Conference Questions (2013) forum discussion (contd)

Committee No. 2

Question 2: 

Would the Fellowship discuss, share experience and make recommendations on the question of:

What can AA do to better carry the message to young alcoholics both inside and outside of the Fellowship?

More specifically, would Conference consider, discuss and make recommendations on the following:

a. What can be done to make AA more of an attractive place to young people inside of AA?
b. What can be done to make AA more of an attractive place to young people outside of AA?
c. Consider updating the “Too Young?” poster with input from younger members?
d. Could young people be represented in the AA structure?

Background

In Continental Europe Region there is a position of Young People contact who has a Liaison Officer role with full voting rights.

Ref:

Too young poster AAGB
Too young poster AA US
Too Young pamphlet 

[See also: The Traditions, Preamble and Concepts]

Extracts:

In reply to ....., 
I don’t think the articles I selected concerning ICYPPA were isolated examples, or out of context. I could have included more. It can be noted the dates of the articles span the period 1986-2010. The AA Grapevine digital archive does not yet include the years 2011 and 2012. I too would invite people to read all the articles about ICYPPA in AA Grapevine and Box 4-5-9. I was not implying that ICYPPA is not part of AA, but suggest that the status, conduct and purpose of ICYPPA and Young People’s groups be re-evaluated in context with AA Traditions, Concepts and AA public relations. 

As long as young people appreciate that large scale gatherings of thousands of alcoholics attracting public attention parallel the large public gatherings of the Washingtonian movement (The Language of the Heart p 5) then I suppose that's OK. The Washingtonian Movement's public relations failed and the movement collapsed. AA is now holding large public gatherings. Those who are aware of national press reports concerning AA in the USA and Great Britain will be aware that some press reports in recent years are much less than positive. These large scale AA gatherings and failing AA public relations at national levels parallel Washingtoninan Movement history. There were over 4000 attendees at the 2008 ICYPPA Los Angeles convention (Box 4-5-9 April/May 2008); 44,000 young and old attendees at the Toronto international convention in 2005 (AA Grapevine October 2005).

Since history tends to repeat itself, for the present and future welfare of AA, I think each new generation needs to consider whether it is continuing to repeat constructive history or repeating the destructive. I suggest young people in AA boycott large scale international events and attend regional forums instead.

It seems to me with an increasing effort to attract young people in recent years with organised events and special comic strip literature, by treating them like juveniles instead adults, the fellowship is becoming less attractive to young people in general. Of the 140 million alcohol dependent people worldwide,[1] the young alcoholics among them will be as diverse in attitude, creed, race, culture, taste and opinion as any other group in world society. I think youth organisation appeals only to a proportion of young people; it is not necessarily inclusive to all youth of differing cultures in a multi-racial society. The fellowship census 2010, Great Britain,  http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/download/1/Library/Documents/AA%20Surveys/2010%20Survey.pdf shows the proportion of young people in the fellowship was relatively stable at 7 -9% in the period 1978 – 1997, but had fallen to 5% in 2002. This appears to reflect the overall worldwide membership estimates which show reasonable growth until 2002.

AA membership estimates:
1960: 250,000 (The Language of the Heart p 308)
1965: 350,000 (The Language of the Heart p 328)
1976: 1,000,000 (Forward to 3rd edition Big Book)
2002: 2,215,293 (Box 4-5-9 Summer 2002)
2007: 2,000,000 (Forward to 4th edition Big Book)
2012: 2,133,842 (Box 4-5-9 Summer 2012)

Rather than trying to attract young people by having a special contact and celebrating sobriety in large AA events and thereby making a public spectacle of itself, I think AA as a whole needs to reflect on why it is only appealing to 2.1 million of the 140 million alcoholics worldwide. The harmful use of alcohol results in approximately 2.5 million deaths each year [2] this is more than there are AA members in the whole worldwide fellowship.

1 World Health Organisation, Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health, 2011
2 World Health Organisation, European Ministerial Conference on Young People and Alcohol, Stockholm, Sweden, 2001 ”

and:

“Just a correction to the above post. The reference numbers to the World Health Organisation reports should have been the other way round. (2 being 1) For anyone interested, they can be read online by putting the document titles into a search engine. “

Cheerio

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

See also AA Minority Report 2013