file heard little about outside AA, with exceptions of course. Interesting contingent matters formerly discussed at regular meetings were saved for special interest at the privileged little conclaves. The entire assembly seemed to feel that its information was something to be guarded for the proper cliques. I was guilty, too. Any one of us has the traits to get that way.
On the other hand, one finds in some groups at the closed meeting, on the literature table, a blank loose-leaf notebook, up to date with Headquarters bulletins and data for all members to refer to—usually unnecessary, but just another thing to make the post-novice feel that he really belongs.
Both of us were once the lower power behind the scenes for a period, in adjacent groups by coincidence; we need not tell our sins to active paternalists.
We will not discuss the small “captive group” that, through the unintentional instinctive defense mechanisms (wow) in the minds of its founders, prevents the formation of other AA gatherings in counties where actually hundreds of willing prospects have attended meetings during the past decade. Most of the private excuses for maintaining “background directorships” are as valid as those we used for taking the first drink.
It has taken us several years to realize that background chairmanship or secretarism causes a state of affairs whereby the fledgling AA does not acquire quite as many close friends as he may need. Can you fathom it? Maybe the yearlings need a freer opportunity to make minor changes for the worse in your old small group so that it will grow.
Too often, some members don’t make the grade in the splitting of a small group. If your group has been consistently not holding new members for too long a time, and you are the “guiding light,” it might be time for someone to do more praying, and less thinking, working and smooth directing, even though the latter seems impossible to avoid and, when accused of shirking, hurts to the core.
J.K. and J.B., U.S.A.
How Group Conscious Are You?
January 1961
I believe that if a group has “a group conscience’’ it can take an inventory, and I am part of that inventory. My inventory includes my own behavior toward my group and each individual member, toward other groups, and toward AA as a whole.
I first ask myself: Am I a good AA member? Then: What is my inventory as part of my group?
Do I …
1 Attend meetings only when “I need a meeting”? Or feel like it?
2 Always refuse to hold any office at any time, even when I could? Shun responsibility, refuse to run errands, make coffee, wipe a cup, empty ashtrays, set up chairs, and ignore anything that needs doing by refusing to notice—always manage to “let somebody else do it”?
3 Neglect to talk to newcomers or, worse, listen to them? Drift off to certain little cliques of personal friends after meetings or just “beat it,” always with good reasons, too tired, too busy—TV more often than not?
4 Turn down, or over to someone else, all Twelfth Step calls, when I could have gone? Refuse to speak or to find someone in my place, before non-AA groups or students, without good reason?
5 Give up after a time or two recontacting the sick alcoholic? Use the “not ready,” “not honest” routine? Try to carry the alcoholic instead of the message? Forget that I go to see the sick alcoholic not because he is an alcoholic (only he can say he is or isn’t) but because I am?
Do I …
1 Make no effort to attend other meetings, help other groups get started, or give a lift to an older group? Encourage other groups to visit us? Or am I (pardon the expression) a tight little island?
2 Show no interest in our Traditions, General Service, or worldwide AA? Have I grown tight with my money when I do not have to be, not realizing that the pamphlets and other services to help other alcoholics “grow not on trees”?
3 Indulge in criticism, resentment, or self-pity toward the group, a member, or members? Complain of boredom, repetition, the speakers, the chairman? Am I becoming part of the problem instead of part of the solution?
4 Criticize a member to other members behind his back with no chance for him to defend himself? Criticize slippers? Take people’s moral inventory?
5 Do these things behind the group’s back without trying to help the situation in any way?
… Do I?
M., Fort Collins, Colo.
Tradition Seven
Every A.A. group ought to be self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
October 1970
On my first approach to AA, the movement was just ten years old. The Traditions had not yet been written, but already AA had effectively declared itself independent of all handouts, thank you. It was managing, somehow, to pay its own way, and I was very glad to learn that.
If it had turned out to be a government-financed project or a charitable branch of some church, my feelings about it could not have been so instantly warm and comfortable. The fact that it was just us drunks, paying our own way, lessened my shame at having to ask for help.
I did, though, feel embarrassed the first few times the collection hat came my way. I was so ashamed to have not even a dime for it that I might have stayed away if the leader had not made a little speech one night. He said it was perfectly all right for those of us with no dough at present to let the hat pass by, since everyone there understood being broke. Visitors were also asked not to contribute because AA wanted to be self-supporting, he said, and we needed only a little money for our purposes.
Later, as treasurer of a group, I understood more clearly those purposes: paying rent for the meeting room, providing AA literature to carry the message outside the meeting room, and putting coffee into the pot. In addition, we sent a certain percentage monthly to our local central office (intergroup) and another portion to keep the big world central office (the General Service Office) going.
Interlocking with Traditions Seven, Five and Six do suggest that we have no other enterprises to finance, don’t they? The conclusion seems so simple that since then it has always taken me by surprise when financial disagreements hit the fan in AA groups. Yet I have joined my most mature, serene AA friends time after time in acting positively demented over the clubhouse cost of a cup of coffee.
In fact, years ago here in New York, almost all groups had an unspoken rule: Finances were too inflammatory to be mentioned at a regular meeting. I suppose we were afraid we were too immature to stay sober if we took the dangerous risk of mixing talk about, say, the moral inventory with that dirty word “money.”
Instead, before the regular meeting time each group had a separate business meeting, usually monthly (when the moon was full, I guess). Then we could madly and happily screech at each other about bills and cash with no mention of “prayer and meditation’’ or being “restored to sanity’’ to mix us up.
It was as if we were supposed to be safe, protected somehow from getting drunk over financial pettiness, from 7:30 to 8:30 on one Tuesday each month, but never after 8:30 and never on Sunday or Monday.
At stake in those long-ago verbal battles
