Personality December 1997
Anonymity and Me February 1975
Admirable Simplicity December 1998
Good for Nothing January 1989
Our Protective Mantle December 1992
WELCOME
"For thousands of alcoholics yet to come, A.A. does have an answer. But there is one condition. We must, at all costs, preserve our essential unity; it must be made unbreakably secure. Without permanent unity there can be little lasting recovery for anyone. Hence our future absolutely depends upon the creation and observance of a sound group Tradition."
—AA co-founder Bill W., AA Grapevine, October, 1947
Founded in 1935, AA’s first decade was filled with an array of challenges and with little or no experience to hold onto, AA groups were often flying blind. Rules were made and broken; policies were introduced and soon discarded; and, inevitably, powerful, sometimes bitter, disputes broke out.
But AA was working—alcoholics were getting and staying sober—and soon the growing body of experience from the Fellowship’s pioneering time began to crystallize into a set of working principles that could guide and protect the group life of AA.
In 1946, these core principles were codified by the founders and early members as the Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous and were published in the April 1946 Grapevine under the title “Twelve Points to Assure Our Future.” Wrote Bill W., AA’s co-founder, “Nobody invented Alcoholics Anonymous. It grew. Trial and error has produced a rich experience. Little by little we have been adopting the lessons of that experience, first as policy and then as tradition. That process still goes on and we hope it never stops.”
Since then, AA members have had years of experience with the principles outlined in the Twelve Traditions and as the stories in this collection show, those principles remain at the heart of Alcoholics Anonymous, providing ongoing guidance and protection for individuals, groups and the Fellowship as a whole.
Accepted and endorsed by the membership at AA’s International Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1950, application of the Traditions continues evolving today, and the stories here share the diverse experience, strength and hope of individual AA members and groups who have found workable solutions to difficult problems through these twelve vital principles.
Based on immutable values such as humility, responsibility, sacrifice and love, the Twelve Traditions provide the spiritual—and practical—underpinning for AA’s ongoing adventure of living and working together. Our hope for this collection of stories, gathered from the broad experience of individual AAs, is that it will provide a pathway for members and groups to learn more about how these vital principles can be applied in our daily life.
TRADITION ONE
Our common welfare should come first; personal
recovery depends upon A.A. unity.
For the individual to recover, the group and the Fellowship must stick together.
Not especially known as “joiners” in our drinking days, “We alcoholics see,” says Bill W., in the first appendix of the Big Book, “that we must work together and hang together, else most of us will finally die alone.”
Warped by years of self-centeredness, this is difficult for many of us to grasp at first. “The concept of a ‘common welfare’ was totally alien to me,” writes Kathleen D. in this chapter’s story “A Thousand Angels.” “To be expected to put the needs of others in front of my own was almost laughable,” she writes. Yet, motivated by desperation, she reached out. “I made a decision to accept this Tradition the same way I accepted the truth of the First Step, not because I fully understood all the implications and recognized their validity, but because I was desperate and I believed these were the only things that could save me.”
Crossing the threshold into AA brings a deep satisfaction for many of us, and the knowledge that at last, we belong.
“I began to get a glimmer of the miraculous promises available to me by putting common welfare first,” says Ed C. of Bowling Green, Kentucky, in the article “Only Natural.” “Instead of feeling diminished by being only a small part, I began to feel like I’d found a home, a place where I belonged after a lifetime of isolation and being fatally unique.”
A Thousand Angels
January 2014
When I first got to AA, I did not have any understanding of what the Steps could do for me, or how critical the Traditions are for the life of the group. But I knew in my heart that I needed meetings desperately. I knew that I was living from meeting to meeting the same way I had lived from bottle to bottle.
The First Tradition was a difficult concept for me. Having grown up in an alcoholic household, I learned never to trust anyone, never to let anyone see that I was scared, and never to let anything get in the way of what I wanted. Lying and stealing were what I did best (next to drinking), and I was secretly proud of my ability to manipulate and connive. The concept of a “common welfare” was totally alien to me, and to be expected to put the needs of others in front of my own was almost laughable. However, I was motivated by a desperation I can only describe as God-given, because without the certain knowledge that I was spiraling toward a very ugly death, I would never have been moved to accept those ideas. And I did accept them. I made a decision to accept this Tradition the same way I accepted the truth of the First Step, not because I fully understood all the implications and recognized their validity, but because I was desperate and I believed these were the only things that could save me.
I understood that the First Step was my lifeline to this program, and the First Tradition was the lifeline for the group. I understood that my recovery depended on AA unity. I even began to understand that it was just as important to me that others recovered because, for the first time in my life, I realized that I needed other people.
What I learned from the First Tradition changed the way I viewed the world and hence the way I interacted with others. Since this was the first time I looked at other people as important, and not as enemies, I had to learn to listen to them. This was pretty difficult for someone like me. But as I got better at it, I was surprised to learn that there were an awful lot of smart, funny, nice people around. And people started to talk to me, and not just to say, “You keep coming, honey.”
I
