It happened to me twice. Having told one member about another member, I learned that the two were old acquaintances and each wanted particularly to keep the other from knowing he was in AA! Clearly, I had violated confidences. It was unforgivable, and I am still ashamed when I think of it.
Now I consider my knowledge of people in AA to be very much like the privileged information confided to a doctor, lawyer, or priest. I have absolutely no right whatever to disclose anything about a member to anyone else, in AA or out, without that member’s explicit permission. Respecting this privileged information is not a matter of professional ethics, specifically sanctioned by law, but I think the AA promise of confidentiality is a sacred one, and I must do my part to keep it.
Within the Fellowship, I prefer to speak of another member—and be spoken of—only by the first name. I like this practice simply because it is extra insurance against letting slip things told me privately, and because it is an effective symbol, making the point—particularly to outsiders and newcomers—that we mean it when we say we’re anonymous, we’re trustworthy, we don’t tell.
Few of us in AA, I guess, have much occasion to worry about that part of the Tradition cautioning against the use of our names or faces in mass communications media. Not long after sobering up, I discovered that neither Winchell, Life, the New York Times, nor anyone else was standing outside the meeting doors every night to announce to a breathless world that I was just leaving an AA meeting, sober. As far as I know, the network anchormen and their TV cameras have let practically all the rest of us alone too. By and large, the record is remarkably good on that part of Tradition Eleven. Even if as many as seventy-five “anonymity breaks” accidentally occur in, say, one year, that’s only about .00015 percent of our membership.
One particular set of AA members does run into that problem, however, and I especially admire the way they handle it. I refer to the many good AAs who work professionally in the field of alcoholism and are always being interviewed by newspapers and on television and radio. They just say they are “recovered alcoholics,’’ without saying that they are AA members. It seems to me that this device is honest, adheres perfectly to the Tradition, and at the same time may carry a message of hope. Certainly, the old stigma fades when good-looking, smart-sounding, respectable folks like that are not ashamed to say in public that they are recovered alcoholics, and when they say it as casually as they would state any other fact about themselves.
In my opinion, anonymity in the mass media is still very important, to all AA members and to all potential members. It signals to sick alcoholics: Come on in—we won’t tell. And it guards us against the temptation to start bragging about ourselves…but I’m ahead of myself again. That’s Tradition Twelve.
And I still have a long way to go in getting Number Eleven under my belt. Doesn’t “attraction rather than promotion” have a personal meaning for me? Yes, I am supposed to make AA life look so attractive that drunks will want the kind of sobriety they see in me more than they want to go on drinking. Rather than promote AA with the hard sell or with bribes (a cup of coffee, a flop , a job, or other favors), it’s up to me to make AA seem very attractive.
The members I met in 1945 did just that for me. I don’t find it so easy.
B.L., New York, N. Y.
Sponsor Your Doctor
by John L. Norris, MD
January 1976
All of us interested in alcoholism and the problems of alcohol have been puzzled, frustrated, and at times angered by the lack of understanding or even of interest on the part of the helping professions, especially medicine. A few pioneers in medicine—Silkworth, Tiebout, Kennedy, Gehrmann, Seixas, Block, Gitlow, among others in the United States—have understood and done much to soften the prejudice that has been a major handicap to alcoholics’ recovery.
Many members of AA have gone back to the physician, clergyman, or other person who tried to help them, and have told of their recovery. This has opened many doors, and I continue to urge AA members, in every way I can, to identify themselves as individuals recovering from alcoholism wherever and whenever the disclosure seems opportune.
When AA members and others who have recovered from alcoholism do this, it is my hope that they will talk about the part of their experience most difficult to talk about—the way they felt, as people, while they were trying unsuccessfully to “handle” their drinking. Rarely, if ever, is this mentioned. How can professional people understand the disease unless those who are the victims will honestly and completely describe their symptoms and their feelings?—describe, for example, how they hated themselves for breaking their promises to themselves and to their families, their employers, and their friends. I can think of nothing that will help as much as this to create the understanding, working relationship we all desire between the “caring professions” and people who are in trouble with alcohol.
Sponsor your doctor, your clergyman, your lawyer, your boss, a social worker, a policeman. They need the knowledge and understanding that only you can give as you tell them honestly your own experience. Let us stop criticizing each other and get on with the job of meeting our common problem, alcoholism.
Are You Powerless Over Money?
August 1967
My husband and I met and married in AA four and a half years ago. I now have six years of sobriety, and my husband almost ten. A while ago, taking a look at our situation, it seemed to us that our sobriety, which AA built, was in fine shape, but our financial “house that Jack built” was crumbling into ruins. In other words, our money affairs were in sad shape.
It seemed to us, on reflection, that if we really were applying AA principles in all our affairs, all our affairs ought to show it. Our finances didn’t. We know that AA is for getting and staying sober, but we believe that AA’s Steps are for the whole of life.
What was the trouble with us and money? We decided it wasn’t the money, it was us, our defects of character: lack of foresight, not saving for a rainy day (it seemed to rain every day), attitude toward our jobs, and so on. We were getting deeper and deeper into debt, and not because we hadn’t had any breaks financially since sobering up in AA. We had plenty of breaks.
We decided it was time we took another kind of inventory. We came to the conclusion that we were powerless over money and that our lives were very, very unmanageable, still.
We also discussed the situation with other AA members and found that the condition was a common one. We began to notice references to it in AA talks. One speaker said, “When I was drinking, I owed five thousand people one dollar. Now, sober many years, I owe two people ten thousand dollars.’’
Another said, “I seem to have lost my drive to make money and haven’t gained any abilities to use wisely what I do earn. Where is the wisdom I need?’’
And yet another: “Debts, debts, debts, and seemingly no way out. I never seem to learn. Why do we keep getting ourselves trapped like this?”
“Are we still drunk when it comes to handling money?’’
“I certainly don’t think it’s God’s will that we live beyond our means, but…”
“Well, I’ve got my credit rating back since I sobered up, but I was better off without it.’’
Someone suggested that perhaps we could substitute the word money for the word alcohol in Step One and take it from there. We might admit we were powerless over
