How the court mandated attendance ('chit') system works (?) in the US …...

Oh yeah! And Clancy was there too!

Our correspondent writes: 

“Hey fellas,

I was at the 80th anniversary AA International Convention this past weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. I attended several panels. One noteworthy one was on "Our Critics Become our Benefactors" which attempted to address the large volume of "bad press" we are receiving. Two of the speakers stayed on task but were pretty neutral when it came to causes and possible corrections. My personal opinion is that the cause is that we do not practice the Traditions and that results in many people attending the fellowship who do not meet the primary purpose. People who do not have a desire to stay sober will not be successful. Then they want to blame the AA program instead of the fact that they should have been in some other program or no program at all. When you have the internet at your disposal you have a worldwide soapbox for your views. If you are not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous you are under no obligation to practice the Traditions. This goes for attendees and for referral parties such as doctors, judges, treatment centers and others.

Then I attended another one, it was on "Cooperating with the Courts". This panel featured 2 judges, neither one is an alcoholic. One is a Sobriety/DWI/Drug court judge who took over the court from a judge who was an AA member (so much for his anonymity). Having an AA member who is a judge is the same scenario as occurred in Maryland in the late 1980's. There an AA member who was a judge flooded local meetings with mandated attendees. Fortunately for the Maryland Groups they revolted and had a Call for Unity. Please see attachment. [DWI's and Court Slips in AA Meetings, Maryland General Service, February 9, 1987]

This speaker went on and on praising her AA volunteer (Ralph) who shows up at court four times a week to provide assessments of how the probationers are performing, what meetings they should be attending, who their sponsors should be and even providing rides funded by the local groups. No affiliation there though!

The other judge is a Federal Judge and a Non Alcoholic Trustee on the GSO board (can you say "there goes our claim of non-affiliation?"). Please understand that here in the states a Federal Judge generally handles High Crimes that are more "white collar" with a high percentage of drug dealers who have gone to prison over their choice of vocation. Simply put, he would see more drug addicts than alcoholics. He was abetted in his court by some kind of "re-entry probation/parole department head". This assistant was not an AA member so he involved local AA members to discern who should be given the great opportunity to cut a few years off their sentence by going into his re-entry program. They were actually cackling when telling us how they coerced inmates into accepting a deal that was not always in their best interest. This coercion was clearly designed to get around the 22 higher court rulings that parolees could not be sentenced to AA because of its religious nature. Mr. Re-entry was proud that they found a way around the court rulings. He also bragged that he used the threat of more prison time to give them an offer they couldn't refuse. He justified this by saying it's okay to break the rules if you are doing it for someone's own good.

Again putting aside how hard it is to claim non affiliation when your board has a Judge as a Non Alcoholic Trustee, the whole thing reached the level of absurd on many other points. Chief among my personal issues with their process was how condescending their attitude was to the people they were trying "help". Talks of letting them sit up on the bench and fist bumps were the order of the day. The Lady DWI/Drug Court Judge admitted she was happy to report that while in her court they did not drink. With a wink and a nod she seemed to be implying that even she knew that most went right back to drinking once they were off probation.

Still she forged on, asking us to please seek out the sobriety courts in our towns and attempt to replicate what her and her dear "Ralph" had done. Volunteer 4 days a week and collect money from his groups so that the system could "keep on keeping on". She tried to close the deal by saying all her 4 main volunteers had indicated that they kept doing it because of the great feeling they got when lives were turned around. Since there was no question and answer session after the panel, I didn't get to ask the obvious question "if the sobriety court is so successful why don't the masses of success stories just come and volunteer??" It would seem with all the fist bumping, bench sitting and graduation robe wearing there would be a list of volunteers so large that you couldn't find your way to the front of the line! 

Mr. Re-entry specialist regaled us with stories how one convict had a gun charge and was thereby usually ineligible for the "great deal". However, his local AA advisor interviewed the soon to be paroled criminal and deemed him safe enough to be coerced into going to meetings. Mr. Re-Entry specialist said it was against his normal protocol but he went with the AA volunteer's call and it all worked out. It never seemed to cross his mind that had it not "all worked out" gun play could have occurred at an AA meeting.

One final note that I am sure you'll get a kick out of. The world famous Clancy was speaking practically next door at another recovery organization's meeting. Well on Saturday night they had the old timers panel in the Georgia Dome. This is a huge American football stadium and 60,000 AA members had gathered to hear a panel of 12 AA members with 50 years or more of sobriety speak. The twelve were chosen by pulling their names out of hat. Then they were each given 5 minutes to speak. This was very fun when one of the first old-timers to speak started his talk by saying, "All I know is that I'm up here and Clancy is out there!!!" And a large portion of the crowd howled. Seems the old timers still see through the nonsense of circuit speakers. I told one younger member who asked why the statement was made and about the response it generated, I explained that not every AA member agrees with the cult of personality that can be reached by the "anointed ones". I went on to say, most of us wouldn't cross the street if Clancy was speaking at a free cookout. Let alone pay $10 a head.

Let me close by saying there was plenty of good fellowship to be had attending an event where there are 60,000 like minded people. Not only was there was great fellowship, there was much inspiration to be gained. Even the odd events I have detailed above were worth the trip. I would rather have an idea what was going astray than to live like an ostrich and stick my head in the sand.

Many say our program is self-correcting. Myself, I believe it will self correct if we follow the Traditions and keep our collective egos in check.........

As usual, please feel free to use any part of this missive in any manner you find fit.

Sincerely, 

….....”

(edits to preserve anonymity)

Comment: None other than to point out the date of the Maryland report: 1987! And we still haven't learnt from our mistakes! We just keep on repeating and repeating and …..... What's that called? Ah yeah! Plain insanity!

Cheers

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

PS Our thanks to the US member for their correspondence. We're always interested in such contributions

PPS For AA Minority Report 2013 click here 

PPPS Plymouth Intergroup corruption

Court mandated attendance (CMA). The Maryland (US) experience

D.W.I.’S and Court Slips in AA Meetings. A Report on the Experience of the Maryland Area of Alcoholics Anonymous, Maryland General Service, PO Box 788, Waldorf, MD 20601, February 9, 1987

(Note: DWI or DUI - “Driving while intoxicated” or “driving under the influence”).

We have already received much information in relation to the adverse impact this policy was and is having on AA (see here and here). One has to wonder for how much longer the fellowship is going to continue making these mistakes before it remembers to abide by its own traditions Here is yet another example of why they exist!

Continued participation by AA in the CMA (or 'chit') system breaches the following traditions:

Long form:

"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.

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. 

6.—Problems of money, property, and authority may easily divert us from our primary spiritual aim. We think, therefore, that any considerable property of genuine use to A.A. should be separately incorporated and managed, thus dividing the material from the spiritual. An A.A. group, as such, should never go into business. Secondary aids to A.A., such as clubs or hospitals which require much property or administration, ought to be incorporated and so set apart that, if necessary, they can be freely discarded by the groups. Hence such facilities ought not to use the A.A. name. Their management should be the sole responsibility of those people who financially support them. For clubs, A.A. managers are usually preferred. But hospitals, as well as other places of recuperation, ought to be well outside A.A.—and medically supervised. While an A.A. group may cooperate with anyone, such cooperation ought never go so far as affiliation or endorsement, actual or implied. An A.A. group can bind itself to no one.

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.”

(our emphases)

Also:

From a research report conducted for and published by the DWP (under Conclusions and Recommendations): 

“6.4.3 Mandation to treatment

Findings regarding the merits of linking benefit receipt to engagement with treatment were varied. We identified a small amount of relevant evidence on this issue from the literature, all of it from the US. What this literature tells us is that firstly, the receipt of benefits does not encourage or increase alcohol dependency (Stevenson, 2002). Alcohol misuse can cause unemployment which may result in being on benefits, but it is not the benefit receipt in itself that causes or escalates alcohol misuse. Secondly, the US experience suggests that when treatment is a mandated part of welfare receipt, more adults with substance misuse problems do engage with it than would otherwise be the case (Schwartz et al., 2004). However, termination of benefits for those who fail to comply with a treatment regime can have negative consequences (in terms of health and homelessness, for example) particularly in the short term (Schwartz et al., 2004).  

Findings from our qualitative research suggest that mandating treatment as a condition of benefit receipt may be counterproductive. The professionals we interviewed stated that the threat or actual loss of benefits (i.e. moving from one benefit to another, appealing a decision about eligibility) was a trigger to relapse for some of their clients. They and clients felt that compulsion was likely to be counterproductive. Individuals need to be motivated to engage with services and motivation is an important determinant of successfully completing treatment. In our view, therefore, there is inadequate evidence from either the literature or qualitative research to support the view that making treatment a condition of benefit receipt would improve treatment outcomes for clients or result in more alcohol misusers re-entering employment.”

(our emphases)

Source: Alcohol misusers’ experiences of employment and the benefit system. Research report No. 718 DWP 

Comment: Now what was that definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results (Albert Einstein) . Also from Albert: Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former …. and …...The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.

So do something about it!

Cheerio

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)