“SECTION
1
Analysis
of past and current events, USA, Canada, UK
The
following is an extract from A.A. Comes of Age. Bill W’s response
to protect A.A.’s public relations by thwarting the plans of a
potential figurehead with a “wonderful vision” and his “message”.
Today one only has to replace the word “radio” with “website.”
An example of TraditionTwo and Concept
IX in action:
“An old
story, revealing several aspects of A.A.’s public relations
problem, comes to mind: One of our pioneer members conceived the idea
of starting a group in his city by radio….. So our promoter friend
constructed a series of ‘Twelve Lectures on Alcoholics Anonymous.’
These were a strange mixture of A.A. and his own religious ideas. He
soon put them on air with all the vigour of a Chautauqua orator.
Contrary to our expectations, he got a modest result. Inquiries came
in and he started a group. Now flushed with success, he was smitten
with a wonderful vision......... We advised him that the trustees
felt his message inappropriate for national consumption. So he wrote
a hot letter to this effect: ‘To hell with the trustees, the world
is waiting for my message. I’ve got the right to free speech and
I’m going on air whether you like it or not.’ This ultimatum was
an alarming poser. It looked like promotion, professionalism, and
anonymity-breaking all in one package…. every ad man and salesman
in Alcoholics Anonymous would soon be selling A.A.’s wares,
willy-nilly. We would loose control of our public relations.………….
We assured our well-meaning friend that we would certainly uphold his
right to free speech. But we added that he ought to uphold ours, too.
We assured him that if his ‘lectures’ went on air, we would
advise every A.A. group of the circumstances and ask them to write
strong letters to the sponsoring life assurance company, letters of a
kind the sponsor might not like to receive. The broadcast never went
on air.” (AA comes of Age pages 130-131)
The
following is another example of Tradition Two and Concept IX in
action; an A.A. committee taking an uncompromising stand against a
power driving leader in 1958. This action split the A.A. group, thus
protecting A.A. from wider disunity and subsequent bad press. True to
Tradition Two, the prediction that the “arch deacon” would either
accept the group conscience or wind up drunk came eventually, but
only after 20 years. The subsequent history of Synanon shows that a
cult run by an alcoholic can be very successful with long-term
viability. The group’s leader Chuck D (who incidentally was to some
years later appoint himself Pope, and his wife, High Priestess of the
cult Church of Synanon), recalled his 1958 not so spiritual baptism
with concept IX, wonderfully executed by A.A. trusted servants.
They
intuitively knew how handle situations which seem to baffle us today.
“It happened right in
the middle of an A.A. meeting. Our whole gang had taken over the
Saturday night meeting of the Santa Monica A.A. group at Twenty Sixth
and Broadway and built it up from its attendance of ten people to an
attendance of about forty five or fifty. There was some objection on
some issue by the members of the Board of Directors of the A.A. club.
I recall the leader stopping the meeting. They didn’t like us. The
alkies didn’t like the addicts, and they didn’t like me in
particular…and they didn’t like my gang because they were mostly
addicts. They made things difficult for us. I remember getting up in
the meeting and saying, ‘All right, let’s go home-the hell with
this.’ So the whole meeting got up, and we all got into our
automobiles and came down to the club, and we never went back to A.A.
again.” (From the Desk of Juan Lesende: How Drug Abuse Treatment
Turns into Mistreatment By Juan E. Lesende - September 18th 2009)
Where
did it come from? Synanon Church and the medical basis for the
$traights:
Wikipedia
– Synanon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synanon
Chuck
Dederich Still Rules Synanon, but Now He Has 1,300 Subjects and a $22
Million Empire -- By Barbara Wilkins
--PEOPLE magazine's archive: October 11, 1976, Vol. 6, No. 15:
Dederick
Charles E: (The link may show “no text available”, if so click
blue link “search for this page title”.
Search
results may show “No page title matches”, If so click on the blue
“Dederick Charles E link, about halfway down the page.):
http://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Dederick%2C_Charles_E.
Finding Aid for the Mitchell-Synanon Litigation Papers, 1979-1989 University of Tennessee Special Collections Library, Knoxville, TN: http://www.lib.utk.edu/spcoll/manuscripts/1711.html
We
wonder how A.A. would have responded, if Chuck had decided to operate
his franchise as an autonomous group of A.A., for example “the
Synanon group of A.A.” instead of going it alone. Or if the A.A.
members had left the A.A. group all to Chuck by saying “Each group
is autonomous!” “Live and let live!” “Vote with your feet!”
instead of having the backbone to stand and defend A.A. Tradition.
Would the intergroups and GSO of the 1960s have continued to register
his groups and how much damage would the extraordinary abuses that
were to occur in his cult have done to A.A.’s public relations,
were his cult to have remained in A.A.?”
Comment:
Again largely self-explanatory. The above indicates how effectively
direct action by clear-thinking AA members (who moreover have some
knowledge of our guiding principles) can nip a problem in the bud.
You will note moreover that the action came from the AA groups and
members, and not from other parts of the service structure. In
addition to the above we would cite Tradition Three here:
3.—Our
membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we
may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought A.A. membership ever
depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics
gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group,
provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.
(our
emphasis)
This
clearly demonstrates that those groups that possess outside
connections may NOT call themselves an AA group. Moreover the
decision as to whether they are or are NOT so denominated is NOT
solely theirs to make. We refer here to Tradition Four (the much
misquoted Tradition Four!):
4.—With
respect to its own affairs, each A.A. group should be responsible to
no other authority than its own conscience. But when its plans
concern the welfare of neighboring groups also, those groups ought to
be consulted. And no group, regional committee, or individual
should ever take any action that might greatly affect A.A. as a whole
without conferring with the trustees of the General Service Board. On
such issues our common welfare is paramount.
(our
emphases)
If
a group (or groups) acts in such a way (knowingly) and fails
subsequently to mend its conduct it then becomes the responsibility
(and indeed duty) of other groups to take the requisite action (which
may include denying that group (or groups) the use of the AA name,
this to ensure “our common welfare” remains “paramount”.
Moreover
this principle extends not only to outside affiliations but even
further. See Tradition Ten:
10.—No
A.A. group or member should ever, in such a way as to implicate
A.A., express any opinion on outside controversial
issues—particularly those of politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian
religion. The Alcoholics Anonymous groups oppose no one. Concerning
such matters they can express no views whatever.
From
this it can be seen that similarly those groups (and in this instance
even an AA member) should abstain (but only insofar as they might be
seen as implicating AA) from such conduct. Therefore those groups
that espouse a particular religious or non-religious interpretation
(atheistic, agnostic (see Toronto AA below), Christian, Buddhist,
Moslem etc), or political orientation etc are in breach of this
tradition. Note that the category of “controversial issues”
relates to those “outside” the immediate purview of AA; this does
not include the airing of controversial views WITHIN the Fellowship
and ABOUT the Fellowship. The intention of this tradition is clearly
not to stifle debate but rather to define its parameters within a
given context. Those members who seek to “shut down” all debate
on “controversy” grounds have missed the point! Additionally the
word “particularly” is employed which suggests that the list is
not exhaustive but intended to be exemplary and selective. Therefore
other issues too may be considered as being included within this
category.
In
this connection we cite Tradition Three again (and as an example of a
breach of Tradition Four):
3.—Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought A.A. membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.
3.—Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought A.A. membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.
From
this it can be seen that as stated in the short form of this
tradition:
Three—The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking
It
follows from this therefore that ANY AA member may attend ANY AA
meeting in the world without ANY further qualification. Those groups
which seek to impose further qualifications on admission are in clear
breach of this tradition (amongst others). This would include the
so-called “non-restrictive” meetings (generally women's only),
the ethnically specific meetings, gay/lesbian meetings, young
people's meetings etc. All of these run contrary not only to this
tradition but also Tradition One:
1.—Each
member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but a small part of a great whole.
A.A. must continue to live or most of us will surely die. Hence our
common welfare comes first. But individual welfare follows close
afterward.
Note
the word “whole”.
Finally
as an update to the above theme we refer you to a selection of links
covering the Toronto Atheists ban:
Needless
to say (in our view) Toronto AA got it right!
Cheers
The
Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
PS
Some of the links in the original report are not functioning. We have
renewed them here but members are advised otherwise to use the link
details in a search engine to discover the new location
