules and doctrine and guidelines. The further I go down the triangle, it's very tempting to be more concerned about editing one sentence in a guideline than it is about making sure that big books are getting into correctional facilities in the United States, Canada, and all around the world. And so I have to really take my inventory all the time, even if it's not popular in a pos in a position that I hold right now that in an AA service event, there's really only one thing you should be talking about 99.9% of the time, and that's how do you facilitate carrying out 12step work?
And is what you're talking about or spending time on have to do with saving lives? Because if it doesn't, if it's like somebody like me who wants a semicolon instead of a colon or wants to word smith a paragraph because I can write it better or believes that we need to have some new guideline. Um I really think AA needs to take a hard look at itself and make a pie chart in your own head like my head and say where are we spending most of our efforts?
Are we in the saving life business or are we in the rewriting sentences and punctuation business? And I believe we're in the first, you know, and I'm not afraid to talk about that, you know, at whatever podium I'm at. It's like the service manual.
The service manual is a huge pet peeve of mine today in Alcoholics Anonymous because the original service manual that I received was more of an instructional guide for a new person involved in service to kind of show you a little bit of the ropes when you go to your first assembly or come back to your second. The service manual was designed to make a GSR, an alternate GSR, feel comfortable and and and know a little bit about what's going on. When I look at the service manual the last 20 years, it's been converted into almost like this gospel.
And I use the word gospel because Bill Wilson used the word gospel a lot. Whenever he didn't like something that was going on, he used the word gospel. and he always used it that nothing in AA was never meant to be gospel, never meant to be.
So I get worried that the service manual has gone from helping GSRs to becoming a tool for a person like me to shut somebody down at a microphone. you know that somebody like me who knows what footnote 6 says in the eighth concept will be there at the microphone armed and ready to shut down and and I say that because I get very concerned about the atmosphere in AA service and whether it is welcoming or whether it is if you don't know what's going on or you're not in the in click Why would you want to come back here and feel the way you feel today? I get very worried about that.
I I get very worried that just like a newcomer at their first meeting who I'm going to talk about who Bill Wilson was very clear. It doesn't matter how bad they behave, patience falls on the side of the person that's been here the longest. Expecting a person with one day to act like they have 30 years is insanity.
insanity, but yet we want to legislate and regulate everybody's behavior. But it's no different than an alternate GSR showing up at their first assembly. Do we want to talk to them like we talked to somebody at their first meeting so that they want to come back or do we want to talk to them so they feel like, well, I don't feel like I'm part of that in crowd at the assembly or the district, so there's other stuff I could do.
Why would I not want to come back? So, a person who travels as much as I do around AA, there are certain things that I love and certain things that I see are patterns and I get a little worried about and I'm not afraid to talk about them. One of my absolute heroes, you know, I'm not an expert on the traditions or the concepts, but one of my absolute heroes is a man named Don P from Aurora, Colorado, God rest his soul, who passed away, but if you want to hear somebody talk about the traditions and the concepts, get a Don P tape at the next conference you're at, listen to that man talk about, and he'll say it.
Are we focused on carrying the message or are we wasting a lot of time talking about things that's interfering with us saving lives? And my other favorite Don P quote is that, you know, when you run into somebody like me, I will always use me as the example of bad. Um, when you run into somebody who is very rigid and dogmatic, Don P would say, "The good news about that is that it's the clear sign of a spiritual awakening." The clear sign.
But he would add a sentence to that and he would say, "However, somebody who remains rigid and dogmatic and alcoholics anonymous, it's even a clearer sign and evidence that they need to have another spiritual awakening." That's my story. That's my story that I became super rigid. So much so that I want to travel around to your group and tell you what you're doing wrong and invite you to my group where we don't practice AA light and we do it the way the first hundred did it.
And you know I I was recently at the AA archives workshop and I'm not an archavist. I would I said at the archives workshop I would never disrespect archavists by saying that I'm an archavist. I'm more of a history freak.
You know, I'm more of like a typea loner, if there is such a thing, right? You know, just I've taken enough of my own inventory. You know, I'm a guy that I could I could watch the History Channel by myself, talk to no one, and be perfectly fine, right?
Same with AA history. You know that. and and and and the one message that I want to send the loudest today is you should disagree with me.
You should want to debate with me if you see me tonight at the dinner. You should want to tell other people that I was wrong because hopefully something I said leads you to our literature and leads you to doing your own homework. You know, the biggest the biggest kind of sin I see in Alcoholics Anonymous when it comes to the traditions in history is people want to promote somebody else's interpretation of a tradition or concept because that's easier than doing the leg work and figuring out your own.
And the one thing that our 36 principles guarantee us uh even if I don't even there are people in this country in Canada that I disagree with everything on. But I've come to a point where I'm number one willing to admit they may be right and I'm wrong. And number two, how much respect I have for them if they're arguing with me with the research they've done rather than saying, "Well, my sponsor told me this or I heard on a tape." Like, that's not real history research.
That's like turning on TV and listening to someone else's interpretation of some other subject. And so I would encourage everybody here that the best place to find out information about the traditions is AA comes of age, the big book, the 12 and 12, Dr. Bob and the good old-timers.
Pass it on. I would even be so daring to mention a non-conference approved piece of literature, but the one that I think is one of the greatest history books about AA ever written, which is Not God by Ernest Kay. And so I have no problem embracing that because sometimes we get a different perspective from outside the books that we've written.
You know, when when you read our history in our books, you hear that Bill knew Bob was going to die. They started to talk about this general service conference. They wanted to pass on the leadership of AA to the groups.
and you kind of hear like it was a very spiritual thing to do. When you read not God, you find out a little more information, which is perfect for an egoomaniac like myself because it points out some defects that a lot of alcoholics have. But I'm not here to do a talk on, you know, on other AA things, but I just want to weave in some things that I think are important.
And so early in AA, there was a Jesuit priest from St. Louis who made his way to New York City. And feel free to read about that Jesuit priest.
And Bill's interaction with him changed Bill's life. When you read Not God and when you read Bill's letters with this priest, you come to realize not only was it the right thing to do that the groups should really be the ultimate say in AA, but you realize that while Bill was still the open say, it was killing him. it was killing him to be the guy, you know, and and that Father Dalling had convinced him that he needed to take AA off his own back, he needed to become a member.
And how dangerous is it? Even for myself, I freely admit this. If I would ever put myself into some separate category in AA, like I'm the guy who knows the most about this, that's the quickest quickest ticket to a drink.
And if not a drink, some other character defect that's going to horribly ruin my life, you know. And Father Dalling had convinced Bill, hey, you need to let the groups be in charge. you need to take this out of you and pass it on to them.
And so a couple of things just to mention from the beginning is how important really is AA? You know, I just came back, we had a general service board weekend last weekend and we're talking about that all the time right now. Like it's nice our history.
It's nice next year in July in Atlanta, we're going to celebrate 80 years. But what about the next 80 years? How important is that?
How important is it to guarantee that 80 years from now AA is still here? I can tell you that recently I was at an AA event in the Czech Republic in the in the city of Prague and I was at a meeting and something really hit me over the head which was AA started there in 1989. So, it's the first place that I ever visited where when a judge told me as a teenager that I needed to go to AA, AA wouldn't have been there if I lived there.
In 1982, if I lived in the Czech Republic, there would have been no place to send Bad Little Billy, right? There wasn't this thing called AA. And so I think about that like our next 80 years are just as important as the 80 that came before which the traditions of what has kept the 80 together.
And and God knows forget about keeping the US and Canada together. I'm sure some of you have horror stories from your home groups about how it how hard it is to keep nine alcoholics on the same page, right? I mean it's like a tall order.
It is a tall order. I say to people all the time, you know, I I work for a very big company. I travel the world.
I have a great career and and a lot of times my job is kind of dealing with very sensitive issues for my company. And when my boss says, you know, Billy, I want you to go over to the London office or I want you to go to the Texas office and there's this ugly topic there. A lot of times I'll go and deal with that and when I'm on my way back to the airport I'll be thinking to myself, you know, that wasn't as bad as like the assembly in the summer of 2004, you know, or like the district meeting in February of 1998 was a lot worse than this meeting.
So I I really do believe that if if you can get things done in AA, you can like conquer the world. It really is amazing. Um, but I mentioned that 80 years because of this a little known fact.
If you were to go into my house on the Jersey Shore, my first floor is very AA safe and neutral. My neighbors can come in if people I work with come by. I think there might be one little magnet on the refrigerator, but other than that, I have a living room and a study on the second floor with a fireplace and a whole bunch of AA paraphernalia that's more like a man cave with a fireplace, but downstairs is very AAF, but on the coffee table downstairs, there's a book that looks a safe and that book is called the 80 Days that change the world that in 1997 1998, Time magazine decided that they were going to look at the 20th century and they decided not to gather AA archavists or AA historians.
They decided to gather together a pool of the most educated and renowned historians in the world. And their task was to find the 80 most important days between January 1st of 1900 up until today. So that book which has I think D-Day invasion on the cover and it says the 80 days that changed the world.
When you go through those days, it's pretty impressive. When you see the first day Jackie Robinson played baseball in the major leagues. When you see the I had a dream speech.
When you see D-Day, when you see Pearl Harbor, when you see the wall coming down, there's all kinds of things in there. If you go 13 days into that book, what they identify 13 days into the 20th century, you come to Mother's Day 1935. And it says there on this day a broken stock broker from New York met a broken surgeon from Akran and from that meeting grew the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous where millions of lives have been saved and those steps have been shared with other people who have other issues and from there more lives have been saved.
Like I'm not really sure when I was going to a young people's dance in 1992 and I was more worried about the kind of jeans I was wearing and the sneakers I was wearing and did I have enough cigarettes to go through a whole night plus the diner. Like I'm not I'm not really sure that when I was doing that I really understood the impact that AA has had on the world or how the rest of the world looks at how important AA is today. I hope to think that I have a sense of that.
The other thing I want to share with you is I was doing a little history research at Stepping Stones because they have their own archives different than the GSO archives. And when I was there, um, I'm a guy who's easily distracted. I have to focus like crazy.
Um, I found this box and what this box was was the condolence letters that came in to Lois after Bill died. It's two boxes packed. And what I found amazing, and I have one of the letters here, which is from the White House.
Dear Mrs. Wilson, I send you our deepest sympathy on the death of your distinguished husband. The splendid qualities of compassion and courage and a starch commitment to society that marked Bill Wilson's long productive life will be remembered and imitated for many years to come and the lives of many Americans will be richer and longer because he cared.
We hope the knowledge of the legacy he leaves may comfort you and that your own involvement in his work and your memory of the happy moments you shared may be a source of strength to you now in the years ahead. Now I read that because that's on White House stationary. But what was amazing is that in one hand I would have a telegram from a prime minister and in the other hand I would have a crayon note from a bus terminal where someone sober seven days wrote to Lois.
Like that's the effect that Alcoholics Anonymous has had on this whole world. And so I'm not here to preach about the traditions or say that my view is right. In fact, I'm here to say the exact opposite.
I'm going to talk a little bit about when they were developed before I get into the 12 of them. I do want to share two things with you because I think they're very important because I think they glanced over in our history. The first one is a talk that was given by a man who passed away named Bob Pearson.
He was a past trustee and a former general manager of the general service office. and his rotation talk I find super interesting because there's so much the same between him and Bill Wilson. And I'll read you a section of his rotation talk.
If you were to ask me today which what is the greatest danger facing AA? I would have to answer the growing rigidity, the increasing demand for absolute answers to nitpicking questions, pressure for GSO to enforce our traditions, screening alcoholics at closed meetings, prohibiting non-conference approved literature, i.e. banning books, laying more and more and more rules on groups and members.
And in this trend towards rigidity, we are drifting further and further away from our co-founder, Bill. In particular, Bill must be spinning in his grave, for he was perhaps the most permissive person I have ever met. One of his favorite sayings was, "Every group has the right to be wrong." He was maddingly tolerant of his critics, and he had absolute faith that in aa we are self-correcting.
And I believe this too. So, in our final analysis, we're not going to fall apart. We won't fall or falter.
At the 1970 international convention, I was in the audience on that Sunday morning when Bill made his last public appearance. Wearing a ridiculous bright orange host committee blazer. He haved his angular body to his feet and grasped the podium and pandemonium broke loose.
I thought the thunderous and applause and cheering would never stop, tears streaming down every cheek. Finally, in a firm voice like his old self, Bill spoke a few gracious sentences to the huge crowd. The outpouring of love and the many overseas members there ending as I remember with these words.
As I looked over the crowd, I knew that Alcoholics Anonymous will live a thousand years if it is God's will. Now, it's amazing that he wrote that when he wrote it in the 80s in the height of what some people call the treatment center boom. I find it amazing that Bob Pearson was not worried about treatment centers, was not worried about singleness of purpose, was not worried about the seventh tradition.
What he was worried about was rigidity and people being dogmatic. Now, I want to speak straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak, because I always say wherever I go, if Bill Wilson was alive today, the one thing I know for sure, he would never even get elected alternate GSR in a group. Like, that's how liberal and out there Bill W was.
He was so far out there that he would drive people crazy. Today in AA there's a lady if you ever get to meet her or another tape much better speaker than me named Tommy D. She was a young woman.
She went to that farm, I'm forgetting the name of it now, in Connecticut, uh, Highwatch Farm in 1961, who happened to be there at the same time for treatment, but a man named Ebie Thatcher, one of his many relapses. She became very friendly with Ebie. Because of that, she became very friendly with Bill and Lois.
She wound up be serving as a delegate from Connecticut. But I always remember her telling the story. And this is a woman, just so we're clear, so I can stress how close she was.
She drove Bill and Lois to Ebie's burial in Albany, New York. Like that's how close she became. And I heard her tell me, I had heard these stories, but to hear it confirmed was amazing.
that she had heard about this group in Connecticut that was bikers and hippies, flower children, was in the 60s. They were doing all kinds of things that people were upset about, which I often find funny now that the people upset today about AA, if I do the math, came in either during the 60s or the sexual revolution, right? It's amazing.
It's amazing to me. It's amazing to me. But she told at the podium about answering the phone in her kitchen and it was Bill.
And he said, "Tommy, I hear you going out to this group to kind of get them set on straight on track." And she said, "Yep." And he just said, "We don't do that. It's not our job in AA. We vote with our feet.
If if the group conscience and the 36 spiritual principles aren't being used at that group, people won't go. But we don't go in there and take it over. And I often think, I mean, could you imagine I I read sometimes today we'd have to create another week of the general service conference where we would have the Grand Inquisition, right?
and a new committee called the investigation committee would visit groups and then would give this report and we would vote as to should they stay in AA or not. Like that's why Bill was so permissive because as soon as we get in the middle of taking governmental actions which one of our warrantes talk about we should not because here's one of Bill's letters from 1964 and anything I refer to today whether it's Bob Pearson, Bill or a couple other things. All you have to do is write your email on a piece of paper and give it to me.
Just put your name and your last initial in your email and I will send it to you or and just write what it is you want. So here's Bill's letter in 1964. Happens to be to a member named Bob.
Dear Bob, our way both as members and his groups of practicing the steps appears to vary from time to time. Many of us lack thorowness which most evidently you do not and I'm very glad that you have had such good results with the approach you have made. I have only one suggestion.
This would be to avoid trying to force anyone into your particular approach. Your example of good results is apt to be much more effective with others than your insistence that they conform to your particular interpretation. Most of us alcoholics are apt to be all or nothing people.
We go to extremes. Either we want perfection by Thursday next or else we want the barest bit of AA that will keep us sober. Experience seems to show that we can go broke on spiritual pride or on unreasonable rebellion or just plain apathy.
A plain everyday desire to make some progress is usually the best and safest bet. However, don't take what I say as gospel. You and everybody have the right to practice AA as you wish.
This is our spiritual freedom. May God bless you ever Bill. So those aren't my words.
Those are Bill's words. Except this could have been addressed dear Billy in 1994 after I went to my first Bigbook workshop and became alive with the big book and wanted to just evangelize forever. So, and that's why I say when we talk about the traditions, I'll go through them, but given my interpretation, we're a fellowship of stories.
We've always been a fellowship of stories. You want to get people active in the traditions, active in service. You got to give them the stories as to why they're so important.
I'm a kid that would never do anything unless you told me why I should do it. Simply just telling me because you have to do it has never worked in my life. I need to know that there's a purpose.
I need to know that the reason we have 36 principles is to keep this lifesaving fellowship alive. I need to know the stories behind that. And I'm going to give you two today and then talk about the 12 traditions as to why I think they're so important.
A gentleman visited the general service office a couple of years ago. He took the elevator at 475 Riverside Drive and he went up to the receptionist and he took a piece of paper like this out of his pocket and he said, "I was in prison in 1988 in Massachusetts." And so he unfolded a piece of paper which looked like it was 15 years old. And he said, "Uh, I didn't have a big book, so I wrote this office." And this office sent me a soft cover big book and they sent me this letter and in the bottom there was this line and it said he told me right here he said by the way if you ever get out and are in New York please stop by and say hello from a guy who wrote it named Doug.
Doug's retiring in December. But he said he had just gotten off parole in Massachusetts. Like that's what the traditions are about.
That's what the concepts about. They're not about rigid dogmatic rules and regulations. They're about saving lives.
They're about realizing that things happen in AA that we have no idea the effect they're going to have in the future. No idea that it's a constant snowball effect that that's the difference I think between service and working with newcomers. In my backyard, you give me a guy with two days and then he gets a year, I can see the progress.
It's kind of like the paradox in AA. It's almost disappointing. Like if I stay sober, I'll have 25 years in January.
The difference between 24 and 25 doesn't look that big. The difference between day zero and 1 year or 90 days is incredible. In AA service, we're supposed to be involved in facilitating 12step work.
And the difficult part of that is we don't get to see the end result a lot. Because let me tell you this story about the traditions. In June of 1983, a young Marine in Beirut wrote the General Service Office because he felt like drinking and didn't have any literature.
And in July of 1983, he wrote them back and thanked them for the literature they sent. In August, he wrote back again thanking the office. And he reported that he started a group called the Peacekeepers Group of Alcoholics Anonymous.
eight members, six marines, two locals. In September, he wrote them back again saying how good things were going and asked for more literature. In December of 1983, a special letter came through the US ambassador's office and the Secretary of State's office to the General Service Office.
It was from one of the local members of that group. Now, if you go to the international listing today or if you were to visit Beirut, there's AA on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights. The letter from the local member was saying, "We regret to inform you that the bombing that killed 270 Marines in October also killed the member that's been writing you." However, the group still exists.
So today in Beirut, AA exists three nights a week because a Marine that felt like drinking in n in June of 1983 wrote the general service office. I somehow wonder myself today because I'm a little bit crazy sometimes. I'd love to run into the parents or siblings of that young Marine.
I'd love to give them a meeting directory from Lebanon today. I'd love to let them know because they probably have no idea what he accomplished. They probably have no idea what how many lives have been saved in Lebanon today because of what he did in the summer of 1983.
Like that's why we have the traditions and the concepts so that AA stays alive. So I'm not going to debate the long form or the short form. By the way, I know better to do that unless we had a week to do a workshop, right?
I know better to do that. I do want to say I am going to talk a lot about sometimes I hear people say AA's watered down today. Oh my god, AA is different today.
I hear all these things. That's not my view. My view is if Bill and Bob came out of the grave for a day and looked around AA and saw the different people, how many women are sober today, color, religion, sexuality, I think they would be blown away at what AA has accomplished.
I also know, and I don't want to pick on Oliver Stone, but I will for a second, that, you know, when you look back and make a movie about history, you get to say it your own way. And sometimes when you look back, you want to make it to fit with my version of AA today. If I want to if I want to win an AA debate, it's easy for me to find a couple of lines of AA history to win my side.
But when I hear people complain about young people's groups and young people's conventions and all they're doing is hugging and hooking up, I laugh. I laugh because I just know that they've not read our history. Because in AA comes of age on page 97 as an example for the first tradition, Bill talks about one of the biggest scares to happen in AA early on.
Anyone just want to throw out what that is? I'll read it. The next big scare was the out- ofbounds, the well-known lovers triangle.
In the case of more than half our membership, the family relation had been distorted. That's why when I hear somebody say, I want the program the first hundred had, I listen up now because I want to ask them, which one of the first hundred? When you throw that around in a meeting, when you just say as careless as I have been, how am I really helping AA's unity if I throw around that term I want the program the first hundred had if I'm expecting a new person to believe the first hundred never drank or the first hundred were perfect or they had the perfect sobriety.
when the history of Alcoholics Anonymous shows me different. I don't know who has a big book in front of them, but another thing about AAN today in the first tradition that drives me crazy is people that want to quote the forward to the second the second edition because they want to tell you that AA doesn't work today. They want to tell you that if you do it like them, you all have the results that the early people had.
And they always go to this line. So really listen up when you hear somebody throw this out in a meeting. For this, there were two principal reasons.
The large number of recoveries and reunited homes of alcoholics who came to AA, 50% got sober at once and remained that way. 25% sobered up after some relapses and among the remainder of those who stayed on with AA showed some improvement. You'll often heard that the 50 25.
Those were our results in early AA. That's absolutely not true. It's not even what it says here.
I read what I hear people say in meetings all the time. I'll read what it really says in the book of alcoholics who came to AA and really tried. There's three words there that are very very important.
And really tried. That means not of everybody who came to AA, not of everybody who was sent to AA, of those who really tried. If I go around my home group today and I look at the people who are involved in all three sides of the triangle, the people who have a sponsor, the people who sponsor people, the people who have a program of action, the results are outstanding.
Of those who are trying, the results are outstanding. I'm not going to use some fear-based misquing of the literature to convince people that they should come to Billy's big book study in my backyard every Thursday night in the summer. You know, it just and but what I think is unfortunate sometimes is it's unpopular to believe our own history.
And that's why, you know, when I was at that archives convention, I said how important that is because it's so important that we do know our real history. Another thing about the first tradition, sometimes I hear people say we need to be just like the Oxford group. That's not what it says in our literature.
In fact, it says um the Oxford group's absolute concepts, absolute purity, absolute honesty, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love were frequently too much for the drunks. These ideas had to be fed with teaspoons rather than buckets for alcoholics. I mean, I'm just going by what it says, you know, and when I read tradition one that our common welfare should come first.
Personal recovery depends on AA unity. You know, I get asked this question all the time. You can get thrown out of AA.
No. That's an easy sentence. No, with a period or an exclamation mark.
Can you be thrown out of an AA meeting? Yes, with a period or an exclamation point. Right?
The two are very different, extremely different. Sometimes groups throw people out. Sometimes facilities like this send a letter to groups and say, "Uh, this person, they're not allowed in our church anymore.
They seem to feel that they're above the rules." Or a group decides that the safety and or the emotional comfort of newcomers feeling safe is more important than one person's right to make people not feel safe. And that's what the tradition says. The tradition is one of the hardest pieces of literature to the alcoholic ego in my opinion because it says very clearly that AA is more important than me.
It even says very clearly that AA surviving is more important than me staying sober. That's a pretty harsh statement. that it doesn't matter how self-important I want to make myself.
It doesn't matter my brand of AA. What's important is AA. What's important is that just this morning, I was able to get on your local website and know where there's an uncomfortable chair and a bad cup of coffee, but the life-saving message of Alcoholics Anonymous.
That is important. Me being at that meeting, not important. Me speaking at a dinner tonight, absolutely not important.
What's important is this spiritual entity we call alcoholic synonymous. That's the only real thing that's important. And the way that it's been kept that way has not been by rules and guidelines.
It's been by spiritual principles. It's been by honoring that we have differences of opinion. You know, one thing it says in aa comes of age, but of but some of our sick and careless members did rock the raft and that scared us to death.
Some of those early fears are today amongst amusing. The first big one was that of slips or relapses. And first, nearly every alcoholic we approach began to slip, if indeed sobered up at all.
Others would stay dry 6 months or maybe a year and then take a skid. That's not what I hear in these rigid big book workshops. I do not hear them read that line.
I hear them talk about that everybody who came into contact with Bill or Bob or Clarence Snider never drank again and lived a perfect life. That's not what it says where I just read. um we would look at each other and say, "Who next?" We were afraid that alcohol might completely undo us.
But today, we see tens of thousands of members completely sober for 5, 10, 15, or even 20 years. Slips are a very serious difficulty. But as a group, we take them in stride.
Fear has evaporated. Alcohol always threatens the individual, but we know that it cannot destroy the common welfare. I mean, how much more do you have to see that AA is what's important, not the individual.
Um, and unity is important. Sometimes I get questions, is it okay to start a new meeting? That's none of my business.
It's none of my business to say that you have three meetings on a Tuesday night and if you start another one, you're violating tradition one. I don't live here. I could never tell that.
I do feel sometimes that it's easier to start a new meeting than to live by the 36 spiritual principles and try to ride out rough times. I do believe that as we start new groups, we water down the seventh tradition and there's less money for those groups to meet. I do feel sometimes that we create more meetings and have less groups and that makes it difficult.
But that's not a thing for me to give my opinion on. I mean, I really do believe, you know, in another Bob Pearson talk that God was present at the first day a meeting and he hasn't missed one yet. I believe that to the core of my being.
I believe that no matter how much I want to be right, I'm going to get to it later, but the book says the group always knows better. Always. Not sometimes.
Not every once in a while. It doesn't matter if you're an old-timer, a newcomer, the group conscience knows best. Now, the groups make wrong decisions every day, 24 hours a day.
But that's why that we're the greatest self-correcting society in the world. You know, when the traditions were written, and Bill did it for a reason. When you look at tradition one, unity, it's almost like when we talk about the right of the minority in the concepts, some people I think they spread sometimes some misinformation in our history because they think the minority opinion is to make sure we get it right.
And that's not what it's about. That's what it was never about. It was about making sure that we had unity, that everyone, regardless of the decision, at least everyone got to participate, and that at the end of the day, it's not the right decision that was important.
It's the AA unity that was important. And that's what Bill talked about all the time. You can listen to all of his talks you want.
He didn't care about the right decision. He like like Bob said the most permissive person on earth. He wanted to make sure that even if it was a very difficult topic that when the decision was reached there was unity that everyone felt like they participated.
You know I tell my sponses all the time especially my service sponses. Sometimes I think service sponsorship has turned into political parties. That's just my opinion from where I live and I travel a lot.
So, but I can tell you what I was taught about service sponsorship. There's only one way to know that I have done my job. There's only one safe way to know and that is for me to be in a group conscience meeting or a district meeting or an assembly and one of my sponses to be there and they're voting opposite than me.
That is the number one clear evidence that I have passed on what was meant to be passed on. that just to be my spons I have some that vote against me all the time just for the hell of it but I'm not saying that I am saying that when I go up to a microphone and state my opinion or share my experience that does not mean that my sponses feel the same as me or are going to vote my Hey, I'm speaking for myself. It means that my sponses have been brought through the 36 spiritual principles to do their own research.
I don't tell them how to reach decisions. I do what my sponsor did, which was I tell them where to find the answers. How much you deprive people when you give them your interpretation rather than saying you might want to read AA Comes of Age.
You might want to listen to Bill W's talk in 1965 in Toronto. What I consider to be most probably the most historic talk ever given by Bill W. 1965 Toronto for so many reasons.
I mean to hear Bill W say if not for the atheists and agnostics we might not all be here today. Like that's how important their role was in writing the big book. That's a pretty strong statement from the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous that he decides to take one of his last great speeches and say without them we might not be here.
So that's why it's so important that service sponsorship. It's just me passing on. It's not me telling people how to vote.
You know, as I go to 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.
I love this line in a comes of age. I expect that many an old-timer still does not believe this proposition. He feels that he is older and more experienced than recent generations of AAS and that it was his guidance and leadership that brought them into this new life to begin with.
We oldsters often construed our longer experience as sort of a vested right even an unlimited license to run AA indefinitely. Whenever we got sick, tired, or old, we naturally thought ourselves entitled to handpick our successors. Who could know better than we?
I mean, that's Bill writing that, not me. Not paraphrasing. I'm reading every word.
Those are pretty strong words. And for me, I think Bill had already suffered the consequences. I'm not here to do a workshop on the life of Bill Wilson.
I love the documentary that was done. I love it the most because it made them real to me. I love it the most because it's good to see that I'm not the only one who stumbles all the time.
It's good to see that I'm not the only one who after I got sober has made some of the worst decisions of my life. Right? How great is it that our founder admits that he wasn't infallible?
That he admits he's a drunk like us. And he gives us a warning here. Don't let your longtime in AA confuse it with an unlicensed right to say how things should happen.
That doesn't mean that there's not timetreasured experience to pass on. My good buddy George saved my life in AA. He's sober over 50 years today.
He rescued me when I was militant and dogmatic. He used to look at me in a diner and he would say, "Billy, where did you hear that?" And I would tell him, "I heard it at my rigid, militant, dogmatic bigbook group." And he would say, "Were they there?" And I would say, "Where?" and he would say, "Well, let's start with Akran, New York, 1945 to 1955." And I would say, "Well, no, they have like seven years. They got sober like with me in like 88, 89, 90." He'd say, "You need to read our history.
You need to stop just listening to who sounds the best in a meeting. You need to stop confusing the ability to speak at a podium with correct information. Those changed my life, those experiences and my, you know, and this is a man that I met and when I first met him, I had no idea who he was.
I just thought he was a poor guy because I would see him out on Park Avenue in New York City before the beginner's meeting on Friday night. He would take his cigar and put it in a planter so he could relight it after the meeting. And I'd boy see, oh, this poor guy has no money.
I went on my first tour at GSO in like 1992 and I go into the general manager's office and who's there but the poor guy from Friday night. who later I found out gave up a lot of money at late in his career to give back to AA and be the general manager at GSO. He was a guy of very few words.
I was at a Friday night beginners meeting on honesty. Great topic at a beginner's meeting, right? And everybody had lots to share.
But I'll never forget that night when it got to him. He said, "Don't lie. I pass." Everybody else had lots to share, right?
Lots. Including me. But George took the time to pass on to me where I could build and find my own AA history.
He passed on to me that me and him don't always have to agree after I do all the research myself. He passed on to me that many times we might disagree. And that's the greatest thing about Alcoholics Anonymous.
That's why we have a group conscience because we each only get to vote once. It doesn't matter that today he has 56 years and I have 24. One group, one vote.
And the group conscience prevails. And that's why I'm so thankful that Bill wrote this all out here. and made it very clear.
So when you look at the first two traditions, it's no surprise the first one's about unity and the second one's about our group conscience. The group conscience has allowed us to remain unified. Unfortunately, it has some tough assignments for those of us who have been here a while.
That staying here gives you no license or privilege. It doesn't mean that what you say is more important. It doesn't mean that what you say carries more weight.
It just says that you get the privilege of staying another day sober and that somebody here who's celebrating a first day sober or celebrating a 50th year sober, we're both equal. And that's a lot if you have an alcoholic ego like mine to accept. But I think the great news about that is what does it say about our fellowship?
How much care do we really have for the new person coming in the door? You know, when we say the new person is the most important person in the room, I'm not going to debate that cuz I've tried to quit the debating society. Okay?
A day at a time, I'm trying to quit the debating society. But I do know this. What kind of message does it send to the newcomer when we tell them that their vote and voice is important as all of ours that have been here for 20 years?
That's how important you are to the lifeblood of our fellowship. That without new people, we can't survive. And that the enemy of AA is the alcoholic ego.
Weave through these whole traditions. And that's why I say, you know, one of the things about the first true traditions and then when you go to the next 10, there's no such thing as enforcement. Enforcement has never worked in Alcoholics Anonymous.
You can try to enforce all you want, but I was taught it's the double E rule. The only way to affect change or to promote, and people say, "Well, you can't promote." That's outside. It's fine to promote the spiritual principles inside of Alcoholics Anonymous.
The only way you can set an example with traditions is by embracement. No enforcement, embracing. Embracing the traditions is what makes other people think that they're a good idea.
Enforcing the traditions with our crowd has never worked. It hasn't worked for 80 years. It hasn't worked since they were first in the grapevine in 194647.
Enforcement Bill knew did not work. It's kind of like the 12 steps. You can berate me.
You can beat me over the head with a big book. You can tell me I'm suffering from untreated alcoholism. You can tell me I don't go to solution-based meetings.
I know all the buzzwords, but I know this. You could even want to enter me into the debate of do meeting makers make it the ultimate debate in Alcoholics Anonymous, right? The ultimate debate.
But if you read our history and you believe in the 12 steps in our big book, we all can agree where we meeting makers make it. The only question is how long does it take them to make it there? Every meeting maker makes it to a place.
It's just for some it's 3 days, for some it's 3 months, for some it's seven years. They make it to a place where they have to make a decision. >> Are they going to accept spiritual help or are they going to drink again?
That's where every meeting maker makes it. I made it there. I was in and out of AA for eight years.
From age 15 to 23. And then from age 23 to 26, I was incarcerated. And then played a lot of sober baseball, a lot of sober softball, went to a lot of meetings, went to young people's events.
But I made it to a place I made it to a place where I met a man, two men, one named Joe, one named Charlie, at the Marriott Marquee in 1993. And they talked about a program of action like I had never heard it talked about. And they explained the doctor's opinion and more about alcoholism in a way that I had never heard explained before.
But they didn't preach to me. They didn't yell at me. You know, I sometimes wonder, it's very popular where I live to use the AA podium to disparage 95% of the AA groups that exist.
And I wonder to myself, how can I really be working traditions one and two if I use an AA podium to put down other AA groups? Does my inventory teach me to worry about my side of the street or should I be worrying about what goes on in those other groups? And if I really want to worry about those other groups, why don't I go there?
Here's something I find very interesting, and I'm not going to pick on any city in particular, but I'm just going to stop about unity after this example. Today, I went to a clubhouse. I forget the address.
I like to go to local meetings and I like to go to what I call unpretta. >> Okay, I go to enough pretty AA. I I've spoken at enough conventions.
I'm a trustee. It's always nice like this with a display and you know and that's even why I didn't wear a suit and tie today because I can't wait for somebody. I can't wait to get the email.
heard you did a traditions workshop without a suit and tie. Can't wait to get it because I know that you have to know your audience. The traditions already sound like rules.
Do I need to be in a suit and tie to express spiritual principles this afternoon? Tonight I'll wear a suit and tie because that's what's expected and I have no problem with that. But I it it's so important that we really worry about our side of the street.
My side of the street is a design for living group on Sunday nights. But the reason I mentioned the clubhouse I went to this morning is because here's what I find interesting as a person who travels for a business all around the country and the world. There's always a place I go to and I'll use if you came to the Jersey Shore as an example where there's always a place where when you go to AA and talk to people they always talk about a crazy group or a crazy clubhouse, right?
Crazy over there. No solution over there. God knows what you'll hear over there.
Every place in the United States and Canada and the rest of the world I've been to has a place like that. But what I find interesting about that is if you take time getting taught to to get to know the people who have time 80% of them came in through that place. I always find that very interesting you know like if you were to go to my home group which believe me they'll tell you we have the program the first hundred had.
We will, you know, and we are a solution-based meeting, and we'll tell you about the Shoreline Club across the street from the ocean on the boardwalk in Belmar. How insane it is. God knows you got to look up and see the steps on the wall to remind yourself you're a meeting.
But why is it that when I talk to people who are sober a while, they felt comfortable in the shoreline when they first came in? Why is it they felt welcome in the shoreline? Why is it they felt less judged at the shoreline?
Why is it when I talk to them about my home group, they tell me that they had to get up the nerve just to go to my home group? That breaks my heart. What are we doing wrong?
Why do they like going to the shorelon when they're new? >> Because I love when I'm at an old-timer's meeting and it's a real old-timer's meeting. In other words, when we talk about our unity and our group conscience, there's always that question in the basket for old-timers.
What's the difference between AA today and when you came in? And I know who wrote that. somebody like me, you know, because they want to hear you get to the podium and and talk about how watered down a it is.
And and and oh my god, if we don't correct it, I love when I'm at a real AA meeting and I hear the old-timers say compassion. Compassion for the newcomer. The way we treated people who came in, the non-judgmental days of the past when we didn't expect someone with a day to act like they had 10 years.
The compassion for the newcomer whose life was totally broken mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally destroyed. And that's what places like the Shoreline Club do. I always joke around.
They're like mash units. you know, if if you're in New York City, my final example of tradition one specifically, because I had joked around that we're going to take a break and then go because I can do traditions 1 and two and traditions 4 through 12 like that. Unfortunately, we have this thing called tradition three, right?
And I say unfortunate, it's great we do, except for if you're doing a traditions workshop because if you want to take a hand grenade and throw it in the middle of a room, let's open it up on tradition three, which we will do and I will welcome that. But the last example I want to give about tradition one is if you get really badly hurt in New York City, shot, car accident, stabbed, there's only one place you want to go. You want to go to Belleview.
That's where you want to go. Belleview is the number one trauma center in all of New York City. However, once they save your life for a day or two, you probably want to transfer somewhere else ASAP, right?
Because Belleview is in the business of being a MASH unit of saving people who are in horrible condition. Now, if you want elective surgery, go to Lennox Hill. Lennox Hill's on the Upper East Side.
I don't even think they take insurance there, right? However, you don't want to be shot, shot, or stabbed and go to Lennox Hill because they won't know what to do with you. You need to go to Belleview.
In New York City, we have a group called the Midnight Madness Group. It meets at the corner of Varic and Hston. It meets at midnight every night of the weekend on Friday and Saturday, 2 a.m.
It's like the Belleview of AA. what walks in there. The people who walk in should not be able to stay sober a day at a time based on the current condition of their life today.
Somehow or another, midnight is able to transmit the miracle of a day of sobriety to the most broken people in the world. It doesn't look pretty. It looks horrible.
Actually, I've heard, are there any NEA related announcements? I've heard somebody say, "Oh, yeah. I just want to let everyone know that the CIA has bugged midnight, so be careful what you say." And I've heard the chairperson say, "Thank you for that announcement." And move right on to the next one.
Right. Like nothing is lost. Right.
I've heard some of the most unbelievable shares from every perspective. But here's what I know. When I travel around the country in the world and I mention midnight, you wouldn't believe in every crowd someone comes up to me and says they either got sober in New York or visited and what midnight did for them.
And that's why I think sometimes tradition one, the unity, what business do I have being at a podium and talking down about other AA? I even embrace my own big book study. I love the big book about vlogs anonymous.
I just don't think I have a right to judge other groups. I just don't think I have a right to scare people into my way of going through the big book. I think I have a gift that's been given to me and I can choose to pass that on.
And when I see that sometimes being used the wrong way, if someone were to tell me today that they no longer wanted me to be their sponsor, I would say thank you. Or if someone comes to me and says they want me to be their sponsor, I always say, "Well, after you sit down and buy your current sponsor a cup of coffee or dinner and thank them for taking the time out of their life." Because if you if I don't sponsor you anymore, that doesn't mean if I'm having a barbecue next week, you're not invited. It doesn't mean I tell all my current sponses that that person is now sick or untreated or somehow.
But you know, we laugh about that here. But I mention that because these are the emails I've been sent. These are the horrible conversations I've had with some AA members who tell me that they left a very I hate to use the C-word cult, but they left a a sponsorship line that was very rigid and dogmatic.
And when they left it, all the other people in that sponsorship line were told that the person must be sick or not doing well. And I think to myself, this is a spiritual journey a day at a time. There might be there are different kinds of sponsors.
And that's the last thing I'll say about tradition one in the unity. Why do we deprive ourselves of the individual unique gifts that every AA member has? There are some people who I know are train wreck specialists.
They can talk people off a ledge better than anybody I've ever seen in my life. Like if your life is really there, there are people who work miracles with the most broken people in the world. But some of those train wreck specialists will tell you they're not good long-term sponsors.
There are other people who are much better loving, emotionally available, but they'll tell you that they're not really good at talking people off the ledge. That's why I think it's so important in traditions one for our unity and two for our group conscience. It's so important to accept and really appreciate and love all the unique individual gifts that every AA member brings to the table.
There's really only one sin in Alcoholics Anonymous. Not finding out what your gift is. Tradition one and two are so important, but only if you know what your gift is.
There are people who work miracles the 15 minutes to and from a meeting that other people wish they could do. There are people who answer phones at in groups and central offices who the miracles they do I can't do. There are other people who are great delegates, who are great this.
It doesn't matter. We shouldn't be in the judging business of God's gifts. We should be in the business of embracing everyone's gifts.
That everyone brings a different gift to the so-called party called tradition one. And that we have to find a way to harness those gifts. So, when we come back after the next 10-minute this this 10-minute break, I'll take a couple of questions about tradition one if anybody has any.
But I really want to get into tradition three because I want to encourage a little debate about tradition three. So, that's all I have. Thank you.
>> Welcome. >> Thanks. We on?
Yep. So I would just ask quickly does anyone have anything question on step I mean traditions one or two but remember I have no answers. I will only point you to where you might want to take a look.
Um that's really all I will do or if I have any experience I will share it. But any questions? Okay.
Um, God, I I love AA Comes of Age so much, especially because Bill does put some questions in there that he didn't know the answers to, but we do now. Tradition three for a long time was a puzzler. That's what Bill wrote.
The only requirement for AA membership is a sincere desire to stop drinking. We worried a lot about membership. In fact, when heavy publicity first came our way, we were scared witless.
Now, here's what he says. They said to themselves, "We said to ourselves, won't all kinds of odd people show up?" I think we all know the answer to that one, right? Is does anyone have a doubt about the answer to that question?
I think we have 80 years of the oddest people in the world in every form of oddity showing up complications. You know, alcohol mixed with other things. Now, here is one of the most prolific statements Bill W ever wrote that I never hear people quote.
In those days, we were always talking about the mythical character. Now, I'll say that again. In those days, we were always talking about the mythical character called the pure alcoholic.
No complications, you understand? Just a guzzler. Now, that's what Bill wrote.
The start of AA, the mythical figure. The problem has become that he says other complications in my humble experience. The problem with that is we used to have two buckets alcohol other complications.
Bill was very clear about it. Somewhere in our history we decided to create a third bucket. We're going to single out drugs from the complications bucket bucket and we're going to put a hell of a lot of focus on that one complication instead of all the others.
When Bill writes, clearly we said to ourselves the mythical character called the pure alcoholic. So it is very easy for me to read that and understand that forget about the dword as I call it the early people who showed up to AA Bill is saying had other complications. What they were according to my book is none of my business but they had them.
Complications you know alcohol mixed with other things. In those days, we always talked about the mythical figure. We actually thought we were like that ourselves.
Hence, when members became pouring in, our worry mounted. Now, separate the language from the day of the language of yestery year. Won't there be mighty queer people?
Won't there be criminals? Won't there be social undesirabs? uh mixed with a certain amount of snobbishness and smuggness.
This was downright fear. We simply did not know what or who would turn up. Um social undesirabs.
I mean, I'm not going to ask you. So, I'm just going to do this. I don't want to know if you consider yourself when you came here a social un undesirable or are a criminal, but I'd be curious how many in this room would say they fit into either of those categories when they came into AA.
>> Okay. I mean, Bill was so prolific and ahead of his time. And that's the dangerous thing to me about tradition 3.
If you really read the history, we've created tradition 3 today to be a qualifier, which it was supposed to be, but we've turned it into a disqualifier. And there was no such thing as disqualifiers in early AA when it came to the 12 traditions. The 12 traditions were a broad set of spiritual principles to allow anyone to come through that door.
And people want to argue with the history and that's fine. But if you want to read the real on a bridge version, the 12 and 12 is nice, but it's a little sanitized. Go to aafind.org.
Go to their digital archives. Type in the words traditions. The first 12 articles will be the original articles that Bill wrote between 1946 and 1949 that appeared in the grapevine.
Those articles are not the same that are in the 12 and 12. Those articles are a little bit more direct, but Bill is very clear. The door is wide and we're not in the diagnosis business.
People come in and I'll use Bill's words. There are three things we are not. Judge, jury, and executioner.
Those are Bill's words, not mine. We do not diagnose people with alcoholism. We do not treat people.
We have a program of action that's helped us stay sober a day at a time. I often wonder about this whole big argument. Now, I'm a guy that never did drugs.
My dad ran the DEA task force where I live. So when you grow up in my family, there's a few barbecues a year. And at that barbecues is all the undercover cops.
And so when you're 15 years old and you look in your backyard and you realize, oh, there's a biker undercover cop. There's a guy in a leisure suit undercover cop. There's a hot girl who buys a lot of cocaine undercover cop.
like it teaches you to say, you know what, I don't want to come into contact with anybody that works for my dad and I love to drink. So, I don't I don't do other things. So, when I say to history, I want it to be very clear.
And and anyone that was in the meeting I was in this morning, I get very I get a little upset when people say that other drugs are more dangerous than alcohol. Not for an alcoholic of my type. They might be for you, but not for an alcoholic in my type.
I try to be liberal and freethinking and open and I try to be as much as I can, but don't tell me that alcohol is a soft drug or because alcohol was horrendous for me. Alcohol destroyed alcoholism destroyed my life. Um, but I don't want that to be that I get to decide who comes into AA.
The traditions clearly state that you get to come in and you get to decide for yourself if you're an alcoholic. Now, we can argue about a desire to stop drinking or a sincere desire to stop drinking, but if there's any card players in here, that's like jacks are better to open. You know, a desire to stop drinking is a ticket in the door.
If you want to get better, you need to consider your concede to your inmost self that you're an alcoholic of our type. Like it says in more about alcoholism, a desire to stop drinking. You might not be ready to take those 12 drastic steps and go through the big book.
Concede to your inmost self. Then you know there's no other option for people like us. But that's very different than diagnosing people.
Diagnosing people is none of our business. There's a rule I call the John G rule because we get so upset about what people call themselves in meetings. I want AA to be for alcoholics.
I want it to be for alcoholics. So much so that I don't care what other problems you have. I have no problem saying that what the pamphlet problems other than alcohol says is correct.
If you're a drug addict who's not an alcoholic, you can't be an AA member. It's very simple. The long form of the third tradition says our membership ought to be for all those who suffer from alcoholism.
Fine. But it doesn't mean if you suffer from something else, you can't be NA. And that's where I think sometimes the witch hunt has gone.
Instead of worrying about are you an alcoholic, we sometimes worry too much what else might you be? And the history and the literature says what else you might be is none of our business. Our business is alcoholism.
My business is to take you through the big book and let you make your own spiritual decision and your own answer that you're an alcoholic. So, you know, sometimes when we go down the path, now when you go to AA history, it's funny because in the beginning of AA, no one said their name is Billy and they're an alcoholic. No one said that in 1944.
I didn't go to a meeting, say, "Hi, my name's Billy. I'm an alcoholic." I didn't start till the 70s. Most people would say, >> Most people would say, "My name's Billy Nan." Period.
End of sentence. That's it. And so we get worried and what I really and that's why I call it the John G rule.
I was in a meeting I would say in the last month I've been in meetings where somebody identified themselves as something other than an alcoholic and that's it. That used to send me off the deep end. It used to just drive me crazy.
But you know what? I finally had to concede to myself how crazy that is. And I'll tell you why.
If I have a new guy, and nothing against anybody new that's in this room, but a really new person, I basically don't believe anything they tell me for a year. Basically, right? I basically believe that everything that comes out of their mouth is somehow slanted in a way that it's going to sound better for me.
However, I'm going to believe that they know what they're calling themselves and get super mad about it. I don't believe anything else they say. And I've had to really subscribe to the rule where if somebody does that in a meeting, the one thing I know that has never worked in Alcoholics Anonymous is public humiliation.
Public humiliation has never worked for alcoholics. What works is if I don't like the way you introduced yourself in a meeting, well then maybe I should take you for coffee. Like if I don't have an hour to invest with you as a new person in AA to share what's shared with me, then I should pretty much shut my mouth and not be a tough guy in meetings and not say something because, you know, we say these things that are so flippant.
And again, I I thank George for this. We'll say things like, or I used to say things like, "Well, if that scares him out of the meeting, alcohol will bring him back." Not really true. Not if you're an alcoholic of the real alcoholic variety that's found in the big book.
According to the book I read, I'm not guaranteed another ticket inside AA. According to the book I read, when I set that compulsion in motion, I cannot stay away from the second drink. According to the book I read, I can't even plan what's going to happen that night of drinking.
So to be so arrogant as for me to say that alcohol will bring them back in. Not true. There's three groups of people in AA.
There's the group of people who are here that went to their first meeting and have been sober ever since. I don't identify with that group of people. I don't know what they have that I don't have, but that's not my story.
And there's another group of people that I do identify with that are people who have been in and out and then finally they stayed. But there is a third group. There are people that have been here that are not here anymore.
Some of them really weren't alcoholic. Some of them had horrible consequences. We don't know.
It's funny when I hear people say, and this is why some of the rigid meetings drive me crazy, including my own, is when we want to force people to be an alcoholic or say things like, "Well, the very fact that you came to an AA meeting must mean that you're an alcoholic." Well, when we say things like that, aren't we kind of like creating the vicious cycle and the paradox of not letting the person figure out for themselves, of not saying, "Hey, you need to find out if you really have what we're talking about in the big book." It's interesting and I'm just going to pass on a couple of stories that um number one the first meeting started by if you want to call them I don't care if it's cross-addicted dually addicted whatever I don't use those terms but an alcoholic who had another complication that happened to be narcotic addiction that first person was a doctor in North Carolina. Bill talked about it at Dr. Gelinik's Yale School of Alcohol Studies.
The good thing about the Ale School of Alcoholic Studies is they actually tape those long before AA was taping conferences. Some young medical student, some woman asked Bill about the addict that happens to be an alcoholic as well. First time on record Bill Wilson was ever asked that question.
And Bill shares the story of the doctor from Shelby, North Carolina, who was a long-term alcoholic, went to med school, and then got addicted to morphine. Wound up in Lexington, Kentucky in a treatment center, got out, wrote the office, first letter of a person who's an alcoholic with another complication that we have on record and says, "Dear Bill, I'm a longtime alcoholic. I then developed a problem with morphine.
Your book, Alcoholics Anonymous, changed my life when I was in treatment. I'd like to start an AA group. That caused a disaster at the AA office.
Oh my god. There's a guy. He used to be an alcoholic.
He used morphine, went to treatment, now he wants to start an AA group. And you know, at the end of the day, Bill said he's an alcoholic. the other complications go to the side.
He's an alcoholic. He wants to start an AA meeting. He doesn't want to start a meeting for duel.
He doesn't want to he wants to start an AA meeting. And what's interesting is Bill says that that meeting was started. He corresponded with him and when he traveled to North Carolina, he decided, if you've ever been to GSO in New York, they have a replica of the old map that had the pins and it shows where a was either a group, a person.
And uh Bill said, "I need to go to Shelby." And so he went to Shelby. And Bill writes or says in this transcript, and this is a pretty bold statement for the 1950s, he says that up until that time, that was the largest AA group based on the size of the city in all of AA. And what good work this doctor was doing.
And imagine we had stopped this person from starting an AA group just cuz they had another complication. Like, aren't we just supposed to stop with the period, suffer from alcoholism, period? Other complications go off to the side.
It's interesting, and I'm going to blow some people's mind right now, and that's okay. Our literature has kind of changed a little in my opinion because I'm going to read some things to you out of conference approved literature that today sound like heresy. Today we seem to wa to be almost afraid that drugs is going to wreck AA where back in early AA the first pamphlet was called the AA member in drug abuse.
Anyone ever hear that? Anyone is there anyone today that never heard of that pamphlet? Okay, that's the first conference approved pamphlet AA member in drug abuse.
the predecessor to problems other than alcohol. Except it was written in a totally different tone at that time. What they were worried about is that I would come in as a pure alcoholic.
I would stop drinking, but I might think that I could use other things as long as I don't drink. This whole pamphlet is written to let alcoholics know, don't do that. That was a very bad idea for people like us.
If you go to the end of this pamphlet, again, I'll email it to anyone that wants it. Here's the one that kills me. This is how I know that sometimes we just change our history.
How AA groups can help. Most AA members agree that newcomers will make their path smoother if they know the facts about other drugs as well as alcohol from the beginning. Period.
There are a number of ways in which groups can help both newcomers and old-timers on the subject of drugs. One, this is like punishable by like 20 years in some groups I've been a member of. One, they can encourage frank and objective discussion of the problem within the group.
Oh my god. Two, members who have used drugs and who have abandon them because they were threats to continued sobriety can be encouraged to share their experience with others in the group. Three members can be encouraged to read AA literature, the AA grapevine in this pamphlet, for example, in which the problem of drugs is distur is discussed in terms of an AA experience.
So, I'm not a prod drug guy. I think I smoke pot like four times in my life. I am not a sit home, watch Pink Floyd, The Wall, get high all night, stay in the same place kind of drinker.
Okay? If you haven't got that, I'm a get on a motorcycle, get hammered. There's always something better going on where I'm not.
Got to get to that. That's the kind of drinker I am, right? I'm not the smoke weed, watch the wall on a couch all night guy.
So, I'm not this like lunatic prodrug person who's saying AA is for everybody. I'm a person who says AA is for alcoholics. When we encroach past that, we're really not observing our 36 principles, especially our 12 traditions in the third tradition.
We're really pushing it pretty far. If they're an alcoholic and they decide for themselves, which is really the key, deciding for themselves that they're an alcoholic, we do not diagnose people. Um, I'll gladly send that pamphlet to anybody.
Um, the other thing I want to talk about is the story in the 12 and 12 that a lot of people always confuse, you know, of the person that shows up in the meeting that has supposedly the problem that's way worse than being an alcoholic and people think he's a drug addict when really, you know, and and the word deviant is used in some of Bill's talks. um and other and others he says a social stigma much worse than alcoholism. But the problem was he was gay and a crossdresser.
That was the other problem that the people didn't want to let in. And what was Bill's answer? You know, Bob's answer.
What would the master do? You know, the door is supposed to be wide. And Bill writes in the in the grape vine.
That's why I encourage people. I would probably get in trouble if I sent you those Grapevine PDFs because you're supposed to get them on the website, but just email me. Um, but Bill writes, "Clearly, no judge, jury, and executioner, and the job of patience falls on the person who's here before.
He says, "Won't we have to put up with a lot of bad behavior?" Yes. A lot of odd comments. Yes.
But how do we expect the new person to act like they have 10 years when they only have not drank for two days? The people who show up to AA are not showing up on a good run. You know, no one shows up here in a good run.
Their their lives are totally devastated. And so I think it's important, you know, when we talk about this third tradition that we really be very clear. You know, there's certain things in our archives.
That's why I love the archives because I'm a history freak is there's a lot of debate about when this drug thing crossed the line. When it went from let's protect alcoholics because if they think they can use them and not drink, they're crazy. That's what the early literature was all about, protecting the alcoholic.
And it went to kind of this thing. Oh my god, we're going to get taken over. Oh my, I mean, I've read some letters in archives where it's, you know, prior to 1970, 1968, it was accepted that is you could smoke pot and consider yourself sober.
That they were rigid about as long as you're not drinking, you have a sobriety date. I run into every once in a while an old-timer who will have a conversation with me and tell me about those days. Today, I think we're pretty much all on the same page that we wouldn't want our group chairperson who's under the influence of any mindaltering substance of any kind.
But that was a threat to a lifestyle in AA in the 60s and 70s. You're telling me to be sober. I can't do this.
So we should, you know, that's why I say when we talk about this topic, we have to be very careful about our real history, especially just read Dr. Bob's nightmare or Bill's story in the big book if we want to go be, you know, I worry sometimes that we're going to have like some grand council on purification of Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, and and what is the actual line? Well, the line for me is if you're an alcoholic, you belong here.
and whatever problems you have. In fact, my book encourages me to tell you to get outside help. My book encourages me that maybe you need to go to another 12step program.
My book definitely tells me and our literature definitely tells me that I have no business being your doctor. I have no business breaking the law. I don't know the law in Ontario.
I know the law in all 50 states on this particular topic. But I can safely say that in the United States, not only do you need to be a doctor to tell someone to start taking medicine, but in all 50 states, the law is that only a medical professional of equal status can change that or tell you to stop taking it. However, we have some people in AA who believe that there's more than just a desire to stop drinking and that you're an alcoholic.
We have some people who have decided that they're going to start playing doctor, start playing with people's lives. I have one kid. I have one kidney, so I'm missing one.
I have no spleen. I'm an alcoholic. No one said that.
You know, it doesn't matter. I'm an alcoholic. Now, I I will go back to what makes us different and why I think it's very important to only identify as an alcoholic in an AA meeting.
And some people say, "Billy, you're like so schizophrenic on this subject." I'm not schizophrenic on welcoming the alcoholic. I just know that in every AA meeting there is a chance that somebody's going to be there who is only an alcoholic. And that's who our duty is to make any new person think they have to be more than an alcoholic to be here is very dangerous.
I don't want any new person in an AA meeting thinking, "Oh yeah, that meeting was okay, but like everybody else is an alcoholic and something else. I'm just an alcoholic." I know a guy like me. It was it took me living in a correctional facility to realize that alcohol took me to the same place as drugs.
And I grew up in a house where alcohol is good and drugs are bad. But yet alcohol led me to the place where supposedly all the bad people go. So I think it is very important.
But that doesn't mean we should censor people's stories. That doesn't mean we should tell people how to share. But I have no problem with telling my sponses, you should say your name is so and so and you're an alcoholic.
And if you're in another 12step fellowship, you should respect that fellowship because there might be a newcomer there who only has that issue. But that's very different than censoring people's stories. I listen to people's stories and I wonder I never hear people complain about multiple DWI stories, depression, one night stands, broken marriages.
I've heard every log possible, right? I've heard the DWI log. I've heard the depression log.
I've heard the one night standalog. I've heard every log possible and no one complains about them ever. However, tell a drinking story and do one line of cocaine and there's a crowd of people that want to tell you you stepped over a line.
And I wonder to myself, if this is a program of honesty, why would we tell you like when I hear people say non-conference approved substance? Anyone ever hear that term? >> Yes.
Right. Has anyone here ever heard that term used? >> Okay.
Yeah. Non-conference. We don't have a conference approved substance.
There is no such thing as a non-conference approved substance. We do not have any substances that are approved by the General Service Conference, alcohol or otherwise. So, if we don't have approved, we can't have unapproved.
Why do we censor people's stories? Because I worry, are we going to encroach and maybe the next time we do the fifth edition of the big book sensor bill story or Bob's are we going to say that just because they mentioned one line in a sentence, one word that that needs to go? Of course not.
I don't think so. I hope not. Then why would if Bill's ultimate goal was to be treated as an equal?
Why don't we give the same respect to the average AA member that we give to Bill and Bob in the Big Book? Like I said, I'm not pro drug. I'm not about I want meetings to be just like stories in the big book to tell your story.
How you found a power greater than yourself and recovered from alcoholism. Period. That's what they that's what you should be sharing in AA meetings.
But if you use one word, I'm not going to jump it. I'm not going to jump all over you. I want AA to be welcoming.
On the other hand, I also know that I don't want to kill people. And I do not want to convince someone who's not an alcoholic that I can help them because I'm an expert in the big book. Because identification is so important.
If you read our history, identification is the thing that the old-timers talk about and write about over and over and over. And without that identification, life becomes very difficult. And and we don't do any we don't do ourselves any good, by the way, when we make fun of or put down other 12step groups.
If you have a newcomer in your meeting for three or four months and they come to the decision that they're not really an alcoholic, let's just say for example, they decide they're a cocaine addict or they're a narcotics addict. If they reach that spiritual decision and for four months they've heard you make fun of or put down those other organizations, are they going to want to go there? I think not.
I mean, don't we prolong people staying in our fellowship when we say derogatory things about AA NA or the people who are there or there's not enough people in the big book in NA or or CA like if if we want to really give somebody a safe place to make a decision that they're an alcoholic and they make a decision that they're not but they need to go someplace else, our words are going to mean something to them And if we've been putting down that other sister 12step fellowship, they might not go there. So those things, you know, they definitely are on my mind. And you know, the other thing I want to address is when people say AA is flat or not growing in relation to the third tradition that we've had 2 million members for 25 years, it hasn't really grown.
Is it working? You know, and I say yes, it is. All you have to do is go to the NA or CA or Crystal Meth Anonymous websites and look at their membership.
We've shared our solution with other organizations. Their membership has gone through the roof. Through the roof.
People had less of a choice 25 years ago where to go. 40 years ago even less of a choice. We're not We're not failing.
we're not. It's that there's a better opportunity for people to go other places that are not alcoholic. Um, but I don't want to be a judge, jury, and executioner.
That's I I have enough problems with my own life to where I interfere in other people's lives. I don't want to deny somebody the ability to get sober. And and I really want to be careful about my words that could be taken out of context in a twominute share in a meeting.
that I make somebody feel uncomfortable because I'll bet you there are some people in this room who have more than 10 or 15 years. And I'll bet you you've been going to your meeting like I have for a long time. And I'll bet you only because it's organizational dynamics, not because of anything about me or you, but I'll bet you in certain settings people in your group really listen to what you have to say or think you have a lot of experience.
And you have to be very careful when you're a person in AA like that because two minutes of what you say could really affect somebody else because that new person sees everyone else who listens to you and so you all of a sudden say something flippant like alcohol will bring them back in. Not necessarily the case. Any questions on the third tradition?
I will gladly email those documents to anybody. The bill Dr. Gelanic talk the it's drug abuse and the alcoholic and then one after that is sedatives, barbituates and the alcoholic and then problems other than alcohol.
Go ahead. I'll repeat the question in the microphone. >> I'm an alcoholic.
>> Well, I I'll tackle them one at a time. First is I love the long firm of the third tradition because it's so simple. Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism.
Period. End a sentence. If you suffer from alcoholism, you should be a member here.
As far as cooperating with Alanon, there's a long history about that. We shared everything we have with them. I do get a little fearful if we're not going to be willing, if we don't want to help somebody, we're not even willing to tell them where to go.
just seems very una like to me. As for registered groups, I don't know if you mean registered here or registered at GSO in New York. >> GSO.
>> So, let me say something about registered at GSO in New York. This I can say. I'll take my disclaimer away here.
I am saying our official policy that when we register a group, it is not a good housekeeping seal of approval that you are an official AA group. We have no such thing. When we register a group, it is simply a number for communication purposes because you have decided you are an AA group.
We are not We do not have an investigative arm. We give area delegates 30 days notice of new groups. And if you're an area delegate, you get a letter from GSO that a new group wants to form.
We give it 30 days if the delegate wants to let us know that that's really not an AA group. But once that 30 days go by, we give them a registered number. It does not mean you're an official AA group.
It means you get mail from us. It means we communicate with you because you say you're an AA group. So this term registered is is taken way out of context all the time.
There is no such thing as an official AA group in our eyes. Now, if the Hamilton in a group or the Toronto central office or the New York in a group have any other different rules locally, we totally respect that, but we do not. >> You're welcome.
Any other questions or comments about the third tradition? Yes, sir. >> Several times in our group, they've allowed narcotics people to come in they announce themselves as as state objections and a lot of times what I've done or what group has done to accommodate that.
>> Yep, I hear that. I can say that I don't hear that around. I do know that it says in the AA group pamphlet that even though a meeting is open, other people may attend as observers only.
That's what it says in the AA group pamphlet. It says you can have an open meeting. You can let anyone attend, but only alcoholics should participate.
Now, you could draw a rigid line there because in the history of AA and Alanon, we've been speaking at each other's anniversary meetings for 50, 60, 70 years. Many Alanon groups where I live always have an AA speaker, right? Many alcohol, many AA groups where I live always have an AA always have an Allen on speaker, but in a regular group setting, the pamphlet does say anyone that's not an alcoholic should only be an observer.
Sometimes the lady was coming in coming in announcing themselves as old. >> And this is really probably where I differ with my fellow big book lovers the most is if you're convincing your sponses that it's the same disease, you don't need identification. You just need the 12 steps.
Well, then why wouldn't they want that in meetings? That's that's what's going to happen in meetings. That's why I tell my sponsors that identification is so important.
You know, you know, I was saying this morning at a meeting I was at in my old way of life, nothing against my friends that did drugs, but they weren't as dependable to commit crimes as alcoholics. That was just my personal experience, okay? That they seem to get diverted sometimes and I needed people who could really do things and then go out drinking, right?
Um, but I do think we have to pay keep that that meeting place in observant of the possible newcomer who might only be an alcoholic. And that's the meeting that we list in the directory for them to come to. Does that mean that someone who's an alcoholic in something else can't help that person?
Of course not. But I do believe we do owe it to the newcomer that when they come to an AA meeting, they do get an AA meeting, which means identifying, you know, and that's let me go on another little anti- my other debate with um some of my fellow big book friends and some of them my best friends. In fact, they're having a big convention right now where I live.
When we get up on a soapbox and tell people that the drunk log is not useful. When we tell people I don't want to hear a drunk log. When we tell people I only want to hear solution, that's not what's laid out in our literature.
Our literature talks about and you know there's a there's a great Allenon speaker named Mary P. Mary Pearl is it Mary Pearl? I love her statement when she says, "Why would the newcomer want your solution if they don't know you have the same problem as them?" And that's why I worry when I hear people tell people to say, "Don't talk about drinking in your story." Well, what are you supposed to talk about?
Are you supposed to say that you only are working the 12 steps and living in the sunlight of the spirit a day at a time in 10, 11, and 12, you know, free of the beds? Like I could give you all the code words to say, but the newcomer doesn't understand any of that. You know, there's a difference between being at a step workshop or a big book meeting and an open speaker meeting.
And at an open speaker meeting, the newcomer needs to know that I know what it's like to be a suffering alcoholic. And because I know what it's like to be a suffering alcoholic, they're willing to take my solution. And so this is going to be like the most this is going to be the thing I say that's always the most controversial.
So I'll say it. People with other complications in AA do not scare me. Heavy drinkers in AA scare me.
>> That's the truth for me. I'm not worried about people with other complications. I'm worried about people who are not alcoholic, who don't suffer from the same spiritual malady as I do, who don't need to do the 12 steps, who don't need to live in all three sides of the triangle.
I'm worried about a person like that sponsoring an alcoholic. That's what worries me the most because it does say in the big book that you could stay sober doing other things, you know, and the people I looked up to used to say like going to speaker meetings, hearing war stories, but the truth is for a heavy drinker, hearing war stories might be enough to not drink again, but not enough for a person like me. So, I much worry about people who aren't alcoholic.
much more than I worry about people with other complications. >> I have no following George. >> George George I obviously you're familiar with the tradition check checklist.
Oh yeah. >> And I try to introduce that for dialogue and sometimes response is if it's not broke. >> So you're talking about the grapevine checklist, right?
>> Which is a great little document. Um and you're talking about introducing it your group and they say if it's not broke, don't fix it. >> Um it's whispered.
>> It's whispered. Yeah. Well, I mean, let's face it.
Uh, these are pretty dry sometimes to talk about. Um, I think you have to bring it up in the right atmosphere. I think sometimes I don't know which side it is that doesn't want it talked about.
Is it the side that wants to make a lot of rules or is it the side that's afraid a lot of rules are going to be made? >> I can respond to that. Okay.
It's more like, okay, where are we going with this, George? Are you talking about group inventory? >> Okay.
there's going to be division. So, uh, we're talking, hey, let's just stay united. We're one happy family.
Let's not upset the apple. I hear you. I mean, my group is currently in the middle of doing an inventory.
I think the traditions checklist is a good entree into deciding if you need to do a group inventory. But, you know, I wouldn't let the group saying that stop me from bringing it up at a business meeting or maybe just saying maybe, you know, what we decided to do at my group because we realized that we were off track. We were so perfect at the big book that you couldn't find one of the other 24 spiritual principles if you had a magnifying glass, right?
Like, we knew the big book, but the 12 traditions and concepts. So what we did is we decided when we're done with going through the first 164, we then automatically go to 3 weeks of the concepts and then the next time we're done, we go to three weeks of the traditions. And what we try to do is bring in people who can bring them alive without reading, you know, um that really get people excited about them.
Like I said, we're a fellowship of stories. Stories make people respond. Um, so that's what I would try to do, but it is very difficult.
I'll take one more question. >> Yeah, I just I just was a little confused with in that how number one would you identify them judge them? And a comment on that is someone who has been around a long time was told he was a heavy drinker and he ended up breaking down and ended up hospital for 6 weeks.
So my question is like how would you make that judgment? >> Well, it's not a judgment for me. It's my experience over 24 years now that I'm not worried about other complications.
I have met many people who successfully drink today who were in AA who clearly do not suffer from the same disease that I have. And I have to accept that as a spiritual truth that what drove them to AA was some external condition. What drove me to AA was an internal condition.
It wouldn't matter about the external. I don't judge anybody. Listen, I am so far liberal in this category that I have to watch even what I say sometimes at service events because I want the tent to be as big as possible to let as many people in as possible and let them make their own decision.
from working with people. I can tell you my personal experience of working with people is that there are a lot of people who come in who later say they were not really alcoholic. They do not suffer from the compulsion.
In other words, I hear people say, and by the way, this is, you know, I hear this, I've gotten challenged, but for me, the definition of alcoholism is not taking one drink and then I smoke a joint or do a line. I don't know what that disease is, but that's not the disease in my book. The disease in my book is I take one drink and I need to have another drink of alcohol.
That it sets off the disease of alcoholism that I have no physical control over. It changes my body chemistry. And then worse than that, the next day when I'm completely sober and I feel uncomfortable in my own skin, I have the power to forget about the night before and think that alcohol is the only thing that's going to help me.
That's what I know makes me an alcoholic. I have met other people who tell me even after months or years in AA that they're able to drink now. And since I've known some of those people and I know those people sponsored people while they were in AA, it worries me.
It worries me that someone could be sponsored by someone that hasn't gone through the book program in the Big Book and hasn't made the determination that they really are an alcoholic and the type described in our book. I'm not judging them. I think if they're not an alcoholic, they have the right to drink.
I think if they're a heavy drinker, they have the right not to drink. I just know my book tells me I'm not a heavy drinker. I'm an alcoholic and there's a clear difference and that's what I believe.
>> Any other questions on tradition 3? Yes. >> I got my in my alcoholic members.
Um I I came I was brought to AA to and uh Johnny and so I was brought to AA and because I believe today in the progressive fatal illness of the disease I after time in the program have felt the disease progressing in my view my personal experience a problem drinker, not a problem drinker, but a heavy drinker wouldn't have that. Would I don't know. I'm just thinking because I believe that it when I stop drinking, if I was to pick up again, I don't start where I left off.
I actually am drinking as if I had never stopped. Is that Can I I don't know what your feedback on that. Well, I I identify with that, but I just want to read a personal example in my life of working with people.
If I can just find the text because I want to be very clear. So I sent a text yesterday afternoon to a executive that works for me and I just simply said, "You're lucky to be alive." The text that was sent back to me says, "I know. Thank you for reminding me.
I must tell myself that every day for the rest of my life or I'll quickly die. I will never forget what you did for me that night and to help me survive until I got to where I went to. No one can ever relate unless they've been there.
Now, the reason I tell you that story is that woman, what she's talking about that night is back in August, I had to step up from a dinner I was at and I had to call her and I had to say, and I won't say her name here, but I had to say, "Listen, you have two choices. Choice A is I'm sending a car for you with no lights on it, no words on the side of the doors and it is going to drive you directly to where people can help you. Choice B is when I hang up, I'm dialing 911 and I will see you at Belleview in about two hours handcuffed to a bed and we can go at it that way.
but way beyond like I believe what it says into the employer and I run my business like that. Now the reason I tell you that story is because unfortunately that woman who is a great and talented lawyer and executive uh she was a member of our fellowship and a couple of years ago other very smart urban people convinced her while they were discussing the problems of the world that we're a cult >> and that we' convinced her she's an alcoholic and that she probably just had a hard time here and there and didn't really be need to become an active member of AA. And listen, she worked for me and I keep my distance as far as it's none of my business as long as you're doing your job.
But she decided to try to drink like that and it did not work out well. And one of the people she took that advice from was from someone who used to be sober and is a heavy drinker and not an alcoholic. And their experience was that after being an AA for a while they were able to drink again.
And they passed that experience on to this woman who works for me. And unfortunately it did not turn out the same for her. She was taking advice on how to treat alcoholism from a heavy drinker and it almost killed her.
I can tell you very honestly, very honestly, because it's been a difficult part for me to be in a role of what I know about this disease and myself and knowing um uh I can't get the old email, but I can just tell you that what she wrote me is that she was drinking vodka every day before work. And then the last time she wrote me, she said she was getting rid of all the knives in her apartment. And I just think to myself, this is what happens when a heavy drinker tries to help an alcoholic.
They just don't understand the difference between the two. And sometimes I think in AA, we get so worried about focusing on who's a drug addict and not alcoholic. And we never ask ourselves the question, are we alcoholics helping other alcoholics?
Or might we have some people around here who are not alcoholic? and what can they really help another alcoholic. So that's why I say it not to be judgmental.
>> Thank you for uh giving me an example. >> You're welcome. No problem.
Any other third tradition questions? So let's move on. I think in the next 30 minutes I can uh the others I can just rapid fire.
Tradition four, I just want to go to about autonomy. And I want to throw a word out there called custom. Uh I can't get the old email, but I can just tell you that what she wrote me is that she was drinking vodka every day before work.
And then the last time she wrote me, she said she was getting rid of all the knives in her apartment. And I just think to myself, this is what happens when a heavy drinker tries to help an alcoholic. They just don't understand the difference between the two.
And sometimes I think in AA we get so worried about focusing on who's a drug addict and not alcoholic and we never ask ourselves the question are we alcoholics helping other alcoholics or might we have some people around here who are not alcoholic and what can they really help another alcoholic. So that's why I say it not to be judgmental. >> Thank you for uh giving me an example.
>> You're welcome. No problem. Any other third tradition questions?
So, let's move on. I think in the next 30 minutes I can uh the others I can just rapid fire. Tradition four, I just want to go to about autonomy and I want to throw a word out there called custom.
I like that word because it's not tradition. So when someone says to me, "It's the tradition of our group that we celebrate anniversaries the last Friday night of the month," I try to just say, "You know what? We have a hard enough time with the 12 traditions we have.
We should stick to that word inside aa and just say it's your custom that on the last Friday night of the month you have your anniversary meeting to make sure that the T's with a cap the traditions with a capital T get an extra sense of purpose. It's like when someone says it's tradition at our meeting that a man wear a suit and tie and a woman wear a dress. I believe that's not a tradition.
The tradition basically says I can show up where I'm whatever I want at an AA meeting. Your custom that you embrace with your group autonomy is that you only let speakers participate who wear suits and ties or dresses if they're a woman. But that has nothing to do with our 12 traditions.
And so when we look at with respect to its own affairs, each group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience. But when its plans concerns the welfare of neighboring groups, also those groups ought to be consulted. And no group, regional committee or individuals should ever take action that might greatly affect AA as a whole without conferring with the trustees of the general service board.
The issue here becomes AA's reputation. That's why we don't give out reference letters. That's why we And I'm going to get to anonymity in a second, but if you want to go home tonight, if you have nothing better to do, Google the Midtown Group Washington DC.
If you think that a group doesn't have the power to do something that affects AA as a whole, just Google the Midtown group Washington DC Alcoholics Anonymous. When a treatment center or every treatment center in a 50-mi radius when they release somebody who's under 18 give the parents a list of what groups not to go to. Clearly something has happened that affects other groups or AA as a whole.
When people are coming into a particular AA group, especially young men and women and being told to cut off all communication with their family, clearly other people or other groups are affected because people don't remember the AA group, the Midtown group. They remember AA. When young women are coming out of treatment and are being told by male sponsors how they can get better self-esteem on ways that I won't dignify this podium with it greatly affects AA as a whole.
Safety in AA has become a big issue in the last couple of years because we're so condoning and I'll just give an example. If you have a job in AA, a service position, if you do it better than anyone's ever done it before, you have beautiful reports highlighted, tabbed, I mean PowerPoint presentation. If you do that, na, you will be ripped apart.
You will have 40 critics who will find a problem with your font, who will find a problem. The However, let me give the opposite. If another person takes the same job and doesn't show up for 3 months and somebody makes a motion to remove that person, the whole room will turn against you.
If you're the person who made that motion, you're you're going to cause them to drink. We don't judge people. We don't do this.
It's like we punish the active and we embrace the people who take a commitment and don't do it. But I say that because we have to be willing to stand up that a newcomer in a meeting deserves a safe place. And there's nothing wrong with calling somebody out on behavior that makes any man or woman feel unsafe in a meeting at all.
And there is a certain sanctity from preamble to prayer that everybody deserves. And there's a certain things that aren't in our books that we need to really pass on. You know, one of my sponses called me and he said he didn't like some gossip that was going around and I said, "Well, how did that's, you know, we were just talking about." He said, "Well, all I did was drive her to a meeting." And I said, "Well, that's all it takes in AA.
Welcome to AA." Right? Like all it takes is you driving her to a meeting. I don't care what the spiritual purpose was.
The fact of the matter is there's plenty of women that could drive that young girl to a meeting and that young girl deserves to feel safe. And your job as a man in Alcoholics Anonymous, now I tell people all the time, I don't go out there telling people not to take you stay out of relationships for a year, anything else. I don't do any of that crazy stuff.
I do what the book tells me to do. I tell my sponses, you want to go out with a girl, ask her to go out for a week from now. Do not use driving to a meeting as some kind of window to open up.
But you know, sometimes people are afraid to speak up in meetings. But the truth is, I don't care man or woman. I don't care how old you are.
I don't care whether it's financial, sexual, anything else. You deserve to feel safe in an AA meeting and you deserve to feel not prayed upon. And I bring that up in this tradition because you know for a long time this group in DC was let go to do whatever they wanted and the people who didn't stand up all of a sudden it blew up and it made AA look bad.
Now AA groups can make their own decisions. You can tell people what to wear. You can be a big book meeting.
Now I just want to say just an example of Bill Wilson. Bill Wilson believed an AA meeting could do whatever it wanted and an AA group whatever it wanted. He believed in no regulation whatsoever.
When you read those articles in the in the grapevine, the one about the fourth tradition, this is his quote. a group that wants to have a bingo game on Friday night and a dance on Saturday night to hire a preacher on Sunday morning is okay. Their right to be wrong is more important than my right to be right.
That's a pretty bold statement. You have to really believe in God and the group conscience to say something like that. That's not what I see in AA today.
And aa today I feel like like I said we should have an investigation committee. You know we create all these new committees. Why don't we have an investigation committee?
Fly around. Just drop in in a meeting. You don't have to introduce yourself.
You can kind of But each group is autonomous. And it doesn't always mean it's good. Sometimes it's not good.
But what they're autonomous on is not the 12 traditions. They're autonomous on how they operate their group. And every once in a while, you're going to go into groups where you don't like what you see.
I can tell you the last time it happened to me. I was in a state that I go to for business all the time. I hadn't been to a meeting in a couple of days.
I decided to go to a meeting. I was sitting in a meeting about 10 minutes before the meeting. I saw a young woman come in with a I don't know a three or a four-year-old.
I think once you've been in AA a while, it doesn't matter what language you speak, you are able to spot across the room broken people, new people, people that really need a meeting. It was clear to me that this woman really needed a meeting. And she sat down and the chairperson went up to her about 5 minutes later and he kicked her out.
He said, "Children aren't allowed in this meeting." And uh you know I know enough that I'm not going to volunteer to watch a three or four year old girl. But I did go to the guy after the meeting and I just asked you know like why didn't you see if there was a woman here who maybe would have taken a few minutes or split the time and and you know his answer to me was kind of comical. He said and this is why I sometimes have trouble with this phrase real alcoholic.
Nothing against anyone that uses it in here, but there's a couple of words in AA that have caused us a lot of trouble. First is definitely one of them. Anytime you hear somebody says, "I'm the first.
We were the first." That's a bad word. Founder. Founder is another bad word.
Founder is always for a group, a meeting, a clubhouse. We have two co-founders. We don't need any more after that.
Um, the other word is real. Real is another word because what this person said to me is wear a real closed meeting. And I said, "Oh." I said, "What is a real close meeting?" I'm a I'm familiar with closed meeting just like I'm a familiar with alcoholic.
Just like I asked, "What's the difference between a real alcoholic and alcoholic, but what's the difference between a closed meeting and a real closed meeting?" He said, "We do it exactly how those people in New York tell us to do it." So that really got me laughing, right? So So now I'm like, well, I'm not even opening up that can of worms, right? I'll just I just kind of laughed and I said, you know, I'm going to have to check with those people in New York.
That just seems a little So I understand the group's autonomy that they're a closed meeting. I understand that there are teachers who maybe don't want teenagers in a meeting because they deserve a place to work and they deserve anonymity. But I also know here's some single parent who's like 30 days sober who needs a meeting with a little daughter and we can't find a way in our group autonomy to kind of like respect our traditions and save this woman's life.
So you know autonomy is clearly given to every group but I don't think that's a reason to create a lot of rigid rules. That's just my own two cents. I think the autonomy is there so that each group has an individual flavor and I think that's good because I think if AA looked the same everywhere I'm not sure it would work as well.
Now I want to go to your question about singleness of purpose and I waited to answer this part of your question until I got to tradition five. The long form of tradition five says each alcoholics anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having one primary purpose that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. The most misqued Bill Wilson line involves singleness of purpose because I've been at hundreds of meetings where I hear the meeting opened up where it says in respect of the third tradition and singleness of purpose we will ask you to and then there's a list of a few rules.
Don't talk about drugs but the what I could care about their list of rules. Bill Wilson never used the terms or the phrase singleness of purpose and the third tradition together ever. It's you cannot find it anywhere.
Bill Wilson, if you're a big book thumper, you know, didn't like to use the same words twice. That was his style of writing. In an article about the primary purpose, the fifth tradition, Billy used the term singleness of purpose.
It was never connected to the third tradition. And the primary purpose has nothing to do with alcohol. It says that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
The primary purpose is not the substance. The primary purpose is carrying the message. Now, we get a little crazy here sometimes, and I don't want to get into the debate of women's meetings, men's meetings, gay meetings, all kinds of meetings.
Um, we try to stay away from dually addicted meetings, but we do register men's groups, women's groups. We register atheist and agnostic groups in New York. We register uh gay, lesbian, transgendered and and and sometimes people have a real problem with this because they think it diverts us from our primary purpose.
And one could argue either way. I would say this though, and I would encourage anyone to look into our history. Our history is not always as positive as we like to make it.
We sometimes act like in on Mother's Day of 1935, AA was started and we never suffered of any of the issues the outside world was affected by. In other words, there was never racism in AA. There was never sexism in AA.
there was never discrimination because of your sexual identity inside AA. Well, that's not true. That's not true in the least.
And I'll just give you a historical reference. So, if you want to look it up someday, in 1953, we had the third general service conference. At the time, one of the biggest topics being talked about was segregated meetings.
In the United States, specifically in the South, there were still meeting directories published that showed segregated meetings. People didn't know what to do. Bill Wilson led a sharing session at that general service conference that's documented in the report about how do you live, especially if those are the laws in the state you're in.
And what's interesting is they basically said you do what you need to do. you leave a door open and you have kind of a line in a wall. You you basically do what you need to do to make sure people get the message.
But there's a quote in that report. The one thing I like about the old general service conference reports is they actually put they put the exact words in there. You know, they're not like sens.
that like cleaned up and it's just the report. And inside that session, I just say to myself, okay, the delegate from North Carolina, it says he got up to the podium and announced to the whole general service conference the following. This is his quote.
We don't have that problem in North Carolina. There are no colored alcoholics in North Carolina. Now, that's a pretty bold statement, right?
That's most would say scientifically and medically, statistically impossible, right? So, but what I ask myself when people want to fight about men's and women's meetings and young people's meetings and gay meetings and even, you know, there were black meetings in certain cities, I say to myself, how would you like to be a black newcomer who has to sit next to that guy in a meeting? How welcome would you feel?
like we want to judge the people who started these meetings. I'm sure the first women's meeting started for the same purpose. It's not like every group embraced women in early AA.
You know, same with the gays. You know, that pamphlet, you know, I was a person who was very rigid that we didn't need any special interest literature. I admit I was wrong.
I was wrong. It took one letter really to change my mind on that and that was from a woman who lived in the Bible belt who was gay and she wrote to the office and said, "I've never read that pamphlet." But at the second meeting I attended, it was in the literature rack. And the very fact that it was there, although I was too embarrassed to pull it out and read it, it let me know I had a place here.
Now, one of the things I know about our literature and this is, you know, I I love the craziness of our fellowship. I love how crazy we are as a collective whole. So, now I've been on the board, the AWS board for six years.
I have a little bit of experience about here's what I can tell you. Literature that we create for us, the outside world can't stand. They can't literature that we create for the outside world, we can't stand, right?
Our membership complains about what we make for the professionals. But I think sometimes what people don't realize with pamphlets is there's a big difference between a pamphlet and a book because for the most part a book was created for those already in AA. pamphlets are written for those who haven't decided if they want to get into AA yet.
So, it's a different audience. No one's saying the gay pamphlet is going to allow someone to go through the steps, but it might be the honey that reels them in. And so, you know, tradition five, as far as our primary purpose, I believe it's to carry the message they're still suffering alcoholic.
the purpose of every single AA group and all of AA as a whole. I don't think um I will give you this example. I do think if you have a young people's meeting, a woman's meeting, or a men's meeting, if you want to call yourself AA, I do believe to the core that if somebody shows up that doesn't fit in that category who needs a meeting, if you do not allow them to stay, you should really take a look about calling yourself AA anymore.
I believe that to the core. Like listen, I've always wanted to go to a woman's meeting. It's still on my list of things to do.
I would love to listen to what goes on there, right? But the truth is, I can read a website. I can read a meeting directory.
I'm 24 years sober. I can get to a meeting that's not a woman's meeting. But if there's a new person and they're just looking for a meeting, you really have to ask yourself some hard questions if your group decides that there's any requirement for them to be in there except that they have a desire to stop drinking and need a meeting.
If you cross that line, I'm not really sure you're AA anymore. That's just my opinion, but I think there's a line there. I think there's a way we can respect people of having these special interest meetings, but also letting them know that you have to let alcoholics in.
Um, tradition six and seven I want to cover quickly. You should know how important these traditions are to us. Does anyone know the limit on how much someone can contribute to GSO?
>> 3,000. Exactly. and once a year and if you pass away you can leave five but you're not allowed to leave a revolving trust now alcoholics admin whenever I get a call like this I just say well go get the central central office in a group directory and leave 5,000 everyone right you know who cares you know I don't have that problem I guess some people but what really really amazes me when when we talk about the sixth and seventh tradition is how kind of connected we are to that $3,000 max.
In fact, two years ago, we almost raised it to five. Do you know how many people in 2011 gave $3,000? Does anyone here know the answer to that question?
>> How many people in 2011 gave the maximum of $3,000 to the US and Canada General Service Office? Does anyone have any idea? >> 10.
>> Very close. We spent weeks and hours debating this >> because 11 people. We wanted to raise the limit for 11 people.
And it drives me crazy because why are we talking about that instead of letting the average AA member know that if each member gave $7, we'd be self-supporting? >> You have a question? >> Yes.
Could you speak to the birthday program? I'm not so sure everybody's aware of that. >> Sure.
Uh, in fact, I just sent a letter out about the birthday pro program to all the delegates just like two days ago. So, we have envelopes and we suggest if you want to a way to show your um gratitude is to give a dollar for each year you're sober. Now, I must say that when I'm in places like this, I try to be very respectful because you have a local inner group, you have districts.
I'm not saying send all your money to New York. I am saying this. In the US, the dollar in the basket does not go far anymore at all.
And this is where my fear of having too many groups comes into play because the more you divide, the more rents, the more insurance, the more I mean this is where it we've really been affected by the 12 by the seventh tradition. There's a number of groups. And I can tell you this just so if anyone hasn't I you know I can give you a little study.
If you take a 40 person group and each person gives $3, which is a lot as an average, each person $3. At the end of the day, when you do the math and pay all the bills and send money to inner group, area, district, and GSO, we get about 29 cents out of every dollar at $3. If you go to $2, about 19 cents reaches the general service split part of that.
If you go to $1, there's no money to even contribute to any entity. And and that's why I tell the stories of that marine and the guy in the big book who came to the office because the money is not to pay for politics. The money is to keep essential services going, whether in the inner group here or the area or our general service office.
That money is to fund facilitating 12step work. It really is life-saving. Now, I'll tell you this.
We've recently introduced a program because we know we've made some bad mistakes when it comes to the seventh tradition because we don't tell stories. So, I've sent letters out to the fellowship in the last three months. We want stories of the seventh tradition that we want to send out to people.
You know, if you look at AA and any other nonprofit, the big difference between our newsletters is they really go to a big effort of showing what happens to the money people give. We realize we've done a pretty poor job at doing that. We've never really let people have a connection between the money in the basket and that book that goes to the guy in jail or that book that goes to the girl who's in prison overseas or, you know, we need to do a better job of that.
The birthday envelope, another thing we realized and this, you know, it says in our service manual, a good idea might come from a newcomer. A kid in in Dallas said to me, "You know, I appreciate this dollar in the anniversary in the birthday thing, but I'm only two years sober. So, are you telling me just to send $2?" He said, "Why don't you have on the back of the envelope what the cost of being self-supporting per member is?
Because that might jog me to say, "Oh, no. It's $7.63 per member. Same with the group number, you know, how much per group to be self-supporting, which is like about $240 a year per group.
You know, when you look at our literature contributions or our literature profit last year, so I can safely tell you this, at the end of 2013, 72% of our services were paid for by contributions. 28% were paid for by literature profit. We'd love that to be opposite, but I think God has taken care of that problem for us.
It's like when I came into AA, the big pro, anybody here like a late 80s, early 90s alcoholic? Okay. So, when we came in, smoking was a huge issue, right?
And you could walk in a business meeting one month and a group voted to be smoking and then the next month all the non-smokers had more people at the business meeting and it went non-smoking. It was a disaster. And God kind of took that problem away for us because now nobody lets us smoke.
We stop fighting over it. That's going to happen with literature profits. Literature profits are going away.
Book sales are going away. People are still buying one big book, but they're not buying a second, third, and fourth, and fifth big book because once they buy it once on their iPad, they got it on their iPhone. They got it on their Kindle.
We see it. We have the numbers for the last seven years. It's devastating.
We're going to be in a place in 15 or 20 years where AA is going to be depending on contributions. Literature profits are no longer going to carry the day. And that's going to affect central offices.
That's going to affect home groups. That's going to affect general service areas. And it's going to affect our office.
And one of the things we got to talk about is, you know, a dollar in the basket in the US. I don't know what the version what your equal is. So I don't want to be arrogant and pretend like I do, but it doesn't a dollar in the basket won't work in the US anymore.
Yes. >> Well, I know I um I've been an alcoholics since 1979 and people were putting the dollar basket then and they're still doing that today. Still three donuts and four cups of coffee losing money.
>> Yeah. The other thing I want to say about tradition six, just aside from the money issue in seven, is affiliation. This gets taken so far.
I feel like I'm going to show up for the general service conference this year and all the Coke and Dr. Pepper labels will be taken off the bottles, right? Because there's no way we can have Coke.
There's no way we can have Dr. Pepper. There's no way we can have Dunkin Donuts coffee.
We should put a maybe some kind of sheet around the Crown Plaza sign because like we've taken affiliation and this is a result of the internet pretty much because if you go I have a collection of old phone books at my house which sounds odd but if you to open up to the A section for Alcoholics Anonymous or AA in many of them if you look at So, so if this was my phone book and AA is over here on this side is a big halfpage ad for AAA plumbing, A1 Towing, you know, AAA auto school, but on the other side of the page, Alcoholics Anonymous, and the phone number is there. The internet has kind of changed that. We have people saying, "Oh, no, you can't have AA there and an ad here." That's affiliation.
But how is that different than a phone book? You know, how is that any different? Because people don't use phone books anymore.
So, this affiliation thing, actual or implied, we really need to take a hard look at. Just because we have Coca-Cola at a conference doesn't mean AA's endorsing it. It does not.
Now, where it crosses the line is a couple of years ago, the National Council on Alcoholism wanted to sublet space from us that we have in our office and the A World Services Board decided that was a step we cannot go. We're not affiliated with them. They're not part of our organization.
How would it look to the average newcomer if they're there? Same the big debate in the grapevine. You know, depending on the area I go to, some areas don't like the alcoholism at large section.
Other areas love it. But even in our literature, we're very clear and and I don't want to step on anybody's toes because I know that the 24-hour day book a slow to the race a lot of the time to catch up. You know, it's our speed, slow or reverse.
So, so, so, so, so there was a 24-hour a day book long before Daily Reflections. long before it and a lot of meetings still use that book. So I don't want to say that's wrong, but I do know there's something you can depend upon when you have a group conscience that only AA literature is used in an AA meeting.
And that is you don't have to have the debate every time someone wants to use a different book. You know, if you just say it's conference approved, then you don't have to worry about looking affiliated when someone wants to use the latest DPAC choper book. Nothing against Deepac Chopra, but maybe not everyone in the meeting likes it.
You know, what about if somebody wants to use Sermon on the Mount? What about if somebody wants to use I mean, I could go on and on and on, but there's a safety and a unity when you just use AA literature in an AA meeting because then you don't have to worry about being affiliated with that. The other thing I want to say is our name AA.
We should use it for AA related events. And that's a group conscience for local areas to decide. I know what I believe that is, but I also know I've had somebody tell me there's no such thing as an AA dance, but I have Bill Wilson's flyer from the 23rd Street clubhouse in 1941 for the AA dance.
So I say to myself, boy, this guy says there's no AA dance. The 23rd Street Clubhouse, boy, they had a dance. It says AA dance.
I think that's a very local decision. But I do think you have to be very careful what you tie AA to. I do think you have to not use it for selfish purposes.
And I think AA has to be very careful because and I'm going to end by talking about this the last 10 minutes is there's never been more outside recovery organizations in the history of mankind than there are now especially in the last 5 to 6 years and I think that's directly attributable to social media. There's no doubt in my mind. And you know, so we get to tradition AA is non-professional.
It says we define professional as helping alcoholics for hire. That's what we mean by non-professional. We don't counsel.
We sponsor. We take people through the big book. We hold AA meetings.
We have AA central service offices, but we do not counsel. And it says it right there. We define professionalism as the occupation of counseling alcoholics for fees or higher.
And the reason I say that is because there seems to be a new growing trend. I'll read it the opposite. We define professionalism as encouraging helping alcoholics to help other people for fee or higher because now we have sobriety minders.
Now we have uh what do they call this? Um uh sober minders. We have people who get paid to just travel around with people and be their sponsor 24 hours a day.
I mean, the world is changing quickly, very quickly. And I get resentful because I add up all my time and I times it by an hourly rate that I think I should get and I I get resentful. But we don't define professionalism as typing on a computer, working in an office, being a CFO, being the general manager.
Phy is our general manager. And by the way, Phyllis announced her retirement last week if anyone didn't hear. Um, we'll be searching for a new general manager starting next month.
There'll be more coming out on that. But we don't define that as professionalism. In fact, we say we need a professional general manager.
We need a professional treasurer. We need a professional staff assistant. Those we need professionals.
It's 12step work that we want to be away from regarding being a professional. And tradition nine, I love it that it says each AA group needs the least possible organization. And in the short one, it says AA as such.
And then have you ever seen our org chart? The least possible organization. It has the trustee committees over here with the conference committees and how they relate together.
I mean, in the corporate world today, we call that matrix management. And AA was doing matrix management like 30 years ahead of the rest of the corporate world. However, the spiritual side of AA is not supposed to be organized.
So when people complain that their home group is crazy, that's a good thing. When people complain that they can't stand their business meeting at their home group, that means it does have the least possible organization it needs. You know the the the the most important comma in the step shades is the comma in this tradition aa comma as such.
The service entities are organized but the local on the firing line saving people's lives was never supposed to be super organized. And that's what we have to make sure never happens. And and I say that because in tradition 102, I think this is also something that's been eroded down over time.
If you only read the wall, and I've heard a long time ago, you know, if the program you work is off the wall, you have an off-the-wall program, right? Makes sense to me, right? Your program's off the wall.
But on the wall, it says that AA has no opinion on outside issues. That's not what the tradition really says. The long form of the tradition says no AA group or member should ever in such a way implicate AA express any opinion on outside controversial issues.
And then it says three of them in particular, particularly those of politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian religion. I hate to use the term cardinal sin, but it lays out three particular things that it tells AA entities to stay away from. Stay away from issues of politics, stay away from alcohol reform, stay away from sectarian religion.
It's almost like advice to go to the noon and family Thanksgiving dinner, right? We can talk about anything we want except these three. These three lead to what looks like a cops episode at the end of the night, right?
That's what it winds up looking like. And so I sometimes worry about and and when I say no AA member, here's what that mean this means for me. If I'm sitting on that side of the meeting and I'm just attending a meeting, I have no problem with saying who my personal deity or God is in the context of sharing my AA story.
However, if I'm on this side of the meeting, whether it's at a podium or being the discussion leader at a meeting or chairing a meeting, I think I have to really walk a fine line with no opinion on any outside issue that makes it appear like you should believe in mine. I think it's fine when I'm sharing my personal story, but not when I use the podium to encourage people that if you don't believe this way, it's not okay. Now, I know people who take this very like crazy serious.
You know, NYU is a great meeting in New York City by my office. It's at NYU's campus. Its real name is Now You Understand.
It's unofficial. Its unofficial name is now you're unemployed because it's a lunchtime meeting. It gets a lot of people.
But you know, you would say I work in the West Village and I guess if I was in the outside world, people might say that's a very progressive left-leaning basic. That's who makes up most of that area. But I'll tell you this, in that meeting at election time, they ask people not to wear buttons on their outermost garment.
I always think that to myself, how impressive that is in this neighborhood. NYU's there, the new school's there. People are very politically savvy.
But at the NYU group around election time, they always say we would remind any member not to have any kind of candidates pin on your outside. And and I think about it sometimes and I think are we infringing on people's liberty? And then I think boy for the newcomer if they really need help and they see someone who they think they could talk to and they really hate and believe everything opposite of the candidate for the person with the pin that person's wearing.
It's probably a pretty smart idea. And I think to what Bill wrote here, how smart he is. Politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian religion.
That those are the three things we should stay away from. Now, I just want to end talking about 11 and 12 because this is my personal experience. We've let anonymity fly by us and I could do a three I I do all the time.
They asked me to come speak on the 12 traditions and what normally is a you know Friday night all day Saturday and half a Sunday. But if I could spend the most time it would be on anonymity because I already talked about how many nonA recovery organizations are building every day and it seems an anonymity has become outdated and dare I say even in AA but how really important is it? It's half of our name.
I mean, when you ask how important is anonymity, it's half of our name. That's how important it is. And I see these lines being created.
You know, I understand that I can say my last name and I understand that Dr. Bob said being too anonymous is as much a violation of the 11th tradition as breaking your anom. I believe that.
But now we seem to have become an 11 tradition program. And I'll explain what I mean by that. There's a lot of recovery organizations.
There's I see kids in my home group on a website called I am notanonymous.org with their picture and their story and everything except they're an AA member. I see this movie going around anonymous people that tells people in the movie as long as you don't say you're an AA member, you're good to go. Now, our traditions are very clear.
The letter of the law in the 11th is we don't own the word alcoholic. We don't own the word recovery. All we ask you at the level of press, radio, and film is to not say you're an AA member.
That would be fine if we just had 11 traditions, but we have a 12th and we have an anonymity based on the spiritual principle of humility that is found in a 12th tradition. And I find it very interesting that when Bill Wilson died, the last message that he gave Lois to read at the Bill Wilson dinner, his last message that you see framed all over the place, I mean, he knew he was going. He could have wrote about a million things.
He could have wrote about singleness of purpose. He could have wrote about the seventh tradition. He could have wrote about God.
He could have wrote about no god. He he could have wrote about the level anonymity at the level of press, radio, and film. He chose to write about the anonymity found in the 12th tradition, as he put it in that final message, using it for sick and selfish purposes.
And I worry about these kids that I know who are being told by other people in AA, as long as you don't say you're a member of AA, you're good to go. Now, I can tell you I'm 48 years old today. I came into AA this time at age 23, a month before my 24th birthday.
If I would have told you what job I had today, if I would the job I have today at 23 years old, I couldn't fathom the career I built for myself. I couldn't fathom. And this is a true story.
I was on an interview last week. I've been being recruited by a couple of companies and I haven't been on an interview in years. And I met with four top executives from a very large company.
And the last one, he did the old he did the math on the resume. And especially for people who got sober young, we all know about resume gaps, you know, and you just you get used to having a plan to deal with it, you know. But I saw him doing the math, right?
He kind of figured out how old I was when I finished grad school. He figured out how old I was when I graduated from high school. He saw that I didn't get my bachelor's until I was like 32.
I saw his head spinning and he finally said to me, he said, "Oh, I have to ask you, what were you doing before this?" Now, that's a trick question for many reasons, right? I mean, how do you answer that question? Oh, I was in jail.
I was in prison. when I was. But the reason I say that is thank God no one told me when I was 24 years old.
Billy, you know, you have a pretty hard story. You had some horrendous things happen to you when you were drinking. You'd be a really good role model.
Why don't you put your picture out there with your story? Just don't say you're an AA. That's devastating advice to a new person if they haven't had time to come to terms, you know, the rest of the outside world.
And listen, I want the stigma removed. I do, but I'm not arrogant enough to believe that everybody has removed it. And I'm also not arrogant enough to know that this is all for spiritual purposes.
There is a big financial machine behind this whole recovery movement. And so I see this attack on anonymity and I I wonder to myself, and here's the other thing, and I know this is going to sound kind of strange, but I also think I have a responsibility to those that come into AA that might change their mind. You know, I can tell you, I told you about a woman that worked for me who is now sober again, thank God.
But I handle my employee situations the way the big book tells me to. I love the book the chapter to the employer. I love being able to tell people who work for me, I will do I will move mountains to help you.
However, this is a two-way street. I'm going to give you this shot. You're going to do the right thing.
You're going to do the right thing for a long time. So when someone sits in front of me and their problem happens to be alcohol and says, "I'm an alcoholic. I just want to tell you I'm taking care of it now.
I'm going to meetings. I'm doing this. I'm doing that." If that person changes their mind and two years later I'm at the Christmas party and they're drinking, they really might not be an alcoholic, but they're gone.
like I cut you a break because of a spiritual commitment you made to me. So you can tell me that you decided you're not an alcoholic, but that's not my business. But I worry about people who maybe really do decide that they're not an alcoholic, but yet two years earlier made one of these advertisements or posted on one of these blogs or decided that they should be part of the public recovery movement when anonymity has been the whole spiritual basis of our society for, you know, almost 80 years.
And so I worry about this. I think there's always been a way for us to be anonymous but yet do PI work. There's always been a way for us to be anonymous but yet do CPC work.
And I worry about the alcoholic ego. Do I want to be known as this great alcoholic, if there is such a thing? I mean, what is a great alcoholic, right?
I mean, in my head, even a great alcoholic is not as good as being just a regular Joe Schmo who's a normal person, you know. And I say that because I do believe that. I came into AA when I heard people talk about regular people or earth people and us almost like we have a special like we're better.
And you know what I found out? We're not. We're really not.
My boss, he has a bad habit of losing his temper in meetings and sometimes he'll yell publicly. But you know what I hate about him the most is the next day without talking to a sponsor, without writing in a journal, without going to a meeting, without reading two pages of AA literature that just normal. He's wired that the next day he will come to your office, shut the door, sit down, and say, you know, I really had a bad day yesterday.
Right? Like there really are good people in the world. And I've had to embrace that they exist.
We don't have this lock on being the best. And I say that because this anonymity thing of wanting to convince alcoholics, I'm all for people getting sober another way. I believe what the big book says.
Our hats are off to him. But if you're sober as a result of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, our whole spiritual basis is anonymity. And I don't have enough time to stress it this afternoon, but ego deflation for an alcoholic is a top priority.
And you know that man that I talked about earlier that's sober a long time. You know, he doesn't talk about it a lot, but he's a gay ex-Navy Seal and he doesn't talk about it a lot. And uh but I'll tell you the one time he did talk to me about it is I must have been running my local craziness about how good I am, which at the time probably meant I paid my rent on time, you know, paid my dry cleaning, was paying back the Sears card.
Who knows what it meant at the time, but probably something like that. But I'll never forget when he showed me a few of his awards citations and he said, "You know what, Billy? Pretty interesting.
None up there for paying your rent on time, you know. None up on the wall for doing your laundry, you know. None of them up there for paying your father back what you borrowed from him." Like those things.
Only people like us think we should have medals for those things, right? like the rest of the world. That's just expected.
That's like what normal people do. And it just reminds me that this kind of trying to take self-importance or over, you know, over like promoting ourselves. It's just it goes against our spiritual values in my opinion.
And I think it's a very dangerous road. You know, I know I have a horrible story when it comes to drinking and driving. And I was approached by one of the beer companies responsible driving programs or responsible drinking programs at a time in my life when I had nothing except for a couple years of sobriety.
You know, a good day was like a couple of packs of Newports, cup of coffee, couple of slices of pizza, going back to school, trying to get my life in order. And here comes a beer company who has kind of heard about my story and offers me more money to speak two days to a school a month than I make in 6 months right now. Like that's a pretty big offer for a 27y old kid who's not making any money and trying to get his life back in order.
And I am very grateful for the people who told me, "Billy, don't make your life about convincing the world that you're so special because you're an alcoholic." Like, join the rest of us. Get a job, get up in the morning, go to school a couple of credits at a time. Like, do those things.
That's impressive. Anybody could fly somewhere, talk to a school, get a check, and deposit it. But but but what do you want to do with your life?
And what do you want to be known for? You want to be known thinking you're some kind of special alcoholic. And I'm glad that I made the decision that I'm not a special alcoholic.
You know, I told you where I went to a meeting this morning. Anyone that knows me, I like to go to hardcore lowbottom unpretty AA. That's where I feel the most comfortable.
I know if you're a psychiatrist, you could put me on a couch and find and and maybe examine me. And there's a lot about my psyche in that statement, but that's what I prefer. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
I also want to tell you a horror story that I recently heard of social media and somebody who did decide to become a very outfront recoverybased person um for their particular alcoholism and the other issue that they have a couple years ago. and recently decided that they're not an alcoholic anymore and the kind of struggles they're having because all over the internet is posted their story of recovery from alcoholism and other issues and that's what their whole life was focused on and that's why I think the day at a time really comes to me like not only do a day at a time do I work this program but a day at a time I concede to my innermost myself that I'm an alcoholic of the type described in the big book. There's a chance that a day may come where I don't concede that anymore.
But for me to make that decision today, I don't know. So, I'm sure I said some things that everybody disagrees with or a few people do, and I'm fine with that. The one thing I want to leave you with is uh just as a visitor of your city, I was in a hotel room this morning.
There's a there's a a section of the big book. Someone at the meeting this morning was talking about triggers, which always makes me laugh. Um because the big book says there's a story about a man crossing a hotel lobby.
Great day. In fact, he says not a cloud on the horizon. And so it's not a bad day.
I mean, is is not a cloud on the horizon a trigger? I don't know. But he drank.
But the reason I say that is because this and I want everyone here to know this. This morning I did type in Hamilton AA and a website did pop up and a website that not only is a regular website but is enabled for mobile users and I know that that's not free and I know that there's a lot of people behind the scenes making sure that's there every day. And I know that somebody is paying the light bill.
And I know that somebody is printing meeting directories. And I know that there's a lot of stuff that I can't see going on behind that. And that that doesn't go on for happen for free.
And that sometimes I think that's the message that doesn't leave make our groups. We hear we need money. We hear we have a seventh tradition, but no one really connects the lifesaving activity to the actual putting money in the basket.
And as a visitor of your city who is lucky enough to see that website, I hope that the members of your groups when they're putting money in the basket realize that there's life-saving activity going on. It's not just some gsr or inner rep or whatever you call them here saying we need money. It's we need money to save more lives.
And you know, the statistics out there are pretty bad. You know, we see them all the time. People are still dying of alcoholism every day.
And you know, I know in my own home group, we get so diverted at my group conscience about who are we going to give money to, who needs more money, who's doing this. And no one ever says we gave this many big books for free to the correctional facility. No one ever says we answered this many phone calls.
No one ever says a whole bunch of other things. And those are the things we should be talking about. So I really want to thank everyone for having me here today.
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Until next time, have a great day.